Forbidden (21 page)

Amy replaced the picture postcards in the box and the box in the drawer. In Venice, she had not been able to make up her mind whether Fee was a true friend or a villain. Whether he was more honest with her than Jarret was. She received mixed signals from Fee, sometimes disturbing, sometimes flattering, at other times informative but coloured by his involvement in Jarret’s life. The one thing that she was sure of was that he saw the love that she and Jarret shared as less important than they did.

Since her return to New York, the few people to whom she had mentioned Jarret and Fee found them an odd couple, and an even odder threesome when Jarret and Savannah were married. A curator of drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a friend of Amy’s, described Jarret as having been an angel of a man to his wife. Before, during, and after marriage, Jarret and Fee had lived and were still living more like impoverished princes than artists. No one knew quite how they managed it, but there were wild guesses, some unsavoury. Another person told Amy they were powerful social climbers with
Jarret being the adored one for his looks, talent and charm, which he used mercilessly on the many men and women who fell in love with him. Fee, known to most people by his proper name of Firuz Yolu, was seen as being eccentric and with a Byzantine mind that only Jarret really understood. Such comments had made Amy very cautious about letting people know how involved with them she was. Opinions? Rumours? Truths? She would only believe what she could hear with her own ears, see with her own eyes.

Amy placed a log on the fire, then went to the full-length mirror elaborately framed in ivory and mother-of-pearl Damascus work and checked herself in it. What to wear had been tricky. She’d wanted to wear something sexy and glamorous, an at-home thing that Jarret would want to rip off her in a moment of uncontrolled lust. But that had seemed too obvious, and could be embarrassing if they no longer felt the same erotic passion for each other.

Now, looking in the mirror, she knew that she had chosen well. The long-sleeved wine-coloured silk velvet wrap-round dress that plunged low between her breasts, and with its sarong skirt that invisibly hooked on the hip, was simplicity itself, yet sophisticated, sexy and festive.

Amy ran her fingers through her long, silky chocolate-brown tresses, hair that was rich and luxurious and worn off her face. The excitement of the moment shone in her violet eyes. The mirror showed that she had never looked prettier or sexier. Jarret did that to her, brought out
the very beautiful and female side of her nature, that side of her so few men had ever been able to tap into. She smiled. Jarret had never seen her looking so glamorous, and she knew that she would not be a disappointment.

Once again a look at the time. She felt that anxiety that comes from a reunion with a lover. It was now a matter of minutes rather than hours and time to put the dinner in the oven. Rib of beef and roast potatoes, a green salad with a vinaigrette dressing, chocolate mousse for pudding. She had changed the menu so many times, having wanted it to be the perfect meal, their first in her flat, and was still unsure that she had chosen well. She had really splurged on the wine, a fine Petrus.

Twenty minutes later she was standing at the window looking into the street. Taxis came and went, cars, a few people braving the weather. The scent of cooking meat sent her to the kitchen to check the oven. She was just walking from there to the fireplace when the screeching sound of the buzzer split the silence of the room. Amy actually jumped. Her heart began to race, her mouth went dry. The waiting was over.

Chapter 11

How many times had she imagined what this moment would be like? Truly, she had lived it to death. In the last week, try as she might, she could no longer imagine what Jarret’s arrival would be like. What she had never imagined was that her legs would feel like lead and screwed down to the floor. She couldn’t move. A rush of heat went through her body. She pressed the palm of her hand over her heart and tried to still its racing. She quite suddenly lost all memory of Jarret’s face. She had not the vaguest idea what the man down in the street pushing the buzzer looked like. Were they two strangers meeting for the first time? Those letters, what were they? And the few days that they had been together, and the sex, what was all that about? The months of keeping love alive, of sexual hunger for his phallus, his heart and his soul, all gone. Had she been crazed? She walked to the intercom on the wall by the entrance door to her flat. Amy could find no voice to speak into it, merely pushed the small white button that released the front door catch, opened the door to her flat and stepped into the hall.

