Lovers

by Judith Krantz

  “Davy!”

  “It’s your own damn fault,” he moaned, and kissed her with all the growing passion and love he’d been suppressing since the day they’d met.

  “Davy, what the hell are you doing?” Gigi asked, trying to sound astonished. Was a mere backrub all she had in mind, she asked herself with what remained of her honesty. My, what very tasty strong lips he had. Nothing like a soufflé at all.

  “Just shut up and pay attention.” He kept right on kissing her, and Gigi felt herself growing interestingly languid. Davy was such an absolute darling, but who would have dreamed that he’d be such a good kisser? Who would have expected that he would know exactly how closely she liked to be hugged and held? Who would have realized that lying down next to her—how had that happened?—this lanky Davy creature would feel as reassuringly solid and lovely as a rock that had baked in the sun? Who would have believed that you could work in the same room with a man for weeks and not understand that the beautiful shape of his mouth made it impossible not to kiss him back with the same intensity with which he kissed you? Who would have anticipated that if this man swept your hair up from your neck and kissed you very slowly and deliberately right up and down your bare nape, taking little nibbles as he progressed, you would become violently excited?

  As those questions drifted through her mind like a fresh breeze, Gigi knew she was the biggest humbug alive. She wasn’t surprised, not at all at all at all.

  “Oh, Davy …” She stirred in his arms, pressing closer to this heavenly, hesitant man.

  “Please, darling Gigi, please give me a chance. I’m so much in love with you that I’m nearly insane …”

  “Prego …” she whispered.

  “You mean …” David hadn’t been totally sure what prego meant, and he didn’t want to make a false move now that he finally held his treasure in his arms and had told her his love.

  “Prego means do … by all means … whatever …”

  “Would that include this?” he asked, trying to unbutton her blouse with his clever artist’s fingers, which had started to tremble so much that they were clumsy.

  “Whatever …” she murmured, closing her eyes so that she could better fell the first touch of his lips on her breasts. When it finally came, she stirred under it as a glade of trees stirs under the first raindrops. “Oh, yes, definitely that …”

  Davy rolled off the couch so that he could kneel on the floor and take both of her breasts in his crafty, sensitive fingertips. He caressed them with wonder, by lamplight, marveling at the vivid pinkness of her fragile nipples, which rose and became plumply erect as he looked at them, marveling at the flushing of her white skin, which created a color so rare that it became an ornament, transfixed by the firmness, the unexpected resilience of her young flesh, each of her breasts a promise that could break his heart. In reverent silence he traced her skin toward the edge of each nipple, until he saw her lift herself upward toward him and her lips shape unuttered assent. Thirty, trembling, awestruck, he drew close to the tenderly swollen buds made of hot honey and tight silk and gently took each of them, one by one, deeply into his mouth.

  Kneeling there, drunk on the taste of Gigi’s flesh, David hardly breathed, held in the sweet surge of a thousand daydreams come true. As she grew dense with longing, Gigi gave great ragged sighs and gradually worked her way out of her clothes while he barely lifted his mouth from its deliberate work. Now he was wily, now demanding, now artful, now avid, always cosseting her, always regaling himself.

  He remained on his knees, intoxicated and rapt, until he felt her hands plunge deeply into his hair, communicating an unmistakable change of pace that was half question, half invitation. At that he took off all his clothes, each movement punctuated by a kiss as his tongue penetrated her open, fragrant mouth. Gigi dexterously discovered his naked flesh limb by limb. At the hollow at the base of his throat, where the collarbones met, she found skin as tender as the softest glove leather, a pulse beating like the surf of a warm sea. In the glow of lamplight she saw that the joints of his shoulders and elbows and wrists were as beautifully shaped as his mouth, that the fine hair on his chest and arms was as dark as a fall of feathers against the luxurious smoothness of his skin, his muscles well defined, long and solid. As he stood up, she said, imperiously and unexpectedly, “Stop …”

  “Stop?” he cried incredulously.

