‘Look, Sophia. Jez . . .’
‘Do you know what I love doing?’ she said, her warm mouth nuzzling into his ear.
His throat was too dry to speak.
‘Fucking on coke,’ she whispered, pushing him back on to the bed and straddling him.
Hell, I’m only human, he thought as her hand sank to the waistband
of his jeans, unbuckling them and pulling them down. His cock was erect and almost painful with need, pushing at the material of his boxer shorts. Looking deep into his eyes, she took his index finger and lifted it to her mouth, sucking it, swirling her tongue around it, then slowly, slowly, pulled it out, saliva glinting in the soft light. She stretched over to retrieve the mirror and dipped his fingertip into the small mound of cocaine. Putting the mirror down, she slid off him and knelt on the bed, lifting her perfect arse towards him, licking her own fingers and stroking the dark crease, opening her tight rosebud, and leaving him in no doubt about where she wanted the cocaine administered. Alex got up and went behind her.
‘Oh God, yes, there,’ she panted as Alex ran his free hand down her spine, towards her peachy buttocks.
He was mesmerised by this woman, drunk with desire. Fuck you, Jez, he thought as he pushed his finger into her.
He didn’t even hear the click as the bedroom door opened, but he heard the gasp. He whirled around to find Emma standing there, her hand over her mouth.
‘Oh shit, Em, I ...’ he stuttered, but she turned away and ran. By the time he made it to the corridor, she was gone.
He ran through the fire escape and took the stairs down, guessing she would have taken the lift. He clattered down the concrete steps four at a time, crashing into walls, finally bursting into the hotel lobby and startling the tiger, which finally lifted its head and gave a half-hearted growl.
‘Emma, stop!’ he shouted as he saw her push through the revolving doors. He rushed out on to the street just as she sprinted across Park Lane, barely looking at the speeding traffic.
‘Wait! Please!’ he called, as a bus came from nowhere, causing him to stumble backwards on to the pavement. It had started to rain, but he could see her on the other side of the road, her red dress as vivid as a poppy. There was a break in the traffic and he ran across the road.
Where had she gone? Then he saw a flash of red a hundred yards ahead of him; she’d run into the park.
‘Emma! Come back, please!’
He pounded after her, so full of adrenalin he didn’t feel the cold drizzle soaking his thin T-shirt. And then finally he saw her, slumped on the steps of the bandstand, her shoulders heaving. She was sobbing, her face buried in her arms.
‘Em, I’m so sorry,’ he began, reaching out to touch her shoulder, but she jerked violently away, scrambling backwards.
‘Sorry?’ she screamed, bending at the waist from the effort.
Yellow light from the old-style streetlamps illuminating the park pathways fell on to her face, and Alex could see she was ghostly white, except for sickly pink spots in the middle of her cheeks.
She closed her eyes and he could see a cloud of breath escape from her lips.
‘You are so predictable,’ she spat, her entire body shivering.
‘Nothing happened,’ he said lamely.
‘Nothing?’ she said with a harsh laugh. ‘You were naked, putting coke up her arse, like some sad fucking rock cliché.’
‘We . . . we went upstairs to phone Ellis Cole,’ he said, knowing how pathetic it sounded.
‘Of course!’ said Emma, flapping her arms at her sides. ‘That’s what you go upstairs to a hotel room for. Well it’s a good job I saw you go off with that tart, isn’t it?’ she said sarcastically. ‘A good job I followed you, a good job the housekeeper let me in, because otherwise something might have happened.’
‘She said I could be in this campaign,’ he pleaded. ‘She pulled my T-shirt off to see if my body ...’ He trailed off.
A guttural part sob, part laugh pierced the night air. ‘Don’t stop,’ she said. ‘I’m dying to hear the part about how Ellis answered the phone and told you to take all her clothes off and stick coke up her backside.’
‘We didn’t have sex,’ he said, looking at the wet ground.
‘Yes, you did,’ she said quietly, then turned and walked away.
He followed her slowly, at a distance, not knowing what to do or say. She looked so small and vulnerable, all he wanted to do was hug her and tell her how sorry he was and how he would make it up to her. Finally they came to the Serpentine lake, long, black and still save for where the rain pitted the dark surface. Alex reached out to touch her.