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He sighs. That muscle is going in his jaw again. Either he’s the actor I’ll never be, or there is a real weight of sadness tugging at him, chaining him under those chalk stripes.
‘She’s gone. That’s all you need to know.’
‘So this isn’t a Rebecca scenario. The ghostly paragon hovering over our shoulders. The paragon I could never match.’
‘There are no paragons in my story. One younger brother. I took care of him all his life. We were thick as thieves until we were estranged. He witnessed things in our house he shouldn’t have, but when I tried to fix it, promised to change, she not only seduced him under my nose but succeeded in poisoning his mind.’ He laughs caustically. ‘Voilà. The concept of family is irrelevant to me now, just as it is to you.’
‘We have that heart of darkness in common, definitely. But do you not see how perverted your suggestion sounds?’
He seems to be growing in stature again. Taller, broader, darker. The exhaustion is scrubbed off his pale face. He flicks his jacket back, shoves his hands in his trouser pockets. I study the tautness of his stomach under the pressed shirt. The way his trousers are tailored beneath his belt. Professionalism personified. Not a hint of what lies beneath.
‘And do you realise how prim you sound?’
‘Touché.’ I laugh a little shakily and stand up to hold the back of my chair. ‘I am listening, Gustav. I’m not – I’m not saying no. I’m just trying to understand, that’s all.’
Polly is screeching no, no, no, Lothario like some kind of Greek chorus in my head, but my own voice is saying yes, yes. Who is left to stop me?
We move at the same time, right up to each other. Behind us, the darkening gallery with the naughty pictures capering across the walls. In front, the great river and the westering sun casting orange ripples under the boats ploughing home over the river. The London Eye rotating.
‘This is my office. My rules. I can lay down whatever warped plan I like. What I want is to be woken up again, but on my own terms. You don’t have to accept any of it. You can walk out that door any time you like.’
He laughs softly, and there it is. The soft lower lip, pushing slightly away from the upper. The run of his tongue across it, the glint of those biting, hurting teeth.
‘Why don’t I just cut the sob story and show you just how carnal I want to be?’
‘Should we not discuss terms?’ My voice warbles up the scale. ‘Sign something?’
‘In blood, do you think?’ he chuckles, leaning down towards me. I can see that yellow crinkle on the edge of his eye. The calmness of his brow. I can smell a faint, lemony tang of scent. ‘Later, perhaps. Let’s see how we get on. Poco a poco.’
‘Baby steps.’
We stare at each other. The mini version of me reflected in his black eyes shimmers against the afternoon light. The bug-eyed girl I can see there is perfectly calm, too. His face relaxes into a smile, the creases at the corners of his eyes showing me it’s heartfelt.
I lift my hands up like praying paws but instead of taking them like he did before, kissing them like a courtier, he pulls me roughly and imprisons both wrists behind my back with one hand. Right. So he’s not being gentle today. I put up a token fight, try to wrench my hands back, but his tall, firm body is pressed hard against mine and my resistance is shrivelling.
‘Trust me, Serena. I’m not going to do anything you won’t like. You responded to me yesterday. I love that you’re so transparent. You’re a frustrated, lovely temptress. You make the blood pump through these weary veins again.’ He tightens his grip on my wrists, nearly stopping the pumping of my own blood, but I welcome the pain because it’s brought him up close. ‘Remember, you’re free to leave whenever you wish. But I guarantee by the end of our time together you’ll wonder how you ever lived without the attention I’m going to lavish on you.’
The window sill digs into the backs of my legs. His smile fades into seriousness as he examines my face silently, sliding his free hand under my hair. Watching the way my hair curls round his fingers, his eyes sliding back to mine to see how I’m reacting. He already knows how that weakens me. He’ll remember, because every time he strokes or tugs or tangles my hair, my eyes will close, my head fall back with surrender. After that I’m a sure thing.
