Wicked Ambition (38 page)

‘Fine,’ Ramona bleated when she said she was going. ‘Leave me to perish.’

‘If you need me, Mom, I’ll stay.’

‘Both my daughters abandoning me,’ she announced, collapsing melodramatically on to a couch and nearly flattening Betsy the cat. ‘What about
my
convalescence?’

It was out of the question in any case that Ramona would go because she had invited a camera crew into her house to film a documentary called BUNNY WHITE: RIP A BEAUTY QUEEN, and was required to be within shooting distance every day of the week. She said she was doing it ‘to raise awareness of the pressures of fame on young women’, which was the most grotesquely hypocritical thing Kristin had ever heard, but arguing with a mother in mourning was not on her agenda. Perhaps this was Ramona’s way of dealing with things.

Until the previous summer, Cacatra Island, the über-exclusive Indian Ocean getaway, had been Hollywood’s number one celebrity spa. Then scandal had hit, a madman storming its shores in a stunt that had culminated in murder. LA had been rocked by the repercussions. Whispers of a secret clique abounded and the island had never recovered, passing into the hands of fashion powerhouse JB Moreau and becoming, for now, a private residence.

Quick to claim the crown of The Place To Be for recovering Hollywood stars, Tuscany Bounty Fields, TBF to those with their shrinks on speed-dial, was a recuperative hub on the west Italian coast. It was zero frills, in the grounds of an old monastery and bordered by golden fields and slender cypress trees. Kristin’s room was plain, a single bed made with starched white sheets, a wooden closet and desk. Her cell was confiscated and her only glimpse of the outside
world was a small arched window with a view to the rolling, burnished landscape beyond. Each client was permitted a luxury, one personal possession from home, and Kristin took a photograph of her and Bunny by The White House pool last year. In it Scotty Valentine could be seen reflected in Kristin’s Ray-Bans—he had been taking the picture—and somehow the three of them together articulated the impending disaster: Kristin, squinting through the heat, not seeing clearly; Scotty on the outside, eternally so, no matter how he pretended otherwise; and Bunny smiling on, blind to it all, gazing lovingly at the boy who loved neither her nor her sister nor any woman.

How had it ended in such tragedy?

Bounty Fields was a reminder that the globe turned on its axis outside LA and its vainglorious bullshit. Meditation was encouraged, as were long walks, exercise and the exploration of a library of carefully selected novels. Kristin recognised a TV starlet in the courtyard one morning after breakfast but neither girl acknowledged the other.

One morning she headed for a deserted medieval village overlooking the Casentino valley. It was one of several that had been abandoned years before when its inhabitants had left for the city, and it stood now ghostly among oaks, remote and rejected but infused with the kind of unsinkable beauty that time cannot steal. As she descended towards the cluster of part-derelict houses, the midday sun casting a glow across the hills, studded with goat herds that were alert when they saw her but unafraid, stumbling clumsily to the rusted metal jingle around their necks, it felt as if she were entering an afterlife, a precursor of heaven, so uncanny
were the polished gleam and the still, calm slowness of the perfumed, nutty air.

It made Kristin believe that something virtuous existed beyond what she knew. When it came to it, this was the decision that mattered—was the world a good place or a bad?

Survival on a knife’s edge: light on one side, dark on the other. When bad things happened, as they had to Bunny, did the door stay ajar? Was there a gap still wide enough for dawn to pass through? Did the sun swallow the moon, or was it the other way around?

She prayed with all her heart that Bunny had gone to a happy, better place: a place like this, with luminous hillsides and sparkling streams and a full, domed sky bursting with blue. It was the kind of thing the old Kristin would have written songs about, those fantasy realms where fairy tales existed and no harm came to the righteous. But if life didn’t work that way, if there was no sense or justice, did those worlds, too, automatically expire?

Kristin settled on a grassy mound, tucking her skirt under her knees and winding the coarse stalks around her fingers. A goat watched her inquisitively, its beard wiry and grey but its eyes alert. Its hindquarters were awkward as it moved off, lopsided and rickety as old chair legs. It disappeared into a dusty half-house whose windows were punched through and whose door was collapsed on one side.

‘Benvenuto, signorina.’

