Bad Girls (56 page)

Joe popped the cork and filled the glass she was holding out to him.

‘In one way, it wasn’t the most romantic thing ever,’ she added, ‘but in another –’ her cheeks went even pinker – ‘it was.’

‘Huh?’ Joe poured himself a glass.

‘A year,’ Skye said, sipping her Cristal. ‘The contract’s for a year.’ She ducked her head. ‘I thought you must
really
like me, to be sure you wanted to spend a whole year with me . . .’

‘Oh.’ Joe felt the tips of his ears going red too. ‘Uh. Yeah. You know, I never even thought about that. I mean, I just took it for granted. Funny, huh?’

He was grinning at her like a schoolboy with his first crush. He knew he was. And she was smiling down at the floor, looking so pretty and shy and sexy all at once that he couldn’t keep his hands off her a second longer.

‘You know what I love about you?’ he said, which was as close to using that word as he dared to get, this soon into their relationship. ‘You put a smile on my face whenever I see you.’ He pulled her towards him, spun her round and bent to kiss her shoulder, his hands sliding down her arms. ‘You never bore me. You get me hard as a tree and you fuck like a runaway train. That pretty much ticks all my boxes.’

‘Wow,’ Skye said, luxuriating in his use of the word ‘love’. She ground her bottom sexily back against him. ‘You
do
know how to make things sound romantic.’

Joe ran his hands down her back to her waist, finding the zipper of her skirt. ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said happily, as she wriggled her hips to help him push her skirt down. ‘I’m about to romance you right off your pretty little feet.’

Her skirt fell to the ground, and Skye tilted her head round to look at him.

‘I won’t have to be a secret for ever, will I?’ she said hopefully. ‘I mean, I know I have to hide out here for now – hole up in hotels when you’re filming – but if things work out between us –’ she blushed again – ‘I won’t have to keep doing that . . . will I?’

‘Hey, you’re going to do that part for Jeff Ringquist over at Clearwater,’ he pointed out. ‘If it goes well, you can snag some more. In a year’s time, you’ll be an up-and-coming actress. No reason I can’t date an up-and-coming actress, is there?’

He snagged his thumb into her thong and started pulling that down too.

‘Might as well take everything off,’ he mumbled into her hair. ‘Since I seem to be going that way.’

‘But I’ll always be that stripper you screwed in rehab,’ Skye said sadly. ‘There’s video of us all over the net. You could never date me for real. I mean, out in the open.’

‘Are you kidding?’ Joe took hold of the hem of her T-shirt and lifted it up to her armpits. His hands came round to her breasts, sliding over the lace of her bra, feeling for the clasp. ‘Front-fastening,’ he said appreciatively. ‘My favourite. Mmm.
Anyway –’
he undid her bra, letting it fall open, and closed his hands snugly over her breasts – ‘that’s even better! You and I meet in rehab, we get up to stuff, we work through the programme, we clean up our act, realize we like each other and settle down – isn’t that the cutest redemption story you ever heard?’

He pulled the bra straps off her shoulders, and Skye wriggled to make it easier for him, dragging her T-shirt over her head. When she turned to face him, she was completely naked.

‘You’ve got
way
too many clothes on,’ she said, her eyes sparkling with happiness at what he had just said
.
She reached for his belt, leaning up against him, pressing the full length of her naked body into him as she went up on her toes to whisper in his ear: ‘You know what you wanted me to do with my hands? Get ready, baby.’

‘Later,’ Joe said happily. ‘Right now, I’m thirsty.’

He picked her up by the waist, sat her on the marble counter, and said, picking up the bottle of champagne: ‘Lie down, will you? I’ve got an idea.’

‘Oh,
no
,’ Skye fake-protested. ‘You and your damn ideas.’

She leaned back on her elbows so her back arched up to the ceiling and her head tilted back, her hair spilling onto the marble. Joe moved between her legs, sliding one over each shoulder, then pouring champagne slowly and carefully into her navel, filling it up, letting it spill over; he leaned forward and lapped it up, his tongue so hot and sexy as he licked up the bubbles that she moaned, arching her pelvis up towards him. Joe filled her navel with more champagne, letting it flood down between her legs.

‘Ooh! Too cold!’ Skye said, wriggling happily.

