Authors: Rebecca Chance
She grimaced at the thought of another pregnancy.
I’ll do it
in a year. Everyone says the best way is to get it over with quickly
.
Victoria was, of course, no longer having sex with Jeremy:
she would get pregnant by the turkey-baster method the
next time around. Jeremy was permanently ensconced in the
dressing room, while Lykke had moved into the master
bedroom with Victoria. The deal, negotiated with much tactful manoeuvrings between the three of them, was as
unorthodox as everything else in Victoria’s private life.
Jeremy would be allowed to crack the door open on occasion
when Lykke and Victoria were having sex, enough to watch
what they were doing. Victoria was so used to having Jeremy
watch her while she satisfied her needs that to her this was
not in any way a big deal. Lykke, although not entirely happy
with the situation, was aware that she needed to compromise
to some degree, and her direct, Scandinavian approach to sex
meant that she was not inhibited in any way by knowing that
there was a silent, but very appreciative spectator to what
she and Victoria did together.
Fortunately, Jeremy’s natural jealousy was alleviated by the
fact that Lykke’s job meant that she travelled a great deal. She
might be sharing Victoria’s bed, but she wouldn’t actually be
in it for more than a third of the year; while Jeremy would be
here every day, every night, spending time with his wife, raising their daughter, being the heart and centre of their home.
‘I’m so happy,’ Victoria said, sitting down at the table, looking from Jeremy, who was dishing up dinner, to Lykke, who
was watching him spoon out the portion of risotto he was
giving Victoria, giving an approving nod at its quantity. ‘I’m
just so happy.’
‘To your new job!’ Jeremy uncorked a bottle of Chablis.
‘We’re all so proud of you. Even Baby Sasha’s proud of
Mummy! Here.’ He poured a small trickle of white wine into
a glass and handed it to his wife. ‘This way Baby Sasha can join
in the celebrations too.’
‘Just a bit later than the rest of us,’ Victoria said, taking the
glass. ‘Oh God, how I miss wine!’
Lykke had lit the candelabra at the centre of the kitchen
table, and now she dimmed the overhead lights, since Jeremy
no longer needed them to cook by. The candle flames flickered,
warm and relaxing, and the Bach concerto playing in the background provided the final touch of calm perfection.
‘To us,’ Victoria said, raising her glass. ‘To all of us. To making
it work.’ She reached out and touched Jeremy’s arm. ‘Thank
you so much for dinner, darling,’ she said appreciatively.
Jeremy went pink with happiness.
He knows that Lykke’s making me so much nicer, Victoria
thought. That’s one of the reasons he’s accepted her so well.
Better to have half of me, being nice, than all of me being
appalling.
‘To us,’ Lykke said softly, raising her glass in turn. ‘Thank
you so much, Jeremy, for letting me be part of this family.’
‘To us,’ Jeremy said, raising his own glass, clinking it with
Victoria’s and then Lykke’s. He smiled at both the women. ‘To
making it work.’
He cleared his throat.‘Now sit down and eat,’ he said gruffly.
‘I didn’t cook a lovely dinner to have you let it go cold. And
Victoria, you make sure you eat up every scrap of that risotto.
Lykke and I both have our eyes on you . . .’
‘
I s this place okay?’ Xavier asked, as he came back with a
drink in each hand, placing them carefully on the table
before sinking down into the capacious sofa next to Coco. ‘It’s
the latest Lower East Side hangout – it just opened last week.
It’d be packed, usually, but with the weather, most people’ll
just have gone home. It’s only locals here, really. So that’s why
it looks a bit empty . . .’
He caught himself. ‘Sorry, I’m babbling, aren’t I?’ he said
apologetically. ‘It’s just—’
‘Just what?’ Coco could hardly read his expression; the bar
was as fashionably dark as all the hipster hangouts on the LES.
‘Here.’ Xavier handed Coco her cocktail glass. ‘Your Earl
Grey martini.’
‘I had Earl Grey with Victoria this afternoon,’ Coco said. ‘I
thought I’d continue the theme.’ She clinked her glass with his,
carefully, because they were both brimming. ‘What did you
get?’ she asked.