Kristin ventured into town the next day. It was a seaside port peppered with cafés and restaurants, the beachfront stalls selling braiding and jewellery and cut-price handbags.

‘Buongiorno.’

The colours had drawn her, a rainbow of rich smooth orbs half melting in the sun and displayed in buckets as vivid as a palette, their syrups as gorgeous and thick as paint and pooling sweetly in cartons and cornets.
Gelati
, the Italians’ ice cream.

‘You’re Kristin White.’ The boy behind the counter beamed. He was dark, with rusty blond hair, an aquiline nose and a full lower lip that protruded just enough to make his good looks interesting. His name badge read: ALESSANDRO.

‘Ti riconosco,’
he said. ‘I recognise you.’

She had made a partial effort at camouflage in a floppy sunhat and shades but had been told before that she was instantly distinguishable. Most stars looked different in real life—shorter, mostly—but Kristin was by all reports as imagined.

‘Will you sign?’ the boy asked, producing a napkin and marker. Proudly he pointed at his nametag and awarded her another grin.
For Alessandro
, she wrote,
with love
. She considered adding,
The most colourful balls in Italy
, or something to that effect, but didn’t.

On cue he gestured to the ice cream. ‘Would you like…?’

She chose raspberry and chocolate and Alessandro piled the scoops high, dense as landslides that thawed deliciously down the sides of the cone. It reminded her of a weekend in LA when she and Jax had licked ice cream at the beach, watching the surf roll in and a game of volleyball unfold on the sand.

He hadn’t been in touch. To know he had tried would have meant something, a scant consolation and even slighter alleviation to the dislike she now harboured for him. How could
he have turned a blind eye to Bunny and the grief they had faced? How could Jax be so hard-hearted? Didn’t he care at all? He had to be the most selfish man she had ever come across, and though he couldn’t be blamed for Bunny’s death his callous reveal of Scotty’s secret was a transgression she could never forgive him for.

‘Party tonight,’ Alessandro offered hopefully as he passed it over, ‘here. You come?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Kristin paid him. ‘This is a break from all that.’

‘Is fun,’ he promised, folding the note. ‘
Sarà divertente. Una marea de gente
, there are many people there. You and me, we go together.’

She shrugged, hoping that wherever Jax was he had a clue what he was missing.

‘Maybe.’

The party was in the town square, in annual celebration of a folklore hero who heralded the arrival of spring and chased away the winter demons. Kristin had spent the afternoon reading, sleeping and gazing out of her window, convinced that any second the door would open and her sister would be there, smiling infectiously in the way Kristin preferred to remember her—how could that smile be gone, just like that, and never coming back?—and had at last decided that heading out couldn’t possibly make her feel any worse. Surrounded now by music and lights, the dancing stream of locals in carnival costume whooping and wheeling, she embraced the distraction. At the gate an Italian pushed a mask into her hands. Its eyes were arched and high, crimson lips a playful smirk, the border embellished with gold.

The mask made her anonymous. Kristin wound through the festival, air hot and heady with the beat of a deep, relentless drum. Alcohol was thick on the air and she could smell a red-hot grill, meat cooking mixed with something citrusy, like orange peel.

She spotted Alessandro on the periphery, his mask pushed up on his forehead. A slick of sweat shone across his brow. When he identified her, his face split into a grin.

‘You came,’ he observed. ‘I’m pleased.’

‘Good. Do you dance?’

It didn’t matter that they could barely converse. Humour wasn’t bound by language and they laughed their way through the clumsily trodden steps and Kristin drank sweet beer from a plastic cup that made her feel light and wild and carefree, not the solemn and bloated sort of drunk she felt back at home quaffing Bollinger Blanc at her mother’s soirées. They joined a train of revellers that wound merrily through the square. Alessandro’s hands on her waist were hot and firm, and when they came to a giggling stop and he pulled her into a silent, tender kiss, she responded passionately, burying her fingers in his hair. She was free, untethered, a million miles from everything bad in her life, from memories of Bunny and the hard, cold certainties of Ramona and Scotty and Jax. She never wanted the night to end.

‘You have fever?’ Alessandro breathed, running his thumb past her temple. He brought it down and trailed it over her lips. ‘I know how to cool you down.
Vieni
.’

