Those Wicked Pleasures (21 page)

And, for the first time since returning to Jamal on the night of his party, Lara knew that she would. In an hour’s chat over a meal, her father restored the confidence that Jamal had been systematically undermining with his paltry erotic games.

Henry and Lara made no mention of her problem again, not that evening, not ever. Instead, Henry eased the tension with enticing descriptions of Old Master drawings and fired her with a sense of the importance of the auction they were about to attend. Between them, they gently reanimated the spirit of their meal together.

At Sotheby’s they shook the hands of numerous people they knew and exchanged elegant verbal trivia. Just before they took their seats in the auction room, Lara looked at her father and said, ‘I am, after all, not that ignorant, Pa.’

Henry smiled. When had his daughter last called him ‘Pa’? He sensed something of her former sparkle returning. Perhaps he needn’t worry about her problem any longer.

‘At the viewing the other day, I fell in love with the Botticelli. It’s mine, I have made up my mind to that, so please don’t bid against me.’

Henry felt more proud of Lara at that moment than for a long time. His spoilt, beautiful angel. Fears once briefly entertained that she might be a dark or falling angel now evaporated. His child was surely going to take her place in the bright angelic courts. She was the dark horse of all his children, the one that would come from the back of the field to win through. He knew that now, for sure, and maybe in his heart he always had.

Chapter 15

A stark, unnatural silence. The hush of several hundred people holding their breath. A tension electric with anticipation. Then the quick, sharp blow of the wooden gavel cracked the quiet. ‘And again, sold to the lady in red for seven hundred thousand dollars,’ announced the auctioneer.

The room released its breath collectively. Hands came together in applause. There was a buzz of chatter, alive with the excitement of the crowd who were rising from chairs, milling about, attempting to descend from the adrenalin-high the sale had induced. Handshakes and whispers among the dealers, the winners and the losers, the curious and the society-mongers. The telephonists who had taken bids from around the world slumped back in relief at a job well done for the auction house. They conferred busily, and the auctioneer mouthed thanks to his audience for their participation.

Who is she? Who is she buying for? Never saw her around. How did she crash in on the bidding? Who’s her dealer? She some kind of a dealer? The room simmered with questions about the young slip of a thing who had so shrewdly played off the other bidders for what she wanted, until her determination and dollars wore them down. Some said, ‘She’s a ringer for Henry Stanton. I happen to know he wanted that Botticelli. He would never let it go.’

‘You’re kidding. Did you get a look at Stanton’s face? He’s as surprised at that broad bringing it off as we are.’

‘She’s with Henry, but who is she? Why didn’t he bid against her?’

One of the women in the small group began to laugh. ‘He wouldn’t, would he, if she were family?’

That silenced the museum director, who was feeling the loss more than most. He too had made a play for the drawing. The woman enjoyed telling them, ‘That’s Lara Stanton. More like Henry, I think, than Emily Stanton. A nice enough girl, and charming, but I heard she was rather frivolous. Not interested in anything but the deb life. But I guess that bit of gossip has been knocked on the head tonight.’

By now there was a cluster around Henry and Lara, the big buyers of the sale. There were congratulations and a good deal of fuss over the Stanton purchases, and much discussion of how the auction went. The losers appeared disgruntled, or as Henry suggested to Lara on the way into the reception hall, ‘Not serious collectors, I think. Fancy approaching me to sell for a profit! Art is big business. Hardly a gentleman’s game any more. Anyone who knows us knows the Stantons buy but never sell. It’s a good policy to remember, Lara. Swap, maybe. Donations to the better institutions can be rewarding. But never sell.’

‘Point taken, Pa.’ There was a sparkle in her eye as she quipped, ‘There’s nothing like a shopping-spree to ease a girl’s anxieties.’

Henry began to laugh. Lara poked him in the ribs with her elbow, which prolonged his amusement. Then she took him by the hand and whispered, ‘I am having the best time I’ve had in ages. The adrenalin is flowing. You never told me what a turn-on an auction can be when you’re in the bidding, Pa. That old competitive nature
you bred in us Stantons has done its stuff yet again. I knew if I was going to get what I was after I had to stay in there, especially when the heat was on with several people in the bidding. To outbid those guys and acquire a great work of art – it’s like winning the America’s Cup. I think I could really get into this art game.’

‘Yes, darling, but can you afford to make a habit of this?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll have to talk to Harland about that, won’t I?’

‘You will if tonight is anything to go by. A Duccio, the Caravaggio, a Leonardo and a Botticelli. You don’t do things by halves, my girl.’