His hand moves down, framing my face, then as it continues on, down my throat, his face is brought so close it’s almost blurred. I focus on his mouth. What will it give away about him today? Those teeth are a tiger’s barrier to his emotions. They come down hard when he’s hesitant or thoughtful, then when some kind of release is allowed the tiny dents in his lip fill out again. It’s happening now. How warm his breath is on my cheek as he brushes his lips against my skin. I tilt my face up, move my mouth towards his, but he turns his face sideways, his black hair falling like water against my mouth instead.
The idea that whores don’t kiss shoots through me and hits its target. Dark determination twists inside me. We’ll see about that.
His hand is over the swell of my breasts now. He closes his eyes. The V of the neckline is very flattering, framing and hoisting them invitingly. The perfect choice for today’s encounter. The perfect garment to launch my new, brazenly ambitious self. Keep the red blood boiling in his veins no matter how controlled he thinks he is.
It’s as if he’s measuring me for something. His hand barely touches, merely brushes. I arch my spine to push my breasts closer to him. If he just moves a little to the left he could untie the wrap fastening with one move and undress me, reveal the black lace I’m wearing underneath.
But his hand travels on, smoothes over my stomach. His grip tightens on my wrists. He half opens his eyes again, watches the exploring progress of his own hand skimming down my body, over the soft rising mound. It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t stop, and then he’s there, down there, between my legs. If his hand goes in through the skirt of my dress he’ll know the dampness springing there, oh God, that is what he’s doing, he’s found where the dress wraps over and he’s inside, touching the bare skin of my thigh above the stocking.
Instinctively I try to sidle away, close my legs against his hand. Behave like a lady before it’s too late.
His fingers rest easily on my thigh. His black eyes are on mine. ‘Stay still when I ask. Move when I ask.’
‘My mind is whirling, Gustav. This feels good, but it also feels very, very bad.’
My body belies everything I’m saying and thinking. It feels absolutely right that he’s touching me and lording it over me. All my life I’ve struggled to appear strong, never show the damage. Even with Jake I led the way sexually, I always gave the go-ahead, but after a while I wanted more than he could give me.
‘Whirling is fine.’ Gustav’s chuckle is low, almost a growl. ‘You telling me there’s something wrong about a man who just wants to touch you? Who’s wanted you since he set eyes on your scruffy little butt?’
‘You didn’t give much away yesterday.’
‘Well, I’m telling you now. I was being old-fashioned. Respectful.’
‘Or slow off the mark?’
He laughs quietly and as always when he laughs his hair falls forward as if it wants to join in. His eyes half-close but they can’t hide the want gleaming there, the lust shining through. ‘Time to make up for that, then. I want to know if you feel as good as you look today.’
Who am I kidding? I’ll never be a lady. Would a lady deliberately put on a low cut, seductive, breast-boosting dress to visit a gentleman? I’ll enjoy the ride, and see how far he goes, how far I’ll let him go, what this demented arrangement will actually turn out to be, what it will actually feel like.
‘Stay still, Serena.’ His mouth is hot against my hair now. ‘Let me enjoy this.’
My body has made up its own mind already. It’s given in, willingly. I’m so tired of arguments or arrangements or agreements. I’m weak with the waiting. His breath heats my hair as he mutters something in a foreign language which sounds dirty and which I know he won’t translate for me, but his fingers do the talking instead, stroking in between my thighs and opening me up, as if about to play the harp. My thighs part obediently, and oh God there he is, touching me, treading over the softness.
The scent from the lilies clogs into my nostrils, so heady and thick that it has actual substance, like stuffing my skull with cotton wool. Some kind of barge or boat outside judders into the river bank. I can hear the pilot telling his mate to cast the rope round the bollard on the pier.
One more feeble attempt at decency and decorum. My thighs press together, meaning to stop his hand but instead trapping it there, the tips of his fingers already inside.
He pauses, his mouth pressed against my hair. He remembers what I said last night, knowing that the little hairs which that woman used to yank when she thought I was naughty are rising sensuously like baby feathers under his breath.