‘It’s like a classy rum punch, as far as I could make out,’ he
said. ‘Want to try some?’
‘No, I’m fine, thanks,’ Coco said, sipping hers. ‘Mmn,
yummy.’
‘It has egg white in it,’ Xavier said. ‘Whipped up, to make it
frothy.’
‘It’s really good,’ she said.
‘I’m glad.’
They both put their drinks back on the table. Cocktail
conversation had been made, the social politenesses had been
observed, and now there was nothing to talk about but the
elephant in the room.
‘What were you going to say – before?’ Coco asked, squishing round on the sofa to try to get a look at Xavier’s face.
‘Oh.’ He shrugged, ducking his head. ‘I just thought, Jacob
must have taken you to all the best places in the city. I can’t
compete with that. But I can take you to the hippest ones.’ He
was mumbling now. ‘It’s stupid of me, I suppose.’
‘No, it isn’t.’ Coco wriggled round more, until she was
almost in a ball, her knees pulled up in front of her, her back
propped against the arm of the sofa. ‘It isn’t at all.’ She drew
a deep breath. ‘If I’m being brutally honest, I suppose part of
Jacob’s attraction was that he did take me to the poshest
places, showed me the high life. He dazzled me. He swept
me off my feet.’
‘You didn’t owe me anything,’ Xavier said fairly. ‘You didn’t
make any promises to me or anything like that. When we
hooked up, I thought it was going to be something more.’ He
reached for his drink. ‘Okay, I
wanted
it to be something more,’
he mumbled round his straw, taking a pull of rum punch. ‘But
I know how the game’s played. I mean, we never said we were
going to be exclusive – you had a total right to see other people.
And then you decided you liked someone else better. You had
a total right to do that too.’
‘I don’t want to play a game,’ Coco said. ‘Any games.’
She shivered, thinking of Jacob.
I never want to see him again, she thought. Thank God he’s
staying away for a year. I look back on the things I did with him
and I feel really creeped out. He was old enough to be my
father – God, older than my father! And he never asked me
what I wanted to do, never. It was always his way.
It would always have been his way.
I starved myself down to skin and bone for him, and it was still
never enough. I had an incredibly lucky escape.
‘I rang you,’ she said, ‘not just because I wanted to
apologise—’
‘You don’t have anything to apologise for,’ Xavier insisted,
but his shoulders were still stiff, and he had not yet turned to
look at her.
‘But I wanted to explain,’ she said, realising that his pride
wouldn’t let him hear her tell him that she was sorry; he
didn’t want to see himself as injured, or as a victim. ‘Because
you and I,’ she felt herself blushing, ‘we had an amazing
night. Really amazing.’
Xavier’s shoulders softened a little. ‘It was pretty good,’ he
muttered.
‘I got carpet burns,’ Coco said, pressing on.
‘Oh, jeez, did you?’ He turned to face her. ‘I’m so sorry!’
‘No, God! I really enjoyed it.’ She was definitely blushing
now, grateful for the darkness. And she thought, yet again, how
different Xavier was from Jacob; her ex-fiancé would never
have apologised for leaving marks on her.
In the last few weeks, Coco had been reading up on S&M
practices on the internet. She had learned that Jacob had
violated every canon of safe practice; he had not let her choose
her own safe word, he had never asked her what she liked and
what she feared, had never made sure she was consenting, had
gagged her and never given her a gesture that would substitute
for the safe word she couldn’t utter with her mouth blocked.
He had taken over completely, ignoring her wishes in a way
that no reputable S&M dominant would ever do.
‘I got some, um, abrasions on my palms,’ Xavier admitted,
embarrassed. ‘I guess we were going at it pretty good.’
Coco giggled, equally embarrassed: but her memories of
that night with X were all lovely, she knew.
Okay, embarrassing, but lovely. Sexy, wild, lovely
. Her body was reacting to them;
her nipples were hardening, and she felt that little twitch
between her legs that was equally impossible to fake, that
instant response of arousal that sent heat diffusing up through
her lower body.
‘It was fantastic,’ she said frankly. ‘
You
were fantastic.’
