Killer Diamonds

by Rebecca Chance

  ‘I can see that you’re very discreet,’ Angel said. ‘Nicole and I share that quality. We’ve known each other since school, so we go back a very long way, and we have a long tradition of keeping quiet about a whole variety of things . . . in fact,’ Angel added, chancing his luck, ‘I’m personally capable of being completely discreet about absolutely anything at all. And I’m terribly open-minded.’

  Biscuit met his gaze with a long, dark, impenetrable stare that acknowledged Angel’s offer while giving nothing away.

  ‘Something to bear in mind for the future,’ he said.

  ‘Hi, Angel!’

  Princess Sophie, wearing a short miniskirt and a wide smile, plopped herself down in Angel’s lap. The way she was sitting made it immediately clear that if she were wearing any kind of underwear, it was the most minimal of thongs. Biscuit, accustomed to women displaying themselves in an attempt to attract his attention, gave the lower portion of her body a brief glance. Avoiding it pointedly might have aroused suspicion about his true preference, and no straight man would have resisted the temptation to look up a young and nubile princess’s skirt if given the opportunity.

  ‘You’ve been totally hogging Lil’ Biscuit!’ she complained. ‘And we’re all so excited to meet him!’

  Biscuit’s eyes flickered over the rest of Sophie’s party, in particular the handsome, red-headed Prince Toby, whose freckled good looks were reminiscent of his boyfriend Gray’s. ‘Well,’ he drawled, ‘I’m kinda excited to meet you all too . . .’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re going on the expedition, Ange!’ Sophie said. ‘I never pictured you as Action Man – outside the bedroom, that is!’

  She grinned knowingly. Sophie’s tastes ran primarily to working-class white boys, but she had dallied with Angel on and off for years; they were old friends and fuck buddies.

  ‘Oh, it really isn’t a big deal,’ Angel said languidly. ‘We’re not having to pull sleds across the Arctic and panic about losing fingers to frostbite, like Tor did with Toby on their polar jaunt. We camp out with full provisions, no foraging for whale meat, nothing sordid, and we do a series of challenges wearing Go-Pros. We’ll be competing in races and climbs, all of which Toby or that action-star actress will doubtless win. I’m just eye candy, frankly.’

  ‘But it’s so not you!’ Sophie persisted. ‘You hate camping, the outdoors – you bitched that whole time we went to Glastonbury, and you had one of the posh tents with beds and outlets you can plug your phone into and everything!’

  ‘Those toilets!’ Angel said with a reminiscent shudder. ‘Boutique camping, my arse! I swear, for the money I paid they should have scattered rose petals in the bloody toilet bowl every morning.’

  Biscuit snorted with laughter.

  ‘I hear you, man,’ he said. ‘I take a helicopter in, do my set and get the hell out. Straight back to my five-star hotel.’

  ‘I still don’t get why –’ Sophie persisted, much to Angel’s annoyance.

  ‘Oh, Granny Viv’s doing so much for charity with this auction,’ he said. ‘I suppose I felt I should do my bit. And I know Tor and Toby already, of course, so it’ll really be like an adventure holiday with some mates, getting extra publicity for Granny Viv’s jewellery sale – not that she needs it.’

  ‘So, do you want to join the guys in the VIP area?’ Nicole was asking Silantra, as they took ginger and green tea martinis from a tray proffered by a waiter who was doing his best not to gawp at Silantra’s lavish cleavage.

  ‘Sure,’ she said, glancing over to make sure that her husband had had enough time to convey to Angel the message that he was more than welcome to have sex with Silantra. ‘I’d love to meet the prince.’

  ‘And that’s Princess Sophie as well,’ Nicole said. ‘The tall blonde on Angel’s lap. Two royals for the price of one.’

  ‘Wow, this is amazing!’ Silantra said, heaving a sigh of sheer happiness. ‘I’m at a party with, like, two members of the royal family!’

