Lord and Master (19 page)

Exactly two days later, Luna was running along the boardwalk in Miami Beach, just passing 30
^th
Street and aiming to get all the way to 46
^th
. To her left was the thin peninsula comprising around twelve avenues running north to south and seventy-odd streets running east to west that comprised Miami Beach, a separate entity from Miami itself reached by a number of causeways from the city. And to her right was the Atlantic Ocean, greenish-blue and calm in the late morning sunshine.

The boardwalk was actually a fair distance away from the water, punctuated occasionally by little shelters with clay tile roofs and wooden seating areas. As she passed next to one of the shelters, feet bouncing satisfyingly off the wooden surface, she saw a group of men in long black coats, hats and side curls standing together, chatting in Yiddish. Surprisingly, at least to Luna when she had moved here in her early twenties, there was a large Hasidic Jewish population on Miami Beach which, in addition to the sizeable Cuban-American and Haitian communities in Miami, made the area of bit of a melting pot.

It had been good to come back, better than Luna expected. If she was honest, when she'd left to go back to the UK she didn't think she would ever return. Oh, her ex-boss, a well-known hotel and property magnate, had told her she was always welcome and he'd meant it; within an hour of her sending an email saying she was planning to visit, he'd sent her a reply insisting that she stay at the Pontiac, her favourite of his hotels, right in the middle of South Beach. And it had been nice to know that she was remembered.

But the two and a half years Luna had spent in Miami in her early twenties had seemed at the time like…enough. Her work for her boss had been on the hoof, following him around from hotel to hotel, property to property, tablet and Blackberry at the ready, an assortment of little black dresses her only uniform. And for a while it had been fun, but eventually it palled and she began to think longingly of England's damp, chilly shores.

Something about all that sun; the hot, damp tropical air that had engulfed her the minute she stepped out of the airport – after a while it sapped your intellectual power. Or so, at least, Luna had found. Living in Miami reminded her of a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale her mother used to read with her when she was little,
The Snow Queen
. There was a part of the story when the little girl, Gerda, whilst searching for her missing friend Kai, stops in the rose garden of an old witch, who combs her hair and makes her forget all about her friend. Miami was like that for Luna – it made her forgetful, and maybe just a little bit vapid.

Of course, she thought as she approached 46
^th
Street where the boardwalk ended, right now Miami was just the tonic. As she'd hoped, the November sun was hot, but not too hot, and a day on the beach had miraculously burnt away the remnants of her chest infection. Her hair, responding to the humidity, had curled and become lustrous, like little Gerda's hair under the ministrations of the witch. There was no way she'd ever have managed to maintain her ‘Arborage do' here; her mane simply would not comply with any efforts to tame it. She was wearing it in a headband now, which was satisfyingly drenched with sweat. It had been a good run.

Exiting the boardwalk, she removed her trainers and socks and walked down to the water's edge, amazed as ever by how uncrowded the beach was. Miami folks, she had found, rarely came here, so on mornings like this she had it almost to herself. The water was just cool enough, and she walked in up to her thighs, looking out onto the horizon under a cloudless sky. And she didn't think of Stefan.

Nor did she think of him when she walked to her favourite bagel place, a little Jewish deli three blocks away, where she bought a poppy seed bagel with cream cheese and a cup of coffee she drank as she walked back to South Beach along the quiet residential streets, passing palm trees and walled gardens dripping with bougainvillea, tiny lizards scurrying across the pavement in front of her.

Sometime later she walked into the stunning art deco lobby of the Pontiac, with its cool polished concrete floors, glass brick exterior wall and stunning, original deco chandelier. She collected her key from the smiling woman on reception, the same one who'd checked her in the previous night, telling her that her ex-boss had left strict instructions for Luna to be treated ‘like gold'.

Luna's room was on the second floor of the hotel, in a prime position overlooking the courtyard pool and bar. It had a queen-sized bed, an inviting armchair and matching ottoman, and large, horizontal paned glass doors opening out onto a balcony.

