by Freya North
‘Yes!’ Cat yelled. ‘You’re not going to do that to me!’
‘Monique was crying?’ Ben repeated. ‘You heard her?’
‘She was crying,’ Cat growled.
‘Did you hear her?’ Ben persisted.
‘I saw her!’ Cat spat. ‘Her eyes were red raw, for Christ’s sake!’ She stamped. ‘She looked utterly miserable.’
Ben stared at Cat, took his hand from his mouth and regarded her.
‘So would you be,’ he said to Cat, ‘if you had raging conjunctivitis.’
Cat stares at the Great Ophthalmologist, her eyes criss-crossing his face trying to absorb what she’s just heard, make sense of the tangle, and figure out how she should respond. Turning away from him, which she does momentarily, seems like a good idea. But when she turns back he’s still there, still silent, regarding her with a blend of reproach and amusement. The onus is on Cat and it’s onerous. She’s biting her lip so hard that it’s throbbing but she can’t seem to release it. Slipping past him to take refuge in the lovely bathroom seems like another good idea so she does just that.
She’s sitting on the edge of the tub regarding her feet, now she’s sitting sideways on the toilet looking at her knees. Now she leans her back against the basin. She’s now knocking her head gently against the window. She turns and glances in the mirror, imploring her reflection to tell her what to do.
Jesus, have I blown it now! Stupid stupid girl.
Say sorry.
As if that would suffice.
Laugh it off?
That would seem too trite.
Give him a blow job?
My jaw is too tense. And anyway, he’s hardly likely to rise to the occasion for a girl who’s thrown slanderous accusations at him, for a girl who’s made an utter fool of herself.
Well, what are you going to do?
Tell me what to do!
No, Cat – you figure it out.
Oh Fen, where are you!
Over the sea and far away.
Reflection – help!
It’s only you in the mirror. Your call, Cat McCabe.
Shit! Have I been in here ages? Say he’s left?
Cat opens the bathroom door. Ben is sitting in the chair seemingly engrossed in Rose Tremain. He glances up and then returns his attention to the book. Cat pads across the room, walks around the bed and sits on the edge so that her knees almost touch Ben’s. She tips her head to one side, silently imploring him to look up. He’s reading. She clears her throat, hoping she might gain his attention. He’s reading. Rose Tremain is bloody good. Cat sighs, hoping he’ll take sympathy on her humiliation. Nope. She gazes over to the window. It’s gloriously dusky now, the portion of sky visible streaked with amber, the room bathed so aesthetically in half-light that Monet really should have been there. Incongruous though it might seem, Cat feels an enormous sense of tranquillity, the willing captive of some strange hermetically sealed moment placing her in a beautiful room on a sultry evening with a man quietly reading. A blink returns her to the situation in hand. A glance to Ben reveals that Rose Tremain’s text is closed around his index finger and his attention is focused on Cat entirely.
Cat licks her lips fleetingly and speaks without preparation or agenda.
‘I. Am. So. Embarrassed.’
Ben does not reply but something about his demeanour enables Cat to smile apologetically.
‘What can you think?’ she continues with a humble shrug superseded by a sorry slump. Ben tilts his head and closes the book, clasping his hands loosely, sitting back in the chair, relaxed.
‘Please forgive me,’ Cat says, now sitting very tall, her hands demurely in her lap, her eyes cast down.
‘You’re fucking gorgeous when you’re angry,’ Ben says, deadly serious and with no jest.
‘I’m sorry,’ Cat says, looking straight at him, ‘I hope I didn’t offend you.’
‘On the contrary,’ says Ben.
‘And I really hope,’ says Cat, very measuredly, eye-locked, ‘that I haven’t gone and ruined any prospects here.’
‘You’re also very sexy when you’re meek,’ Ben tells her.
Cat can’t hear the compliment, her concern to appease Ben, to undo any wrongdoing, her sole focus.
‘I didn’t mean to insult you,’ she says.
‘I’m pretty flattered, actually,’ Ben says, ‘that you should have thought me such a gigolo and so in demand.’
‘What can you think of me?’ Cat laments, looking at her lap but immediately yearning for Ben’s gaze.
‘I think you’re a feisty girl who won’t tolerate any crap,’ Ben says openly. ‘Fuck, what a challenge!’
