Those Wicked Pleasures (2 page)

‘I love you more, Lara. But I can’t have sex with you. Not now, not ever. Not like I have with them and other women. You’ve always known that.’

Before he could say any more, Lara was on her feet and out of the room. Tears of despair streamed down her cheeks. She felt utterly rejected.

David took his time in the shower. He was neither disturbed nor confused about how to deal with her. He tied the grey terrycloth robe piped in white cotton cord around his waist. He opened a drawer in the Biedermeier chest in his bathroom and placed a neatly wrapped Cartier package in his pocket. Barefoot, he walked down the corridor to Lara’s room. He knocked at the door. No answer. He knocked again and walked into the room.

‘I don’t think I want to talk to you, David.’

‘Is that for now or for ever?’ he asked with a smile on his lips.

‘Maybe not for ever. But nothing will be the same for us.’

He felt a pang of sadness for that rang true, and walked over to the four-poster bed. Lara was lying at an angle across it, dressed in a white eyelet cotton robe ruffled at the wrists and around the neck, and haphazardly buttoned down the front. It made her look young and vulnerable, and hid the voluptuous body so ready for and in need of love and sex.

Her wondrous platinum-blonde hair spread like a mass of silk threads over the pillow; the sultry, seductive green eyes sent out a single message: her need of a carnal relationship.

David decoded these messages with mixed feelings. He lay down on the bed next to her, gathered her to him, and inched them both back against the pillows, where they half sat, half reclined. Lara was silent while she tried to fend him off. The more she twisted and turned in his arms, the more he tightened his grip.

‘This is stupid, Lara. We have to talk,’ he told her in a whisper. He stroked her hair and kissed her on the cheek. He unbuttoned the mother of pearl buttons of her dressing-gown and caressed her breast with his free hand. That seemed to soothe her and, under his caresses and kisses, slowly she gave up the struggle.

Finally she said, ‘I thought you loved me?’

‘How can you even question that? Surely you must understand that it is because I love you so much that I have always wanted to be the man to help you discover the sexual side of you. To show you how delectable the pleasures of the flesh can be. Love you? I always will, but here, now, this very afternoon, we must come to terms with the lust we feel. We have gone as far as we
can together on that road, Lara. You have always known about my womanising, so blundering in on my sexual activities this afternoon has been no trauma for you. I won’t let you pretend that it was.’

‘Did I say I was shocked? Did I appear to be in distress? Did I run away?’

Her pride was coming into play now. That was a relief for David. The next part was going to be easier than he thought. That petulant pout again! He began buttoning Lara’s robe, and gave her that seductive David Stanton smile that endeared him to women and won him whatever he wanted.

‘Quite the contrary, wasn’t it, David?’ The hauteur in her voice, that touch of bravado behind her eyes, softened, and she became more hesitant as she added, ‘I want a sex-life like Myling and Luan. I was so jealous of them! I was devastated when you rejected me. Oh, I know all the reasons why. But, David, just that once … It would have meant everything to me.’ Tears welled up in her eyes, but she forged on. ‘What am I supposed to do with all my sexy feelings? Give them all to some guy I don’t care about? Not a very exciting idea when all my sensual good times so far in life has been with someone I love. If you don’t take me, who will? Will you choose me a lover? One of your oh-so-sexy friends? Come on! I doubt it.’

‘You’re right. Not one of my sexy friends. But wrong, too, because I
have
chosen someone. I think he is perfect for you – at this time of your life anyway. A man you will be happy with. Someone who loves you, who has always wanted you. Your first sex should be for love, if possible. If you want him, I am certain he is there for the asking. You know, a nod of the head, a provocative kiss … Any hint that you are available will do.’

Lara began to laugh. There was a note of anxiety in that laugh, and more than a hint of anger.

‘What is so funny?’

‘Not funny, pathetic.’

‘OK, what’s so pathetic?’

‘You. The very idea that finding me a lover will solve the problem of my wanting you. All it does is get you off the hook. And, of course, safeguard the good old Stanton standard of morality.’