  “Yes … I want to see you.” Gigi gave a low, playful laugh, allowing full rein to her saucy, erotic spirit. Glorying in her nakedness, she sat up tall on the couch, kneeling on her heels, and took his rearing penis in her hands. He saw the smile fade abruptly from her face as she bit down on her lower lip and drew in her breath with astonishment as she measured his length and bulk with airy, eager fingers, her touch flickering, clasping, unclasping, deliberately maddening. He stood his ground, unmoving, tensing his thighs, thrusting his pelvis forward, his hands forming fists, and willing himself to let her play with him until she had her fill. He adored the teasing punishment she meted out, knowing that it wouldn’t be long before the devilish inquisitiveness that had started by making him take off his glasses would get the better of her.

  Gigi was torn between the gourmandise of drawing out this moment of fascinated discovery, of prolonging this glorious, sweet frolic of inquisition, and by a growing urgency that could only be relieved by feeling him invade her, fill her, possess her. Her mouth grew dry and her heart pounded impatiently until, unable to make herself hold back a moment longer, she surrendered to the drug of long-deferred desire, fell back on the couch, and offered herself to him as eagerly as the dry land offers itself to the storm.

  Now David grew serious, measuring his entrance with the concentrated precision of an Olympic diver, pleasuring her with knowing measures, meting out, with the hard-won patience of experience, his slowly sliding, deep, full thrusts that went in as far as he could go, and his short, hard, rapid strokes that penetrated only a few inches, holding back his own need in favor of hers, listening to her skin, gauging her sighs, judging her breathing and her sweat, until he wove a veil of pure passion around them, creating a zone of timelessness in which Gigi lost her singleminded rage to reach fulfillment, and let herself exist, aching still but rocked in the moment, exist in his arms and his breath and his heartbeat and the rise and fall of his body above her.

  Only after he was certain that they had used that timelessness to begin to learn the uses of their flesh did he permit himself to attend directly to her excitement, to concentrate severely, sternly, on the burning pearl that lay deeply hidden between her legs. Soon she sighed and gasped, her breath finally rising into a series of shameless, uncontrollable shuddering sounds. David smiled for the first time and now plunged freely, over and over, the diver liberated from judgment, immersed himself in the living depths of her until he quickly pounded to his own superb release.

  Soon after Victoria Frost moved to California, she rented an apartment in one of a group of gated town houses, vaguely Regency in style, that had recently been built on land once owned by Twentieth Century Fox. The well-guarded complex offered her the advantages of high security and underground parking along with a striking degree of anonymity. She could go straight from her car to an elevator that rose to the fourth and top floor of the building where her apartment was located, one of a group of three other apartments, without seeing anybody or being seen, except by a stray unspeaking neighbor, all of whom were far older than she. Victoria had had all her furniture and books sent out from New York and she had reproduced, in the exceptionally high-ceilinged and well-proportioned rooms, an apartment that was almost identical to the one she had lived in before.

  After the Indigo Seas pitch, she spent the rest of the day back at the office, conferring busily with several of the other creative terms, making sure that she didn’t get trapped by Archie and Byron into the usual lovingly detailed and endlessly repetitive recapitulation of strategy and triumph that followed a win. She knew she’d made a face-losing tactical mistake
, and she didn’t want to listen to them try to get her off the hook with all the considerable tact at their command.

  As she wrapped a heavy quilted violet silk robe around her waist and made herself a drink, Victoria reflected on the day’s events. When she’d taken her position on the campaign Gigi and David had created, she hadn’t left herself room to follow the parade if it turned left instead of right, a mistake she’d never made before, an amateur’s mistake and a totally unnecessary one.

  Ben Winthrop and his Enchanted Attic account still hadn’t turned up and became a solid reality, although Gigi had explained that he was in New York for the next few weeks. That excuse would undoubtedly turn out to be as real as the success of the Abbondanza campaign, Victoria thought, unaware that she had tightened her lips and narrowed her eyes in a grimace that made her face turn bleak and forbidding. That little bitch had led a charmed life since she’d appeared at the office, she didn’t seem able to put a foot wrong.

