Swan (25 page)

Chet hesitated when he reached my inner thighs,
prolonging the moment of suspense.
God,
yes pleaseeee!

He lay down on his stomach, positioned his head
between my legs. Tentatively, he started to lick my privates, gently at first,
then graduating to deep, sweeping thrusts, constantly taking me to the pitch of
ecstasy. I couldn’t believe it. Chet Vincent was going down on me!
Breathe girl, breathe
.

God, what that man could do with his tongue!

After what seemed like an eternity, Chet raised his
head and flashed a devilish smile. ‘Do you want to fuck?’ he breathed.

I couldn’t answer him. I was too blown away to
speak.

He took my silence as a come-on for him to take the
lead. Untying my wrists, he parted my legs and lay back on top of me. It was
like a tornado hit me. When he first entered me, I thought I’d cry from the
pain, but then quickly, the discomfort transformed into a wildly pleasurable
experience. After several frenzied minutes, he dragged me up with my legs still
wrapped around his waist and fucked me against the wardrobe door. Then he did
me from behind, standing up, on the floor, me on top, and then him on top,
until we had exhausted every position conceivable (and some I didn’t think were
possible). I groaned, I screamed, I bawled. By the end of what seemed like a two
hour marathon, I couldn’t take any more. I was completely exhausted with
pleasure. My mind still hungered for him, craved him, but my body just wasn’t
up to it. I was so out of practise, I had no choice but to admit defeat.

‘I’ve come now,’ I lied. My body was stinging from
carpet burns.

Chet drew away from me, studied my face. Then, he
put his mouth very close to mine, licked my earlobe and whispered, ‘No you
haven’t. Don’t you think I know when I’ve satisfied a woman?’

These words sent shivers through me.

He carried me back over to the bed and entered me
again, this time with slow, sensuous thrusts, working his hips with consummate
artistry. I dug my heels into his back, gripped his hair. I felt as if nothing
else existed in the world but him and me and this marvellous, marvellous
feeling. Very soon, my hips convulsed, I cried out, threw my head back in the
throes of an explosive orgasm. We yelled in unison.

Afterwards, we lay together entangled in each
other’s arms, basking in the euphoria of it all. I closed my eyes with a smile
on my lips. Everything was right with the world.

Chapter
Eighteen

We slept until seven o’clock that evening. When I
woke up, the bedroom was shrouded in darkness. A milky shard of light from the
street lamp outside filtered through the blinds, casting strange, exotic shapes
across Chet’s sleeping form. I studied him for a few minutes, still trying to
convince myself that I wasn’t dreaming. For a reality check, I leaned over and
gently stroked his cheek. I loved everything about this man: his face, his
body, his wonky teeth (minus the veneers), his personality, his sexual prowess.
Everything.

Suddenly, he opened his eyes and looked at me. Then
a slow, lazy smile spread across his face. With a stifled yawn, he raised himself
up on his elbows and looked round the room. His face appeared disorientated.

‘What time is it?’

‘I don’t know. Late, I guess.’

He threw back the covers and rushed out to take a
pee. When he returned, he was still stark naked. I looked away. He laughed
heartily at my discomfort. Not David’s loveable Kenneth Williams laugh, but a
low, throaty one, that was equally as captivating. What a brilliant actor he
was – even David’s trademark laugh had been a fabrication.

‘Why can’t you look at me, Madeline?’ he said
softly. ‘After what we did earlier, you needn’t be shy around me.’

I remained silently crimson, holding the duvet
around me to cover my modesty. With another laugh, Chet turned and left the
room. I heard the sound of lights going on, cupboards opening and closing.

‘I’m starving. Have you got anything to eat?’

‘Um, I think there’s some burgers in the freezer,
or, or a pizza. Sorry, I was supposed to have gone shopping this morning but ...’
My voice trailed off.