‘Still time to back out, Serena. You have no idea what you’ve done to me. So warm. So sweet and fresh. I could play with you all day. But it’s not too late. If you don’t like it, you’re free to leave and we’ll say no more about any of this.’
Those words decency, decorum, dignity are like shreds caught on barbed wire. Distant voices tell me he should shove his gallery, along with his twisted suggestions.
But I like the feel of his hand there. My body wants it, him, inside me.
‘Not that sweet. Go on, if you dare. Put your fingers in me,’ I whisper. ‘But look at me while you’re doing it.’
He nods, as if I’ve answered a question correctly. His mouth slides across my cheek, just touches my mouth, then his eyes are there again, locking onto mine and it’s like I’ve always known them, the dark messages burning inside, the pulse pummelling his neck to confirm the urges he’s struggling to control. The desire he has to touch me and own me.
He doesn’t hurry, though. His self-control is almost military. He continues softly onwards and upwards, to invade me, smoothly, making all my senses come alive. He keeps his eyes steady on me, his mouth a closed line as he feels underneath me. I squirm in response, shamelessly, close my thighs harder as his hand finds its goal, and I start to ride it.
Shame flees, hands above its head like a horrified spectre. Sense and sensibility flee too, along with every other sensible attribute: chastity, modesty, mystique. I close my eyes, the better to feel his breath now on my neck, under my ear.
‘You like that? Of course you do.’ He grunts approvingly. ‘Remember to stay very still. What I didn’t tell you is that if I think you’re resisting me or being disobedient, I might get angry.’
‘Yes,’ I stammer, confused. ‘But I thought I was the one who was supposed to – I thought it was your own pleasure you were after?’ I open my eyes again. He’s doing what I asked. He’s still staring at me but it’s the deep stare of the hypnotist now. I’m ready to drown in it.
‘You’re pleasing me already. Look at you. So lovely perched here in front of me, opening your legs for me. So quiet now. Obedient. Willing. Just the way I like it.’ He hooks one finger into my knickers, keeping his eyes on mine. ‘How could any man not get pleasure from doing this?’
He can feel how wet I am. He strokes me for a moment, his face still so intense. A strand of his black hair has been hooked by one of my curls. There’s no-one else in the world except us.
I’m tight under his fingers, but he pushes more insistently, knowing his way, so that everything loosens and opens, and then he groans quietly and changes tempo, and he’s being rough and hard with me now and several fingers are up inside me, thrusting into the emptiness, and it’s so, so good.
His eyes are burning with triumph. ‘This lovely body has so much to give. So much to learn, too. You can’t help showing me, my lovely. Can you?’
I moan incoherently, not really hearing what he’s saying, tipping myself up to his fingers.
‘You don’t want me to stop, do you? You’ll never want me to stop.’
He pushes his fingers in harder, moving his arm so I am rocking on his hand. This is what Pierre was doing to Polly last night at the party. She was riding on his hand, right there in front of everybody. It’s what caused old Toga Tomas to get so aroused. But there’s no-one watching us now. I fall back against the window as my legs lose their strength. Gustav grips my wrists harder to keep me from falling.
His eyes flash. He can sense the build-up of excitement in me just as strongly as I can, I’m certain of it. The last bastions of my resistance give way, no point even pretending to fight, I’m going weak with it, his fingers are doing what he said they’d do, claiming me as I whimper into his shoulder and I surrender and buck against his hand, my honey soaking his fingers.
He leans his forehead on mine and waits for my hysteria to subside. He releases my wrists and wraps one arm around me. His other fingers still possess me. We’re breathless, embracing lovers there in the window inflamed by the sunset.
At last he pulls away, leaving me wet and still wanting. He smiles as he holds his hand up to the fading light and one by one he licks his fingers.
‘You’re mine now, my Serena. That was me, taking possession.’
I nod wordlessly, watching him sucking my juices. He pokes that last finger into my mouth, pushing it between my teeth so that I taste the faint salt-sweet tang of my own arousal.
