Sins

She’d affected not to see him, sitting down in a corner and keeping her back to him, unusually, for her, seeking out anonymity. She’d lit herself a cigarette, her hand shaking again, which she’d put down to the diet pills. She’d drunk a glass of wine and toyed with the steak she’d ordered, but for which she had no real appetite, refusing to give in to the temptation to turn round to see if he was still at the bar.

She’d just pushed the meal away virtually untouched when he’d arrived at her table, pulling out a chair and sitting opposite her.

‘I hate to see good stuff wasted,’ he said, and had then tucked into her discarded lunch without another word.

She should have got up and left. There hadn’t been anyone forcing her to stay, after all. But she had stayed, heat coursing through her body as she watched him, unable to drag her gaze from his hands and his mouth. Somewhere along the way he had learned how to eat properly, even if his total focus on the food wasn’t what she was used to or liked. But liking had nothing to do with the feelings Max aroused in her. By the time he had finished the steak, the expensive French broderie anglaise knickers she was wearing were soaked with the wetness of her arousal, thrumming through her, causing her clitoris to pulse eagerly and with increasing discomfort.

As she’d discovered with the first lover she’d taken after Robert’s birth–the new husband of a smug fellow deb who’d been foolish enough to cut her and not invite her to her wedding–she was easily orgasmic, but not surely so easily orgasmic that she was actually going to come sitting watching a man eat in a pub. Enticing, exciting though the prospect of having sex with him was, that certainly did not fit in with her own image of herself at all. Not one little bit. She was all about control.

That had been when she had decided that it was time for her to leave.

She had got as far as the stuffy narrow corridor that led to the ladies when he had caught up with her, reaching for her and spinning her round, and then pressing her up against the wall as he kissed her, thrusting his tongue aggressively against her, and expertly sliding his hand up her skirt and into her wet knickers.

She’d come within seconds, the pressure of his mouth silencing her pleasure.

She’d still been trembling from it when he’d taken hold of her hand and hauled her into the ladies, leaning against the outer door to stop anyone else from coming in.

The ladies was a cramped airless area with a washbasin in the corner and one lavatory, a couple of feet away from the door into the corridor. He’d kicked open the lavatory door with his foot and then turned her round so that she’d had her back to him, pushing up her short skirt and pulling down her knickers, so that he could take her doggy style.

She had thought herself experienced, but being fucked by Max had been a revelation, because with Max it was being fucked. For one thing he was big–very big. She’d heard that but had dismissed it as exaggeration, but it was obvious that she’d been wrong. For another, he was selfish and aggressive, but somehow that had made the whole thing all the more exciting and thus her own pleasure all the more intense.

After he had come, he had washed himself in the basin, and then left.

It was only later, when she was back in her own Cadogan Place house, soaking in the bath, that she had realised that from the moment he had started to eat her discarded lunch to the moment he had left her in the ladies he had not said one single word to her.

She hadn’t seen him again for nearly five weeks, despite the fact that she had virtually haunted both the pub and Annabel’s ever since, hoping that she might.

Seeing a photograph of him in the Express, partying with a group that had included several well-known models, had filled her with a savage burst of temper that had resulted in her throwing a very expensive piece of Sèvres china–a pretty plate given to her by a previous admirer–at the marble fireplace of her drawing room.

She’d been on the point of leaving London for Denham with Robert when Vogue had got in touch with her, wanting to do a pi

ece on her. She’d agreed, of course, and when the features editor had come round to the house to interview her she’d seen a photograph of Robbie and had immediately wanted to do something on them both.

Bailey had photographed her, initially with Robbie and then on her own.

It had been whilst she was at his studio that the door had opened and Max had walked in, and she had known then that somehow the Vogue shoot had been his idea and was his way of indicating his interest in her. The whole of society, or so it seemed, was entranced by London’s underworld. Certain members of its criminal gangs were now high-profile celebrities in their own right: men like the Kray brothers, for instance, and, of course, Max, who it was rumoured had made a fortune through his involvement in boxing and, so some said, strip clubs.

They had had rough sex on the studio floor whilst Bailey had gone out to buy more cigarettes. That evening Max had taken her out to the Kray twins’ club, laughing at her when she’d told him that she didn’t want to go there. She’d seen and been secretly impressed by the way he fitted as easily into that world–his world–as he did into hers.

She had learned not to question him or push him, because when she did he simply disappeared. He refused to spend the night with her or take her back to his apartment. He liked his sex rough and raw, taken quickly and dangerously, in ways and places that added an exciting edge of risk. He liked sex in public places, where they could easily be caught out: Hyde Park, one morning, when he’d pulled her off the path and leaned her against a tree, pushing up her skirt and silencing her warning protest with a hard kiss as he thrust into her, leaving her weak with excitement and longing as she clung to him, urging him in deeper, even though she could hear the sound of an advancing crocodile of school children. When he had pulled out of her a split second before the children had appeared, turning his back on them whilst leaving her to cover herself as best she could, all she had cared about was having him back inside her to finish what he had started.

There had been other similar occasions, in darkened alleyways, and once in a taxi when he’d thrust his hand up her skirt and then into her knickers, bringing her so close to orgasm just as they reached their destination that she’d have given anything to have him finish what he’d started, stationary taxi and waiting cabby notwithstanding.

On that occasion he’d been escorting her home after an evening at a private gambling club where he’d won rather a lot of money, by cheating, Emerald had suspected. As soon as they were inside her house she’d headed for the stairs, but she’d only made it up the first few before Max had caught up with her, bending her over so that her hands were on a higher stair whilst he entered her from behind–his favourite position.

He had tried to persuade her to let him have anal sex with her but that was something that Emerald had resisted–so far. Such an act connected far too closely with Lord Robert, the man she had always thought of as her father, for it to have any appeal for her.

Her refusal had angered Max. He had lost his temper with her and lashed out at her, punching her hard in the stomach, the force of the blow making her sick and leaving her crawling on the floor of her bedroom in so much pain that she had neither known nor cared that he had left. Until later. Until her body had started craving him again.

She would tire of him, of course–that went without saying–and in fact she was surprised that she hadn’t done so already.

She fidgeted with the hem of her mini now. It was three days since she had last seen him. She looked across the sports field to where her mother was standing with Robert. She’d better go over.

Drogo watched her walk away from him in a skirt so short she had every pair of eyes in the vicinity fixed on her. She’d got good legs and it was not surprising that Vogue had eulogised her, stating that with her beauty she more than matched the looks of many of the day’s top models.

Bailey had done the photo shoot, Drogo had noticed, wondering cynically if the photographer had adopted what was supposed to be his favoured fashion shoot practice of closing the studio door and fucking the model.

Even he was torn between appreciation for what had to be one of the sexiest bodies he had ever seen, Drogo admitted, and his awareness of what a total bitch Emerald could be.