  Why, Victoria asked herself, did she feel such an instinctive hatred of Gigi? The redheaded tart was doing brilliantly well for the agency, yet somehow Victoria felt that any success for Gigi was a defeat for her. When she’d described Gigi to Angus, he’d said that Gigi sounded like Millicent Frost at the beginning of her career, a diminutive; vivacious charmer, a golden girl sparkling with ideas and energy, but that surely couldn’t be reasonable. It made no sense. No one sane would compare a twenty-three-year-old girl with no advertising experience to speak of—who had had exactly one lucky break, with a potential second—to a powerful woman who would soon be sixty and knew more about the agency business than did any other woman in the world. No, that couldn’t possibly be it, Victoria decided firmly, Angus’s intuitive guess about Gigi was simply wrong, just as wrong as her own first impression, her memory of her mother as a young woman.

  As she walked around her living room and turned on the lights, Victoria, grim in her new defeat, asked herself what else Angus could be wrong about. Almost a year had passed since he’d persuaded her to leave Caldwell & Caldwell, and what had she to show for it? One-third of a partnership in a small agency—almost acceptably adequate for the minor, minor leagues, but a blip on a radar screen by Madison Avenue standards—an unwanted exile from the city of her birth, and a forced rupture with all the swains who had swarmed around her in New York. As for Angus and the marriage he promised her—nothing. She could detect no visible signs of real change, in spite of his constant reassurance that she was too far away to be a judge, that he never stopped planning for it, that he was laying the necessary groundwork, but that without their joint patience they stood to lose everything.

  His words were like a metal nail file working away under her skin, severing tender nerves, making thin skin bleed; each phone call made her want to scream at him, scream vilely until he did what she wanted, yet he was so entirely convincing, he made so much sense, that she was forced to agree with him and try to beat down her sense of panic.

  They’d been together on a total of fourteen occasions during all of last year. On Victoria’s visits to New York, Angus had only been able to snatch a few hours for her on nine separate afternoons, coming to her hotel for a few hours before he was expected at home. The other five times they’d been together were here in Los Angeles, in her apartment, during brief visits he’d made to the West Coast.

  The long weekends he’d promised her before she left, the trips up the coast to Ventana, the trips down the coast to Laguna, the trips out to the desert—none of them had materialized because there had never been enough time, no chance for him to be out of touch with the office, no reason for him to be in California without a full day of meetings, no excuse for disappearing for a weekend and leaving his wife alone at home.

  His secretary and Millicent’s secretary had long ago formed a tight alliance, and both of them made sure that they would always know where to find him. They would suffer severe loss of face if he slipped the net for more than a few perfectly explained hours. He might as well be in a maximum-security prison, Victoria thought viciously.

  Even phone calls of more than a few minutes were difficult to arrange. She couldn’t call him, either at home or at work. The time difference that puts New York three hours ahead of Los Angeles meant that by the time Angus got to the office where his secretary routinely placed all his calls, it was only 6:30 A.M. in L.A., too early to phone. By 5:30 P.M., when he was free of his secretary’s surveillance, it was afternoon in California, just after lunch, a period that was eaten up by business for Victoria. By the time her day ended, Angus was back home or already out for the evening.

  In any case, Victoria thought vitriolically, did Angus imagine that a telephone call at three in the afternoon, in a busy office where a stream of other calls kept coming in, could be the equivalent of his kisses? Did he believe that the few times he’d phoned her from his office before his secretary got in, awakening her from her sleep, gave her the equivalent of emotional satisfaction?

  No, she’d taken care of herself, thank you very much. And not ineffectively either, Victoria thought, as she settled down in her favorite corner to watch the fruitwood fire she’d lit in the fireplace. Not ineffectively at all.

