Soledad sprung forward, her heart beating a song against her ribs. Dropping her shopping bags and kicking off her sandals almost instinctively, she began to navigate the rocks, their jagged edges tearing into her soft flesh as she made her way down towards the clearing below to where they were, their ecstatic moans becoming increasingly louder with every clumsy step.
*
Lance Spencer couldn’t hold back much longer and he knew it. He had been willing back his orgasm from the moment he had touched her and now it was pushing through his body with all the force of a tsunami. For the first time in his life he was actually scared of his impending orgasm, such was the intensity of the build-up. Never in his life had he felt so turned on by a woman. Soledad had come close on occasion, but this woman he was sliding himself into … so firm and juicy and young and beautiful, her body tight and willing, accepting his with such abandonment and enjoyment. It was coming now and this time no amount of will was going to stop it crashing to the fore.
‘Oh God, you’re soo … so beautiful …’ he began to moan, as she drove herself down onto him over and over again, her soft moans accelerating into loud cries in time with his own.
‘Oh God … I’m going to co …’ Lance felt his orgasm rush to the surface like a runaway freight train and squeezed his eyes shut, teeth clenched. As he opened them again he saw his wife standing in front of him. ‘Soledad!’ he said, as he finally came.
*
‘I want a divorce.’
Soledad looked up at her husband’s ashen face from the king-sized bed of their suite, her expression anguished, but he could see from the look in her eyes that she was deadly serious. He could barely answer her; his bones felt heavy as lead as his mother’s face flashed up before him … He had to talk her out of it. Fast.
What Lance was struggling to fathom was how had Soledad found them. By all accounts, the delectable Violetta had taken him to what appeared to be an extremely secluded location, one she seemed to have known well. But, alas, she’d clearly had no idea they could be so easily seen from such a vantage point. Lance winced as he recalled the abject horror of seeing his wife looming over him, the look of shock on her face just as he’d exploded into Violetta’s perfect body. Violetta on the other hand had appeared quite unmoved by such an unfortunate turn of events and had simply stepped back into her bikini bottoms, calmly gathered her things and strutted off like it were an everyday occurrence for her to be caught in flagrante with a lover. And perhaps it was.
Lance however had never experienced such acute mortification. He had talked his way out of many an indiscretion and prided himself on his ability to have never yet actually been caught in the act. Now however he had nowhere to go and the sheer velocity of panic was overwhelming him. Damage limitation was his only hope now.
‘She offered herself on a plate …’ he quickly said, realising how utterly pathetic it sounded, in spite of it being the truth. ‘She seduced me… I think maybe I had a little sunstroke … too much limoncello … it was a moment … a moment of utter madness.’
He took in her cold, hard stare with burgeoning despair.
‘And you could not say no?’ she made the question sound rhetorical. ‘You could not just have walked away … a married man on holiday with his wife … his new wife..?’ she cast him such a contemptuous look that he physically shrunk. ‘You disgust me, Lance.’
‘C … can’t you please forgive me?’ he stammered. ‘It was a one-off I swear, a singular moment of utter, utter thoughtlessness and selfishness and, look, I’m a total arse … a weak, pathetic man.’ But his words sounded as hollow as he knew they were.
Soledad’s mouth formed a grim, thin line. She looked like a different woman altogether.
‘Please don’t leave me …’ he was begging her now. ‘I’ll do anything to make it up to you … whatever it takes, whatever you want … a new house, a yacht, car … just name it, it’s yours, just please, please don’t tell Mother.’ He could’ve sworn she was smirking now, that grim line slightly dipping at the corners.
‘What I want,’ she said, her voice cold and low, unfamiliar even, ‘is a divorce.’
Lance tried to go to her but she sprung back.
‘Don’t you dare even touch me!’ she shrieked as she began to cry. Lance once again made to go to her to comfort her. He hated hurting her like this, but he hated the idea of losing twenty four million more.
‘No!’ she screamed. ‘I said do not touch me!’
‘Ok … Ok …’ he held his hands up and could do no more than watch as she began throwing her belongings into a suitcase, randomly pulling dresses from the closet.