Like many 1930s hotels, the guest rooms at the Pontiac were small. Some of them had been knocked through to make suites, but Luna's retained its original dimensions. To give it a larger feel, wall-to-wall bevelled mirrors had been installed opposite the bed – even the door to the bathroom was mirrored. She went to the bathroom now and turned on the shower, pausing quickly to take her birth control pill. A tiny, bitter little thought of Stefan crept in then, which she quickly quashed.

She spent the rest of the day on the beach, alone, which was fine with her. She'd bought a stack of trashy magazines at the airport but didn't open one of them, happy enough to just stare out at the sea or at passing walkers, digging her feet into the white sand and thinking mindless thoughts.

Sitting on her balcony that evening, listening to the hum of chatter from the bar below, Luna looked at the VIP pass the nice woman on reception had given her to Coast, a new gay club in South Beach. The South Beach and its many clubs had been Luna's stomping ground when she lived here, but now, on her own?

Two hours later she stood in front of her bathroom mirror applying a thin coat of black liquid eyeliner, followed by a mixture of smoky grey and cobalt blue eye shadow. Eye makeup completed, Luna studied her reflection. Her mane tumbled down her back in a shining mass of curls and her sun-kissed face shimmered under a light coat of translucent powder. She briefly considered her lips. Given her dramatic eye colour, or rather lack thereof, lipstick had a way of looking strange on her, overly colourful, so she tended not to wear it. Besides, she remembered Kayla telling her once that she should never, ever wear both heavy eye makeup and lipstick. ‘It's a prossie look,' she'd said.

Luna was in a strange mood tonight, though, here in Miami Beach on her own. She reached in her makeup bag and pulled out her MAC Russian Red lipstick, the one she'd only used twice, and carefully applied it, standing back once more to examine her handiwork. Did she look like a prostitute? Well, maybe so, maybe so. A high-class one, she liked to think.

And, Luna reminded herself, she was going to a gay bar after all. Which meant it was important to look good – ‘like the good little fag hag you are rapidly becoming,' Nancy had observed disparagingly during one of her frequent visits – but it didn't really matter what the opposite sex thought, or didn't think, of her.

Her dress was made of black shimmering fabric that never wrinkled, which had made it perfect for this travelling light weekend. It was both daringly short, with a tight-fitting skirt that fell to her upper thigh, and incredibly low cut. So low cut, in fact, with its sleeveless cowl revealing a slash of bare flesh reaching almost to her navel, that she couldn't wear a bra with it; possibly the only thing in her wardrobe that made her glad of her modest but pert B-cup assets. And finally her shoes, her gladiator sandals with the five-inch heels and crisscrossing leather straps that ran all the way up to her knees. ‘Fuck me' sandals, her South Beach chums had dubbed them, which she hadn't worn since returning to the UK. They'd been hard to fit in her North Face backpack, but she'd squeezed them in on a whim and now, standing in her bedroom, looking at herself in the wall of mirrors, she was glad she had.

No, she could not be Miami girl anymore, Gerda with her beautiful hair and empty, forgetful mind. But she could pretend for a night. Jem would say she looked fierce, with her red lips and her smoky eyes and her fuck-me sandals. And that was good enough for Luna.

Coast was located in an old cinema that had been transformed into a black, purple-lit paradise inside, with a glittering bar along the full length of one wall and a large dance floor that was already heaving with dancers, both homo- and heterosexual, by the time Luna arrived at just past 11pm. A place where hot young things went to see and be seen by other hot young things.

Two sips into her second Tanqueray and tonic in the upstairs VIP area, Luna spotted a group of acquaintances down on the dance floor, gyrating to Pharrell Williams. Squaring her shoulders, she finished her drink and headed down the stairs, relieved and delighted to be greeted like she'd never been away. And it was perfect, really, dancing in a circle of hot young men, bass from the club speakers vibrating in her ears.

Two hours later, after much dancing and two more gin and tonics, it began to feel slightly less perfect. As time crept on, the atmosphere on the dance floor began to change, her dance partners scanning the room, their eyes drawn to the new and hard, their thoughts on where the night would end, and with whom. Luna was reminded of why nightlife on SoBe, and particularly as a resident fag hag, had begun to grate – three hours of preparation, two hours on the dance floor and suddenly you were surplus to requirements.