  She’d arrived in Los Angeles with warm letters of introduction to a number of women who were connected to the busy social life she’d left behind in New York. They were women on the highest levels of Los Angeles society, members of The Colleagues, who raised funds for mentally retarded children, members of the boards of the Children’s Museum, Planned Parenthood, and the Santa Monica Rape Treatment Center. They worked in the leadership of the Zoo Committee, the Friends of the Joffrey Ballet, St. John’s Hospital, the President’s Circle of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Downtown Women’s Center, and the Host Committee for the Olympics. Victoria had approached each one of these philanthropic and powerful women as if she were a prospective client with a fifty-million-dollar account to award. Victoria had played that irresistible, undetectable customer’s game she’d learned how to play better than anyone of her age, and before the first meeting was over she’d mentioned her desire to be useful in her new community. Soon she’d been invited to join in the complicated dance of service to others on which these women spent so much of their time.

  And after all, why not? She had everything to offer them, Victoria reflected. It soon became a coup to capture her to work—and so effectively!—for one’s favorite cause. Not only was she able to have her agency create and give them the copy and art for their invitations and party programs, but Victoria Frost had all the glamorous allure of someone who had been involved in a famous family rift about which there had been national speculation, but no hint of scandal. She was, as a matter of course, considered the great heiress that every hair on her head proclaimed her to be. Yet she looked unthreateningly sexless in her relentless simplicity, and no hint of her well-leashed carnal cravings escaped as she charmed the women of those groups she quickly penetrated, groups many Los Angeles women had tried to get into for decades without success.

  To a small number of her new friends, always the most influential woman in any charity, Victoria confided that she had “an understanding” with a man in London. With a minimum of words she conveyed that he was a titled, landed, but unhappily married man, and that her love was not without hope. It explained, they told each other—for they almost invariably knew each other, joined as they were at the many crossroads of the city’s good works—a quality of purity and dignity and slight sorrow that was rare in an eligible young woman who was still unmarried. It explained why she didn’t date the still unmarried young men of her age, it explained why Victoria Frost made a perfect extra woman who never flirted with their husbands or their married sons or their sons-in-law, why she was such a welcome addition to their private parties.

  They never suspected that she was like a cowboy who rode into a herd of cattle and cut one steer out of the crowd for branding, Victoria thought as the flames of the small fire blazed higher. They never
guessed that during the tennis matches at the Los Angeles Country Club, or at the Dinosaur Ball in the National History Museum—even on the occasions of her infrequent attendance at the All Saint’s Church in Pasadena—Victoria was looking over the possibilities. The man she picked was always a young married man, a very-much-married man with a wife who was one of the darlings of the community, a man who had everything to lose by boasting about Victoria to anyone, by even mentioning her name. They never guessed that when she found a man who appealed to her, a man she chose with the most scrupulous attention to his physical desirability and the shrewdest sizing up of his availability, she waited observantly until she had the perfect opportunity, at a big party, to say a few quiet words into his ear.

  “Would you be terribly shocked if I admitted I’m dying to fuck you?” That was all it took. Was it that easy for men with women, she wondered. Would any woman be as enormously flattered and as quickly aroused by a man who said those words as he sat next to her at one of those ubiquitous, convenient round caterer’s tables for ten or twelve, at which you couldn’t make out clearly what anyone was saying except the one person to whom you were talking? If a man said those words, it would sound like a bad pass, crude and cheap, Victoria mused. Any woman would feel insulted. When a woman said them, a man found it irresistible. God, what complacent, eager fools they were! How simple they were to pluck from their branches!

  The arrangements were easy. Their wives weren’t Millicent Frost Caldwells. These were young, established businessmen who could get away for afternoon golf games or business lunches without Angus’s time constrictions. Victoria herself had only to say she was going to see a client to disappear without questions from FRB.

  Many a long lunch, many a long afternoon, Victoria spent with some of the most attractive married men in all of Los Angeles. She used them mercilessly. If they weren’t sexually talented, if they came too soon or couldn’t get hard more than once in an encounter, she allowed them only a single second chance with her before she sent them back to their wives.