‘Please darling …’ Lance could see that the apologetic approach wasn’t working and he had to find a way to stop her from leaving, placate her before it was too late and she did something rash, something that would effectively destroy his entire life and leave him a disinherited pauper and her a seriously, seriously rich woman by default. Not that he could ever let her know how much was really at stake.
‘I’ll deny it,’ he said stoically, regaining a little composure. ‘You’ll never be able to prove it. The girl … she’ll be long gone by now … and you’ve no proof.’ His switch in tone stopped her in her tracks and she glared at him.
‘Oh no?’ she responded, eyes ablaze as she took her phone from her tote and held it out to him almost gleefully.
Holy fuck! Lance blinked at the image on the small screen of him and Violetta, naked together on the rocks, his face contorted in a grim sex mask that looked almost painful now that he saw it on the outside looking in.
‘Jesus … what the … you took a picture?’
Soledad raised an eyebrow and suddenly he saw her as if for the first time.
He thought about wrestling her to the ground, snatching the phone from her grasp, but she seemed to have pre-empted this thought because she said, ‘Don’t even think about it, husband dearest. I have already sent the image to my e-mail account – and your mother’s.’
Lance felt his sphincter muscle collapse. He visibly shrank in front of her, sinking to his knees, hands clasped together in prayer. ‘Please don’t do this … please … I love you, I … I just made a mistake … a terrible, stupid mistake … you have to understand, give me another chance …’
‘You have spent your whole life making the same mistake, Lance,’ she said coldly. ‘The same mistake over and over again … and now you will pay …’
Well, she was certainly right about that part at least. It would cost him; twenty four million to be precise.
‘Men like you will never learn how to respect women, to understand the true meaning of love and loyalty. These are just words to you, Lance, empty meaningless words …’
He felt his shoulders sag. She was right of course and he knew it. Damn the beautiful siren that had been Violetta and her incredible body … what was it Soledad had said about Ulysses and the Sirens again? His only hope was that she might eventually calm down and come to her senses. Just as long as she didn’t find out about his damn mother’s ridiculous clause. Perhaps once the initial sting of his ill-thought-out betrayal had waned she would swallow it down and realise which side her bread was buttered. It was his only hope and he clung to it like a child to its mother in a storm. For a brief moment he wondered if he might get away with strangling her and throwing the body overboard. Lance knew he could not afford, quite literally, to let her leave, but then he wasn’t sure he had the stomach to actually commit murder either.
‘You’ll be hearing from my solicitor,’ Soledad said as she flounced from the room, dragging one of the matching Louis Vuitton suitcases behind her. ‘And your mother too …’
‘Where are you going to go?’ he asked weakly. ‘In case you’ve forgotten we’re on a boat.’
‘Goodbye Lance,’ she said, as she closed the door behind her. ‘And thank you.’
Thank you. It was a strange thing to say given the circumstances, but he didn’t ponder it. Instead he reached for t
he bottle of single malt scotch in the drinks cabinet and wondered if that spiteful bitch of a mother of his really would come good on her word and disinherit him, giving Soledad every single penny. She’d had the lawyers make it all legal after all. Opening the bottle with shaking fingers, he threw back a quarter of the contents in one breath. He had lost his entire inheritance for a ten minute dalliance. That was 2.4 million pounds per minute, or forty thousand pounds for every second he had spent in Violetta’s company. As incredibly beautiful as she undoubtedly was, no woman was worth that.
Lance Spencer resisted the urge to laugh out loud, borderline hysterical. Whichever way he looked at it, he was royally fucked.
*
Lance woke with a start and the worst hangover he had endured in many years. His eyes felt raw and were bloodshot, his mouth Sahara-dry and tacky. Belching acid, he tasted remnants of last night’s scotch and groaned as he spied the empty bottles next to the bed. His head throbbed as he padded through the immaculate suite, opening the curtains to blinding sunshine, holding his forearm to his pallid face as he opened the sliding doors to the balcony. The heat as it met with him made him feel instantly nauseous, bile rising up through his oesophagus with urgency. It was as he was retching over the balcony that Lance’s attention was caught.
