“I hear you shifting into your hostess voice, Susan. You don’t have to bother. The interesting thing is that I’ve known you for ten years or more and I’ve never talked to you and detected the slightest sign of genuineness. Do you dislike me in particular, or is it nonspecific?” Vito’s voice was amused, impregnated with his unclassifiable charm. Susan’s lips parted slightly in shock.
“You always stand on ceremony with me, Susan. Even when I won three Oscars for Curt’s studio, you didn’t let up. I have a theory that when a woman behaves like that with a man who obviously admires her, it’s to let him know that there’s nothing doing. The thing I don’t understand is why you warn me off over and over. I’ve never made a pass at you.”
“Vito, I don’t know what gives you the idea that I treat you any differently from most people, and I’ve got to go too,” she said firmly.
“Just a minute, Susan. I’m aware that you have the power structure of Hollywood in the forefront of your mind at all times, but don’t you ever give yourself any freedom? Do you know how half-alive you looked all through lunch? I saw a luscious woman going to waste, leading a life that doesn’t use up half of her wild energy. I wonder how you discipline yourself to stay so collected? Is it the tennis that does it for you, Susan? Or the art collection? Or the parties? You realize, of course, that you’ve always been one of the most desirable women around, not the youngest, not the most beautiful—after all, this is Hollywood—but one of the most desirable. There’s sexuality written all over you.”
“Shut up, Vito. That’s enough,” she said, but she didn’t get up, hypnotized into inaction by his audacity.
“You’ve always been afraid of me, Susan, that’s why you’ve made yourself believe that you don’t like me. You don’t have to worry, other people can’t see you the way I do, and I keep my perceptions to myself. I like secrets, Susan, and so do you. I like to make my own rules, and so do you. I like to follow my own instincts, Susan, that’s why I’m not in the mainstream and never will be. I know that somewhere, somehow, you follow your instincts too. You’re the personification of a lady, correct, cool, just the right degree of cordiality for everyone you meet, and not a drop more. But nothing will make me believe I’ve ever seen the real Susan Arvey.”
“That’s all very interesting, Vito, but I have a fitting.”
“Your fitting can wait,” Vito said calmly. There were few women in the world who could resist a discussion of their qualities, Vito knew, and Susan Arvey, who took such extraordinary care of herself, least of all.
“You couldn’t look as thoroughly young as you do if it weren’t for some other reason than sheer vanity,” he continued, thoughtful and measured, certain of his insight. “You couldn’t have that wonderful skin, that quite perfect face, you couldn’t have the body of an exquisite girl. On the one hand there’s Susan Arvey, the conventional wife who’s never dropped a stitch, and on the other hand there’s Susan Arvey, the exceptional woman who must have her secrets because she’s too intelligent and too strong to be merely what she seems. While Fifi and I were having lunch, I kept imagining you the way you were meant to be, as if there were a film running in my mind.…” Vito paused for a second, and when she continued to listen to him, although she looked straight ahead, he knew that he’d succeeded in arousing her. There was only one totally satisfactory way to get his revenge. Curt would never know about it, of that he was sure.
“I kept imagining you someplace else, Susan, not here, where everybody knows you, but someplace where you could be yourself, let yourself go with all the volcanic vitality I know you have. For some reason I imagined a little bar in the Valley, a sort of roadhouse, the kind of place nobody we know ever goes, I saw you walking in, looking just the way you do now, unapproachable, collected, and yet incredibly exciting. I saw all the men in the bar becoming instantly aware of you, unable to hide their interest, ail of them with only one idea on their minds, giving it to you, Susan, any way you wanted.… I wonder … have you ever had it any way you wanted? Have you ever been able to ask for it straight out? Have you, Susan? I could see you picking and choosing, taking the one who pleased you the most into a back room … taking him and allowing him to give you pleasure, and then, if that wasn’t enough, taking another. I saw you free, Susan, able to act like a man.… it’s strange, you’re so marvelously feminine and yet I feel a masculine drive in you, a masculine need … it’s a fascinating contradiction.” Vito took her hand and pulled it under the tablecloth and placed it on his crotch. He’d been getting steadily harder from the minute he’d told her how desirable she was, and her face had remained composed. She’d listened to him for too long to turn back now. “Pleasure, Susan … do you know how long I’ve ached to give you pleasure?”
