by Primula Bond
I giggle helplessly and feel my body going all soft and willing as he bends to his gentle task and runs the blunt end down between the cheeks of my bottom and burrows underneath me, pushing open my resisting body, nosing towards the centre. Those strippers oiled up their phalluses with something good enough to lick and then buckled on special belts and aimed them at each other, suggestively at first and then thrusting their pelvises like men, pushing in and penetrating each other, long and slow.
A little scream bunches in my throat as my legs come up to squeeze it away, but it’s like a missile, what do they call it, heat-seeking, because the dildo pushes blindly against this different part of me, against the tightness, burrows in forcefully and pushes until there’s a little pop.
The resistance gives way to melting acceptance, and I revel in the fact that this is Gustav, my lover, who asked those scary strippers if he could have their dildo to take home and is wielding this thing and invading my most private part with it. I don’t want anyone else to do this to me, not even some domineering woman I might play with in the future. I have a vision of Mrs Weinmeyer locking those fur handcuffs and using a white dildo on her chunky husband, and it’s that awful, naughty thought that makes my legs stop kicking against the soft white duvet, my wrist ensnared with the silver chain go limp.
‘Trust me. I’m your teacher. Although this is a first for me, I have to admit. We’re experimenting together, remember? So think of this not as punishment but as another pleasurable lesson. For both of us.’
I have managed to push away Pierre’s presence at last, but I can’t look at Gustav while this is happening. Now his other hand is lifting me, to get a better angle, I suppose. His long warm fingers are wandering over my bottom, following the path of the dildo, and the combination of sensations is emptying my mind of all thought, filling my body with a riot of responses. His fingers find another way in. How dirty can this get?
He seems detached from me, perhaps torturing himself with thoughts of me dancing in front of those grinning men. He’d be more tortured if he knew I’d just imagined his brother sitting on my bed, but I can’t focus on that now, all I know is that several fingers and a dildo are working in tandem, tips inside me now, pushing on and up. My heart starts to beat thickly and fast. I’m not afraid, but I feel vulnerable, cracked open like a shell, my tender insides exposed to a new, brutal battering.
‘I’m here, Serena,’ Gustav grunts, reading my mind as always. ‘I’ll always be here. You’re perfectly safe. Give in to it. Go on. See how good it can feel.’
I grapple for the remnants of my senses and he gives a low, throaty laugh, pushing the dildo harder so that I squeal and jump, but my body is letting it right in now, and the combination of the two, the leather phallus and the strong, gorgeous man holding it, the bulky weight of his body behind each thrust, the knowledge that I deserve this, is beginning to have its effect. If this is a new lesson, then I’m learning fast.
‘You’re so wet now, Folkes, you little slut,’ Gustav mutters as I start to buck against the leather dildo, squeeze my thighs round it, round his hand and arm, to keep it there. He matches the buck of my body with an answering thrust. He runs his free fingers up me, out again, over me, making me wetter still, everything tight and sore and throbbing now, gripping what’s inside me, keeping it there, my body scraping back and forth over the bed as Gustav watches and manipulates.
Above my head the sun sinks rapidly over the Hudson River. Around us the city hums and sings.
The brute hardness of the dildo is almost visual, sparks coming off it, off me. I don’t care that it’s false. It’s big and hard, warmed by my body, and with a sudden rush the phallus speeds up inside me, making me arch upwards in shock.
And then it’s him, of course it’s him, Gustav is inside me now, his fingers fanning under me as he pulls out the weapon of punishment and enters me to show me that in the end it’s always him.
‘I feel like a cowboy. I can barely walk after that, ah, initiation.’
‘No more than you deserve, cara. I was only doing what we both wanted to try out in the safety of our own home, but I never dreamed a well-endowed dildo like that would fit so snugly into your dainty little ass. And if you can’t walk then it means you have to stay close to me, yes?’
Gustav kisses my hair as we step out of the lift into the cute rooftop bar of the Library Hotel on Madison Avenue. It’s so intimate in here that it’s impossible to miss Pierre. He’s sitting out on the glass-roofed terrace with a bottle chilling in an ice bucket.
