The Pleasure Quartet (16 page)

‘What would you like to eat?’ Raoul asked me, as he leaned further forward and grazed his knuckles all the way up my bare thigh to the seam of my panties. I responded to his touch without consciously thinking about it, my body disconnected from my brain – or perhaps the two were perfectly in sync in a way that the moralistic part of me didn’t want to admit – by slinking down in my seat to give him easier access. I had changed into a cap-sleeved navy lace top tucked into a short red skater skirt, and for one shameful moment I felt pleased that I had picked the flared number and not the black satin shorts that had been my second choice.

‘Good girl,’ he whispered, and slid two fingers inside my knickers. He kept them there and continued to lightly brush over my now wet slit as the waiter returned to take our food order.

‘We’ll have the large plate to share,’ Raoul interjected for me, when it became apparent that I was unable to speak.

If the uniformed attendant had noticed the reason for my reticence, he didn’t remark upon it.

‘You’ll make a lot more noise than this when I get you home,’ Raoul teased, when we were alone again. ‘I’ll make sure of it.’

His presumption and his cockiness horrified and annoyed me in equal measure, but also undeniably turned me on.

Some things never changed.

I knew juggling two lovers was not a feat I could sustain indefinitely.

I was right.

I was no good at lying and coming up with new excuses. Pretending to Joao that I needed some space and time on my own when I happened to be with Raoul. On every occasion I visited Astrid’s father or spent time with him after days of rage and sex with Raoul, I thought he would immediately notice the obvious signs of dissipation across my face, in the depths of my eyes, let alone all over my body. I was ever rehearsing explanations for the small bruises, the pleasurable tiredness that surrounded me like a cloud after rough sex. But if Joao ever noticed anything, he carefully avoided questioning me, retaining his innate elegance and discretion. Or maybe he knew from experience how complicated it was to keep a younger woman on an imaginary leash or happy, and he feared upsetting the apple cart. If there was an affray, I guessed it wouldn’t be of his making.

As for Raoul, I had to come up with a different set of answers. And ask he did. Repeatedly. Which meant grossly exaggerating the number of violin lessons I was giving Astrid, to attain some level of plausibility. I sensed his jealousy and possessiveness.

And then there were the nights when both insisted they wanted to see me, and I had to make a choice between them, the smooth and the rough, the slow waltz of love and hovering over the precipice. Never an obvious choice.

Raoul loosening the rope that bound my wrists to the bed’s metal headboard, my breath still halting, still half afloat in that envious zone where I was both spectator, victim and sacrificial offering to the gods of lust, and a shameless form of desire through which I navigated as if naturally born to it. His perspiring body, dark and linear, strong thighs taut, thick cock still at half mast, hovering above me.

Rubbing life back into my wrists, noting in passing the marks the rope had left, the momentary imprint of the sweet madness on my skin. Experiencing parcels of pain in parts of my body I didn’t know I had. Listening to the life outside filter through, one sound at a time, the air stir, the whoosh of the ceiling fan, this wonderful and terrible man’s sweat pearl down from his hairy chest onto my bare skin, pooling around my navel and in the valley between my breasts. Coming down. No longer flying through the holy spheres. Floating. Falling. Becoming myself again. Summer.

He bent over. Kissed me. His hand tight around my throat, immobilising me into position. The pressure in my lungs. The buzz racing across my skin like a web still holding me captive. I couldn’t move. Didn’t want to move. As if he was testing me, keeping me under observation to see how far I would allow him to go on dominating me. Checking my resolve, my limits. And, out of pride and obstinacy I knew I would not be the first to flinch, to cry out ‘no’.

He released me.

My cunt felt abominably raw, so much more exposed, open, ravaged, wetter than wet. He initially refused to wear a condom. During our very first encounter. Unlike Joao. Assuming in his macho way that I was the one who should be taking precautions, not him, and thinking only of children that might come, as if he were invincible to other risks. I insisted from the outset we use protection, but he never stopped making me pay for it. Pointedly spitting on my slit to keep it lubricated. Once bringing a condom filled with his semen to my face and making me lap from it like a dog drinking from a cup. It both disgusted me, this attitude, but also fired a light inside me, the radiance of the moth attracted by the glare of the fire.