‘Really? You’re complaining now?’ Joe said, licking down her stomach, flicking her with his tongue, making her moan and buck beneath him, her hips pumping as he said, his voice mock-hurt: ‘And there was me thinking you
liked
my ideas,’ a second before he closed his mouth over her and made her scream so loudly that Hengist and Horsa, who had wandered off to slump onto the living-room floor, raised their heads, looked at each other in disgust and got up heavily to find a less noisy place to have a nap.

I
n her career as a model, Amber had travelled all over the world. She had posed in fluttering silk on the Great Wall of China, emerged in a minuscule bikini from the Caribbean sea onto the pink sands of Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas, and done a shoot in Venice that required her to lie in a gondola wearing only lingerie as a photographer hung off the Accademia Bridge, pointing his lens down at her near-naked body while a bevy of excited tourists snapped her frantically on their phones and digital cameras.

But she remembered very little about her travels. She had been on a combination of pills the whole time, in a pleasant, half-tranced haze of medication that had given her a cushion of psychological padding, allowing her to do things like step into a rocking gondola in broad daylight, wearing only a transparent lace bra and knicker set, and a pair of Louboutins.

I could never do that now, she thought ruefully, looking down at the water below. She was standing on the little balcony of her hotel room, which faced onto the white dome and belltower of the church of Santa Maria della Salute; the church and the hotel were separated by a narrow canal, a little tributary that ran between the Grand Canal on one side and Giudecca on the other. Ca’ Maria Adele, the hotel, had its own little pier, at which a motor taxi was pulling up to unload a lone passenger, an elegant silver-haired man in a white linen suit. He stepped onto the wooden pier, into the pool of golden light cast by the lamps above the hotel entrance, and took his leather overnight case from the taxi driver, entering the hotel without a glance up at Amber half-hidden in the twilight shadows above.

I hope he’s meeting someone wonderful here, Amber thought. I hope the love of his life is waiting for him in a room almost as romantic as this one. I want everyone to be as happy as I am right now . . .

She might never have come to Venice before. Everything was new, everything perfect; it was as if she was seeing all this beauty for the first time. On the Grand Canal, a vaporetto passed, its wash causing the motor taxi below to rock as it backed slowly away from the hotel pier, its shiny wood and chrome trim glinting in the gentle light cast by the hotel lamps. The sun had set; the statues surrounding the basilica of Santa Maria della Salute, the detailed carving around the windows and belltowers, were fading against the sky, which glowed in a watercolour wash of deep blues and purples, tinged at the edges with gold.

The house next to Ca’ Maria Adele, just over the little iron bridge, was covered with wisteria, thick green foliage heavily laden with clusters of mauve blossoms hanging down, reflected in the dark water below, filling the air with an intoxicating scent of honeyed vanilla. Amber breathed it in deeply, her head spinning with the perfume, and just then a different, equally rich scent came pouring out of the bathroom behind her, as its door opened: lemon and mandarin, the sweet fresh citrus smell of body wash and soap.

Turning round, she stretched her arms along the stone balcony, and a smile of pure happiness flooded over her face as she watched Raf emerge from the bathroom, wearing a white waffle robe, rubbing his hair with a white towel, his Mediterranean skin dark gold by contrast. He padded towards her across the tiled floor.

‘I thought of running a bath,’ he said. ‘I figured, we have a room with a Jacuzzi, we should definitely use it. Can I persuade you to take a bubble bath with me? God.’ He looked around briefly at the bedroom, its walls upholstered in the same white and blue brocade that covered the gilt chairs and the high bed, hung with gold-framed mirrors, white-painted statues of Moors holding lamps in the far corners of the room. ‘This place is amazing. I never want to leave.’

He stepped out onto the balcony.

‘But you know,’ he said, looking at her, ‘as far as I’m concerned, we didn’t need to come to Venice. We could have stayed back in California. Because we might be in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, staying in a room like something out of a museum, but all I can really see is you.’

Amber reached up, winding her arms around his neck, pulling him down to kiss her.

‘You’re going to make me cry,’ she said against his mouth.

‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘No more compliments, then. Not if they’ll make you cry. No more tears.’

Their kiss was long and deep, and as drugging and heady as the scent of wisteria in the air. Amber wanted it to go on for ever. Still kissing him, she slid her hands down his body, finding the tie to his robe, undoing it and pulling the robe open, pressing herself against his naked body, inhaling the scent of his skin under the citrus of the body wash.