The ship had obviously been docked somewhere for some time as the last of the passengers were returning on board and he watched as happy couples, young and old, made their way back on deck, their beaming, happy smiles offensive to him given his predicament and current physical condition. Jesus, how long had he been asleep for? And then … hang on … was that Soledad? Lance rubbed his gritty eyes and tried hard to focus. Yes, he was sure it was his wife. She was standing at the end of the jetty leaning on the Louis Vuitton case she’d fled with the previous evening. She was wearing a bright headscarf and tight white jeans and appeared to be waiting for someone. Lance made to call out to her, instinctively waving in her direction. Why wasn’t she coming back on board? he wondered, suddenly overcome with emotion. They could work this out, couldn’t they? His young, pretty wife whom he’d betrayed in the worst way. He suddenly had the grace to feel truly ashamed of himself for causing her such humiliation and anguish.
Lance continued to manically wave to his wife in a bid to catch her attention. He was sidestepping along the balcony, calling out her name, frantically throwing his arms around like a goalkeeper trying to put off a penalty striker and then he stopped dead in his tracks, staring in confusion as he watched the woman greet his wife, embracing her in the most familiar way, kissing her on the mouth like an old friend … like a lover even. It was Violetta. A woman like that was not one you could forget in a hurry. He would recognise that body at 1,000 miles. He rubbed his forehead. The two women looked like they knew each other, but how was that possible? And then he was struck by a truly terrible moment of clarity, one that caused an icy rod of fear to shoot along his spine, taking the breath from him like he’d impacted with a blunt object. Jesus fucking Christ alive! They did know each other.
*
‘So my little cupcake,’ Violetta purred in Soledad’s ear, impervious to the pair of eyes on them as they canoodled inside the small gondola. ‘After Venice where shall we head to?’
Soledad shrugged happily running her hand along her lover’s inner thigh.
‘Wherever we choose, baby,’ she smiled, her lips meeting Violetta’s gently as they caressed each other in full view of the gawping gondola.
‘Did you see his face …’ Soledad sniggered, ‘when he saw me standing there on the cliff …?’
‘How could I?’ Violetta smirked, ‘he was behind me.’ The two women began to laugh then, cackling like a couple of fishwives, albeit very beautiful ones. ‘Twenty four million pounds,’ Violetta spoke the words carefully as though she were handling glass. ‘Do you think he suspected anything … that you knew about the clause in the marriage contract all along, that it was your idea?’
‘Nothing,’ she shook her head, allowing it to drop affectionately onto Violetta’s shoulder.
‘The man was an imbecile, ripe for the picking, thought with his distinctly average dick first before engaging his small brain.’ They laughed again. ‘Incidentally,’ Soledad addressed her seriously, ‘next time you can do the hard work.’
‘Pah! I had to screw the idiot too remember?’
Soledad shot her an incredulous look. ‘And I had to marry him …’ she visibly shuddered. ‘Almost a year of my life gone …’
Violetta nuzzled her neck.
‘Such a good actress … you deserve an Oscar …’
‘I love you bambino,’ she nibbled her earlobe, oblivious to the apparent disgust of the older women sitting opposite and her clearly delighted husband who was pretending not to look. ‘Of course … it must have been difficult.’
Soledad grunted.
‘You have no idea …’
‘Baby …’ Violetta was pouting at her sympathetically, her giant lips almost comical.
‘Every time I had to fake it …’
‘Every time?’ Violetta enquired, visibly jealous.
‘Well,’ Soledad smirked, ‘only the times I thought of you …’
‘Ok, I promise I will do the difficult bit next time … although with the twenty four million that’s coming our way do you think there will need to be a next time?’
Soledad smiled, taking her lover’s hand in hers. They had been together since they were twelve years old, thrown together in a care home on the wrong side of south London like human trash. Vi a refugee from war-torn Kosovo and Soledad an abandoned child from an alcoholic mother and absent father. They had loved each other from the moment they had met and had spent years plotting their dreams of making a better life for themselves, endless sleepless nights holding and loving each other as they’d fantasised about the life they wanted for themselves. Both women were very beautiful, Vi especially so, but above all they were smart, devious and streetwise, the most lethal and deadly of combinations.