She heard the front door close and his footsteps on the marble floor. Amy walked to the balustrade and looked over it and down into the stairwell. Someone was
coming up the stairs. He wore no hat. The sight of his bare head, a gloveless hand on the stair rail, was enough to send Amy back into her flat. There she stood in the safety of her home, facing the open door, the hall, her future.

Looking through the row of balusters she saw first a flash of his head, his shoulders. He was taking the stairs two at a time, then rounded the last few that curved on to her floor. And suddenly he was there, walking swiftly towards her, wearing his black overcoat with the velvet collar and carrying a small case in his hand, a smile on his lips. He should have had a scarf, he should have had gloves, but instead he wore the cold, and looked half-frozen.

Once more they were struck: the shock of love, the same
coup de foudre
, they had experienced before. The handsome and quiet, elegant and charming Jarret, looking every inch a Fifth Avenue gentleman-artist, was walking towards her, but she didn’t rush out into the hall to meet him. Instead she remained where she was, standing still while a new and fresh sense of joyfulness took her over. Never taking his gaze from hers, he entered the flat and closed the door behind him, placed his case on the floor in the small vestibule that led into the sitting-room, not slowing his pace as he walked towards her.

He stopped a few feet from Amy. Jarret was reacquainting himself with her, she could sense it: the way his eyes lingered on her hair, her eyes, her lips, the happiness she was wearing like a light film of powder
on her face. She saw his expression change from pleasure to delight when his gaze lingered on her body: the way the wine-coloured silk velvet wrapped itself softly but seductively round her breasts, the narrow waist, the hips he had found so voluptuous. The long shapely legs shod in high-heeled wine-coloured lizard shoes made her look more glamorous than he had ever seen her before.

Amy stretched out her arms in a greeting, offering him her hands in welcome. Only then did he step forward and take them in his, lower his head and press his cold lips against them.

‘You had forgotten me,’ she told him.

‘Not so much forgotten as my vision of you had dimmed. Seeing you like this is like discovering you all over again,’ he told her.

‘Your hands are freezing. Welcome home. Give me your coat, and go and stand by the fire.’

He gave her his coat and did go to the fireplace to warm himself. She had noticed that his hair was wet and so after hanging his coat in the wardrobe went to the bathroom and returned with a towel. There was an awkwardness about this reunion that she had not expected. Too much distance or possibly too much time had elapsed to dispense with it easily. Or maybe they were just too overexcited, too nervous. Amy knew she was. She wanted to get on with loving him, with his crushing her in his arms, his being unable to hold back his lust for her. What had that to do with taking coats and being cold and wet?

Amy began to towel dry his hair. After several minutes
he removed her hands from his head and the towel with it and ran his fingers through his hair.

He was wearing a dark suit, very well tailored but worn, a white shirt and a dark tie that had seen better days too. Jarret removed his jacket and dropped it on the wing chair. While they were gazing into each other’s eyes, he shrugged the wide red braces off his shoulders. They hung limply by his sides.

The distance between them seemed to vanish like the mist when the sun comes out. He loosened his tie and Amy went to him and undid the knot, slipping it from round his neck.

‘Hello, Amy Ross.’

‘Hello, Jarret Sparrow.’

Amy placed her arms round his neck. Jarret slowly drew her to him, then tightly up against him, his hand on her bottom, pressing until she could feel the swell of his penis straining against his trousers. She sighed and whispered in a husky voice, ‘How lovely to feel you so alive for me. I’ve waited so long, been so lonely for you and for this.’

What they felt for each other was still there and confirmed by their tears of relief. Here was a love that was deep and profound. They understood that, possibly for the first time. A moment so filled with emotion was inhibiting, words failed them. All energies were silently directed to dealing with the realisation of their feelings and the repercussions of them.