She edged away from him and raised a hand, placing it over his lips. ‘No, not another word about it. I couldn’t bear it. One day you will ache for me as I have ached for you, and
I
will find
you
someone else. I guess, till then, you won’t ever know the pain I’m feeling now. Oh, God, I don’t want to think about us any more. Let’s never talk about this again. Just tell me who this man is who’s going to be my first loving fuck? Just who have you chosen to be your surrogate lover-stud?’

She removed her hand so David could speak. He remained silent, his gaze intent on her. She half expected his determination to deliver her into the arms of another man to dissolve. She held her breath in hope. She knew it was in vain when he finally answered, ‘Sam Fayne. And he wasn’t chosen lightly. He has known you almost all your life. You are the best of friends. He adores you. He’s handsome, a kind and loving guy, and you can have a wonderful love affair to go with the sex. I’ve tried to see that you get it all, Lara. Take him for as long as it lasts.’

‘I can’t believe it! The boy next door. You are more pathetic than I thought. I want an exciting, thrilling adventure. A touch of depravity, like I saw this afternoon. And you set me up with my best friend.’

‘Don’t be a petulant little smart-ass, Lara. Other women have had him and, believe you me, from what
I hear, you may not be exciting enough for him.’

The moment David said it he was sorry. The child in this sensuous adolescent surfaced. Tears filled her eyes again. Before they could burst forth he gathered her in his arms, whispering, ‘I’m sorry, so sorry. It was mean of me to say that. But you’re not making this easy for me. You
are
exciting. So exciting that, if I just have you in my arms, I start wanting to take you. My fantasies are full of you. Other women are not enough. You can’t imagine how much I want to fuck you, the things I dream of doing to you. The thought of another man introducing you to real sex drives me wild with passion for you.’ All control gone, he grasped her hair, and pulled her down upon him, kissing her hotly.

The words she wanted to hear. The kisses she wanted never to stop. She felt her own power over David and liked the feeling. She had rarely experienced such power over another human being. She liked it, and in that instant Lara Stanton became a woman.

David, always alert to any nuance of change in women, especially in moments of grand passion with them, edged his way back to the reality of the moment. This was his and Lara’s grand parting as lovers. He drew away and watched her. Eyes still closed, she trembled and called out softly, ‘Oh, yes, yes.’ David reached under the eyelet robe. He found that soft moist slit, fondled its lips and gathered up on his fingers the last of her childish orgasms they would ever share together.

David rubbed his fingers across her lips and then licked the moistness of Lara from them as she rode out her moments of ecstasy. When she opened her eyes he was sitting on the end of the bed. All her life Lara would remember that meeting of their eyes as one of the saddest she would ever know. It was over for them, that special
illicit something they had always had for each other. Gone. She adjusted her robe, slid off the bed and walked to her dressing table, found the silver-backed brush and began brushing her hair. Returning to the bed she sat down next to him.

‘Friends?’ he asked.

‘Best friends.’

He took the brush from her hand and replaced it with the slim Cartier box, continuing to brush her hair himself. ‘Open it. You’ll be pleased.’

‘What’s the occasion?’

‘Since when do I need an occasion to spoil you with something pretty?’

She smiled and tore open the red wrappings. A bracelet. A cuff of gold elongated links. He clasped it around her wrist. She bubbled with pleasure. ‘Mother is right, you spoil me. But promise you won’t stop. Oh, David, I love it.’

He laughed. ‘No more than Steven, Max or John will I stop. And Elizabeth is the worst of all of us. No, correction, Your Honour, your dad is the worst offender. Aren’t you lucky to be the baby of the family?’

‘I wonder.’

‘My advice, Lara, is don’t even question it. You’re a golden girl, a Stanton golden girl, spoiled and pampered, beautiful and sexy. And the world is all spread out before you. You’re intelligent and fun, and have a solid family backing you up. Go out there, Lara, and grab the golden ring. It’s what all we Stantons do. Which reminds me, I must do something about the twins.’

‘You’re going back to them?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will you pick up where you left off? Have more sex with them?’ she asked rather more calmly than he might have hoped.

‘I’m not going to try to kid you, Lara. Yeah, they still turn me on.’

She was surprised she was no longer upset about David and the erotic twins. She had always taken his advice, and it had rarely been wrong for her. Now she would go out and find love, and a sexual mate who would not reject her. She walked to the door and opened it. ‘Then you had better go, hadn’t you?’ As he passed in front of her she stood on tip-toes to kiss him on the cheek, and thanked him for the bracelet.