‘You neither, Pa. Mother will be furious. What are you going to tell her?’

They were in the reception hall. He took two glasses of champagne from the tray carried by a red-jacketed waiter, and handed Lara one. ‘That I have a very clever daughter with an unexpectedly good eye, in whom I have every confidence.’

Both knew to what he was referring. They clinked the rims of their glasses together in a toast. The reference once made was quickly taken and as quickly forgotten. Lara said, ‘No I mean about your extravagance, not mine.’

‘Oh, I know how to silence your mother. She can be bribed with a charity concert. It works every time.’ They both began to laugh again.

They were surrounded by art-lovers who insisted on shaking Lara’s hand and her father’s. Strangers never met before, unlikely to be encountered again, were congratulating them upon owning a masterpiece. Lara found that part of her evening at the auction odd but fun. Nevertheless she did wonder what it was all about. She had bought the drawings because of some inner desire
to continue experiencing the bond she felt with the figures in them. The masterful beauty that they emanated affected her so deeply she wanted never to have to let it go. There was a magic and power and timelessness about these great works of art that enveloped her. She felt eternity in them, and love, and could not relinquish the feeling.

Lara sensed Jamal’s presence. She felt a shiver of excitement, just knowing that he was somewhere in the room. He was watching her. She perceived his admiring glance and her already joyful heart knew yet more delight. She glanced at her father, in animated conversation with two men. At that moment she felt no fear, no guilt, about the petty lies and deceits she had perpetrated in the name of love. She knew, after the conversation she had had with her father earlier, he would understand what had driven her to use them. Her father’s trust, that she had thought lost to her, was now restored and had renewed a sense of self that could never again be shaken.

She felt an overwhelming desire to be with Jamal, in flagrant sexual communication with him. She made no excuses to herself for her sexual appetite. She knew she would not now allow herself to be unhappy over their relationship. Trust, she thought, is a powerful weapon against defeat. And at that moment she loved Henry more for what he had so generously given her than she ever had before.

It was not at all difficult for Jamal to find Lara in the sea of black ties and expensive dinner-jackets, glittering dresses and hundred-dollar hair-do’s. She glowed like some bright star. Her youth, that fetching combination of sensuality and innocent Aryan beauty, shone like neon. Everyone else was consigned to the shadows. There was her provocative red dress: its message that of an aristocrat thumbing its nose at the conservative establishment.
Jamal caught in her, once again, that special spark that had flashed in her since childhood. Anxiety that it had been extinguished left him.

He greeted several people distractedly as he struggled through the crowd, never taking his eyes off this girl-woman, the sensualist, the strangely powerful yet vulnerable creature who had the ability to offer him more than most women. How often she seemed to challenge him to force her into total submission. For him she was still a game that he was always on the brink of winning. Tonight perhaps?

He saw Henry, the all-powerful Henry. The gentleman par excellence, manipulator of so many aspects of so many lives. Some close to him, and some he would never see or hear of. Jamal had always loved and respected Henry, as a man and the uncle of his best friend. And he was not immune to Henry’s wealth or his mastery of power and influence. He had always wanted to belong in some way to the Stanton clan, but had never seen Lara as his way into it. Any hint of that would have entailed ostracism by his best friends. Such entrée to their society as he enjoyed would have been closed to him. Yet what drove Jamal to pursue his dangerous erotic relationship with Lara? Could he simply neutralise his guilt at deceiving this man he so admired, and his family?

Jamal knew that he was corrupting Henry’s most precious possession. From passion, he told himself, his own and Lara’s. Yet, she was safer with him than with any other she might play erotic games with. A fortune hunter might have exploited her sensual nature, exposed it to the world, while Jamal had gone to great lengths to keep it secret. Henry himself could have done no more in Jamal’s position, and Henry had earned his reputation as a hard-liner when he wanted something, whether a
sporting trophy or a financial triumph, his art collections or his most private affairs.

Jamal saw Henry place an arm around Lara’s shoulder. A glance passed between father and daughter. How alike they were, he had never realised that before. And he saw in this vulnerable young woman who was sexually dependent on him a strength more fierce than he had imagined. It excited him enormously, knowing that he had a power over her that no other man wielded. She was indeed a prize. He redoubled his efforts to reach her.

He placed the key in the latch and turned it. The door clicked open, then he faced her. His kiss was tender and sweet. He licked her lips with the tip of his tongue and surprised her when he swept her up off the stone step and into his arms to carry her over the threshold.