‘Jesus, Amber,’ he sighed, as her hands slipped down further, finding him already hard, ‘you’re going to use me up and wear me out.’

They had had sex already that day, waking up in a heavy daze of jet lag, weighed down by the brocade covers of the bed, reaching for each other still half-asleep; slow, drugged, it had been like making love underwater, lying side by side, his leg thrown over her hip, his fingers between her legs making her come over and over, like the water of the canal lapping at the pier below them as he rocked inside her, finally coming in a long, drawn-out shudder of pleasure against her back, falling back to sleep in the same position.

They’d woken up to bright Venetian afternoon sunshine, starving for a late lunch; gone out to a little local restaurant to eat a feast of sardines cooked in vinegar and raisins, tiny fried crabs, risotto, black and rich with squid ink, lemon sorbet and sweet polenta biscuits. They’d walked over the Rialto bridge, bought the obligatory souvenir of a Murano glass bowl, got lost in narrow back streets, and finally taken a water taxi back to the hotel to fall asleep again, overwhelmed by sunshine and jet lag and happiness.

‘I’ve got a lot of lost time to make up for,’ Amber pointed out, wrapping her fingers around him, twisting and stroking in a way that made him groan deep in his throat. ‘All those years before I met you. All those years having sex with people I didn’t choose.’

Twilight had come, night was falling; it was too dark on the balcony to see Raf’s expression properly, but she could hear the laughter in his voice as he said: ‘Well, you certainly chose me.’

‘I did,’ Amber said with great satisfaction. ‘I chose you. I knew I wanted you as soon as I saw you. You were the first thing I ever truly wanted in my life.’

‘And I chose you,’ Raf said, cupping her face in his hands, kissing her lips softly.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said, her fingertips playing up and down the length of his cock, teasing him, drawing him slowly closer and closer to her. ‘When we get back to LA, I want to train as a counsellor. To work with recovering addicts. I know it’ll be a long process, but I want to try. Do you think I’d be any good at it?’

‘I think you’ll be amazing,’ he said, letting her pull him towards her till his cock pushed up eagerly between her legs, ‘but –
God
– can we please talk about this later?’

‘Of course,’ she said demurely, slipping up to sit on the stone edge of the balcony, widening her legs, adjusting herself so his cock could start to slide inside her. ‘I just thought I’d ask if you thought it was a good idea—’

‘Amber,’ he said, gripping her hips, pushing further up, ‘as long as I’m inside you, you could tell me you wanted to become an astronaut, and I’d say it was the best damn idea in the world—’

‘Sssh!’ She put her hand over his mouth. ‘We’re outside – people might hear us.’

He slid his hands under her bottom, lifting her fractionally, his cock driving right up inside her, filling her completely; she gasped and clung to his neck for balance, her eyes closing in ecstasy.

‘Shall I carry you back in the room?’ he whispered, looking over her shoulder at the Venetian night, the shadowed church beyond them. ‘No one’s going to see us in the dark, but—’

‘No! Don’t move!’

She wrapped her long legs around his waist, tilting back to get the exact angle she wanted,gasping again in sheer pleasure as she found it.

‘
God
,’ he whispered, starting to rock in and out of her, finding his rhythm.

‘Sssh . . .’

Amber slid her fingers between her legs, as his hands were fully occupied in holding her on the balcony edge, and almost as soon as she touched herself, she started to come. A gondola poled into the canal below, the long slow strokes of its single oar in the deep water echoing what Raf was doing to her, driving back and forth, bringing her to an orgasm that seemed to last for ever, rising and falling with every stroke of his hips meeting hers.

‘I’m going to come,’ he whispered in her ear, his grip tightening on her hips, his cock swelling inside her. ‘You’re going to make me come . . .’

She pushed down against him, hearing him groan as he finally let go, feeling him surge up inside her, coming again herself as he did.

In my wildest dreams, I never thought I would have this. In my wildest imaginings, I never dared to hope that I would be in Venice, making love with Raf on a balcony. Feeling him come inside me.

His arms were tight around her, his biceps swelling as he held her. She pushed her face into his shoulder, and, despite what he’d said about her crying, she let the tears come, dampening his skin, feeling a total release of emotion wash over her, her body utterly relaxed, her eyes closing.