Oh, the bastard, Susan Arvey thought as she bit her lips, the bastard, it had been too many months since she’d been to New York. She needed it, needed it as she had never needed it before, and he smelled it on her, the bastard.
Vito released her hand slightly, and when she didn’t put it back on the table immediately, he put his hand back over hers, pressing it firmly down, watching her teeth catch her lower lip. “I’m in the third bungalow to the right along the pathway. I’ll leave now. I’ll wait for you. If you don’t come, I’ll understand and I’ll never mention it again. If you do come, no one will ever know. The choice is yours. I want you. I’ve always wanted you. The real you, the secret you. Come to me, Susan.”
As she walked along the path, there was only one thought in Susan Arvey’s mind; whatever happened, he’d have to beg before the afternoon was over. Oh yes, she must reduce him to begging. In Cannes, after Vito had first met Billy, Susan had been stuck at the hotel night after night, listening to Curt sleeping, tormenting herself with pictures of what those two must be doing to each other. He’d be made to pay for those nights of fevered frustration.
As Vito waited, as resolute as a matador waiting for the bull to enter the ring, he resolved that he’d make her want him so badly that she’d have to ask for it, no matter how much she tried not to. Nothing less would satisfy him.
He opened the door to her knock. They didn’t smile at each other, but once they were alone inside the living room of the bungalow, where the curtains had been drawn so that a dim golden glow was the only light, the entire history of their long, arm’s-length acquaintance was tacitly put aside as entirely irrelevant. Vito locked the door behind her as Susan unpinned her chignon and let her long blond hair fall around her shoulders. He took her in his arms and kissed her perfect mouth without a word or a sound, although she could feel the quickening rhythm of his heart. Strange, she thought, as he continued to kiss her, strange how long it had been since she had kissed a man besides her husband. She didn’t allow kissing in New York. She’d forgotten how different one man’s mouth was from another. Vito’s strongly formed lips were so hard that they could easily be cruel, but his tongue was unexpectedly gentle, tentative as it merely touched the inner rims of her lips, moving slowly without the attempt at invasion that she anticipated.
For minutes he was content to stand there kissing her, supporting her firmly in his muscular arms, concentrating on feeling the suspicious set of her mouth gradually relax under the clever operation of his tongue. Only when he could feel her own tongue moving slightly forward to meet his, did he initiate any contact, probing her half-parted mouth with a deliberate delicacy, little by little establishing an intimacy of touch and taste that she had never expected.
Each kiss sensitized her to the next, each kiss was followed by a studious exploration of her face with his lips, first her earlobes, from which he removed her earrings one by one before he took each dainty lobe and sucked it as if it were a nipple, learning it with his lips, his tongue and his grazing, careful teeth. When he finally returned to her mouth he found it more eager than before but he took no advantage of her quickening, kissing her piercingly, but not for long enough, before he removed his lips and wandered to her eyelids, taking his time as he covered her lids and
her brows and her lashes with the very lightest possible brushes of his languorous tongue. This time, when his tongue entered her mouth she held it there, matching him thrust for thrust, until finally, with triumph, Vito felt her tongue impatiently move forward into his mouth, while her arms reached up so that she could run her fingers upward on his neck. He pulled away, bent his head, evading her fingers, and kissed her throat, from the pulse at its base, all the way up to her jawline, tracing the slender column over and over from right to left with a quick, nibbling, maddeningly light use of his lips.