Not that it particularly mattered. The meter was running, as Nancy would say, on how much longer Luna cared to stay out anyway, being not much more of an extrovert here in Miami than she was at Arborage. She hadn't chatted to a single heterosexual man all night and hadn't felt the need to.

Then the opening guitar lines from her all-time favourite Arctic Monkeys song started to play. A slow song for them, about a damned, doomed love. Luna was standing alone at the bar at this point, and she wished, how she wished, that someone was there to dance with her. Jem, or Nancy, or Kayla, so they could have sung the words, which they all knew by heart, along with Alex Turner. Or a man, any man. She thought of her university boyfriend, who would have known immediately that she had to dance to this one. She thought of the professor she'd clandestinely dated for two months who had never made her come – she'd have danced with him, even.

And then, as Alex Turner began to sing about the colour in his lover's cheeks, Luna thought of Stefan. And wished he was with her, just for this one song. It was a stupid, stupid wish, four gin and tonics in, but she wished it all the same and knew a moment's despair that she couldn't repel him from her mind. She wished he was there.

Luna placed her empty glass on the bar, and looked for an exit line between the bar and the crowded dance floor.

At first she thought it was some kind of alchemy, an apparition she'd magicked up, the tall blond man moving towards her across the darkened, purple-lit room. She mistrusted her eyes, of course she did. No, she told herself, heart thumping in her chest, this man – boy, more like – dressed in a short-sleeved, close-fitting white shirt, his hair looking a blond, sexy mess, was too young to be him, some college kid who'd doubtless gotten in using fake ID. It was her mind playing tricks on her, and the fact that he seemed to be looking straight at her like he couldn't quite trust his own eyes, that was a trick of the light. The boy came to stand in front of her, and she saw his lips say, ‘Luna,' saw his eyes travel down her neck to the bare slice of skin trailing to her navel.

She took his hand and it was warm against hers, hot even. She leaned towards him and said, ‘Let's dance,' and led him out into the middle of the floor, in amongst the slowly writhing bodies. He knew just where to put his hands; on her hips where he could feel them undulating in front of him. She placed her forearms on his shoulders, not holding him, just resting them there with her hands outstretched beside his head. Wearing these, her tallest heels, she was almost as tall as him, and rather than look at him, this spectre she had willed into being, she placed her cheek against his, inclining her nose into his hairline. His hand slid into her hair, twining it. He moved against her, saying her name again.

Soon the entire crowd was slowly clapping in time to the chorus, some stamping their feet and some even thumping the sides of the bar. Luna smiled, she
had
to smile, at what a surreal moment this was, and stamped her own fuck-me-sandal-clad foot.

They didn't stick around after the song was over. This time it was he who grabbed her hand, leading her out onto the pavement. And then she was kissing him, all mouth and tongues, right in front of the bouncers and the waiting queue. She didn't care. Eventually they stopped kissing and he led her the three blocks back to the hotel. He seemed to know where he was going. Of course he did, Luna thought; this was the night when anything she wanted just magically happened.

Outside the hotel her heel caught in a crack on the pavement and she stumbled briefly against him, twisting her ankle slightly. She bent down to release the heel, quickly rubbing her ankle, then stood with a little wince. ‘Put your arms around me,' he said, then lifted her up and carried her into the hotel lobby.

‘You found her then,' the nice woman on reception smiled, handing Luna her key.

‘Yes, thank you, Carrie,' he said, and carried Luna into the lift, lowering her down briefly so she could push the button for their floor. The doors closed and Luna looked at him.

‘How did you know I was here?' she asked.

‘Luck, and a little guesswork. Your e-ticket was still open on the laptop, and I knew something of your former employer. So then it was just a matter of a little investigative work, which I assigned to Bibi. As a penance.'

Luna nodded and said, ‘Why have you come?'

The doors to the elevator opened. Stefan looked down at her, tightened his arms around her and said, ‘To get you back.'

