The Movie (51 page)

gaze, she reached into her pocket and drew out the tube of insect repellent. ‘Let me put some of this stuffon you. At dusk we’re going to need it.’

Zach said, ‘Take offyour top.’

‘What?’

‘Take offyour top.’ He patted the damp ground beneath

them and reached to his waist, untying his shirt. ‘We have to get some kind of solid coveting underneath us, so nothing crawls out of the leaves while we’re asleep. The gel should keep the bugs away from our upper bodies.’

Megan did as he said,,spreading her shirt next to his on

the ground, trying to act naturally. This is a survival situation, she told herself ftmaly. Right? Just like going to the doctor. He won’t think anything of it.

‘My God, you’re beautiful,’ Zach exclaimed softly. He reached out and stroked the so, creamy flesh of her left breast with one finger, and Megan felt a liquid rush of renewed wanting surge through her like molten lava, his touch burning against her skin. Her nipples stiffened with pleasure, and they both saw it, the swollen buds pressing

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through the thin chocolate lace of her bra. Half hypnotized, Megan glanced down at Zach’s crotch. He was already erect, the hard outline of his cock, large and thick, clearly visible as it strained inside the calfskin. Instantly, a burst of. wetness exploded inside Megan’s pussy in response, making her mb her thighs against each other with impatient need. She moaned.

‘I want to make love to you,’ Zach said urgently, his voice rough with desire, and Megan reached out to caress his chest, saying, ‘Oh, yes, Zach, please, now,’ and then his hands were on her breasts, not softly this time, grabbing them, cupping them, his thumbs brushing her taut nipples, sending little shocks of sex through them, and Megan leaned forward, her fingers shaking, and unknotted the laces at the top of his crotch, pulling them halfway down his thighs, so that he sprang free, and she took his thickness in her hands and began to play with him, her fingertips lightly brushing against the warm skin of his balls, her fingers wrapping themselves round the stem of his cock, until Zach groaned with pleasure and broke away from her, ripping off his clothes as if he couldn’t undress fast enough. Megan, her heart hammering against her chest, snapped open the buttons on her 5ots and started to yank them down, then stopped, dismayed.

‘What’s the matter?’ Zach asked her, seeing her sudden distress.

Megan pointed to her injured ankle, bloated and discoloured above the leather of her shoe. ‘I can’t take my jeans off. I’ll never get them over that,’ she said, almost choking on her disappointment.

Mason took her head in his hands and kissed her, a long, luxurious kiss, his tongue meeting hers, teasing the inside of her mouth, flicking under her top lip, then taking her bottom lip in between his teeth and sucking it. Lust bathed her entire body and she pressed against him, her breasts

swelling with need, her nipples now sharp as a razor blade against his chest.

‘You don’t need to take them all the way down. They go far enough,’ Zach said, giving her a slow smile. Megan gasped as his left hand snaked round behind her, cupping the back of her neck, supporting her weight, and his tight hand plunged between her thighs, coveting her mound, his palm first barely touching the damp, silken down, then pressing harder, sending a blaze of pleasure through her crotch. Automatically she bucked underneath him, trying to move her thighs, to twist away from the caress, but she couldn’t. Her jeans held her locked securely in place, her crotch dxposed to him. Zach looked into her eyes and laughed, a low, throaty laugh, of delight and desire. , ‘No way, baby. You’re not going anywhere,’ he said, and then his fingers were inside her, two of them, stroking her gently , probing her heat and her wetness, and he began to caress her, intimately, fmgertips sliding over the smooth nub of her clitoris. Megan cried out, her back arching involuntarily under him, and waves of pleasure began to beat up in her, the ecstasy overtaking her, and she came in a blind rush, spasms of bliss tippling across her belly.