His lips abandoned me just as I was about to cry out, gasp for air. His hands moved away from my throat. He was still squatting over me, his knees pinning me down, widening the angle of my thighs. His hand passed through my legs, wallowing inside my juices, brought a finger to his lips, then mine.

‘Taste,’ he ordered me.

I licked his fingers clean.

‘You’re like an animal,’ he told me later. ‘A beautiful beast . . .’ Admiration and desire juggling for space in his eyes.

He gazed at me, a million thoughts apparently bustling in his mind.

I remained impassive. I didn’t love this man, never could. But I craved the way he wanted me and the brutal form of his desire.

‘I’m hungry,’ I said.

He rose, turned his back on me, walked to the nearby kitchen counter, his naked arse solid as rock, like a throne of stone presiding above the straight towers of his muscled legs, his movements swift and proud. Returned holding a plate. His dark cock had now shrunk but was still visibly wet from our exertions, shone like a warped diamond, reminding me of its relentless journeys inside me, the way it pushed its way down my throat earlier, almost had me gag, and the way he slapped my cheeks and pinched my nose in reaction as I resisted, forcing his authority on me, controlling me, enjoying me.

I was unwilling to move, spread obscenely across the faded white sheets of his narrow bed, my body broken, still relishing the ebb and flow of fading lust that kept animating my mind as I lay on the bottom of the mental ocean. He held a thin strip of beef carpaccio above my mouth. My lips parted.

‘Raw meat for an animal,’ Raoul said, with an undisguised smirk of satisfaction.

I gulped the meat down with relish, chewing it avidly and sucking out the taste before swallowing it.

‘It’s not very flattering to be compared to an animal, you know?’ I remarked.

‘Maybe a thoroughbred would be a more appropriate description,’ Raoul said.

‘I think I prefer that.’

‘A thoroughbred whore,’ he continued. ‘A pleasure animal.’

‘Hmm . . . Animals can sometimes be dangerous, unpredictable,’ I pointed out.

‘They can also be trained,’ he added. Oh yes, he had cruel lips.

‘Do I really need further training?’ I asked.

‘There can never be enough training.’

I was due later that afternoon at Joao’s villa, for a lesson with Astrid. Her violin skills were developing nicely, even though I knew I was something of an impatient tutor. I would be expected to stay the night, I knew. I just didn’t think I was in a state to do so. My body would betray me. The marks on my skin might not fade in time.

I felt drained right now.

‘I need to sleep, Raoul. Can I stay?’

He had a tour booked, I knew. Would be away until late in the evening.

‘Sure.’

I switched off, allowing the waves of lassitude to breach the dams of my consciousness. I was about to go under when I heard him.

‘I want to show you off, Summer. I feel others should witness how beautiful you are when unleashed, bridled. Even, see you with another man. Oh, that would be quite a sight . . . One day . . .’ he promised.

I was too tired to respond and welcomed the dark.

I missed the violin tutorial with Astrid. And was too weary to even phone and warn her.

My explanations and excuses might not have proved convincing, or maybe I was betrayed by invisible signs of my activities with Raoul, but on the next occasion I met the businessman at his villa, I found out that Joao’s suspicions had been raised. He’d had me followed by someone, his driver maybe, and he had been made aware of the fact I had spent the night away from my own place and instead at Raoul’s. How much more he knew, I could only guess.

He asked me to choose. Between his anchor and the deep blue deep sea that Raoul represented. I told him I was unable to do so. Begged for time. Somehow Astrid knew some of what was going on and became more distant, suspended our tutorials of her own accord and no longer wanted to spend time at the beach with me.

Which left me with just Raoul.

And I knew all too well where the relationship with him might be leading me. It was a combustible path I was all too familiar with and was unwilling to tramp through yet again. God only knew that I wasn’t good at learning lessons, but some had made indelible marks and left me badly scarred in the process.

I was also running out of funds.