He carried her down the hall till she nodded toward her door, signalling to him to put her down. Her ankle felt okay as she inserted the key in the door and ushered him into the dimly lit room. She caught a glimpse of herself and him in the mirrored wall and wondered again at how little like themselves they looked, him in his white shirt, grey skinny jeans and sexy, messed up hair, and her like some kind of fierce gladiatrix.

He opened his mouth and she immediately held her hand up to it, bringing her lips close beside. ‘What would you do if I said that all I want right now is this…' She kissed him once. ‘…and this.' And kissed him again, dragging his lower lip between her teeth.

He hesitated infinitesimally, then pulled her abruptly against him. ‘I'd say I live to serve.' And they were at it again, tongues and teeth and lips and hands and hips. She quickly unbuttoned his shirt and threw it on the bed, kissing his chest and kneading her fingers in the base of his spine. He slid his hand into her neckline, along her waist and up over her bare breast and made a low noise in his throat. She unbuttoned his jeans, pushing him onto the bed, and turned her back to him, bending to untie and remove his shoes. Presented with her rounded bottom, he placed his hands on it first over her skirt, then under it, feeling her bare cheeks and swiftly moving up to her waist, where he grasped the string sides of her thong and pulled them down, negotiating her sandals with rather more skill than Luna herself could have mustered.

She turned back around, put her hands on his waistband and unzipped his fly, reaching her hand within to stroke the hardness she found there. She shimmied his pants and boxers together to the floor, then stood and took in the sight of him. And she was glad, no matter what ‘to get you back' meant – even if in the end it meant nothing – to have him lying there in front of her again, the muscles in his stomach rippling in the dim light of the room, segueing into that lovely bit of muscle between his hip and the start of the dark blond hair below. Which she ran her hand through now, feeling the crispness of it, moving toward the hard base of his cock.

In response, he promptly sat up on the bed and clamped his legs around her, lifting her dress up. Taking over where he started, she pulled it up over her head, till she stood naked before him. She bent to begin working a gladiator sandal down her leg and he stayed her hand, growling, ‘Leave them on.'

He stood and placed his hands on her hips, pulling her against him and simultaneously walking forward, forcing her to step backward. Then he took her by the shoulders and turned her around, presenting her to the wall of mirrors.

‘Look at yourself,' he said. ‘
Look,
Luna.' So she looked, saw herself clad in nothing but her high-heeled sandals, her irises startlingly pale against her dark eye makeup. One breast covered by her hair and the other crowned by a nipple that was already tight in anticipation of his touch. And him, standing behind her, eyes on their reflection, bending his mouth to her exposed neck, his teeth flashing white against her skin. She watched his hands in the mirror, moving up her thighs, pausing briefly at her waist to pull her toward him, rubbing his cock against the cleft of her butt. As always, her clitoris responded immediately to his arousal. She felt it actually twitch within the soft folds of her sex, the blood strumming through her veins, her vulva growing plump with it.

He moved his hands to her breasts, placed his middle fingers on her erect nipples and inverted them, circling them around in a counter-clockwise motion. And it was so unbelievably good that she gasped, her eyes beginning to slide shut.

‘No,' Stefan commanded harshly. ‘I want you to watch this. Watch what I do to you.' He began plucking her nipples gently and Luna did as she was told, watching his fingers on her. Her thighs weakened with the pleasure of it, and she bit her lip to stop from moaning. And then he removed his hands from her breasts and brought one arm across her shoulder to steady her against him, while moving the other hand straight to her cleft.

She moaned then – she couldn't help herself.

‘Watch, Luna,' he reminded her, delving into the soft flesh around her clitoris with all four of his fingers, pressing hard against her, moving fast. ‘I want you to think of this, the next time you touch yourself. Look at my hand on you.' She watched his hand, moving so swiftly it was a blur, saw the muscles standing out along his forearm, felt herself begin to writhe against him. Her breath was coming in strangled gasps and her face, she could see, was contorted with what looked like pain.

