Musical Beds (17 page)

“Oh, Ness. Of course you will. With me. Tomorrow, if you like. In five minutes’ time, if I’m up to it.”

She shook her head, unable to rely on her voice. It felt a little wobbly.

“Babe.” Ben sounded quite concerned. “Hey.”

“Ben, I’m forty-two. Forty-three in August. I can’t help thinking I’m desperate. Trying to cling to my youth by taking yours. A silly old fool.”

“Jesus, Vanessa, no! Don’t say that. You’re gorgeous. You’ll never be desperate.”

“I hope you’ll always remember me fondly. Not as that rank old cougar that got her claws into you.”

She put her arms around her knees and buried her chin in them, trying to hide her face from Ben.

“Oh, don’t. Don’t call yourself that. What’s brought this on? I thought we were having fun.”

“Is that what this is, Ben? Fun? A nice way to pass some time before the real love of your life turns up?”

He put his hand on her shoulder. She tried to twitch it away but he wouldn’t allow it.

“I had no idea you were this insecure.”

“I’ve had some bad experiences. With men.”

“I’m not those men. I like you, genuinely. In fact, I more than like you. Every time I see you I fall for you a little bit more. I can’t imagine wanting to be with anyone else.”

“Not now, you can’t.”

He squeezed her shoulder, a little roughly.

“Look, this is silly. I don’t know what the future will bring, but, as far as I’m concerned, I hope it’s a whole lot more of you. I can’t think of anything else I want.”

“I’m still looking good. For my age. How long will that last?”

“I think happiness and lots of sex are supposed to help that kind of thing.”

“Oh, ha ha.” But she cracked a smile.

“We’re all getting older,” said Ben. “In fact, it’s my birthday next month. The week before the Prom.”

“Is it? I’ll have to bake you a cake.”

“That’d be nice. But I can think of something I’d rather have.”

“Not more sex, by any chance?”

“For once, no. My parents are coming to town, taking me out to dinner. I’d like you to come with us.”

Vanessa sat up, shaking dead grass stalks from her hair.

“What?”

“Yep. That dreaded time has come. The time to Meet the Parents.”

“Oh, God, Ben, do you really want me to?”

Her paranoia had flown away, replaced by exhilarated dread.

“Yes, I do. You’re such a big part of my life. They’ll want to get to know you.”

“They’ll want to shoot me.”

“No. You make their boy happy. Why would they want to shoot you?”

“How old is your mother?”

“Fifty-three.”

“Okay. At least she’s older than I am. But she won’t want to see an old bint like me with her little boy. She’ll think I’m a cradle-snatcher. She’ll… Oh, God, I don’t think I can do it. Not yet, at least.”

“Ness, relax. Lie down.”

She lay back down, her hand over her mouth, pondering.

“It’s really too big an age gap,” she said at last.

“How can you say that? You don’t mean that.”

“Why can’t you be older?” she lamented.

“Because I can’t. After everything—all the good times we have, all the amazing sex, all the closeness… You’re panicking, that’s all. Just stop panicking, okay? You’ll see that this can work.”

“What are your parents like?”

“Nice. Tolerant. Liberal. Too liberal sometimes, especially when I was a teenager. Listen, they’ll just be relieved you’re not Sasha Milford.”

“Sasha Milford?” She cocked her head to one side inquisitively.

“My girlfriend when I was seventeen.”

“Was she older, too?”

“No, she was my age. Mad as a box of frogs, though. Constantly in trouble, sometimes with the police. She was so brave, though. She wasn’t scared of anything. That was what I liked about her.”

Vanessa smiled, finding the idea of Ben chasing after a crazy girl with his hair flopping all over the place irresistibly endearing.

“It wasn’t enough, though?”

“No. She ditched me in the end. Went and joined some kind of anti-capitalist tent city somewhere. Never saw her again.” He looked up to the heavens and shook his head.

“And off you went to music college.”

“Yes. Not much of a rebellion, really. What about your exes, then? Milan’s one of them.”

“Yeah. Disaster, for reasons you can probably guess.”

“Was it anything to do with his planet-sized ego?”

Vanessa laughed. “Basically. Yes.”

“What about your ex-husband?”

