Original Sin (7 page)

‘Are you ignoring me?’

Exactly
, thought Liz.

‘What are you looking at?’ she asked, still not looking at him.

‘The cleft on your chin,’ said Russ, ‘I have one too. I wonder where they come from?’

‘It’s where the right and left side of your jawbone hasn’t fused completely. It’s a Mendelian trait.’ She took a drink and watched his reaction.

‘A what?’

Liz touched the small dimple at the base of her face. ‘Genetics. It’s a dominant gene. I was unlucky. My sister escaped it.’

‘Mendelian trait, you say?’ he laughed slowly. ‘You’re a smart girl.’

Choate Rosemary Hall. Princeton. Wharton Business School, thought Liz. He didn’t know the half of it.

‘Sorry, I missed your name,’ said Russ.

‘I didn’t tell you it.’

Now she turned the full power of her eyes on him, looking at his face in detail, feeling a growing dampness between her legs. He was good looking, really good looking, like a greeter at Abercrombie & Fitch. No more than twenty–five, twenty–six. Tanned skin, a smudge of stubble over his chin. He seemed self–assured, arrogant even. Keen to challenge her, banter with her. She knew she had chosen well; this was exactly the sort of man to respond to her.

‘So what should I call you?’

She paused, a hint of a smile. ‘Lisa.’

‘Okay, smart, lovely Lisa,’ he said. ‘Forgive the corny question, but what are you doing in a place like this?’

‘A place like this?’

‘A place full of hookers and transvestites?’

‘Is that right? And which category do you fall into?’

He chuckled.

‘Neither I’m afraid,’ he smiled. ‘I live round the corner. It’s cheap and I’m broke. Bars like this suit me. What about you?’

‘I work nearby,’ she lied.

‘What do you do?’

She stifled a smile, wondering what he would say if she told him she had just come from the twenty–five–million–dollar spa she was about to launch; wondering whether it would make her more or less desirable to him.

‘Things I like to forget about by drinking Scotch.’

He laughed. ‘I like mysterious women. So can I buy you that drink now?’

What was the point of stringing this out any longer, thought Liz. More games, more Scotch? Why not move in for the kill?

She looked at him directly. ‘Only if you’ll fuck me.’

His eyes seemed to shine a little brighter in the dark redness, his face showed no surprise except for a slight pull of the right corner of his lip. Liz stood up and, as she moved, she ran the tip of her finger across his jeans. She simply turned and began to walk towards the exit. She didn’t need to turn round to know he was following her. Since her divorce from Walter Baker, a hotelier she had known since her teens, Liz found that she had no need for relationships. She had no interest in the complications, cluttering her life with thin emotion. But she wanted, she
needed
sex. It charged her.

He caught up to her as they left the booming main room of the club.

‘Keep walking,’ he whispered into her neck. ‘I know somewhere downstairs.’

He steered her into a corridor and down a short flight of steps ending in a door marked ‘Staff’. Inside was a dark, six–foot–square room lined with black. In one corner was a Formica stall and a white ceramic sink. She heard the click of the door being locked behind her and then felt his hands snaking round her waist. His lips sinking into the warm skin of her neck. She spun around to face him and his lips brushed her ear lobes before they came crashing down on her mouth. His tongue slid into hers and she could taste her own lipstick. He was a fantastic kisser, his touch almost as expert as her own. He rucked up her dress and peeled down her hose and thong in one movement. His lips heavy and urgent on hers, he pushed Liz up against the edge of the sink, raising her feet off the floor, and then spread her thighs with his hands.

Liz groaned as she unzipped his jeans. He pushed his hand under her top and bra until her breast sprang free. Desperate, Liz pulled the fabric over her head. Russ had unhooked her bra so it fell to her waist. He circled one breast in his hand and lowered his lips onto her brown nipple, which grew bigger and harder in his mouth. After pulling a condom out of his pocket, he pushed his own jeans down to the floor, as if they were white–hot against his skin.