She reached the point of no return, thought she still had a few more moments to gather herself, when her orgasm took her by surprise, coming first in three short, involuntary pulses of pleasure that built into one massive one. She closed her eyes and threw her head back on his shoulder, arching and shaking and crying out. Luna was not normally one for noisemaking during sex, but this time she literally couldn't stop herself, so intense was the feeling. Midway through her climax, Stefan's hand grew more gentle on her, slowing and reducing pressure, and this, too, was incredible, drawing her orgasm out and leaving her whimpering against him.

She couldn't bear to look at her reflection again after that, to see herself surrendered against him. Instead she turned around and buried her head in his neck, breathing, ‘Thank you.'

He shook his head. ‘The pleasure really was all mine, Luna. It always is with you.' He ran his hand over the curve of her bum and she pictured him looking at its reflection in the mirror. ‘Really, these heels do the most amazing things to your posterior.' His hand moved up to her hair. ‘I also like this. Very much.'

‘It's the humidity here,' she responded, lifting her own hand to his head, twisting her fingers into his scalp. ‘I like what it's doing to your hair too.' She placed her fingertips on his chest, gently pushed him down onto the chair beside the balcony doors. Placing her fuck-me-sandal-clad foot on the ottoman, she kicked it out of the way, glancing behind her at the mirrored wall, then back to Stefan, levelling her hands questioningly.

‘Is the angle right there?' she asked. When Stefan lifted his eyebrows at her, she added, ‘I wouldn't want you to miss anything.'

He looked from her to the mirror and back. ‘The view is very impressive, from every angle.'

She smiled and placed her hands on the back of the chair, sliding one knee between his outer thigh and the chair's arm, followed by the other, till she was kneeling above him. She took his cock, still hard, still ready, gingerly in her hand. Then it occurred to her that this was the very first time they would have sex without a condom. And that seemed, suddenly, strangely serious.

‘Wait,' she said, and lifted herself off him, going to sit on the ottoman. She slid the straps of her sandals down and removed them, then returned to him barefooted and resumed her previous position. This time he guided himself to her and she slowly descended upon him, her interior still slick from her own satisfaction. For a moment she didn't move, and when she did her pace was unhurried. He, meanwhile, forgot about the view, resting his head on the back of the chair and closing his eyes.

‘Tell me what I feel like to you,' she whispered in his ear.

‘You feel wet,' he responded immediately. ‘And soft. And much warmer than someone with such cold hands has any right to feel…' He half laughed, then sighed as she continued slowly moving atop him. ‘You feel…tight, like you were made to fit me.'

‘Can you feel it when I…?' She clenched her muscles around him.

‘Ah, yes.'

‘And when I take you fully inside?' she said, angling her hips and taking him as far into her as she could.

‘I can feel all of you,' he replied. ‘And I don't want to hurt you.'

‘It doesn't hurt,' she said simply. And began to move again. ‘Tell me what you want me to do.'

He looked up at her and shook his head. ‘I'm very happy with what you're doing right now.' He closed his eyes again. So she carried on, finding that his slow pace, with his hands resting lightly on her hips, suited her. At some point he lowered his mouth to her, latching onto her breast, and she stilled.

‘That…' she exhaled as he sucked her nipple, ‘ah, that…' She flexed her knees, then took his head and pulled it to her other breast, watched his mouth take her in, his nose pressed into the curve of her soft flesh. ‘Can you feel what that does to me?' He groaned and pulled her to him, till her breasts were full against him, his arms tight around her, his hips moving against hers, grinding into her. He reached a hand in between them and spread her labia wide, pressing his fingers against her, rubbing her rhythmically.

‘Like that, yes,' she said, then moaned and shook above him.

‘I feel that, Luna. I feel you coming…' And with a final thrust, he came himself, holding her tightly, shuddering beneath her.

It was 3am before they finally went to sleep, Luna sidling to the very edge of the bed and Stefan promptly pulling her back towards him, throwing his arm over her hip.

‘Stay there,' he instructed when she wriggled, and soon enough she fell asleep.

She woke later to find that she and Stefan had reversed positions. Now her arm was slung around his waist, her face resting on the pillow behind his nape. It was still dark outside; they couldn't have been asleep for more than a couple of hours. And she should really have gone straight back to sleep.