Aurelia, or the Network, had made a payment into my account as she promised that they would, but I refused to spend it. I wanted to be free of their hold over me, unencumbered by the ties of that world which I had chosen to walk away from. Neither could I bring myself to rely on Joao’s generosity, although I knew that given even half a chance he would happily install me in his Jardim Botânico villa permanently, or pay the lease on a new apartment. The Ball had paid up front for my rental for one year only, and my twelve months were nearly at a close. If I wanted to remain in the city by the sea, I would need to find alternative accommodation. My once frugal habits had taken a hit when, ironically, as a result of some of Joao’s generous gifts of dresses and outfits, I had felt obliged to accessorise and complete them with added jewellery and, principally, shoes. He had bought me shoes and earrings as well, but I was too vain to wear the same ones over and over, and too proud to insinuate that I needed or wanted more. And I’d always had expensive taste in shoes! What with my loss of income from the Ball, and the fact that I had not undertaken any musical engagements for more than two years now and my old record royalties were dwindling, I calculated that I only had six months’ worth of cash ahead of me. I hadn’t waited tables since I was a teenager, and I knew that sort of work paid terribly here. My Portuguese wasn’t anywhere near strong enough for an office job, even if I could fake a résumé. I had no other skills but music. And I knew I was not ready to return to playing the violin for a living. My soul wasn’t ready. Would it ever be?

I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to stay in Rio now. It seemed that a simple life of beach and sun was not enough for me.

My foolishness with men had spoiled things. Again.

I rang Susan, my erstwhile agent back in London. She was surprised to hear from me. Had probably written me off completely.

I didn’t tell her exactly where in the world I was.

Or explain the true reasons for my call.

Before departing for the Ball, I had left her a power of attorney over my business dealings. I asked her to sell some of my violins, whose storage she had access to, and transfer the proceeds to me via PayPal.

‘Any particular violin?’ Susan asked.

‘Whichever will fetch the best value,’ I said.

She agreed, and we postponed any other discussion to a future occasion, although she did insist on advising me that another record label appeared to be strongly interested in signing me up. Some new executive she found rather interesting. I informed her that I was anything but ready to return to music, though. I heard her sigh on the other end of the line.

After I’d set the mobile phone down on my kitchen counter, I felt a momentary spell of dizziness and I gripped the bench and stared out through the window. A compact herd of low-lying clouds was drifting above the golden sands of the beach. Rain was on its way.

The only violin of substantial value was the Bailly Dominik had bought me, I knew.

I wasn’t even sure any longer why I had held on to it so long.

Now it would be gone forever.

And with it, its history and personal associations.

I began crying.

5

A Magnificent Obsession

Noah sat at the bar of the Ivy Club, sipping the last dregs of a potent double espresso, his second of the day. He felt both energised and aimless. A meeting with a couple of journalists had ended a half-hour ago. The label kept them on retainer to report on interesting new prospects in the North of England and Scotland, and they’d handed over a handful of demo discs and memory sticks they thought he might turn out to be interested in. He still had an hour to kill before attending a gig in Camden Town in a subterranean club where the sweat poured down the walls and archaeological layers of grime and dried beer coated the floors defying any cleaner’s attempt to attack them. Far from his favourite venue.

One of the journalists, a Manchester-based freelancer called Barbara, had caught his eye at first sight. Bubbly and highly convivial, she was championing a local band she had come across and was effusive with her praise for their still-unformed talent. She’d not been part of the company’s network of A&R stringers-along, recruited by his ill-fated predecessor just before Noah’s return to Britain.

Noah had the feeling the music she was praising so loudly would not prove to his taste, if only by the way she described the group, but he politely heard her out and pocketed the demo disc. The moment she had walked into the bar, he had been struck by her initial appearance. A tiny pocket Venus, curvy, a buzzing ball of energy and all too self-aware of her physical attraction, vertiginous cleavage peering out from her colourful turquoise top and a black denim skirt that adhered to her skin with industrial precision.

She also had red hair.

And a built-in radar that immediately registered his undisguised curiosity. Must have been the way he looked at her, he knew, anything but indifferent, a possible twinkle in his eye as the words poured out of her. She took it as an open invitation to flirt. Totally ignoring the other journalist present, a tall shaggy-bearded Glaswegian almost twice her height, dressed in lumberjack chic shirt and skinny tie. They visibly knew each other. A couple?