He holds my face thoughtfully. ‘Good girl. So. Are you ready to do this? You and me, working and playing together?’
‘And at Christmas I turn back into a pumpkin?’
He wipes his finger across my mouth and holds it there as he studies me, his black eyes dancing now as if he, too, has been relieved of some massive tension.
Then he steps away to his desk and takes out a sheaf of papers.
‘That depends. You are mine until every one of your photographs is sold. Agreed? So I suppose the nicer you are to me, the more we learn about each other, the quicker the photographs will sell, the more successful you’ll become, and the sooner you can go back to your old life.’
I’m aching now, pulsing with soreness. He’s right. I am his, body and soul. He reached right inside me just now, flicked a switch. Hooked me like a little wriggling fish.
I lean back gingerly against the window sill, aware of the naughty stickiness.
‘It’s only till Christmas. It’s why I came to London, after all. To sell myself. I’ve nothing to lose and everything to gain.’
He turns back to me, smiling broadly now, as if he can never get enough of looking at me. ‘Got it in one. And who knows? By then you might not want to leave.’
‘So what’s the document?’
‘A letter of agreement for you to mull over. I prefer this kind of formula to be signed face to face, on paper, not done by email. If you’re happy to sign it, let me know before the end of today. Let’s be really dramatic and Cinderella-like and say midnight. If not, just give me a call and we can rip it all up.’
There is a long pause. Big Ben is tolling. It must be about four by now.
Gustav holds the document out towards me, then when I don’t respond he puts it back on the desk with a shrug.
‘You haven’t got much time, granted. But I wanted to make sure you couldn’t tackle any other galleries today. And you’re not really in a fit state to go touting for business now, are you?’
I look up at him and catch his grin. He really does look like the wolf who has taken a nip at his prey and is relishing the promise of devouring the whole meal very, very soon.
‘If you do agree, then make sure you’re here tomorrow morning at nine a.m. sharp. Leave your portfolio with me. We can start printing and framing the best once I’ve had a good look at the whole collection, see if we can’t produce various themes to flow from wall to wall. Then I’ll convene some meetings with my marketing guys.’
I am going to agree to all of it. Of course I am. Just not yet.
‘Give me a moment. I can’t think straight. Let’s talk about something I do have an opinion on.’ I stand up shakily and smooth down my dress. ‘Tell me about the show you have on at the moment. Who are they, by the way? Parisian whores?’
He spreads his arms to present the whole display. ‘Ah, my bordello show. Yes. Turn of the last century, some of them. Others taken during the occupation of Paris in the Second World War, in the maisons closes they kept for Nazi officers. There’s a family legend that several of my own relations were involved. Controversial form of collaboration, to say the least. But some of these pictures were taken as recently as the sixties. Gets you in the mood just looking at these ladies of the night, doesn’t it? They’re so innocent, yet so dirty. So hairy!’
Every hair on my own body prickles in response. I blush and walk over to a picture to study it more closely. I’m sore, but deliciously so. I can’t put one foot in front of the other now without remembering his fingers inside me. If he’d shown me these pictures yesterday I’d have taken a purely professional interest, perhaps felt awkward forensically examining these women alongside an attractive stranger. But today it’s fun to look at them frankly and easily. Let the subjects of the pictures speak eloquently in all their plump, open nakedness.
Gustav Levi has taken me with his fingers. I don’t feel shy any more.
He strides round the gallery pointing out each different picture of each era, his jacket flapping over his hips every time he lifts his arm. The way he taps at each picture like a magician tapping his magic wand at a top hat full of secrets is infectious. I follow him around, start to see more detail in each picture. The awkward way the women have been positioned by the photographer, their large buttocks squashed against a buttoned cushion or a piano stool while their knees tip the other way. But all with a coy smile, all with their legs open, everything on show so untidy, so luxuriant, au naturel.