She turned away. “Ah, look, let’s not talk about him. I’ve already brought too much angst to the party. Are those clothes dry yet?”

Ben hopped over to the bush and gave them an investigative swipe.

“No. Going nice and stiff, though. Those jeans’ll be a treat to put back on.”

“So, what shall we play next? Game of I Spy?”

He sat back down beside her and put his arm around her waist.

“Do you promise you’ll think about my birthday?”

“I promise.”

Chapter Twelve

The rehearsal was going well, but Lydia’s concentration wasn’t at its best. Unusually for her, she was wearing a dress, a shortish number with a flippy skirt, and she found the air on her bare legs distracting. But not quite as distracting as trying to keep her knees pressed together while she played.

Because Lydia was not wearing any knickers.

In the week since she had accompanied von Ritter back to his hotel room, he had taken up the habit of setting her little tasks for each day. Although he had professed to want to take things slowly, Lydia felt that she was in the middle of some kind of sensual waltz, being whirled around the dance floor until her head spun.

She had gone to an equestrian tack shop the day before and bought a riding crop, with which von Ritter had promised to whip her on the backs of her thighs if she didn’t practice her violin playing to his satisfaction. Buying the item had been embarrassing, because she’d been sure the assistant had known that it would never be used on a horse, but it had thrilled her all the same.

And now she faced the prospect of going back to von Ritter’s hotel room and being tested on her violin playing. She hoped she wouldn’t be found wanting. Or did she?

They still hadn’t had full sex, von Ritter limiting their physical contact deliberately so that Lydia felt her frustrations climb higher day by day. He would touch her, sometimes gently, sometimes roughly, but he would always stop before she reached orgasm. In fact, he had forbidden orgasms until their first night together, and Lydia had obeyed the command, although it would have been very easy to cheat, lying in her bed at home. But she didn’t want to cheat. She was too curious to know where this odyssey of sexual exploration might take her, and the excitement of being under von Ritter’s spell was drawing her further and further along the road.

If she wasn’t mistaken, their first night together might well be tonight.

She smiled to herself as she bowed away, then her eyes slid over to where Milan sat, waiting for his solo.

He was being difficult, of course. Well, when was he not?

Earlier in the week, he had confronted her about her relationship with von Ritter. She had not seen the point of denying it, so he had spread the story far and wide until the orchestra and all of the trustees knew about it. There was no rule about fraternisation of members, though, so nobody was particularly put out.

Most were amused, Lydia’s reputation as an unlikely
femme fatale
being something of an orchestra joke. Milan’s tactic had backfired, merely highlighting him as the jealous ex-lover who had lost.

Vanessa was supportive of the relationship, approving of the impeccable von Ritter.

“He’s the kind of man you should have gone for in the first place,” she said. “A safe pair of hands, bit of a father figure. I know there are the rumours about his temper but I haven’t seen anything to justify them. Have you?”

“No. He did admit to it himself, though.”

“Did he?”

“Yes, but he said he’d never hit a woman.” She paused. “In anger.”

Vanessa gave her a searching look.

“You mean he’d hit a woman without being angry?”

“Well, I don’t know if hit is the right word.”

“What is?”

Lydia was blushing furiously by now, wishing she’d never taken this tack.

“I don’t know…” she said. “Change the subject.”

“No, I don’t want to. You’re bright red, Lyds. This is a sex thing, isn’t it? He’s kinky, isn’t he? I knew it.”

“Just a bit,” she muttered.

“Jeez, Lydia, are you allergic to vanilla or something? First a bisexual polyamorist and now a sadist. You know how to pick ‘em.”

Lydia burst into mortified giggles.

“He’s not a sadist, really,” she said. “He just likes to take control.”

“Yeah, we’ve noticed. Does he spank you on the bottom with his baton?”

“Shut up!”

“Okay, okay. The subject is closed. For now. But I might need to ask you some more later. Purely for information, of course. I need to take my mind off my own sex life.”

“Oh. Everything’s okay between you and Ben, isn’t it?”

“More than okay. Wonderful. Amazing. But he wants me to meet his parents.”

“Oh, Ness, that’s brilliant. He’s really serious about you.”

“I’m terrified.”

“They’ll love you. You’re so good for each other—they’ll see that, surely.”