At last he picked Susan up easily, and sat down in a deep couch, holding her on his lap. She closed her eyes and leaned back against him passively, refusing to allow herself to utter any demands since he must be the one to beg, although she was having difficulty keeping herself still as she felt the heavy length of his penis against her thigh. Still kissing her neck, Vito began to unbutton her blouse, from neck to waist, slowly freeing her breasts, those succulent breasts on which he had watched the large nipples harden and pucker while they were still sitting at the lunch table. He made no attempt to free her arms from the silk, prefer-lying across his thighs, her legs supported by the couch, enabling him to devote his entire attention to her firm, blossoming, swelling flesh. Not her nipples, he thought, not her nipples until she starts to rub her legs together, and he took first one and then the other heavy breast in both his hands, and softly clasped and unclasped them until Susan was focused entirely on the discriminating attention of his warm fingers, which flattered her more than she had ever been flattered in her lifetime. She arched her ribcage, not realizing that she was beginning to move her hips.
When he felt her tensing on his thighs, Vito allowed his fingers to move from her breasts to his mouth. She heard him licking the tips of each of his fingers before he began to caress her nipples with such a discreet touch that their wetness made it almost unendurable. She wanted his mouth on them desperately, yet still he used his wet fingertips, all five of them gathered together to surround each nipple with a circle of painful sweetness until the tips were pointed, fully erect and dark pink with blood. Gauging the instant exactly, Vito finally bent his head and took one nipple into his hot mouth, listening with delight to the sigh that escaped her as he sucked, increasing the pull of his mouth and the strength of his plundering tongue. She pushed her breasts together with her hands, as if she wanted him to take both nipples into his mouth together, but her breasts were far too big for that, and he devoted his attention to each in turn, always leaving one before it had been stimulated to its peak, so that she was never satisfied but kept hanging on the brink of the full-blown sensation of being suckled that he knew she wanted. This wasn’t about what she wanted, he thought as he felt her breasts swell and grow fuller under his educated torment, and this wasn’t about what he wanted, because he’d wanted to take her on the floor from the first kiss, take her quick and dirty and leave her there without finishing her off.
Vito got off the couch and arranged a cushion under Susan’s head. He fell to his knees on the carpet, still fully clothed, and removed her skirt and her underwear, so that she lay fully exposed to his gaze, her only clothing the blouse that still clung to her arms. Her eyes were half open so that she could see the look on his face when he saw her body, the body she knew was so ripe, so strong and so ready to be looted. He looked her over steadily, with an expressionless scrutiny, as he took off his tie, his jacket and his shirt. Susan held her breath as he began to unfasten his belt, and watched with bewilderment as he changed his mind and refastened it.
Vito, still kneeling, inclined his head between her legs and soon she felt the brush of his lips on her pubic hair, just a whisper of a touch as the skin of his subtle lips barely made contact with the soft, fine hairs of the blond triangle. At first he only used his lips and his nose to browse questingly in that hair, nuzzling her and inhaling her fragrance. She felt herself becoming engorged with desire, she knew that her lower lips were becoming more visible as they grew pinker and more prominent, but she held herself rigid, waiting for his tongue. Her eyes closed when she finally felt the point of his tongue barely touching her outer lips, running delicately along their rim, leaving a wet trail in its wake. Over and over his tongue retraced its path, ignoring her inner lips that were pouting in expectation like the petals of a flower. Susan wouldn’t allow herself to move her legs, although she felt like screaming when the tip of his tongue descended cautiously into the channel that lay between her inner and outer lips, parting them with the utmost care, its heat traveling moistly between them as he lapped his fill, carefully avoiding making any contact with her clitoris. That small, deep pink, blunt arrow of her living flesh grew larger and harder. Surely, surely he must take it in his mouth, she thought as she waited fruitlessly for that essential prize, reduced to one excruciating need.
