Sunlounger - the Ultimate Beach Read (Sunlounger Stories Book 1)

by Belinda Jones

  Only with you!

  Roughly Damien blew out the cigarette smoke, leaning on the veranda as he suppressed a tremor of anxiety. Against the romance and history of the piazza, the golden spires of the basilica as they glinted in the late-afternoon sun, he resembled a prince on the eve of battle. Damien Gant was supremely handsome. Tall, broad, chiselled to perfection, his darkness flirted on the right side of swarthy and his liquid features were meltingly seductive. In 2012 he had been voted ‘Most Beautiful International Newcomer’ by a US magazine, and was set to sign a contract with an underwear giant, to be the face (or whatever part of his anatomy was required) of their new campaign. If Meredith permitted it, of course.

  But the modelling wasn’t enough. Since boyhood Damien had harboured ambitions to make it as an actor. He’d got together with Meredith in the belief it would aid the slippery ascent – the ladder to Hollywood stardom was a greasy one and he would need all the help he could get – but while Meredith had stood at the top, arms outstretched, encouraging as a mother guiding her child’s first steps, at the last moment she would prise his fingers from the rungs and laugh wickedly as he tumbled back down to earth.

  You thought you could play at my game? Think again…

  There was only room for one megastar in their partnership and it wasn’t him.

  As a clatter of birds swooped overhead, he remembered the last straw, both a month and a lifetime ago. He had been downtown, at a casting. The role had been perfect, the part tailor-made; an opening he had unearthed without Meredith’s supervision and after an electric audition the deal was as good as sealed – until Meredith stormed in. Somehow she had found him, she had eyes and ears all over town, and acted the concerned girlfriend as she held out a small prescription bottle he had never seen before. You forgot these, darling – and you know what you get like without your special pills. Thank heavens I found you in time. He can get violent, you know…

  The studio never called.

  It had been the final slight, and the moment at which a bulb had finally switched on in Damien’s head. How he wanted to wring her scrawny, pearl-encrusted neck – and if he could not do it, he would simply hire someone else to do it for him.

  He flicked the cigarette butt and watched it twirl to the ground.

  Inside, the shower was still running. Meredith was humming tunelessly.

  If he was quick, he could slip out before she noticed.

  Scribbling a note, he left it on the bed beside the red dress.

  Gone for some air – back in half an hour.

  That depended on how long he’d be nailing her for, of course. One thing was certain: Jennifer Weston didn’t consider his iron-hard cock to be a pathetic excuse.

  I’ll be the most ravishing woman Venice has ever seen, Meredith had announced when she had unveiled her beloved creation.

  Damien couldn’t help his smile. He could think of one more.

  *

  Sex with Jennifer was always going to be a foolish idea, her hotel being just around the corner from his supposed love nest with Meredith, but the sensible things in life were always going to be the most boring. And anyway, he was addicted.

  ‘Keep fucking me, baby, you feel so good,’ Jennifer moaned beneath him, clasping his shoulders and arching her back. She grabbed tufts of his dark hair between her knuckles and raised her hips to slide him all the way.

  Damien obliged, driving into her soft, yielding shape, so different to the cold gruel he was served up at home. Three months he had been screwing the brains out of Jennifer Weston and every minute he spent with her he became more devoted. Never had he considered himself a one-woman man, but with Jennifer he could imagine settling down, getting married, having a family… She was beautiful and sweet and kind and talented, and she worshipped him. In short, she was perfect.

  Fiercely he pounded into her, perspiration covering their chests in a hot, glorious slick as he picked up speed to deny her reprieve from the building fire. Taking a rose-pink nipple in his mouth he pinched hard with his teeth until she cried out in exquisite abandon. Damien decided he could die happy with his face buried in these tits, full and ripe as apples, soft and welcoming as marshmallow, and most crucially unlike Meredith’s, whose resembled day-old pricked balloons.

  ‘Does it turn you on?’ he whispered hoarsely.

  ‘You turn me on,’ she breathed, lips parted to receive his kiss. With a strangled cry she tightened against him, rocking to her pinnacle as he ground his dick deeper and harder and faster, everything she was begging for.