‘We’re just warming up,’ Zach Mason said, and he laid her down on their flattened clothes with infinite gendeness, taking care not to jar her ankle, and then Megan’s fingers tightened in his dark mane as he lowered his head to her skin, his tongue flicking the erect buds of her nipples, so that she moaned again, feeling a new warmth between her thighs, and then shuddered with longing as he sucked her breasts, licked down past her navel, holding her body firmly in place with his hands as she moved under him, and then finally, wonderfully, he reached her pussy and his mouth was on her, licking her, sucking her, playing with her, and Megan was transported into a new phce, a new kind of passion, her universe contracting and shtinking until she was aware of nothing except her own crotch, and

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Zach’s head, and her breath, coming in ragged gasps, and the pleasure was so intense, it was ‘so hot and unbearable and incredible that she thought she might pass out, and then, just as she was sure she was going to explode, Zach took his mouth away and moved across her and she felt him enter her, his cock thick and hard as stone, throbbing, pulsing with need for her, and he was inside her, making love to her, fucking her, deep and slow and rhythmic, the strokes coming harder, faster, pushing into her, driving her further up, so she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, had never imagined sex could be like this, and then, deep within her, his cock was thrusting against her g-spot, that tender, sensitive little kiss of flesh, hidden so far inside her that no man had ever reached it before, and she heard herself cry out, as though far away, and suddenly the pleasure exploded around her, dizzying her so that she couldn’t lee, her whole world dissolving around her, her bones liquefying, her body melting into a sea of bliss, absolute, complete nirvana, the spasms seeming to contract her every muscle, groin, calves, forearms, back, and she sensed his climax rushing up to meet her, and finally the waves of rapture slowly receded, and Megan was letS, sweating and sl-/aking, gazing into Zach’s wolflike eyes, and locked tight in her lover’s embraces.

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toxana Felix was under siege. Literally. The reporters were everywhere: massing the road outside the front of the house, sneaking through the neighbouring grounds, even flying past in helicopters to get a few aerial snaps of her gardens. The discreet seclusion of her coffee and white Moroccan-style villa was no match for the tabloid’s rot pack, every, one of them desperate for a photo or a comment or, better still, a snippet of footage. Her tall private hedges rustled with unauthorized movements every few minutes, and all the available viewpoints on nearby tall trees or mountain outcrops were being bitterly fought over. She no longer dared even to sneak into a bedroom to take a look outside, because the slightest twitch of the curtains would set offa flurry of flashbulbs. loxana F.elix had graduated into the hottest type of celebrity around - the fallen angel, the Madonna exposed as a whore. It was a perfect piece of white-trash culture the story of the superm,odel everybody adored. America’s sweetheart, the bashful, modest heroine of a mil/ion magazine puff-pieces uncovered as a teenage prostitute and brothel-keeper. America and the world licked sleaze hungry lips. Who didn’t relish something like this? It was the best story since the Michael Jackson thing broke. Marissa Matthews had been first with her scoop, announcing the grisly details to New York society over breakfast-a special edition of Friday’s People released on a Wednesday and the rest of the pack had followed enviously in her wake

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an hour later. Orders were dispatched and shuttles jumped on in London, Paris, Madrid, Sydney. Bribes were offered wholesale to anybody who would talk - old clients, old hookers, old schoolfriends, anybody - and suddenly acquaintances were pouring out of the woodwork faster than the TV shows could line them up. Her hairdresser. Her New York chauffeur. A secretary to her booker at Unique. And with every passing minute another news crew or freelance hack arrived at the ‘secluded’ villa tucked away in the Hollywood Hills, now about as secluded as Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

P,.oxana sat on a chair she’d dragged into the bathroom with her head in her hands, listening to the phone ring. She’d chosen the bathroom because it was the only room in the house without windows, the only room where she could be sure that she wasn’t seen. She wouldn’t disconnect the “phones or the fax machines; that was what they would expect, but she would not do it. She was no coward.

So it had finally happened, loxana thought. After all these years, they had found her. They knew almost everything. And the fame, the conquest, the safety, the adoration - her iron castle, the fortress she had built up, over eleven long years, inch by painstaking inch - in a matter of hours it had melted away, vanished like dew in the morning sun.

The demons had come for her. She had always known that some day they would.

loxana sat on the chair and rocked herself backwards and forwards, singing gently, as though lulling a little child.

‘Mr Goldman, I think you should see this.’

‘Not now, Marcia. I have to call New York.’