Jarret placed his lips on hers and gave her the most passionate kiss of their affair. He licked her lips, touched
the tip of his tongue to hers, and then licked her lips again, sucking them into his mouth and nibbling on them. Amy searched out his tongue and sucked it into her mouth, moving her tightly puckered lips on it. Sensual kissing gone wild: she sucked as if she were giving head. This was the most aggressive she had ever been with Jarret and her aggression seemed to gather momentum: she wanted to bite into his lips, his flesh, lick and caress, suck him deep into her throat. But Jarret cut short all of that when his eager kisses were directed from her lips to her eyes, the tip of her nose, the side of her neck. He caressed the silk velvet covering her breasts and slipped a hand beneath it. Together they walked from the fireplace to the bed. Sitting there with Amy in his arms, Jarret moved aside fabric and exposed Amy’s breast. Cupping it in his hands, he sucked the erect nipple, the puckered nimbus into his mouth.

Amy felt herself slipping into submission, all aggression gone. Her only instinct was to nurture this man, to let go whatever she was clinging to and come. He had both breasts exposed now and was moving between them with his mouth. Limp in his arms, she whimpered as she came in light, sweet orgasms. Never leaving her breasts, he placed her against the pillows. The sarong skirt of her dress parted, she was naked save for the lacy garter belt holding up her stockings. Her legs open wide now, he went between them and pinned her arms back above her head. Jarret held them there with one hand while he unzipped and directed his engorged phallus with the other. The penetration was
languorous and exquisite, his thrusts slow and forceful, until she picked up the rhythm and went with it, doubling his pleasure as well as her own.

Jarret was where he wanted to be, doing what he wanted to do. All barriers down, he could now tell Amy in whispers husky with lust what he felt, what she wanted to hear. ‘I love you. God help us, how I love you. You’ve been there every minute of every hour of every day, even when I was denying you. This is what you want – my fucking, to be fucked to oblivion by me. If it was only enslavement by lust … but it isn’t, it’s love. It’s you, Amy Ross.’

When they came together they went limp in each other’s arms, Jarret lying on top of her, still erect inside her. Amy could feel him shrinking back. It was instinctive; she clasped him tight to hold him there for as long as possible. Finally he slipped from and off her and on to his side facing her.

It was inexplicable, natural, primeval, her overwhelming desire to hold within her every drop of his semen and her come. She would have liked to keep it in her womb, to hold him forever within her body. She wanted never to part with a drop of his life’s force. It was lustful and more than that – it was utterly private, and extraordinarily thrilling to love a man enough to want to hold him inside you for all eternity. Even too intimate to express to Jarret.

Amy watched him adjust himself and zip up his trousers. He gazed into her eyes and told her as he adjusted her dress to cover her breasts and her
nakedness from the waist down, ‘Violet eyes. God has indeed blessed you, I’m a lucky man. Now tell me, my violet eyes, how did you like that for an ice breaker?’

Amy laughed and so did Jarret. ‘Fine, just fine. For a moment I was worried we were going to be reduced to no talk, or even worse small talk, or even worse than that indifference – “let’s just be friends”.’

He took her by the hands and pulled her up from the cushions she was lying against. They sat there for several minutes, hand in hand, then he told her, ‘That wasn’t how you looked.’

‘How did I look?’

‘Very chic, very New York, glamorous for an art historian, not at all anxious for a woman waiting for her lover, cool, composed, yet hungry for sex with me.’

‘You were very sure about that?’

‘Yes.’

‘And that I had remained faithful to you?’ she teased.

‘Yes.’

Amy threw back her head and laughed. ‘How were you so sure?’

‘Because you love me, and couldn’t give yourself to any man the way you give yourself to me. I did tell you that you would never replace me.’

‘I might have found a stand-in.’

‘It was never even a vague possibility. Admit to me that’s true?’

Amy found herself caught out. For some reason she could not understand, she would rather not admit to Jarret that it was true. A blush appeared on her cheeks.
She rose from the bed and straightened her dress over her hips with the palms of her hands and busied herself plumping up cushions on the bed. He stood up immediately and took her hands in his, lowered his head and kissed one then the other. Gazing into her eyes, he said nothing.