He coughed. ‘So were you,’ he said, his voice soft now,
becoming intimate. ‘Coco . . .’ He swivelled round to face her
now. Their knees touched, and the contact sent a rush of
excitement through her, an electric current switching on.
Xavier waited for a moment, to see if she would pull away; and
when she didn’t, he pressed his knees more firmly against hers.
‘I’m really glad we got this time by ourselves,’ he said.
‘Before the girls all storm in and start shrieking about what
they bought today.’
Tiffany had arrived in New York the day before, and Emily
and Lucy had taken her out shopping that afternoon: they
were both employed now on
Mini Style
, one of the perks of
being an editor being that you could delegate your friendsslash-employees to entertain your sister while you were hard
at work. One of the other perks, of course, was that you could
choose which photographers your editors would book for
shoots. As soon as
Mini Style
had been set up, Coco had sent
round a memo, not only telling everyone on the staff that
Ludovic was permanently blacklisted from ever working for
her magazine, but asking them to start compiling a list of other
photographers whose behaviour had warranted a similar ban.
It was growing fast. Victoria had, to Coco’s astonishment, had
also banned Ludovic from working for
Style
in the future,
which had made Emily, in particular, very happy.
In another push to change fashion magazines for the better,
Coco was focusing on getting what were called plus-sized
models – a UK 12 or 14 – into the magazine, and featuring
boutiques in
Mini Style
’s pull-out shopping guides to major
cities that carried sizes beyond a US 8. Emily and Lucy had
been researching the New York scene, and come up with an
entire list of places where they could take Tiffany shopping
and find a range of clothes she could fit into.
‘Tiff’s been texting me,’ Coco said, smiling happily. ‘It
sounds like they’re having a brilliant time.’
‘Good,’ Xavier said. ‘I’m glad. But they’re not here now.
And I’m wondering why you called me and asked me to join
you all.’ He looked at her seriously. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I was
really glad to hear from you, to come out with the girls. Like
old times. But . . .’
He tailed off, prompting Coco to respond. She took a deep
breath, knowing that it was her cue.
‘I’ve been thinking about you, a lot,’ she admitted.
Contrasting you with Jacob. Realising that all my memories of
sex with Jacob make me cringe, and my memories of sex with you
are really, really great.
‘And I wanted to see you again. To see if . . .’
He didn’t say anything; he wasn’t going to help her out.
Which is fair, Coco thought. I cut things off, cold, when he
wanted to keep going. I should have to do the work now.
‘To see if we could sort of pick up where we left off,’ she
concluded, her voice small, sheepish.
‘I don’t want to be used, Coco,’ Xavier said very intently. ‘I
don’t want to be just your fuck buddy or booty call, the guy
you pick up and put down when you’ve got an itch you want
to scratch. Or a Band-Aid. You know – to stick on a wound. I
have feelings for you.’
‘I have feelings for you too,’ she told him. ‘I’ve been thinking about you so much. Ever since I broke it off with Jacob.’
Xavier’s eyebrows shot up. ‘
You
broke it off with Jacob?’ he
said, his voice full of surprise.
‘Yes, I bloody did,’ Coco said indignantly. ‘Honestly, is it so
hard to believe?
I
broke up with
him!
’
Well, I left the ring behind, she thought. I did do that. But
Jacob never got in touch, never contacted me once, not even to
see how I was. After the wife he hadn’t bothered to tell me
about tried to kill me, he couldn’t even get in touch to apologise for not telling me he was married to Mireille, to see how I
was doing.
I starved myself down to size zero for him, and he never even
took the time to ring me and ask me if I was okay after Mireille
tried to push me off his balcony.
‘And believe me,’ she said defiantly, ‘I don’t regret it – not
one bit. I was an idiot to date him in the first place.’
‘Oh, you weren’t an idiot. I get it,’ Xavier said sympathetically. ‘Emily and Lucy did too. I mean, Jacob was so rich and
powerful. It’s a huge deal. They pretty much told me what you
said just now – that he swept you off your feet and you couldn’t
think straight.’