  ‘You’ll get on with Sophie,’ Nicole said, grinning. ‘She’s a real party girl – though not as much as she used to be. Did you hear about her getting caught out having this big orgy in a villa in Ibiza? Toby was there too, and it was all on film, apparently – lots of coke – anyway, really dodgy, and the palace got furious and clamped down on them hard. Prince Hugo was livid. It wasn’t long before his wedding, and the publicity was awful. So ever since, they’ve taken a bit of a chill pill.’

  ‘You gotta be careful when cameras are rolling,’ Silantra agreed. ‘There’s, like, no point recording yourself fucking if you can’t make money from it, right?’

  Nicole, who had quite forgotten about Silantra’s sex tape, started to stammer an apology, but Silantra shrugged it off with a swift rise and fall of one slim, smooth, mochaccino-tinted shoulder, almost completely revealed by her jumpsuit. The garment had been designed specifically to show off her assets; her round, bolt-on breasts did not need the same support natural ones did, and thus the back of the jumpsuit was so low it showed hints of her buttock cleavage as she moved. Fine gold chains, studded with diamonds in an echo of Biscuit’s necklace, hung from the halter at the nape of her neck, the lowest chain almost skimming that cleavage too. The entire outfit was a miracle of engineering.

  ‘This way,’ Nicole said, steering Silantra towards the VIP section.

  ‘Is that Angel’s girlfriend?’ Silantra asked, as they passed a cluster of guests that included Christine. She was with a couple of colleagues from the auction house, wearing a black dress as demure as Silantra’s outfit was outré.

  Nicole could barely repress a sneer at Christine as they passed. Crucial as Christine was to their plans, the whole scenario of Angel pretending to be falling for her was proving extremely annoying to Nicole. It meant she couldn’t crash at Angel’s, and instead had had to take a short-term lease on a flat which, because of London prices, was costing her a small fortune. It also meant that Angel was unavailable at least half the time, which was frustrating. And despite his protests to the contrary, Nicole had the sense that he was enjoying fucking Christine much more than he admitted. It had been a long time since Angel had had a fresh little thing to corrupt; maybe not since their schooldays, when the upper years had picked out playthings from the new intake, bartering for them with their classmates, just as they themselves had been selected back in the day.

  However, breaking in a newbie wasn’t Angel’s fetish. He liked experienced women, ones who, like Silantra, were no stranger to strap-ons, role switching and bondage play. So it struck Nicole as odd that, when she brunched with Angel after Christine had spent a night with him, he always looked so relaxed, so sleek and satisfied. It was as if introducing that drab little snub-nosed thing to, say, some bog-standard concept like double penetration had been much more fun than any wild and raunchy idea Nicole could conjure up.

  Odd, and exasperating. And the most infuriating part of all was that Nicole could tell Christine was not really in love with Angel. She was dickmatized, as Nicole put it. Sexually obsessed with Angel and his endless box of tricks, thrown perpetually off balance, and thus made vulnerable by not knowing what was coming next; and also hugely flattered by what she believed to be the monogamous attentions of such a handsome playboy, who seemed to have reformed his wicked ways just for her, and whose hugely famous grandmother was encouraging the relationship with everything she had.

  Like a fucking romance novel, Nicole thought, her lip curling in contempt. But those guys aren’t the kind of husband material Christine and Vivienne want Angel to be. Men like that don’t settle down with a nice girl and give up all the pervy stuff overnight. Quite the opposite. Not only do they want to keep doing all the naughty things they enjoy, they always need more. They have to go further and further to get their thrills.

  It wasn’t that Nicole wanted to be exclusive with Angel, nor that she was in love with him. Nicole didn’t operate on either of those levels. But when she was fucking a man, she expected to be the most important
woman in his life. Both the trader and the triad White Paper Fan had been sexually obsessed with her, willing to take any risk she demanded in order to keep her around, and that was just how she liked it.

  She wasn’t foolish enough to expect that level of infatuation from Angel: they were equal playmates. But she wanted to be the acknowledged mistress – not sitting back while her co-conspirator had more fun training up an innocent like Christine than he did with her.

  He’d get bored with Christine eventually, of course. But by then, Nicole would have got her revenge for the insult he’d given her . . .