They regard each other in the fading light, the soft tones, the hush of the evening, enhancing their reciprocated allure. Cat flops herself backwards on to the bed, her arms above her head, and scours the ceiling. She hears the Loom chair creak. Her heart is beating fast and goes into overdrive at the touch of Ben’s fingers on her knees. Goosebumps tingle their way over her skin as she feels her dress being lifted up and then lowered back.
‘Cat McCabe,’ Ben marvels in a low voice, leaning over her, his hands either side of her torso, ‘where are your knickers?’
‘Obviously, they were in a twist!’ Cat jests softly. Ben sits on the edge of the bed and Cat runs her hand lightly up and down his back. She pulls at his shirt, gently at first, then with an insistent tug. He lies next to her. They look up at the ceiling and then, with film-worthy timing, they turn and look at each other. The shared gaze, the mutual desire caught in a sealed second of fabulous intensity before they are at each other’s mouths; kissing and tasting and biting and uncontrollable.
Ben flings Cat’s dress up so that she is naked apart from one breast and her shoulders. He has a hand enmeshed in her hair. The other is everywhere and fast. Trickling over her legs, brushing her bush, sweeping over her stomach, up her waist, into her armpit, over her exposed breast where he stops awhile. She wants to taste every part of his mouth. His body feels so tantalizing behind his cotton shirt. Off. Off. She pulls at buttons, at the tails, she slips her hand underneath and finds his flesh. Warm, prickling under her touch, a strong body, a little hair to the chest, to the lower stomach. His skin is so soft, almost incongruously so for his defined musculature and masculinity. She straddles him, she has to get that shirt off. As she is unbuttoning, he runs a hand up her inner thigh, cups it over her sex and inserts his finger effortlessly, deep inside her. She’s gasping, he’s glazed. He’s moving his finger and she’s moving on it. His thumb is stroking her clitoris. She wants the shirt off his back. Get it off. She wants to come. Fuck the shirt. Her whole body wracks with the orgasm, her voice comes through her gasping. She’s coming on his finger, his thumb, in her stomach, through her nipples. Her body crumples with the pleasure of it all. She lies beside him, her leg slung over his, her sex grazing his jeans. He brings his finger to his mouth and sucks it and then he takes it to her mouth and she sucks it too. That’s me. That’s you.
‘I’d like to have sex with you. Now. Please. Now,’ Cat says, easing his shirt away and gazing desirously at his torso. She unbuckles his belt, her eyes drawn to and delighted by the bulge in his jeans, her fingers tracing the shape of him, her sex anticipating the feel of him.
‘I’d love to have sex with you,’ Ben says, his hand up the back of her dress, softly feeling her buttocks and tracing the crack down and under to her damp mound.
‘Now,’ Cat implores, leaning over his face and licking his lips, ‘I want to have sex with you now.’
‘I don’t have any condoms with me,’ says Ben, stroking her face and tracing her lips.
‘I don’t have any condoms with me,’ Cat bemoans. Then she smiles mischievously, eyes his insistent bulge and regards him with delight.
‘There are plenty of other ways I can think of,’ she says.
‘And,’ Ben reasons, unpopping his jeans, bucking his hips to wriggle free from boxer shorts too, ‘there’s tomorrow. Come to me when y
ou’ve had Luca.’
‘Metaphorically speaking,’ Cat chides, walking her fingers tantalizingly up his shaft.
‘Come to me then,’ Ben murmurs, closing his eyes with the pleasure of Cat’s hand encircling his cock; gasping as he feels her lips at the tip of him, can sense them opening, anticipating her mouth taking him deep.
I want you to come in my mouth, Ben.
I’m coming, Cat. Jesus. Fuck.
STAGE 7
Computaparc - Individual Time Trial. 54.5 kilometres
‘Rachel – help.’
Vasily Jawlensky entered the Zucca camper van.
‘Oh dear,’ his soigneur said from behind an architecturally intriguing tower of energy bars. ‘Och Jesus – look at you!’