He stands and spreads his arms as soon as he sees us. I feel Gustav stiffen slightly. He takes my arm as if it’s he who needs support. I totter beside him towards his brother. The high red heels I stupidly decided to wear to show Pierre I was not to be messed with were a bad choice. The unnatural gait makes my calves cramp, and the tendons at the tops of my legs, where they were wrenched open by my lover and his brutal toy, are twanging like a Spanish guitar.
The men stop in front of each other, study each other’s faces for a drawn-out moment. It must be strange, I think, standing aside, to see another’s visage so like your own. With a pang that nearly doubles me over with its acuity I realise how important it is that these brothers forgive each other.
I will never look into the face of someone who shares my blood, and the thought of two brothers turning their backs on one another breaks my heart.
They finally make an awkward, back-slapping embrace, and just before they separate I catch Pierre’s eye over Gustav’s shoulder. The eyes are black and innocent, the mouth curled in a half smile of – what? Approval? Admiration? Thanks?
Instantly I realise what, or rather who, is absent. I sidestep round Pierre before he gets a chance to greet or kiss me, and sit down on the chair opposite him. I guess he’s given up even going through the motions of treating my cousin like a girlfriend.
‘Polly not joining us?’ asks Gustav, glancing round, raising one eyebrow at me.
‘Er, no. She’s out of town tonight, some big casting she really couldn’t miss. Didn’t she tell you, Serena? Up Boston way.’
She told me no such thing. The poor girl doesn’t even have an assignment at the moment. She’s right here in New York, waiting for me to call her after tonight’s meeting. She’s either hunched in her flat or down at the gym riding an exercise bike furiously to burn off all her frustration and her few remaining ounces of weight. This is not going to be the moment to tackle Pierre about Polly, though. I promised her I’d try, but it doesn’t look as if I’m going to get the chance, especially if I make sure I’m never alone with him. I’m beginning to doubt whether I can help her.
I keep my face averted from Gustav, try to alert Pierre to the fact that I know he’s only pretending to care about Polly. But when he lifts his glass and we chink cheers he returns my look so easily, an attentive, waiting smile transforming his face with such open, boyish enthusiasm that I falter. There’s little doubt that he is, or has been, cheating on her. But this handsome, groomed young man doesn’t look anything like the deranged bully Polly described to me. Or the sexy, threatening face that hovered in my drunken imagination earlier.
I feel like a traitor, but I can’t help being warmed by his smile. He has shaved closely. Even his hair looks calmer, the thick black tufts parted to one side like a schoolboy’s and brushed close to his head. He looks totally sorted. Totally together. In comparison it’s my poor cousin who is sliding downhill. If Pierre Levi has broken her heart I have to tell him what I think of him. It’s a terrible way to treat her. But for the sake of the peace these brothers are after, tonight is not the time.
Dare I say it, Pierre looks even smarter than Gustav tonight. Fair enough, we’re all off-duty, but Pierre has really made an effort in a blue and white checked shirt and navy-blue blazer with the correctly folded handkerchief in the breast pocket, even crisp well-tailored trousers. Gustav on the other hand is taking more and more of his dress code from his role as my pretend Hispanic assistant
.
I glance at my lover, though, as I always do for strength, and my stomach gives a sleepy kick. He looks gorgeous, like a bandit. Silky hair half falling over his brow, evening bristles hollowing his cheeks, an eager sparkle in his black eyes as he rests his hands between his knees.
‘Yes. Of course she told me,’ I lie sweetly. But the fear that I’m letting Polly down tastes sour. ‘I’ve been so busy I forgot to mention it.’
Pierre pours out the wine. The body language of the two brothers would be funny if it wasn’t so tense. They are leaning towards each other like two condemned buildings that if not shored up will be demolished.
‘Busy at Club Crème today, I gather. The Robinson stag do. A really prestigious commission.’
Gustav and I exchange glances. Gustav pauses as he’s about to sip his wine, keeps the glass in front of his mouth as if to hide what he really wants to say.