Eventually he returned clutching a bowl of
Cheerio’s. There was a look of lazy watchfulness on his face as he perched
himself at the edge of the bed. This was followed by a silence that was broken
only by the intermittent sounds of crunching cereal. My uneasiness made me
mute. I had now reverted back to a star struck fan, lost in the glow of
make-believe exuding from him.

Chet scraped up the last Cheerio then, with a loud
slurping noise, raised the bowl to his mouth and downed the rest of the
leftover milk. It was a habit that had always irritated me. Beth had done that
when we were kids, and it had never failed to get my back up. Still, as it was Chet
Vincent, I decided to forgive him on this occasion.

‘So,’ he grinned, placing the bowl on the dresser,
‘how are you feeling? Good?’

I nodded my head vigorously.

‘How was I?’

‘Um ... what?’

‘I mean sexually. Was I good?’

A trace of a smile played on my lips. ‘Oh yes, yes!
You were ... astonishing. Absolutely!’ I focused my eyes on the purple flower
pattern on the duvet cover. Inside, I was cringing.

He stifled a smirk. That actor’s ego of his was
really starting to kick in.

‘So has it really been twenty-five years since you
last got laid?’

‘Er, yes, I’m afraid so.’

Chet gave a low whistle, shook his head. ‘Man, I
don’t know how you coped. I mean, I would have difficulty going twenty-five
days without sex, let alone twenty-five years. But, I don’t understand why. I
mean, you must have had a lot of offers, an attractive girl like you ...’

I shrugged. ‘No, not really.’ I fell silent again. I
didn’t know what to say to him.

Chet smiled indulgently. Then, he reached over and
brushed a stray hair from my face. ‘You’ve got such lovely hair. Let me comb it
for you.’

He got up, took a brush from my dresser and climbed
into the bed behind me. Positioning me between his thighs, he proceeded to run
the comb sensuously through my hair. Deep, hard strokes. I closed my eyes,
leaned my head back. I could feel him hardening, pressing against the skin.
It felt so good.

‘Twenty-five years,’ he murmured again. ‘I would
never have guessed from the way you – ‘ Chet checked himself. ‘I have to
say that you were pretty astonishing yourself. And I’m not just saying that to
flatter you. I really mean it, Madeline. I’ve never met a woman with so much
energy before.’

I blushed profusely. He continued to brush my hair.

‘So what’s the deal with Maria?’ I blurted.

‘Maria?’

‘Esposito.’ I hadn’t meant to be so audacious, but
the question had been playing on my mind. I just had to get it out of my
system.

Chet went stiff. Stopped combing. Then, he made a
low grimacing noise like he’d just stepped in dog poo or something.

‘Oh,
her
,’
he said with assumed nonchalance. ‘Things with Maria are sort of complicated.
She’s very ... how shall I put this ... very high maintenance.’

He then gave me the history of their relationship:
he told me they’d been introduced at a party by Leonardo DiCaprio and,
following an instant attraction, the two had embarked on a whirlwind romance.
After just four weeks, however, the cracks started to show. Chet portrayed
Maria as a pretty unstable character - full of crippling insecurities and prone
to bouts of insane jealously if he so much as looked at another woman. She
constantly needed him to reassure her of her beauty, of her talent and his
commitment to her. Given Chet’s past reputation as a Casanova, he said he could
sympathise with some of her issues, but after a while, her constant nagging
started to wear him down. Nothing was ever good enough for her, he said.

‘You know, this one time I bought her a Lamborghini
for her birthday and she sent it back to the manufacturer because it was the
wrong colour. How ungrateful is that?’

I shook my head in disbelief. He was talking about
something I could not comprehend – a world where a privileged drama queen
could afford to turn down a luxury car worth the price of a house. What
fascinated me most though, were Chet’s accounts of Maria’s insecurities. Maria
Esposito, the stunner who had twice been voted the world’s sexiest woman by
People
magazine needed compliments and
reassurance of her desirability – surely not?