She looked at him. Vasily Jawlensky, her team’s key rider on whose shoulders the hope of the yellow jersey was today firmly placed. And yet, unlike the brooding Fabian Ducasse, currently barking and snarling at everyone, Vasily’s comportment was no different than if he was merely going out on a training ride. His tall body, on to which lycra had seemingly been sprayed, dominated the interior of the camper van. He regarded his soigneur steadily and shrugged at her almost apologetically. Rachel saw that his skinsuit was split from underarm to hip and was aware that his Time Trial start time was in half an hour. She helped peel her rider from the lycra and assisted him in slithering his way in to a pristine suit.
‘I go back to the blocks now,’ he said graciously, focusing so intently on her neck that Rachel found herself cupping her hand against it. ‘With thanks to you, Rachel.’
‘That’s good,’ his soigneur replied. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Tight,’ Vasily replied, ‘tense – you know?’
‘I can imagine,’ Rachel said. She stood in the doorway of the van and watched Vasily place himself on his stationary bike. He clipped his feet in and started to pedal, soon leaning down to take the handlebars. Rachel winced. The skinsuit had torn again, this time around the shoulders.
Fucking supplier – I’ll kill them.
Vasily calmly dismounted, feeling the ripped material, his skin. He looked at his soigneur.
‘You have another, Rachel?’ he asked.
‘Sure,’ Rachel replied, closing the door on the fans craving every last glimpse, any glimpse, of the great Russian. Again, the two of them freed Vasily’s body from its colourful sheath and he stood naked and contemplative whilst Rachel delved around a bag for another.
‘Have you grown?’ she asked Vasily, eyeing him objectively, or as objectively as such a particularly fine specimen of masculinity could be viewed by a young woman.
‘No,’ Vasily said, ‘I am as I always am. No change.’
‘Bloody suppliers,’ Rachel elaborated with a thunderous frown.
‘Yes, bloody them,’ said Vasily ingenuously, liking the semantic taste of the word but intending no insult. Rachel puffed clouds of talcum powder over Vasily’s torso and patted his skin lightly. And then, momentarily, she wavered. She stroked him gently down his chest. Smoothing the talc. No, stroking his body. She turned him around. Again, she wavered. She looked at his back – no, gazed at his back – before applying more powder. Stroking gives better coverage than patting. Yeah, right, Rachel. She took the new lycra, assessing the material with much concentration, trying to pay no attention to the downy blond hairs furled about his forearms. She’d never noticed them before; she certainly wasn’t going to start noticing them now.
How can I not have noticed them before? How many times must I have massaged this rider?
Was Vasily staring at her? She didn’t think so. How could he be, with his Time Trial looming? His eyes might be focused on her, but she acknowledged that his mind was already engrossed in the Computaparc course. She’d obviously quite lost hers. She helped Vasily dress again, checked the seams of the new skinsuit and asked him to bend, to stretch.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’ll last you the 54 and a half k and the short trip to the podium this evening.’ She winked at him supportively, wished him good luck and told him to go and finish his tuning up.
‘Thank you, Rachel,’ Vasily replied, continuing to stare at her so intently that she wiped her hand across her chin to remove whatever it was that had so caught his attention.
‘Go!’ Rachel said, glancing at her watch and wanting Vasily to be warming up five minutes ago.
‘Yes,’ said the rider. And then Vasily Jawlensky kissed Rachel McEwen. Quite quickly but very intensely. Too swiftly for her to have pulled away; too adeptly for her to have wanted to. He encircled her waist, lowered his head and took his lips to hers, slipping his tongue into her mouth immediately on contact. She’d never had a kiss like it. His eyes were open and so were hers. Their tongues danced slowly. It lasted seconds yet it was luxurious and measured rather than urgent. Then Vasily went directly to his bike and continued to warm up in earnest. Rachel closed the campervan door and sat down heavily on the bench. She placed her head in her hands and took deep breaths. She could smell talcum powder. She inhaled deeply.
Then she wiped her hands urgently on her jeans.
What the fuck just happened?
There had been no warning, no prior hints, no clues at all in all the time she’d known Vasily. Not from him. She knew so little about the person behind the champion cyclist. Not within herself; she’d rarely thought about the personality behind the body which raced bicycles.
Have I ever fancied Vasily? Have I ever thought he’s fancied me? Hand on my heart, no. I’m his soigneur. He’s my charge.
What just happened?
I have absolutely no idea.
How can that be?