Wrapping his hands under her buttocks he pulled her closer. She could feel the roughness of his fingertips on her skin. Blue–collar hands she had felt many times before. She moaned as she felt his thick hard cock enter her, his hands holding her steady as he deepened his quick thrusts.

Biting into his shoulder, he responded by pulling her knee up and back so he completely filled her.

She cried out, barely registering that his urgent hands had turned on the taps behind her. Feeling the water pouring on her back, she reached behind her to grab at the cold liquid. She stroked the water across his face, letting him suck her fingers.

‘Faster,’ she groaned, tipping her head back until it knocked against the mirror. Her breathing quickened as she was about to come. As she grabbed his thick, coarse hair she felt spasms swell from her core to every nerve ending in her body.

‘Shit,’ he winced, his body shivering as he exploded inside her.

As he pulled away from her, Liz inhaled deeply to regulate her breathing. She shut her eyes to enjoy the sensation of his thickness retreat, until the tip of his cock finally slipped out of her.

Sliding off the vanity unit, she picked up her discarded tights and thong and put on her shoes. She looked at him, all excitement gone, like air from a deflated balloon, the electricity in the room unplugged. All that was left was a panting twenty–something with his pants down and a rolled condom still on his cock. She almost laughed. So he was good looking. Usually it didn’t matter. She wasn’t after someone she had to look at for the rest of her life.

‘I’ve got to go,’ she said, rolling down her dress.

He touched her arm as she tried to walk past. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘Not tonight.’

‘But, but where do you live?’ he asked. ‘Let me come with you.’

She smiled slowly and shook her head. As she opened the door she turned to look at him one last time. Her third nameless, faceless fuck this month. He had been good, very good. What a shame she would never see him again.

CHAPTER FOUR

Paula Asgill smiled to herself as she lay back in the soapy water, gazing through the open bathroom doorway at the luxurious guest cottage on the Billingtons’ exquisite country estate, Belcourt. At first she had been disappointed not to have been staying in the main house, which she could just glimpse in the distance through the cottage’s pretty leaded windows, but now she was here, she knew she’d hit social gold. For years she’d been forced to listen to her connected Upper East Side friends boast about the legendary parties they’d attended at Belcourt: how they’d marvelled at the seventeenth–century chandelier in the ballroom, swayed on the polished dance floor suspended over the Olympic–sized swimming pool, or visited the 50,000–bottle wine cellar, from which endless glasses of Château Pétrus, Mouton Rothschild or d’Yquem flowed. For years, she’d had to stand there and take it, but now it was time for revenge.

Paula stepped out of the claw–top bath and wrapped a fluffy white towel around her pale, lithe body. Tomorrow she could talk about all those things and more. Yes, her friends were familiar with Belcourt’s interiors and furnishings, but how many of them were au fait with the grand estate’s guest cottages, the twelve sumptuous mini–mansions dotted around the thousand–acre grounds, all exclusively reserved for Billington family members. How many of her tormentors could describe the exquisite Stubbs paintings over the fireplaces? The Cornish pottery in the petite, handmade French kitchen, the lavender–scented Porthault linens on the sleigh beds or the view of the cherry–blossom trees from the east window? Not one. It was priceless social ammunition, and Paula could barely wait to use it back in New York. She would almost pass up tonight’s party to see their faces. Almost.

Walking into the pastel peach bedroom she let the towel drop to the floor and slid into her black lace Dior lingerie and silk robe, then reclined on the crisp sheets, luxuriating in her good fortune. It was very nearly a perfect moment; the only niggling annoyance was a small fly buzzing around the room. She flapped her hands at it and shuddered. The thought of insects or germs of any kind made Paula feel physically sick. She pulled her robe around her tightly and hurried to open the window, but recoiled when she touched the metal handle. What was that? Rust? Not wanting to take a risk, she ran to the dresser and pulled a bottle of hand–sanitizer from her wash bag, scrubbing her hands thoroughly. By now the fly was gone, but it had ruined her mood.