The same place where he just touched me. I look at the plump, naked women, and they look at me, and we are conspirators. We give pleasure naturally and easily. Who cares how we all arrive at the arrangement?
The past is another country, though. These women are another species. How small and neat are their breasts compared with modern breasts. Much smaller than mine. They’re even a different shape, curving upwards like flowers meeting the light, nipples by contrast huge and dark on each white cupcake.
‘Shame to see them go. I’ve enjoyed sharing my space with these lovelies.’ Gustav has stopped presenting, and is beside me again. ‘They’re incredibly erotic, no? A study, a celebration of the female form, even when these particular female forms seem crude by today’s standards, even when there’s no denying they are only there to debase themselves. Talk about sleeping with the enemy!’
One of the pictures in particular strikes me. One from the sixties. A very young woman, my age, maybe, sitting in the middle of a huge sofa, totally alone but for blurred male figures standing about in doorways, on distant stairways, all looking at her. Queuing for her services. But she is oblivious. She’s one of the few subjects staring straight at the camera, legs akimbo, arms crossed in a vain attempt to hide her breasts. They are huge, and generous, and rest on her slender arms. Her hair is long, right down to her waist, curling and tangling like jungle vines. And the label underneath the picture? One word. Rapunzel.
‘She looks just like you, doesn’t she? She also looks like the Rossetti I have at home. She’s the woman I was thinking about last night, when your beret fell off.’ Gustav comes to stand next to me. Our arms touch. ‘She could be you.’
‘No-one has ever compared me to a pre-Raphaelite painting before.’
‘You’ve been mixing with rude mechanicals then, with no culture.’ He snorts and turns to me. ‘But you’ve risen above all that, haven’t you, Serena? And maybe one day you’ll be taking photographs like these.’
‘Oh, you ain’t seen nothing yet,’ I laugh softly. I’m emboldened by everything that’s happened today. ‘In a way, I already have. Not prostitutes. Something much, much more kinky!’
His eyes flash with amusement.
‘Now I’m itching to see what other work you’ve done. And by the way that bravado will take you anywhere.’
‘That’s what my art lecturer used to tell me.’
We seem unable to leave each other’s side. Again I get a waft of the sharp, crisp, lemony scent off his cheeks, but I also notice the bristles starting to push their way through his skin as the evening approaches. I try in vain to suppress a sudden, vivid image of Gustav Levi in a vast Italian marble bathroom somewhere this morning, patting on the cologne before he came to work, his face and lean, naked body reflected in a huge, spot-lit mirror.
I force myself to move away from him. The exhibition continues on the walls down the corridor towards the lift, except these are blown-up photographs of Roman frescoes. At first they look as if the subjects are dancing or praying, and I wonder if this is a totally separate theme, but then I see that the men and women are standing, sitting and lying in various positions.
‘The lupanare,’Gustav says in a low voice behind me, like the commentary of a son et lumière. ‘From Pompeii. The frescoes should give you a clue what the lupanare was.’
Very faint, cracked figures, painted in terracotta and black over ancient bricks. At first they look as if they are dancing, or praying, but no. They are copulating, rutting, humping, in every position under the sun. Here is a tough man gripping a slender girl’s thighs while she stretches out gracefully and he takes her from behind. There is a woman with elegant coiled hair straddling a man as he reclines on cushions, her breasts pert and terracotta coloured, the nipples sharp cherries dotted on with the tip of a paintbrush.
‘It’s like a menu, see? All the services you could get for your dinarii,’ he whispers into my ear. ‘Or perhaps the pictures were just designed to get them horny.’
There is such a heavy silence in the gallery that I am being sucked right into the ancient paintings. Another pair of lovers, or punters, kneel up and go at it face to face, togas slipping to the floor. A man simply poses for his own enjoyment, staring into the middle distance as he displays his thumping erection. A girl solemnly lowers her face into a man’s groin. Another woman, naked and with her legs open, sits on the bed with them, staring directly at me. The same attitude as Rapunzel, the Parisian whore with the long red hair.