I don’t know. I hardly know Vasily. Few people do. He’s such a closed book – one so many are desperate to read. Not me. I know his joints and muscles off by heart but I’ve never really stopped to contemplate the man they belong to.
Why did you stroke and not pat?
I don’t know. But I don’t think it was me, if you see – I don’t think he meant to kiss Rachel. Maybe it was an instantaneous reaction to me stroking, not patting – a chemical, hormonal, non-cerebral, male response. Shit, maybe it was the talcum powder itself. Maybe there’s a substance in it that’s banned. But it wasn’t me. It can’t have been. I’m just his soigneur. How can he know me as Rachel? He does not know Rachel at all.
You should get moving. You have a million and one duties to attend to.
I need to sit a while.
‘I know what I need,’ Rachel said, standing, glancing around the interior of the van, ‘I need a girlfriend – I need the insight of a woman. I need female company, complicity – a confidante.’
Contre la montre.
What a lovely phrase. It was Cat’s chant that morning as she gathered together her wits and her work effects. She was running late, having not been able to leave her bed for all the reliving of the night before and the projected ponderings for the day ahead. Sex? Perhaps. More than likely. Hurry up! Contre la montre. Against the clock. Morning, Josh. Morning, Alex. Hurry up, Cat. Sorry. Sorry. Allons!
‘You’re perky,’ Josh remarked, pleased that she was.
‘I had,’ Cat reasoned, ‘a very good – night.’
‘Moi aussi,’ Alex said, ‘like a fucking log. Out for the count.’
‘I slept really well too,’ Josh added, glancing in gratitude at Auberge Claudette before driving away.
‘Me too,’ Cat recapitulated.
I am going to sleep with Ben tonight and I’ll be most wide awake.
‘I’m interviewing Luca this afternoon,’ Cat said. ‘He’s riding early so I’ll disappear for an hour or so. Will you fill me in?’
‘Sure,’ Alex said, looking to the back seat where Cat was sitting and staring out of the window with an inordinately expansive smile on her face, ‘as long as you share any juicy Luca-isms.’
‘Where are you going to do him?’ Josh asked, curtailing any insinuation from Alex by stamping on the brakes to allow the race commissair
e’s car priority.
‘In his hotel room,’ Cat replied. Alex tittered. The others didn’t.
The only time Jules Le Grand was going to leave Fabian Ducasse’s side was when the Système Vipère rider and overall contender for the maillot jaune was actually on his bike riding the course. The rider had all but sleep-walked to his directeur’s room at four in the morning to say one thing.
‘The Time Trial is a test of truth.’
For all Fabian’s outward arrogance and confidence, he needed the support of his directeur if he was to take yellow at the Time Trial that afternoon and define the ultimate outcome on the podium in Paris a fortnight later. Though Fabian had returned to bed and, amazingly, to a deep sleep, his directeur stayed awake for him. In silk pyjama bottoms, Jules had gazed out of the window witnessing night simper into dawn.
Fabian needs me to yell ‘Allez allez allez!’, to torment him, to demand that he ride harder for fuck’s sake.
Jules showered and shaved and treated his underarms and cheeks to liberal applications of Gucci toiletries.
Fabian also needs me to listen attentively when he repeats his concerns arid strategy for the course.
‘Often he does so in silence but it is always audible to me,’ Jules said out loud, wondering if 6 a.m. was too early to phone Système Vipère’s eponymous sponsor. He would leave it half an hour. No doubt his favoured journalist on L’Equipe would be glad to take a call.
‘Ultimately, it is the paternal support of the directeur sportif that the rider requires after a Time Trial,’ Jules said down the line to the reporter, ‘to lift his spent body from his bike, to be there for him whatever the outcome.’
‘Merci,’ said the journalist, hoping Jules Le Grand had not heard him stifle a yawn, could not envisage him as he was, crumpled, in bed and still half-asleep.
Jules was dressed in Gucci top to toe. He phoned the team sponsors.
‘Whatever the outcome, today,’ he told them, ‘Ducasse will ride the Stage as if his life depends on it which, to him, it does. The team are pleased that you will visit today to watch the Stage. It will be good for Jesper Lomers to see you.’ There was a pause. ‘Yes, yes, he is on the verge of renewing his contract – of that I’m sure.’