He conveyed her into the ground-floor sitting room and set her down in front of the open fire. He walked around the room putting out all the lights except one in the far corner. Then he returned to Lara and slid the red silk shawl from her shoulders. He raised her hand and lowered his lips to her fingers, kissing them, and licking the palm of her hand. He could feel her dissolving under his touch.

In the semi-darkness of a room flickering with firelight, she looked, if possible, even more sensuous. So feminine, so delectable for a man with the sexual appetite of Jamal. He walked around her once, and then a second time. She almost felt her clothes peel away under the penetrating gaze. She imagined the frenzy of his mind, conjuring up sexual delights to please her, and tried to hide the shiver of excitement she felt. He could always prime her with those eyes, the touch of his lips, the very feel of his skin against hers. This was to be
her
night. Everything would be done for
her
sexual pleasure. She could tell that by
the way Jamal all but sniffed around her. Like some sleek beast that stalks his prey until she is ready to receive him on his terms, he knew with what looks to transfix her, what things to say and do to prime her for what was to come. And she waited, always holding back, holding back for as long as she could.

He was the shrewdest of seducers. He well knew the longer she held back, the further she slipped under his spell, and the stronger grew her desire to escape into sexual nirvana. Once lost in that outer place so far from the reality of life and of herself, she would do anything, submit to anything, to remain there for as long as possible. That was where Lara Stanton imagined she felt love and peace, and more excitement for life than anywhere else. At those times, with Jamal, each orgasm was like a little death. She was as if chained to a cycle of death and rebirth in her seemingly endless stream of orgasms.

‘Thirsty?’

She could hardly utter, and so nodded assent.

‘Good. I have a lovely wine for us.’ He smiled, and, running his hands down her arms, kissed her once more on the lips. He felt them part, slid his tongue between them and kissed her again. He walked behind her to lavish a kiss on her naked back.

It was by no means a one-sided thing with Lara and Jamal. The taste of her flesh on his lips was like an aphrodisiac. He nibbled at her flesh and slid his hands over the strong, bare back exposed to the waist. His hands reached under the silk and found the swell of her breasts. He cupped them in his hands and felt her yield that little bit more to him. He sensed she was already moist between her legs. But her banded dress, her clinging skirt, prevented his delight in confirming that.

Lara, her eyes closed now, put her hands over his, the
red silk separating them. She tried to move his hand to her nipples that ached for his touch. He kissed her on the back of the neck, but instead of responding to her pressure, discreetly avoided it, caressing the swell of the breasts with a teasing tenderness that was simply not enough for her. He skimmed his hands across her flesh to the silk of her dress, and through it caressed her hips. He pushed tight up against her, allowing her to feel the rigid swelling in his trousers. He pressed it raunchily to the cheeks of her bottom, and then whispered in her ear, ‘The wine.’

He brought the glasses, charged with the perfect Margaux whose colour in the firelight was all garnets and rubies. Their eyes met, and he recognised that hunger in hers that so excited him. He stepped back a few paces and held the glass out to her. ‘Come.’

He sat down on the white damask-covered Chippendale settee. Lara didn’t move. She couldn’t. She stood as if glued to the spot. Her knees felt like jelly, and she had come so copiously she was afraid to take a step for fear she would stain her dress and he would know how much she wanted him. She didn’t have to say anything. He knew. They had, after all, been there before, many times. She had confirmed his power over her, and that was all he wanted.

He went to her and handed her the glass. He was aware of the slight trembling of her hand as she raised the glass to her lips. ‘A Botticelli, a Carvaggio, a Leonardo, and me. I would say you are having quite a night.’

That eased the tension. She drank some of the superb wine before answering: ‘Can you compete?’

‘I’ve only just begun.’

‘I hope so.’

That was another thing he found exciting about her. When it came to sex, she was usually honest,
unashamedly so. He lifted the empty glass from her hand to put beside his on the mantel. Then he took her in his arms, held her and kissed her deeply, with great passion. He whispered in her ear: ‘How wet are you? How ready are you for me? Tell me how much you want me. I am crazy to take you. To feel you run with cum under the influence of my cock, my tongue. To feel with my fingers deep inside you the silky-smooth syrup of your lust for me.’

He registered the change in her breathing as he unbuttoned the cuff of her sleeve to kiss her wrist. He found the fastening at the back of her neck. She watched him, relishing every nuance of his slow, sensuous way of undressing her. She retrieved her glass and finished the wine. He kissed her lips. Her taste tingled with that of vintage claret. He eased her dress off her arms and let the blouse fall down around her waist and over her hips. He stood back, the better to admire the ripeness of Lara.