‘And one we thought was highly confidential.’
He rests his hand on my chair, just beside my arm in some kind of protective code. I glance up through the glass canopy. To the left of the building I can just make out, if I crane my neck, the ice-cream-layered elegance of the Chrysler Building. Then the arches of Grand Central Station. Above us, the trail of a jet plane, heading east.
‘Tomas will have to be blackballed, then. He’s the one who told me.’
Pierre lifts his glass in another toast and smiles steadily at me, his tongue flicking quickly across his teeth as if removing a foreign object. I think I am going to pass out. Tomas isn’t just the man I rejected at Pierre’s Halloween party in London who still has the hots for me. He has broken every code in the book and told Pierre exactly what happened at the club, no doubt every slavering detail. I daren’t look at Gustav. He must be recalling the same scenario. Those thick golden curls buried between my thighs just a few hours ago.
Gustav puts his glass down on the table. I notice his hand is shaking very slightly. ‘Let’s leave it there, shall we? Discretion being the better part of valour, and all that?’
Pierre grins and sits back in his chair. It honestly feels as if he’s interviewing us for a job.
‘Absolutely. But you know that Club Crème is the pinnacle of every man’s desires. I know, I know. You’re wondering why I want to belong to a den of iniquity like that when I’ve made such a big deal about what was going down in Baker Street. But this is different. Five years ago I was a clueless, cosseted young man who was genuinely shocked by what he saw and heard, partly because he was so green, but mostly because it involved you, Gustav. I’m still getting over that, to some extent.’ He glances across the table, but Gustav is looking down, biting his lip, trying to keep calm. ‘But I’ve learned a lot since then, and Club Crème is for grown-ups. It has a gloss on it that no other club in New York or London has. Everyone is panting to join. Its members are men of the world who know their own mind, and what they want is pure, unpoliced hedonism. There’s no other darkness involved. Just escapism. Extreme fetishes like whips and racks are banned, isn’t that right, G?’
‘You’ve done your research.’ Gustav looks up. ‘That’s right. It’s why I accepted the nomination to join.’
Pierre leans forward eagerly. ‘The bottom line is, guys, that a lot of my friends and business associates are members, or on the list to be voted in. You’re a nobody if you haven’t at least been along as a guest. But my own brother is a member, which would have a lot more clout than one of my mates. How about voting me in, G? Put the seal of validation on this reconciliation?’
‘I would love you to be a member, P, but it doesn’t work like that.’ Gustav isn’t looking at Pierre but at his glass of wine, perhaps trying to defuse any slight tension with a small laugh and a shake of the head. ‘For a start, you have to have a million in the bank.’
Pierre’s expression barely changes, but I notice an intensifying of the blackness in his eyes. Just like Gustav’s, when he’s displeased.
‘Of course. Money talks. I guess what you need is an inheritance, handed to you on a plate.’
Gustav turns the stem round and round in his long, strong fingers. Keeps turning it. The wine barely moves in the glass. I would not blame him for rising to that, but he keeps it very calm. Very low.
‘Anything handed to me on a plate was used to look after you, Pierre. A home, school fees. Any fortune I have accumulated since you left came to me through hard graft. You’re making big strides in your own work and I’m proud of you. So let’s give it six months. If you can show me where you are with your current project, that midtown theatre and your costume business, how you’ve publicised it, who’s taking it up, giving it their patronage, then of course I’d be glad not only to sponsor you for the Club Crème but more than that. I’d finance a business project for us to do together. I can see you doing something theatrical with these industrial spaces I’m viewing up and down North America over the next few months. My plan is to turn them all into venues for the arts. Something creative that interests us both.’
Pierre’s face darkens slightly. He leans forward in his seat, frowning at his brother. ‘You’d only give me a leg-up on the basis of a deal? Does everything work like that in your life?’
I shrink away from what could be a gathering storm.