‘The thing is Madeline, I’ve dated so many beautiful
women, and the world looks at me and thinks “lucky son of a bitch.” They look
at these women and buy into their promise – the promise of sex. They pout
at you from the cover of magazines, smoulder at you, make you buy into the
hype. But the reality is that they can’t deliver on that promise.’

This was clearly a thinly veiled dig at Maria.

Chet then became even more candid about his love
life– he confessed that Maria was frigid, an ice maiden who couldn’t keep
up with his enormous sexual appetite. When they’d first got together, they’d
been at it like rabbits, then quickly, she’d gone cold on him, complaining that
she was either too busy, too tired to make love, leading Chet to compare her
with a McDonald’s Happy Meal: cute and appealing but ultimately insubstantial.

Mind you, after the sexathon I’d just experienced, I
had to admit I had some sympathy with the poor girl. Very few women would be
able to keep up with him for long. Then again, who could complain about making
love to Chet Vincent? Who wouldn’t kill to be in her shoes? In my opinion, this
once again just highlighted her ungratefulness.

Yet, despite her refusal to sleep with him, Chet
said she still expected him to remain faithful, still threatened to commit
suicide if he so much as spoke to another woman. It was during one of these
aggressive arguments that he had first started to seriously consider retreating
from the spotlight – his world had become a troubled place, full of
responsibilities he could not handle. So when Pantelli made his proposal, it
seemed all the more attractive to him. To get out of the media glare, and
ultimately away from Maria, seemed to be the answer to Chet’s prayers.

‘Then again, it wasn’t just about the sex,’
he continued, combing my hair into ferocious tufts. ‘Maria’s a lot younger than
me and sometimes, well ... let’s just say I found the conversation to be
lacking. Sometimes I’d be talking to her about old movies, about Joan Crawford
and James Cagney, and she’d be looking past me with this glazed expression,
like she was bored. I mean, she doesn’t even know who Orson Welles is! Can you
believe it? She thought
Citizen Kane
starred Gerard Butler.’

I nodded sympathetically. His words helped
to ease my guilt. If it was well and truly over between him and Maria, then
what we had done couldn’t technically be classed as cheating. Besides, how
could you cheat with a dead man? As far as Maria was concerned he’d gone to
Hades.

Chet stopped combing, leaned over my
shoulder and examined my feet critically. ‘I think you’re in need of a top up,’
he grinned, referring to my chipped nail varnish.

I could have died from embarrassment.

He got up, started rummaging around in my
dresser. I wished he’d put some clothes on. It was terribly distracting!

‘Where do you keep your nail polish?’

‘Um, it’s in the second drawer, I think.’

‘Found it.’ He returned to the bed with a
jar of red nail varnish, a bottle of remover and a packet of cotton wool.

He flashed a killer smile as he positioned
himself at my feet and started rubbing the remover into my toes. ‘I love doing
this,’ he said quietly.’I find it so relaxing.’ I was extremely flattered, yet
at the same time, insane with jealously. I wondered how many other women he had
done this to.

‘Anyway, enough about Signora Esposito.
Let’s talk about you, Madeline.’

‘Er, what exactly did you want to talk
about?’

Chet paused, momentarily absorbed by the
task at hand – delicately positioning little cotton balls between my
toes. ‘That’s it! Right, now, what was I saying? Oh yes ...’ He looked up at
me. ‘I don’t know what you’ve done to me Madeline but it’s like ... it’s kind
of like I’m obsessed with you or something.’

I froze with shock. ‘Obsessed? With me?’

‘Yes. You can’t imagine what I’ve been going
through. Since that time in my apartment, when I took your pictures ... I’ve
wanted you so bad. It was torture. I mean, I’ve never had such restraint - I
knew I couldn’t get close to you in that way, because if I did, I knew I
wouldn’t be able to control myself. There were times when I really wanted to
tell you what I was feeling, you know? But I couldn’t, cos that would have
given the game away.’

My head was reeling.

He continued, ‘You were not part of the
plan, Madeline. This wasn’t supposed to happen ...’

‘What wasn’t?’ I whispered.

‘Falling in love with you.’