‘Be careful out there. If you ever want to talk, I’m always here for you, just as the others are.’ He squeezed her hand. He was in some sense leaving her, no matter what he was saying. She could not help the twinge of pain she felt in her heart.

Lara turned back into her room. She lay down on the chaise and covered herself with a white cashmere coverlet trimmed with pink applique roses. She held her arm up, better to view her new bracelet. It dazzled in the afternoon light filtering through the white silk curtains. She adored it. Her mind kept returning to the sex scene in David’s room. The excitement took hold. What compulsions of lust were the three pursuing now? Her imagination took flight. And Myling … no woman had ever provoked such sexual feelings in her as the Chinese woman had when she offered to make Lara a part of their orgy. Oh, David, you should have allowed me the experience. David … the taste of him in her mouth, that exquisite yearning to have him deep down within her throat. She longed for him in that way, to feel him deep inside her and moving in and out as she had seen him with the twins.

As she tried to fight her frustration and feelings of rejection and loneliness Lara felt herself slipping into some dark emotional void. It was pulling her down. An ugly desperate feeling. She hated it. She wanted to be up,
way up. Was David right? Was what she really wanted a man, sex – not him? Now that idea took hold. Half a dozen young men who had pursued her filled her mind. She began to imagine sex with them. It became exciting. She could think of nothing but sex. Her need seemed overwhelming.

Sam? Maybe David was right. She remembered his kisses. Not bad. What his hands had done. Nice enough. She hadn’t exactly laughed down his hard-ons, his anguished pleadings to ‘make it’ with her. But, then again, she hadn’t taken it all seriously either. To her it all seemed like kids’ stuff, experimentation. She had never thought of it as sex. Certainly not like the exciting sensations that had always stirred her with David. Or what she had seen that afternoon, or wanted right now.

She made a vow to herself never again to feel rejection and loneliness. That perked her up. She couldn’t endure those mental twins any more than she could bear thinking about that human twosome Myling and Luan in the throes of sexual ecstasy. She dressed and fled to the tennis courts on the roof of the Fifth Avenue mansion.

Lara joined her father, Henry Garfield Stanton, and her three brothers, Steven, Max, and John, and her father’s friend, Mr Chou Lee. The twins’ father was an old friend of theirs from the days when Henry Stanton was an air ace, a Flying Tiger, fighting the Japanese during the Second World War. Now he was one of the wealthiest industrialists in Hong Kong. Why didn’t he question where his daughters were? Lara felt a spurt of jealousy again. The twins’ absence served to remind her of what she was missing. For a moment she hated David almost as much as she loved him.

There was a fierce match in progress between her mother, Emily Dean Stanton, and her sister Elizabeth, the Countess of Chester. Elizabeth’s husband Jeremy, the
Earl of Chester, greeted Lara with, ‘Seems like that competitive streak in the Stantons means war. At the very least a duel to the death, whether with racquets, golf clubs, or in business. Don’t you Stantons ever play for fun?’

‘Fun’s the only reason to play anything, Jeremy. But with the Stantons, fun and winning are synonymous,’ interrupted his father-in-law. He placed an arm around his daughter and kissed her on the cheek.

‘Oh, Henry, do spare me the Stanton dictum on the will to win. I get enough of that from Elizabeth.’

Henry began to laugh. He could afford to: he and his family were famed winners.

Lara relaxed against her father, grateful for his affection, the warmth of his body, his support. She also had the attention of her brothers; their greetings and a friendly teasing. John raised her hand and held it. All the while their eyes were riveted on the game being battled out on the court. In the bosom of her family, Lara’s spirits began to rise.

Match point, and then it was over, and Emily Stanton was laughing and throwing her racquet up into the air and catching it as it slowly spun down. Elizabeth jumped over the net and hugged her mother, but she wasn’t smiling, simply shaking her head from side to side in admiration and thinking how to win the next game.

Two of her brothers rushed out to kiss their mother and take up the court, eager and ready for battle. That fierce competitiveness was the norm in the Stanton household. It pulsed in every Stanton’s blood like adrenalin, and they did everything to cultivate it in themselves.