Seizing her hand, he led her through the throng. The back of his neck shone darkly in the shimmering, flickering glow and she wanted to reach out and touch it. The skin
looked soft, iridescent with perspiration, and she imagined how it tasted.

Through a couple of deserted alleyways they emerged on to the empty street. The store was shadowy, lit by the electric blue of the coolers, and the GELATI sign outside was extinguished. Alessandro withdrew a key, unlocked and they stepped inside, the low buzz of the refrigerators heralding their arrival. As her eyes adjusted Kristin picked out the colours in the bank of ice cream, every shade and flavour she could think of.

Alessandro released the cover and lifted it.

‘You want? For free this time.’

With his finger he ran a groove through the nearest container and held it out. Wordlessly Kristin stepped to meet him, taking his hand in hers and bringing the finger to her parted mouth. The
gelato
was sugary and slid coolly down her throat.

Alessandro emitted a husky groan and pushed her up against the counter. In a flash he lifted her dress and peeled it over her head. She wore no bra and he dived for her breasts, the nipples firm and taut in the cold, taking one hungrily in his mouth and pulling. Kristin gasped. He sucked so fiercely it teetered on the brink of agony, before flicking his tongue expertly around the bud and tipping her back into an explosion of pleasure. His hardness ground against her, splitting her legs, and she zipped him loose. Alessandro’s length sprang free, smooth and swollen, and she ran her fingers down his erection, clasping his balls.

Fiercely he pushed her up on the counter, the ice-cream palettes spread gloriously beneath her. She felt the freeze seal on her thighs, her breath visible in the air, ice-white
as the hairs at the back of her neck stood on end, prickling in the cold.

‘Ti voglio,’
Alessandro muttered, tugging her knickers so that they caught on her knees. With a tear he ripped them off.
‘Facciamo l’amore.’

Arching her back, she surrendered her body to him, longing to be devoured. Alessandro’s kiss hit her, his tongue in her mouth, and she put her hands back to steady herself, gasping as each palm hit a bucket of the soft melting glacé. His hands followed, scooping the nectar in his fist and bringing it round to her parted warmth, flattening the chill against her drenched heat. The cold struck her crisply and she stretched wider, crying for more, not knowing what she said, senseless in the state of her desire. Her whole body burned, the build sparking in her belly as if it were a living thing.

Alessandro sank to his knees, ravenous as he tasted the cream. His tongue was slick and wet amid the fruit and her own flesh, sticky and soft as his tip caressed every inch, circling her with torturous control, up, down, around, before plunging in deep, his fingers in close pursuit to deny her reprieve. Bursts of numbness were followed by glimpses of ecstasy so intense she thought she would pass out. Tears threatened, so exquisite was the sensation, and when on the cusp of her orgasm he rose to kiss her, cassis ripe and crimson on his lips so she could taste the black juices of that fruit, she shuddered and shivered in his arms.

Kristin took his hard-on in her hands, running back and forth till a rhythm built and swelled and he rocked in her grip, his face contorted with the promise of the inevitable and his hands on the edge of the refrigerator, soldered to the
cold. She brought his cock to her open legs, wanting him inside her more than she’d ever craved a man in her life. Right now, this second, her sensuality was raw and uncompromised, it could not be told no. There was no way back but through. Alessandro gripped her hips and flipped her round. Thrust forward, Kristin’s breasts plunged into the slick cartons, the freezing, even surface warmed instantly by her skin so that she slipped like a skater on the rink. His hand slapped her ass, sending a splinter of delectable pain across her backside, and when he did it again it stung her between her legs on that most delicate part and she shrieked in surprise at how much she loved it.

Desperate for him, she raised her ass. ‘Please,’ she begged, ‘take me.’ His hand came round to clutch her tits, dark and wet with chocolate and coffee and coconut, and he rubbed her down with it, the paint smeared across her belly, and disappearing inside her once more, finding her clitoris so she throbbed uncontrollably against his touch.

‘Please!’ she cried, every part of her surging. ‘I can’t stand any more!’

Alessandro stood with his feet parted and his grip on the underside of her ass. The ice cream was in her mouth and hair and dripping down her body in a myriad of colours. She felt like an animal fresh from the kill, the barest, most primal part of herself.