But he smelled so nice, and his ass felt so good nestled into her. She felt him breathing evenly, his back rising and falling against her. And she couldn't resist; she ran her palm down his lovely stomach muscles (still tight, even in his sleep!) into his hair and down to his resting penis, holding it gently for a moment, before running her fingertips lightly over it. Feeling it respond even as his breathing continued slow and steady.

It was completely hard in her hand when he woke, stretching and mumbling, ‘I have been having the most extraordinary dream…'

‘Don't wake up,' she murmured as he rolled on top of her and entered her. ‘Stay asleep.' She wrapped her legs around him and offered her mouth and tongue to him. They made simultaneous ‘mmmm' noises, then laughed, then fucked.

And then slept some more.

She woke again at just after 8am. Stefan's leather bag was resting on the floor next to the bed; at some point he must have gone and retrieved it – from where she didn't know. She heard his voice and looked through the white muslin curtains to see him out on the balcony, dressed in surfer shorts and a t-shirt, his laptop balanced on his knees. Hard at work, as usual.

Luna rose from the bed, coiling her hair and wrapping it into a sloppy bun atop her head. Then she went and got into the shower, briefly lathering up and washing the previous night's makeup off. Her face in the mirror looked tanned and…well shagged.

She donned her blue bikini with the white polka dots and the little frill on the bottoms. She'd worried when she bought it that it was too sweet, too girlish for her, but the cut of it made the most of her figure, a fact that was confirmed for her when she briefly stepped out onto the balcony and silently motioned to Stefan, who was still on the phone, that she was going down to the pool. He kept talking, in German she noticed, but his eyes gave her a swift, approving once-over. He held a hand up to her as if asking her to wait, but she chose to ignore it, turning on her heel and walking back into the room, her flip flops thwacking gently against the soles of her feet. Today was her last full day in Miami and she had no intention of spending it listening to him make business calls.

Walking down to the pool, she quickly assessed the strength of the sun and decided she could afford not to put on sun block for the moment; it could wait until she and Stefan decided what they were doing that day. Sitting on a deckchair close to a potted palm, she donned her Ray-Bans and stretched her arms above her head. She'd lain there for maybe ten minutes when a shadow fell over her and warm, firm lips descended on hers.

‘Good morning,' she lilted, removing her sunglasses and scootching over on her deckchair so Stefan could sit beside her. Really, he looked dangerously good with his blond hair and his surfer shorts. And his mouth and tongue, when he bent to kiss her again, were…seductive, languorous.

‘What would you like to do today, Luna?' he enquired eventually, tucking a loose tendril of hair back into her bun.

An hour later, Luna was sitting in the passenger seat of Stefan's rented Jeep, directing him up the A1A to the mid-40s.

‘I'm taking you the wrong way, really, but I wanted you to see this,' she said, pointing in front of them towards the massive painted
trompe l'oeil
of an archway overlooking the sea that formed the side of the Fontainebleau Hotel. The road here turned sharply left – if you carried on, you'd run straight into the wall. Luna grinned at Stefan, who took his eyes off the wall long enough to smile at her in return.

‘Do you miss it, living here?' he asked.

‘No,' she said simply, then directed him to the causeway leading to Miami proper, and Route 1, which would take them all the way down to the Florida Keys. It was a drive she'd made frequently when she lived here; she'd taken all three of the girls to Key West at one point or another, she told Stefan. ‘Many, many drunken misadventures,' she admitted. ‘But it's a very pretty drive, and I think, I
hope,
you'll like Key West.'

The further south they drove, the more rural the scenery became, the bluer the ocean every time they glimpsed it in the distance. Luna made him stop at a roadside stand, buying a punnet of strawberries she fed to him as he drove. ‘It spoils you for anything else, the fruit you can get here in Florida,' she said, wiping a little bit of juice from the side of his mouth with her finger and placing it in her mouth. Near Homestead, the last town before the road stretched west onto the Keys, they passed the entrance to a farm where long-stemmed roses were grown. Stefan pulled the Jeep over and they got out, staring at the acres and acres of roses stretching out before them.