“I hope so. I really, really hope so.”

Lydia put down her bow, the piece being finished and the rehearsal brought to a close. Could she get out of here without getting nabbed by Milan? She stuffed her violin rather clumsily back into its case and stood carefully, making sure the skirt of her dress had fallen to mid-thigh before removing her hand from its hem. Underneath it, she was wet, and had been since her journey to work. There was something about going knickerless that just seemed so very, very rude, even if nobody knew about it.

“Lydia.” Milan’s voice behind her. “Come for a drink with me and Sarah.”

Fat chance, sunshine.

So he was playing Mr Nice Guy now, was he? Let’s all be friends and cosy up together?

“Got to dash—need the loo,” she said, heading for the double doors at a rapid pace.

She stood in the stall for a good ten minutes, giving Milan ample time to round up his usual suspects and bear them off to the Delius Arms. While she stood there, she lifted her skirt and looked down at her bare pubic triangle. An earlier challenge of the week had been to get a full wax down there. The skin was so smooth and her lips stood out, puffy and pink. If only von Ritter would come into the bathroom now, drag her up against the wall and slam himself into her, over and over and over… She thought about touching herself, but no. She was meeting von Ritter, and he would
know
.

She stepped out of the stall, washed her hands even though she hadn’t used the toilet and pouted at herself in the mirror. Then she set off for the hotel.

Von Ritter was ahead of her, waiting at the bar. He waved her over, smiling, and invited her to sit down on the high bar stool—a precarious place for a knickerless girl to be.

“Did you do as you were told?” he said, looking down at where her hem grazed the upper slopes of her thighs, which were pressed tightly together.

“Yes,” she whispered, glancing over at the barman to make sure he wasn’t listening.

“And how was it?”

“Different. Bad for concentration. I was too busy keeping my legs together to think about anything else.”

“That’s good. I wanted it to focus you on your cunt.”

She looked sharply at the barman again, then at von Ritter, frowning as if to shush him. But von Ritter wasn’t a man to be shushed.

“I wanted you to be constantly thinking about how wet you are, how your clit feels, how you want to be touched down there. You do want to be touched down there, don’t you?”

Lydia could barely get her voice out of her constricted throat. She nodded instead.

“Good. Shall we go?”

She slid off the bar stool, her heart thumping, desperate to get to the bedroom for some much-needed relief. But he put his hand on her arm, checking her progress towards the staircase.

“Oh, no. No. We aren’t going upstairs yet. It’s a very fine evening. I thought we could take a walk in the park.”

“Karl-Heinz,” she pleaded, but he was not to be dissuaded.

Out again into the balmy air they stepped, Lydia feeling every swish of the fine cotton-jersey skirt against her skin. The park was busy with post-work strollers and students, tourists and lovers. Karl-Heinz put a hand on her bottom as they walked along the path, rubbing it through the thin fabric.

“This is a public place,” she hissed.

“I know,” he said, unfazed. “I’m not doing anything illegal. What?”

She thought she might burst into flames. Her clit was throbbing with need and her upper thighs were damp. Couldn’t they just go back to the hotel…?

He patted her bottom and led her away from the path until he found a tree with a trunk of sufficient width to conceal them from the majority of passers-by.

He pinned her to the trunk and began kissing her passionately. As his tongue foraged in her mouth, he lifted her skirt until her bare bum pressed against the bark. Forgetting now her earlier worries about this being a public place, she prayed for him to push his fingers inside her soaked slit, but he wouldn’t. Instead, she tried to grind herself against him, lifting a leg to open herself up, rubbing her calf against his perfectly pressed trousers.

“Mmm,” he said, breaking off. “You need it badly, don’t you?”

Lydia wondered how he could sound so calm when she was so ruffled.

“Can we go to the hotel now? Please?”

“Just a moment. Turn around.”

She faced the tree trunk while he held up her skirt and inspected her bottom, running his fingers around the bark grooves that patterned her flesh.

“You are showing the whole park your bare bum,” he said, giving each cheek a light smack. “Bad girl.”

“Nobody can see, can they?” she asked anxiously.

“No, no,” he reassured her, lowering the skirt and pulling her back towards the path. “At least, I don’t think they did.”