  ‘Does it turn you on to do it here, now—’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Fucking like rabbits,’ he growled, ‘and the bitch has got no idea…’

  Jennifer opened her eyes, panting, the flames of her orgasm doused.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t mention her,’ she mumbled, sliding out from beneath him and sitting on the edge of the bed, her head bowed.

  ‘Baby, I’m sorry,’ Damien protested. His cock was burning with frustration, mere seconds from an explosive release. He reached for her. ‘C’mon…’

  ‘No.’ Jennifer pulled up the sheet. Long blonde hair tumbled down her honey-coloured back, and when she turned to him her eyes were wide and blue. ‘I’m afraid of her, Damien.’

  ‘I know you are,’ he kissed her neck, reaching round to unclasp the sheet, ‘it was stupid of me…’ Feeding a hand beneath the material he circled her breasts.

  ‘Then why say it? Are you thinking about her or something?’

  He pulled back. ‘Hell, no!’

  Jennifer sulked. The moment was lost. Defeated, he slumped back on to the pillows, one hand behind his head. The other pressed the bridge of his nose, resisting the headache that came on when he had a loaded erection and nowhere to put it.

  ‘Gimme a break, Jen.’

  ‘Why should I? You know as well as I do that if Meredith ever found out…’

  She didn’t need to finish. Such a discovery would jeopardise their careers. The affair was kamikaze. Meredith wasn’t an isolated powerhouse: she and her cronies were the puppet masters of Hollywood.

  ‘I love you,’ he said simply, meaning it. He’d never said it to another girl, not even Meredith, despite her efforts to draw it from him: she could manage every other area of his life but she couldn’t put words in his mouth. ‘You, too,’ or ‘Me, too,’ he would respond to her avowals, empty platitudes and never those three magic words, never the ‘I’ of ownership. That was reserved for Jennifer alone.

  Jennifer’s shoulders sagged. ‘I love you, too,’ she answered. Her gaze was open and trusting. ‘But this can’t ever work, Damien – not really, not outside of hotel rooms or trailers or locked in someone’s condo for a weekend. Not in real life.’

  Arguably she had put more on the line than he had. She and Meredith had met on the set of The Heavenly Ones; there was playing with fire and then there was diving headfirst into a burning building. Jennifer had been Meredith’s co-star – taking the role of her daughter, no less – and cast and crew had existed for those weeks of filming beneath a regime of terror. Jennifer was an upcoming ingénue, talented and beautiful yet naïve about the industry, and meddling with her leading lady’s man was a cardinal, irrevocable sin. Yet the second Damien had laid eyes on her it had been inevitable. He had arrived onset to collect Meredith for a gala appearance and caught one of her scenes with Jennifer, stilling in his tracks, unable to help his love-struck gape. A guy on the crew had seen his jaw slacken, assumed it was for Meredith. You’re one lucky guy, he had lied, hoping the compliment would make it back to the diva herself. Sure takes someone with balls to tame a woman like that.

  But Meredith couldn’t ever be tamed. She was savage.

  Reckless with lust, Damien had employed a contact to uncover Jennifer’s details. He’d turned up at her apartment one afternoon and nailed her against the kitchen counter. So different to his first time with Meredith, fumbling under her expectant glower, a young man intimidated by her status an
d desperate to impress.

  His and Jennifer’s affair had been about snatched visits, ravenous phone calls, illicit text messages describing all the things they would do to each other, which Damien would etch into his memory in preparation for the next ordeal with Meredith.

  ‘We don’t know that,’ he replied carefully. ‘Things might change.’

  ‘Like what?’

  He stroked her waist. ‘Trust me.’

  ‘You can’t leave her.’ Jennifer’s expression was grave. ‘You can’t leave Meredith. Promise me you won’t.’ When Damien had confided his latest attempt to walk out, she had been appalled. The way Jennifer saw it, it would solve nothing. Even if her lover achieved a clean severance, the two could never date, never be witnessed as a couple. Indeed, any woman who dared pick up with Damien, probably until the day Meredith Castille choked on her very last basil bocconcino, had to have a death wish.

  ‘I won’t.’