She leaned against him. The warmth of his body, his scent. She was awash with his sperm and their comings together … she was helpless to do otherwise than tell him, ‘It’s true. Of course it’s true.’

He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. Was it with triumph or relief? He detached himself from her and went to the fireplace where he placed several logs on the ashes. The fire, very nearly out, began to smoke. He knelt down and blew on it for several minutes then it caught and flared up. He turned from the fire and looked round the room.

‘Do you like it?’ she asked.

‘Very much. I don’t know what I expected, but it’s more.’

He walked to the table set for two in the bay window and put his face among the flowers, the better to draw in their scent. Amy joined him. The bottle of wine was unopened. He picked it up and asked, ‘May I?’

‘Of course. I meant to offer you a glass but somehow got distracted.’

‘A fine wine, perfect flowers. And dinner?’

‘Oh, God, dinner. I forgot about the beef.’

She ran to the kitchen and opened the oven. A blast of heat and the powerful scent of roasting meat filled
the kitchen. The potatoes were crisp and the colour of caramel, the layer of fat on the top of the rib of beef crisp and browned to perfection. It sizzled and spat as she removed the roasting pan from the oven shelf.

He was right behind her. He slipped his arms round her waist and pressed up against her, looking at the food over her shoulder. ‘You’ve thought of everything, the best of everything, and all for me. I think I’m going to enjoy being spoiled by you, Amy Ross.’

It was a tight squeeze for them both in the kitchen but she managed to turn round to face him. ‘For us, Jarret, for us.’

He laughed and told her, ‘It’s all right for you to spoil me, Amy, and even to admit to it.’

‘And what about me?’

‘I’ve already spoiled you for sex with any other man, I dare say I can manage to keep that up. Every painting I paint is for you. A more than fair exchange for all the flowers in the world, and roast beef and fine wine,’ he teased.

But was it a tease? There was something, a look in his eyes, that was just a little too intense for a real tease. She had a brief mental impression of the
palazzo
in Venice chock-a-block with things, the Paris flat, and the
yalis
on the Bosphorus, and realised that her lover was a very greedy man. So greedy, she almost laughed aloud. To Amy, who did not understand real greed, something she herself had no feeling for, it was more funny than pathetic. She simply could not take it seriously and so was not disturbed by it.

‘I’m famished,’ declared Jarret.

Over food and drink conversation came easily to them. Each was curious about what had happened in the other’s life since last they had been together. There was chatter and laughter. What little serious talk there was was constructive and interesting. He was charm itself and flattering, open and more informative than he had ever been with her. The evening went from great to sublime not just for Amy: here was a Jarret she had seen only flashes of in Venice and Paris, one completely at ease and happy, full of vitality and without artifice. He was whole, hers and hers alone, and they both seemed to revel in that. Yet when it came near to any talk of love, any declaration of his passion and commitment to her – ‘I love you, Amy. No matter what happens in our lives, you have to believe that I love you, God help us’ – that only came much later during his long and exquisite erotic thrustings, and when Amy was lost in lust for him, exhausted from the many orgasms he was able to bring her to.

Even the sex was different, more raunchy and adventurous, but always with Jarret in control, Amy submissive. But no matter how submissive, she held him enthralled sexually. It seemed that he could not get enough of her, they could not get enough of each other.

Amy awakened long before Jarret. She lay on her side leaning on her elbow and watched him sleep, overwhelmed by how much she loved him, wondering that one human being could love another so completely. She didn’t wake him, would simply lie there very still,
gazing at him until he wakened naturally. That would become one of the patterns of their life together. Some mornings it could be a matter of minutes, occasionally it was hours. It never mattered to Amy. The warmth of his naked body next to hers, his scent and steady breathing, his extraordinarily handsome good looks in repose, she could never get enough of. These were some of the most intimate minutes they would ever have together and Amy was sometimes moved to tears of joy and gratitude to have him for a lover.