  ‘Yes, that’s Christine,’ she confirmed to Silantra. ‘You’ve got your meeting with her tomorrow, at the auction house. She’s the gemmologist there. It’s a very convenient connection,’ she added pointedly, wanting to underline the fact that Christine’s attraction for Angel was in large part the link to the jewellery sale.

  Silantra nodded, her blue-tinted gaze slicing up and down Christine’s body, making it clear she had exactly the same opinion of Christine’s outfit that Nicole did.

  ‘They exclusive?’ she asked.

  ‘She thinks so,’ Nicole said. ‘But then, girls like her always do, don’t they?’

  Silantra rewarded this observation with a dazzling smile.

  ‘You’re funny,’ she said. ‘And I love your boobs. They’re like my sister Shanté’s, before she had the babies. Real small and pretty.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Nicole said, returning the smile.

  ‘You and Angel . . . ?’

  ‘We like to have fun,’ Nicole said, her voice now lowered, as the bouncer lifted the rope to the VIP area and gestured them in.

  ‘We’re gonna have a lot of fun later,’ Silantra said in an equally quiet tone, letting the hand that wasn’t holding the martini glass slide down Nicole’s arm in a brief caress. ‘I’ve been looking forward to it.’

  ‘Angel could join us,’ Nicole suggested. ‘If you’d like. I don’t know if your husband . . .’

  ‘Oh, he does his own thing,’ Silantra said carelessly. ‘We all got our own thing, right?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you and I have lots of things,’ Nicole said, and although Silantra was quite a few inches taller than her, the two women’s eyes met in such understanding of the message being conveyed that they might for that moment have been twins.

  Christine glanced over as Nicole passed by with Silantra. She couldn’t help admiring Nicole’s peach suede dress, the way it clung to her slender figure, and the diamond and gold chains trailing down Silantra’s smooth, flawless bare back. They were way out of her league, those women; they saw their looks as one of their greatest assets, willing to spend vast amounts of money as an investment to help those assets appreciate. Silantra’s face now was by no means the one she had been born with; the work she had had done was calculated to ensure she could be filmed from every conceivable angle.

  As Nicole and Silantra entered the VIP section, Christine noticed someone else inside whom she very much wanted to talk to. The rose-gold hair of the Countess of Rutland, arranged in the American-beauty-queen style she favoured, tumbling down her back, was unmistakable. Christine had seen her at jewellery auctions before, but, as a mere appraiser, had not had the status to approach one of the reigning queens of London society.

  Although Christine was in correspondence with the Countess’s publicist about the possibility of the Earl and Countess viewing Vivienne’s collection, so far she had not managed to make an appointment for them. Often, publicists perceived their job as blocking enquiries to their clients rather than facilitating them. Christine had known, however, that they would be likely to show up tonight, as Edmund, the Earl, was an old friend of the younger generation of the royal family and the Rutlands were well known for the many charities they supported.

  The rules of social contact at this kind of occasion were clear. Christine would need to be introduced by a mutual friend if the Rutlands were in the main party area – but once in the VIP section she could approach the Countess as an equal, the fact that she had access beyond the velvet rope vouching for her status. Angel would get her in; she was looking around for him when a voice behind her rather tentatively said: ‘Christine?’

  Stupidly, she felt her heart pound fast as, instead of looking for her boyfriend, she turned round to greet a married man – a man who had completely failed to mention his relationship status when he had picked her up on a beach, invited her out for drinks, and generally behaved in a manner calculated to make her think that he was exactly what she had been looking for all her life.

  ‘Oh, hello, Tor,’ she said, looking as composed as she could manage and keeping her voice flat.

  She had seen him already, across the room, and assumed that they would probably exchange a few words at some stage. It was ridiculous how nervous she had been at the prospect, considering not only that she had been on good terms with him for less than twenty-four hours before Vivienne’s revelations, but that she was now in a relationship with someone else. Still, in the black tie he was wearing for the launch, he looked so dashing. There was something compelling about a man in black tie: it flattered even the worst of bodies and made the best look godlike. Tor, having spent the last month getting into top shape to lead his upcoming expedition, naturally fell into the second category. His shoulders were wide, his waist as narrow as his solid build could achieve; his natural tan shone against the crisp white shirt and black grosgrain bow tie.