Tom Goldman did not conceal his impatience. It was one thing after another: first, Zach and Megan’s disappearance; next, deciding on the best way to handle Keller; and now, the second he got into his office, he found piles of

4I

pink-slip telephone messages from various men

board. Jesus, Tom thought as he sank into his bit

“

Eames chair, those sons of bitches better n.o,t be se,

company. Not now. Because,when what s happenet,

Zach Mason gets out, the press 11 be all over See the Lights

and then it’s all over for the stock. Right now, if those

pencil-pushers decide to sell, they’ll find Artemis Studios

trading for thirty cents and a can of Coke.

‘Yes sir, I know,’ his secretary said apologetically. ‘But

you should really see this before you make any calls.’

Tom glanced at his assistant, cradling the morning

papers to her chest. Oh, God. ‘Is this something to do with

Zach Mason, Marcia? I’d better have a look.’

‘Not exactly, Mr Goldman,’ she said cautiously, hand

,ing them across to him.

Goldman felt his jaw slacken in blank astonishment.

The New York Post had two pictures of Poxana Felix:

smiling, poised and confident as the forty-million-dollar

face of Jackson Cosmetics, and wafer-thin, over-made-up

and dressed in a miniskirt, spike heels and sequined top,

leaning against a wall in Paris, a teenage hooker in an

unmistakable pose. In bold black type the headline

screamed - MODEL MADAM! and underneath. The sensa

tional story of Roxana Felix -from streetwalker to supermodel!

How teenage tart turned from brothel-keeper to America’s

Sweetheart!

Aghast, Goldman puled out the New York Times.

TIlE LADY IS A TRAMP. The Washington Post. rASmON

PRrCSS WAS FmNCr PIMP’. The Los Angeles Times. REAL

ROXAtA .ValVe^tED. They were all the same.

‘Those are the late editions, sir,’ Marcia said, adding

weakly, ‘they couldn’t fit it in the earlier ones.’

‘Is this all over the radio and TV, too?’ he asked,

although it was a form question.

‘Yes, sir. I thought you might have heard it on your car

radio.’

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Dazed, Goldman shook his head. He’d driven in silence this morning, radio off, carphone switched off, so he could have a little time with his thoughts. “

Just as well, Tom thought grimly. Because that’s the last peace and quiet I’ll be getting for a while.

‘No calls for ten minutes, Marcia, OK? I have to read this story through. Tell them I’m on my way into the oflSce.’ She nodded, but Goldman was sudderdy struck with a dreadful, clammy fear. The directors had been calling. The board was worried…

‘Wait! Marcia, get me Joel Steinbrenner on the phone,

right away.’

‘OK.’

Goldman spun his chair round, his fingers drumming nervously on his mahogany desk. Steinbrenner was on the phone in seconds.

‘Joel, i’ Tom.’

His broker’s voice was a screech of agony. ‘Goldman, where the luck have you been? I don’t have power-of attorney! You’ve been unreachable for the last hour, and I can’t sell jack for you without an instruction! You know that!’

Tom nodded, pain crunching through his temples. The carphone. It had been the fast time he’d switched it offfor months. Christ, why today? Why had this happened today?

‘Yeah, I know that. What’s the damage?’

‘The stock’s.going south, Tom. Nobody can dump it fast

enough. I’m telling you, it’s in fucking free-fall!’

‘What did we lose?’

Steinbrenner snorted with disgust. ‘On paper? Your holdings have lost about eighty per cent of their value. But it might be more by the time I get to lose whatever I can. Even the bottom-fishers don’t want to touch it.’

Eighty per cent. The words echoed in Goldman’s brain, sending new shockwaves through his system. Eighty per

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cent, possibly more, wiped off the value of his Artemis holdings. Holy Lord God, Tom thought, I’m mined.

‘So? Talk to me, Tom, goddamn it!’ Steinbrenner howled. ‘Give me a sell order, for God’s sake! Let’s salvage

something from this mess!’

‘No,’ Goldman said.

‘No? What the luck do you mean, no? We have to move

now!”

‘No,JoeL Don’t sell anything,’ Tom said. ‘This studio is

in trouble. I’m the chief executive, and I’m not going to dump my stock in the company during a crisis.’

‘Are you out of your fucking mind?.’ Steinbrenner screamed.

‘When you think the stock has hit bottom, buy ten

thousand units.’

‘Do what?’

‘You heard me. You’re my broker, right?’