‘I
couldn’t
think straight,’ Coco said, passionate in her need to
convince him. ‘More than that – I lost my mind! I really did. I
spent ages trying to be someone I wasn’t. Trying to be some
thing
I wasn’t – starving myself, working out two hours a day, to get
into a size zero. And I was so happy when I got there! I must
have been insane. I was skin and bone, I was hungry all the time.
And cold.’ She shivered. ‘I lost my mind,’ she repeated quietly.
‘You looked God-awful,’ Xavier said frankly. ‘You really did.
You were like a skeleton.’
‘I know,’ Coco admitted, grateful for his honesty – and not
only that. Here was a man who positively didn’t want her to be
a size zero. ‘Like I said, I was trying to be someone else.’ She
took another deep breath. ‘I was trying to be Victoria.’
Xavier nodded. ‘Everyone on
Style
’s trying to be Victoria,’
he observed. ‘I remember you girls telling me about all the
bangles and the make-up and the heels.’
‘Well, I’m not on
Style
any more,’ Coco said. ‘I’m making
my own world on
Mini Style
. I’m
not
Victoria, and I never will
be! I’m—’ She stopped dead as the force of a revelation hit her
squarely between the eyes.
‘What?’ Xavier said.
She burst out laughing. ‘You know what? I was going to say
I’m Coco. But actually, I’m
not
Coco, I’m Jodie. That’s my real
name, and I’m going to use it from now on. Who cares if it isn’t
fashion-y or posh enough? I’m the editor of a successful magazine now, not someone’s assistant! I can call myself whatever
the fuck I want!’
Xavier was laughing too. ‘What’s wrong with Jodie?’ he
asked. ‘It sounds pretty cool to me.’
‘That’s because you’re not British,’ Jodie said, laughing even
harder. ‘Over there it’s what glamour models are called – girls
who get off with footballers and sell their stories.’
‘But you’re not in Britain now,’ Xavier said, taking both her
hands. ‘You’re in the States, and over here, we’re going to think
Jodie’s a really cool, unusual name. Welcome to New York,
Jodie. It’s great to meet you.’
He bent over her, pulling her closer, hovering, waiting for a
moment, to be sure, before he kissed her. As before, the attraction was instant, flaming, Jodie kissing him back with equal
passion. For a moment, the strongest emotion which flooded
through her was relief – utter, total relief.
This feels so right
! she
thought with great happiness. They were both young, both
eager, both, frankly, horny;
all we want to do is tear each other’s
clothes off and fuck like rabbits. No weird games, no mind control.
Nothing but happy, healthy, crazy sex
.
She pulled back, gasping for breath. It was so dark that she
couldn’t see Xavier’s features at all, with his head bent over
her; a tiny speck of candlelight flickered behind him. She put
up her hand and touched his mouth, tracing its contours, feeling his smile. He bit at her finger, and she gasped again with
excitement.
‘I want to have fun,’ she said passionately. ‘I’m only twentyfive! I want to go out dancing and stay up all night. I want to
go out with Tiff and Emily and Lucy and drink silly cocktails
and gossip about work. I want to go back to that gay club and
see all your friends again – Jamie and Marco and Travis, right?
And hang out with them. They seemed really cool.’
‘They are,’ he said, laughing.
She drew a deep breath. ‘And I want to fuck my brains out
on a regular basis. I want to have fun, I want to be silly and
crazy and party hard, and I want a partner in crime. I want to
do all of that with you.’
What I’m trying to tell him, she knew, is that I’m not ready
for anything completely serious, not for a while yet. I’ve just
come out of an insane relationship and an engagement that
was a huge mistake. I was about to marry a man thirty years
older than me and live a completely different life from the one
I should be having at my age.
So right now, I just want to have fun. I want to be a normal
twenty-five year old, living it up in New York. With a great job,
and hopefully, a really hot lover . . .
‘Oh, Jodie.’ Xavier’s arms tightened around her. ‘I want to
do that too. All of it. But most of all, right now, I want to fuck
your brains out.’
She reached a hand down, feeling between his legs; he was
like a rock already. Remembering what his cock had felt like
inside her, in her mouth, she felt her lips go dry with sheer
desire.