  ‘You look lovely,’ he said with great sincerity.

  But then, she reminded herself, he was a master at sounding sincere. And at seeming available! Don’t fall for it again!

  It was shocking how genuine he seemed. There was a soft light in his blue eyes, as if everything around them had faded to nothing when he saw her. Vivienne had told Christine that Tor was a practised flirt, unable to settle with just one woman; but that kind of man was more like – Angel, she thought now. If Angel found himself alone in a room, he would flirt with one of the walls. And he would make that wall blush pink with pleasure if it could, even though it knew that as soon as someone walked in, Angel would forget it had ever existed.

  But Tor was worse – much worse. Because the wall would genuinely believe that Tor only had eyes for it, and its heart would be truly wounded when he turned away.

  ‘Thank you,’ she murmured, smoothing down the boring black sheath dress she’d chosen because it was suited to a professional occasion at which two of the Berkeley auction house directors would be present. Still, at least her accessories were elegant. Vivienne had insisted on giving Christine a set of aquamarines and diamonds set in white gold – drop earrings, a bracelet and a necklace; inexpensive, Vivienne had assured her, just a little trinket to say thank you for all her hard work on the catalogue. The set must have cost several thousand pounds, however, and the shade of aquamarine so exactly matched Christine’s eyes that she almost suspected Vivienne of having bought it especially for her, rather than having found it while going through her collection.

  The simple dress set the aquamarines off perfectly, and Christine had pulled back her hair to show off the earrings; they made her feel sophisticated. When you knew you were wearing real, rather than costume, jewellery, you carried yourself differently, pegged your chin higher, felt as if your neck was actually longer. Christine had been feeling elegant until this moment, poised and suitably ladylike; but Tor’s gaze on her now was so melting, so appreciative, that she suddenly felt as dazzling as Silantra or Nicole, with their body-hugging outfits and superbly honed bodies.

  ‘You look nice too,’ she added lamely.

  ‘It seems so funny that I haven’t seen you since that day in Tylösand,’ Tor said simply. ‘It was such a good evening.’

  ‘I got so drunk!’ she said apologetically. ‘I never really thanked you for introducing me to Vivienne. It’s been the most amazing thing for me. Thank you so much.’

  She was stuttering out short sentences, but at least she was managing to spea
k, and it was true that she never had thanked him properly.

  ‘Thank me for introducing you to Vivienne – and Angel?’ Tor said, his mouth twisting into a rueful smile. ‘That was a mistake of mine.’

  Christine’s whole body heated up with a mixture of embarrassment, delight and anger. How dare he talk like this, make her feel this way, when he was totally unavailable for anything serious? Even if he did eventually leave his wife, he would be off-limits to Christine forever. A married man who could convince a woman that he was truly interested in her was much too dangerous to date.

  ‘You lose ’em the way you got ’em,’ one of the girls at the foster home with her had once snapped at Christine, when she guiltily confessed her interest in a boy at school who already had a girlfriend. Christine had known exactly what she meant. Her decision to go out with Angel and yield to his insistent courtship had been partly motivated by the strength of the impression Tor had made on her – the need to block out thoughts of him by putting another man in the place she would have liked him to be. The girl at the foster home hadn’t said ‘The best way to get over one man is get under another’ – that had been someone on her gemmology course – but it was equally good advice.

  Only, clearly, it hadn’t completely worked. Christine stared at Tor, unable to summon up anything to say that wasn’t as aggressive as ‘How’s your wife?’, while he continued:

  ‘You left Sweden so fast! I did understand, of course. I’m happy it worked out so well with you and Vivienne. You must have done a really good job of convincing her to go with your company.’

  Christine nodded silently.

  ‘I thought you might leave a note for me, though,’ he said, and now he had the nerve to look downright reproachful. ‘With hotel reception, saying how to contact you. I made them check again and again. I thought you must have left something for me and they lost it. And then I rang your auction house, and I left messages on your answering machine. But you never returned them.’