  Jennifer’s cell rang. It was her stylist. After a brief conversation she hung up and kissed him sweetly on the mouth. ‘You should get back.’

  He tried to drag her in. ‘I don’t want to go.’

  ‘My team’s due.’

  Jennifer would be attending the Palazzo dei Leoni as well this evening. It would require all his power of will to resist embracing her. Perhaps when the news struck he could comfort her: two grief-stricken stars finding solace in each other…

  Swiftly, he dressed. At the door, Jennifer looked up at him beseechingly.

  ‘You won’t do anything silly, will you, Damien?’

  Softly, he touched his lips to hers.

  ‘Of course not, baby,’ he lied. ‘Of course I won’t.’

  *

  It was easy to get lost in Venice. A labyrinth of canals coiled around his cloaked figure like a nest of snakes, black as oil and twinkling gold in the creeping evening.

  Damien wore a long coat and a hat that obscured his face. Head down, he walked anonymous through the narrow, winding alleys, at one turn alive with the buzz of tourists and ripe with the scent of sugared pastries, the next rotten with water-stink as he slipped past windows filled with beaked Casanova masks, tooth-white in the moonshine, and bejewelled, taunting jesters.

  We know what you’re up to, they seemed to whisper. We see you…

  The rendezvous was at a dripping arch past the Rialto. Gondolas sighed, slopping against banks that were slick with algae, black and dark green, and he vanished into the gloom, his breath hot and ragged in his throat. He consulted the hour, watching, waiting. In the distance, bursts of Italian punctured the night.

  Across the city, an event of unrivalled dazzle and splendour was about to get underway. Reporters would be arriving, cameras being set up, the carpet rolled out to receive the doyennes of the celebrity world: the planet’s most beautiful people.

  They had no idea what tragedy was in store.

  Eventually he spied an approaching silhouette. At first it was just a shadow, a slithering shape pooling along the dank, dark walls, until it revealed itself as having a head, two arms, two legs. Damien straightened. The assignation was nigh.

  ‘We spoke on the phone,’ Damien began, a faltering start that choked like a dying car engine. The man appeared confused, skeptical. ‘Alanzo?’ he tried again.

  The stranger understood that much, at least. He shook his head, the movement bringing his features into light. He had a scar down one cheek, a deep groove that ran from his temple to the corner of his mouth. Black hair obscured hooded eyes, through which syrupy irises gleamed meanly. His shoulders were broad and hulking.

  ‘Not Alanzo,’ he said at last, in faltering English. ‘Alanzo boss.’

  Damien suppressed a surge of anger. Curse Alanzo, sending a lackey to do a job this important… Wasn’t Alanzo meant to be the best of the best? Italy’s premier hit man? Christ knew Damien was shelling out good money for the privilege. But of course Alanzo wasn’t to know the nature of the crime. It wasn’t as if Damien had been prepared to reveal his own name – or that of his target. As far as Alanzo was concerned, he was just another jock who wanted his girl bumped off.

  ‘He’s briefed you, presumably?’ he demanded.

  The man frowned, not understanding.

  Damien spoke slowly. ‘What you’re meant to do? Instructions? The plan?’

  ‘I do it,’ came the hollow reply. ‘Red dress.’

  He was relieved. At least that much had made it through. Probably better if the thug spoke barely a word of the language and had no idea who Meredith was. It was neater, cleaner that way. A mindless hoodlum – wasn’t that what he was paying for?

  Damien watched his own hand stretch out, pale beneath the moon’s lonely spotlight, and pass the photograph. In it Meredith was smiling. It had been taken a few years ago and was one of her favourites: she looked young in it, she said.

  ‘I keep,’ snarled the man.

  Damien snatched it back. It was way too risky to have a picture knocking about the scene. ‘Just do the job,’ he commanded.

  He imagined the red dress making its way to the Città d’Oro. Meredith was expecting him to meet her at the entrance, their boats briefed to arrive simultaneously at the palazzo. The glowing scarlet material as it stepped from the water, rippling deliciously in the night, like paint or like fire.

  He enunciated the room number and made the man repeat it.

  ‘Capiche?’ Damien finished, with more conviction than he felt.