Walking back to the living room, she took a sip of camomile tea to settle herself, wondering why she felt so jumpy at the moment, so nervous. It couldn’t just be the prospect of Brooke and David’s engagement party tonight; after all, it was only a night out, wasn’t it? At least she had the dress,
the killer dress
, she smiled, glancing back at the long pale violet gown hanging by the door. The moment the Belcourt party had been announced, Paula had dispatched her personal shoppers at Bendel’s and Bergdorf Goodman to find something wonderful, something elegant, something absolutely nobody else was going to be wearing. It was Cheryl, a friend from her modelling days who had reinvented herself as a celebrity stylist, who had finally come up trumps with a McQueen sample that had not gone into production. Cheryl had warned her that violet was a difficult shade to wear, making brunettes look too sallow and blondes too garish. But against the alabaster paleness of Paula’s skin and the rich red of her long, straight hair, it looked magnificent. A small size four, Paula was slim enough to squeeze into the sample size, although the cut made no concessions for bumps of any kind. Paula had therefore spent the past week on a rigorous diet and had let nothing but the tea past her lips in the last twenty–four hours.

Looking good meant hard work, thought Paula, but converting those looks into success was even harder. She had learnt that hard lesson from her mother, Helena. A sunny blonde with perfect features, Paula’s mother had once been an incredible Southern beauty, but she had sold herself short by falling head over heels in love with Samuel, a trucker and dedicated alcoholic who had been killed drink–driving on a long–distance job when Paula was ten. With a grieving heart and a young daughter to support, Helena had taken on three jobs, in a launderette, the general store, and the local bar to pay the bills. She had been trying to break up a brawl at the bar one night when an enraged hooker had smashed her glass into Helena’s face. With an ugly six–inch scar across her cheek, all work except the launderette shift had quickly dried up. It had broken Helena. She worked hard, and where had it got her? When the MS had kicked in, it had ravaged Helena’s body quickly; she simply seemed unwilling to fight it. By the time Paula was nineteen, her mother was dead, but she hadn’t missed the point of the life lesson.

Paula worked damn hard to make her own beauty count. When she moved to New York to model, she was not the most beautiful or even the most interesting girl on the circuit; otherworldly looking girls like Karen Elson and Erin O’Connor were making their mark. But Paula was not disheartened, even when a booker at Ford had told Paula that Julianne Moore had cornered the market in pale, interesting redheads. Paula simply put in twice as much effort. She never arrived late for a job, never had sex with a photographer or a client, never took drugs or drank too much. Instead of partying, she perfected a regal bearing that made her stand out in a city awash with young exotic beauties. Even so, Paula was never quite flavour of the month, but shoots for St John and Escada kept her in work until she had met William when she was twenty three. That was when all the hard work had paid off.

Just then, husband William walked in and dropped his overnight bag on the floor with a grunt. A tall, athletic–looking man with a full head of sandy hair and an open face, he looked tired and slightly world–weary; inevitable, thought Paula, considering his job as a senior executive at Asgill Cosmetics.

William moved behind her and nuzzled his lips into her neck. She giggled, genuinely pleased to have him there, holding her. It was getting dark and it felt a little isolating to be on her own on the estate.

‘What kept you?’ she asked, turning to kiss him.

William sighed. ‘I would have been here an hour ago, but I was waiting for Liz. Then she decided she was going to make her own way here.’

‘Typical Liz,’ snorted Paula; her sister–in–law’s selfishness was one of those things that made William’s job that much more difficult than it had to be.

‘Well, David’s mother called two hours ago wanting to know if we want to take a couple of horses out,’ she continued, gesturing towards the window. ‘Apparently from the ridge over there you can see the whole Manhattan skyline. Do you think it’s too late?’

‘We can go tomorrow morning,’ smiled William in his easy–going, almost placid way. ‘Besides, think it would be wise to check with security. There were already extra guards on the gates when I came through, and I’ve heard a couple of choppers already. I’m not sure whether it’s paparazzi or party guests arriving.’