Disbelievingly, just as she was about to put her hands on his head and push her clitoris up into his mouth, she felt Vito take her in his arms and turn her over so that she lay facedown on the couch. He began to explore each inch of her backbone, as now, newly disciplined, she proudly refused to move or speak, schooling herself to lie still even when his lips dawdled cannily as they descended toward the fine globes of her bottom. He took them in his hands and pressed them from the outside of her hips toward the downy line that separated them. She didn’t allow herself to rub against the fabric of the couch as she heard Vito’s breathing grow harsher, but she waited, waited sternly, knowing full well how beautiful she must look, how lush and full. Even when she felt his fingers parting the globes so that he could insert his tongue between them, she didn’t move, even when his tongue probed ever more deeply, she didn’t raise herself to allow him more access than was possible in her prone position. She kept herself resolutely unclenched, knowing that the lubrication between her legs was moistening the couch. Even when he withdrew his tongue and she felt his middle finger reach between her legs, pressing toward her tumid, aching lips, she lay still. Her head was turned away from him, so that he couldn’t see her mouth on which agonized desire was so clearly written, so that he couldn’t see the determination in her eyes, so that he couldn’t see the victorious expression she knew she wore when she felt him at last put one arm under her belly and raise her high off the couch so that he was able to push his head between her legs. She was burningly distended, there was nothing she could do to deny that, she was as open as she’d ever been, but she let Vito finally suck her clitoris deeply into his mouth, bathing it with his tongue, without a sound of satisfaction or moan of desire. She neither resisted nor responded until, insane with her taste and her smell he turned her over on her back, ripping off his trousers and shorts in frantic haste. He rose and flung himself on the couch, so that he was bestride her on his knees, his straining penis clasped in one hand, the other holding her thighs apart roughly. Their eyes met and held.
“Ask for it,” Vito said.
“Never.”
“Ask for it.”
She used all the muscles of her strong legs to push them together, so forcefully that he was unable to keep them apart with only one hand.
“You ask,” Susan whispered, putting her own fingers over her tautly swollen clitoris and rubbing with a flickering expertise, seeming to be absorbed in the pleasure she was giving herself, watching him grow more avid as her rhythm quickened. Helplessly Vito saw her approaching an orgasm without him.
“Stop that!”
“Ask me nicely,” she panted without stopping.
“You win, you bitch!” he gasped. She took away her hand, opened her legs and tilted upward so that he could enter her immediately, both of them so consumed with each other and so inflamed by their long duel that they gripped each other and used each other more violently, more brutally, than they had ever used another person. They came together ferociously, in racking spasms that happened too soon, but lasted and lasted until they were weak and totally drained.
They lay together for many slow minutes, without spe
aking, half-asleep.
“Game, set and match, Susan Arvey,” Vito murmured at last.
“Well played, Vito.”
“Can I see you tomorrow?”
“No, I’m busy all day. But come for dinner, I’m having a party.”
He looked at her pink face, at the tumbled strands of hair, wet at the roots, at all the delectable disarray of a satisfied woman, and he covered the sticky hair of her mound with the palm of his hand and pressed down on it possessively.
“I’ll come for dinner, but you won’t be this Susan, I’ll see another person.”
“You’ll have your memories,” she said tauntingly.
“That won’t do. You know that. You know this is only the beginning.”
Mutely she nodded her assent, her eyes brilliant with anticipation.
“That roadhouse in the Valley, it really exists. I’m going to take you there next. And we’re going to sit at a table in the corner of a crowded bar and I’m going to make you come just using my fingers, no matter who’s watching, you know that, don’t you?”
Susan nodded again. She knew two tricks for every one of his. He had no idea of how she was going to enslave him.
As he watched Susan dress, Vito wondered if it was going to be more or less of a challenge to make Curt Arvey put up eleven million dollars to finance his next film. He’d never done business before with a man whose wife had already begun to obsess him. She was a thrillingly bad girl, a thoroughly naughty girl, and her long carnal punishment was going to be the most exciting experience of their lives. He knew already that there was nothing he and Susan wouldn’t do to each other before they had finished.
Susan pinned up her chignon, thinking of how she was going to instruct Curt to deal with Vito, for he had asked her advice about the appointment he had with Vito tomorrow. Curt must not say yes under any circumstances, no matter how taken he was with Vito’s potentially interesting and just as potentially impossible project. Nor must he give him a quick and merciful no. Maybe. It must be maybe for a long, long time. Only a tantalizing, elusive but very real and possible maybe would keep Vito exactly where she wanted him until she decided to end it—one way or another. She’d won today, but their tournament was only beginning, and one element must be missing in the wonderfully challenging months to come. There would be no fair play.
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