  The man bared his canines. His expression said what words could not:

  It was as good as done.

  *

  Meredith peered into the mirror, narrowing her cat-like eyes as she pulled gently at the skin, stretching the crows’ feet flat and wondering if she could get away with another one of Dr Prendergast’s magical face lifts. According to a magazine piece recently fished out by her PR she was looking younger than ever.

  ‘What a ridiculous thing to say,’ she had sniped at her publicist. ‘So I look younger now than when I was ten?’ But secretly she’d been thrilled.

  It was difficult not to be. She was the best-looking fifty-something on the Hollywood block and she damn sure intended to stay that way. It was a case of taking care – of what she ate, of how much she drank, of what she wore, of whom she was seen with… Being Meredith Castille was a full-time employment.

  And the trick to staying truly youthful? Going to bed with a man half her age.

  Damien Gant was an Adonis – and an utterly pliable, malleable one. He had a body to die for and a grin slicker still, but Meredith wasn’t stupid: she hadn’t got this far playing nicey-nicey. The instant Damien hit the big league he would be off with some tart quicker than she could haul up her knickers – it had happened before and it would happen again. That was why Meredith had to keep him in his place; issuing timely reminders that she was the one in charge, and that without her he was nothing. Not just when it came to his forays into Hollywood, which she was managing with the same stunted growth control as cultivating a Bonsai, but in the bedroom, too: give a man ideas above his station and he would surely bolt. With Damien she had embarked on a dedicated campaign of subtle erosion, a little more every day, so that eventually he would believe she was the only woman who would accept him. Occasionally he ran for the stable door, that much was inevitable, but he always came back.

  Meredith sang lightly to herself. She might ask Damien to marry her later this year. If he refused, he would start to find his modelling commitments dwindling, too…

  She laid the dress out. It was a thing of beauty.

  Città d’Oro, here I come.

  There was a sharp, hollow knock at the door. Ah, there her stylist was now.

  *

  The train of gondolas queuing at the Palazzo dei Leoni was a sight to behold. Purple water reflected a black sky pricked with stars, as VIPs were helped to shore in shimmering gowns, diamonds winking at their necks and wrists. Paparazzi surged to capture the money shot, the square packed with fans craning their p
hones, desperate for a glimpse of their heroes. Venice sparkled like a jewel, the palace lit gold and the rash of red carpet threading through the press. Couples were guided along the route, at intervals pausing elegantly to receive a question. Designer names were thrown like confetti into the evening: Marchesa, Dior, Elie Saab, Armani. Actresses eyed one another with suspicious admiration, each gown measured against the last, a preliminary introduction to the Best and Worst Dressed of tomorrow’s papers and blogs. Ass looks big. Should have gone with a bra. That up-do puts ten years on…

  Such was the flurry that nobody heard the raw, terrifying, blood-curdling scream that flew from an open-shuttered hotel suite across the courtyard. It wasn’t the woman who died who had released it; it was the maid who found her.

  *

  The trouble with Damien’s ambitions to be an actor was that he wasn’t terribly good at acting. Waiting on the banks of the palazzo he could feel his face drained of colour, the fidget in his hands and the impossibility of standing still for more than two seconds. Surely it was a giveaway. Any moment now someone would rumble him.

  ‘Damien! Where’s Meredith?’

  He heard it as an accusation and spun on his heel, ready for combat, before he fell into the gentle, smiling regard of director Neil Carver.

  ‘Everything all right, buddy?’ Neil asked, as Damien composed himself.

  ‘Sure, sure.’ Damien forced a smile. It was like cracking ice. ‘You know Meredith’s style – always preferring to be fashionably late.’

  Neil grinned. ‘Send her my best for tonight, won’t you?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘She deserves it.’

  He gulped. ‘Indeed she does.’

  With Neil gone he checked the line of gondolas for a sign of Jennifer. Once she arrived he’d feel better: his anchor, his friend…ultimately, his reason.

  Did this make him a murderer? No. The man he’d hired was the murderer; Damien had simply facilitated it. And what choice had he been left with? Meredith had sealed her own fate with every swipe of her tongue, every insult and every jibe.