‘Honestly?’ Gustav leans forward, too, so that their hands are nearly touching. ‘Yes. That’s how I’ve got where I am. You have to have concrete proven talent to go with. Not just someone’s word. And I think you and I could work together, your design eye and my business brain. Serena came to me on that basis, and look at us now! You’re my brother, and together we could be a force to be reckoned with. But first, show me your cards, yes?’
‘Fair enough. It’s why you’re such a great example, and I’m a fool ever to have thought otherwise.’ To my relief Pierre smiles ruefully and sits back in his chair. He spreads a hand towards Gustav as if presenting him to an audience. ‘Don’t look askance like that! I mean it! I’m going to work like a dog to prove myself to you. Let’s forget everything else, all the other influences. All the bad stuff, the mistakes, the betrayals. If we can do that, all we need to focus on is the positive. And the positive is you, Gustav. You are an incredible success story!’
Gustav’s mouth remains slightly open, as if he’s trying to get his breath.
‘Thank you, P. And I agree. That we need to jettison everything negative from this drama, like a splinter. You remember when you fell through the beams of the attic playing hide and seek? I had to take out about ten wooden splinters from your knees and fingers with an ice cube and a sewing needle.’
‘I should have known coming to you cap in hand wouldn’t do the trick!’ Pierre lifts his glass again. ‘I could do with a few quid, who couldn’t? It’s just that some things aren’t going so great. The business in London hasn’t really taken off, despite my Halloween launch. In fact, the only punters who have been into the premises since then have been pantomime dames.’
There’s a brief pause where we all look at each other. I can’t blame Pierre for being anxious and embarrassed about that, especially after all the fanfare. But the vision of these grotesque comedy figures with deep voices and false bosoms barging through that little shop looking for Widow Twanky crinolines makes me giggle, then splutter into my wine glass. The brothers stare at me for a moment then start to laugh, too.
‘You may have to cut your losses with that one, P. Close the shop or let it out, but keep grafting, build on what you’re doing here in NY, and I have every faith in you.’ Gustav shakes his head with amusement and takes another drink. ‘And that neatly segues, does it not, into the other reason we’re here?’
I realise that I’ve been staring so hard into the pale primrose of my Sauvignon that it is blurring. I am so, so tired.
‘Serena, yes. I want to put some business your way.’
Gustav laughs again. ‘You sound like a car dealer!’
Pierre laughs, too. I’m happy to hear their laughter. It sounds comfortable, like
some kind of in-joke they share. I take another sip of wine. If I get much more relaxed I’ll nod off.
Gustav reaches over to me and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. His way of getting my attention. I blink and yawn. As his fingers trail down my neck, pluck gently at the chain holding the golden locket, the sliding rattle inside rouses me and I look up. Just in time to see Pierre’s eyes wandering over my body. Up my legs, long and lean in the burgundy leather trousers I’ve chosen. Taking in the smoky grey silk T-shirt clinging to my breasts.
‘You up for another commission, Serena?’ he asks, lifting the wine from the ice bucket. I keep my eyes not on his face, which is unsettling me more than ever this evening, but on his hands as they tip the bottle to pour. The fingers are thicker than Gustav’s. More powerful. Seem more capable of causing harm. I can see them snapping the belt from round his waist and flicking it in the air, frightening the living daylights out of Polly.
‘Sure. I’m always up for more work.’ I cross my legs calmly and hold out my glass for more wine. ‘Tell me more.’
I’m too tired or too pissed to take anything seriously. Despite everything I’m enjoying myself. I’m with two gorgeous, hot-headed brothers. I’m the envy of several of the other women in this bar. I try to compose how I will excuse myself to Polly when she asks how I got on.
Pierre is either a consummate actor concealing a committed philanderer, in which case she needs to let him go, just like the failing little shop in Covent Garden – or the wide-boy charm she fell for in the first place, flawed as it is, is worth fighting for.
‘I want you to come down to this theatre in Gramercy Park Gustav just mentioned. It’s where I’m working at the moment, supplying wardrobe for a new off-Broadway musical show that’s rehearsing there. I’m dressing the cast and I’d like you to come down and take some photographs. A day in the life. The dancers dressing. Dancing. Undressing …’