‘Maybe not,’ Soledad said, nuzzling her girlfriend’s neck, enjoying her soft, powdery feminine scent. ‘But it is such fun!’
Vi laughed and lit them both a cigarette. She was incorrigible. But she adored her little Soledad. She always would.
‘Excuse me,’ Violetta leaned forward to address the very distinguished and clearly rich man sitting opposite. He instantly sprung to attention like a cocker spaniel. ‘But you have the fire for the cigarette?’ she purred in her highly convincing Italian accent that had been honed to perfection over the years.
‘Err … somewhere, let me see,’ he replied, haplessly searching his person for a lighter, keen to oblige the beautiful lesbian before him, unable to take his eyes from her impressive tits that her pretty girlfriend had openly touched in full view of everyone.
‘Grazie,’ she smiled as he finally produced a lighter, and provocatively sucked on the tip of her cigarette. The man gave her a wide-eyed grin, happy to be of service. He felt a small stirring just looking at the pair of them.
‘So tell me,’ Violetta addressed him with a dazzling smile, as she blew smoke rings into the air with her full lips, ‘are you here with your wife?’
Those of you who’ve read my first novel, Chelsea Wives (and I thank you if that’s you!) will know that I’m fairly obsessed with referencing exotic destinations and luxury living (oh how the other half live!) in my writing. I have set this short story on the stunning Island of Capri in Italy, a country I seem to have become increasingly enamoured with each time I visit it. There is something about Italy, and Italian people that I find both exciting and intriguing. I adore the passionate language and unapologetic sexuality that the people seem to exude. And the women sure know how to dress!
I don’t always set out to create feisty female characters but they do always seem to end up that way by default! The female leads in this story are uber-glamorous and quite naughty, very much in keeping with one of the main protagonists in my new novel, Wicked Wi
ves, a powerful Italian seductress who stops at nothing to get what she wants – my kind of woman!
I find writing short stories challenging but ultimately enjoyable. I think a good short story should definitely have a brilliant twist. I hope you like this one – see if you can guess it before you reach the end!
I welcome your thoughts and responses. Feel free to message me on Twitter @ annaloulondon or on Facebook: @chelseawives. And look out for WICKED WIVES published this summer. It’s the only accessory you’ll need on the beach.
Read on for an exclusive extract of Anna-Lou Weatherley’s novel, Wicked Wives:
PROLOGUE
The view from the yacht was superlative. The ocean, a faultless shade of azure blue, stretched out as far as the eye could see, its perfect blue ubiquity broken only by the crystal-white shoreline of St John’s Bay. The sun had begun to set in the distance, a mix of blood-red orange and purples erupting seamlessly into a rich ombre pattern, painting the sky like an oil canvas.
Tom Black peered over the top of his mirrored Ray-Ban Aviators and rested his forearms lightly on the shiny chrome edge of the smart Sunseeker 75, appreciating the final rays of the Antiguan sun on his tanned skin. He took a cursory glance at the diamond-encrusted Rolex on his wrist – a welcome reminder of just how far he had come in recent months. It was 8.28 p.m.
Casting a critical eye around, he admired the shiny teak wooden deck and opulent white leather furnishings of the yacht with a fleeting sense of satisfaction. A huge, cocoon-shaped day bed took pride of place on the sun deck, affording its lucky recipients both seclusion and exposure to the best of the day’s rays as they relaxed – or otherwise – on the sumptuous white cushions. On one side of the bed a magnum of Dom Pérignon Vintage Rose 1959 was chilling to -25 degree perfection in a solid silver Tiffany champagne bucket. On the other, a matching bowl filled with the finest Beluga caviar and two silver spoons nestled on crushed ice. Tom silently congratulated himself. It was a miracle he’d made it here, all things considered; he knew he was on borrowed time, that it wouldn’t take long for them to find him, but he just needed tonight. Just one more night to make things right.
The Perfect Escape Page 27