Those Wicked Pleasures (7 page)

Slowly he made his way through the room. He stopped to take in the scent of a bowl of white roses, run his hands through a bowl of pot-pourri. At one point he seated himself on the arm of a sofa, and watched Lara. He had been a fool about her. She had been ripe for years. He should have plucked her from childhood long ago. Even as late as last evening. She looked up and saw him. He sighed and smiled at her and walked to the piano and leaned on it. ‘No, don’t stop.’

Lara finished the Gershwin song. He lowered his head and, raising her hand, kissed it. She stood up. He had not let go of her hand. He stepped back, and with a slightly threatening charm, said, ‘I should have run off with you when you were thirteen, just as I promised you I would. Now you have grown up, and maybe you won’t have me. You look very beautiful.’

Chapter 4

Coup de foudre
, a shattering blow, the thunderbolt of love at first sight. It was crazy, but that was all Lara could think about.
Coup de foudre
, and how her French teacher had given the definition and then added, ‘Young ladies, you will better understand the power of this expression when love strikes you.’ How right Mademoiselle had been. It was instant falling in love and being struck senseless at the same time. It happened for her when Jamal held her hand and they gazed into each other’s eyes and remained silent, each trying to regain some equilibrium. Impossible and
coup de foudre
kept going through her mind. She tried to block them out and recall what it felt like to be in love with Sam. The absent Sam. Safe, loving, sexy, a friend and lover completely devoted to her – yet she couldn’t even conjure up a picture of him. She had known him always, he was one of their own, and as if in a puff of smoke he vanished from her life, dispelled by another man’s touch and seductive glance.

Jamal. She had always been drawn to his handsome looks, the dark hair, the bronze skin, the sensuous lips, the large brown eyes, so dark as to seem black. Those eyes that smiled and contained such disquietingly smouldering sexual promise. How many times had she teased him about the not-quite-perfect nose? And how many childish crushes had she and her girlfriends had on David’s friend. Started and then abandoned for a puppy,
a boat, a tennis tournament. But now! This was no child’s crush, not even an adolescent one. This was the sexual attraction of a young woman for a man.

She felt a shiver of fear, but he was too quick for her and dispelled that warning. He drew her slowly into his arms. ‘It’s I who should be shivering. It’s I who should be frightened.’ He placed his hand under her chin, tilted it and gazed into her eyes. He studied her face. She had known him for so many years, but the way he was with her now, it was as if they were strangers. She felt her senses spiralling out of control, falling for this handsome unknown man.

She actually felt weak when he placed his lips upon hers, ran his tongue so sensuously between them. Her own remained closed. He traced them with his moist tongue and then kissed them with such tenderness that she had to stifle a whimper. Another kiss and another, on the side of her neck, on the lobe of her ear, on her shoulder. Then he raised her hand and placed it over his mouth and kissed the palm, and again, and then he licked it. She was struggling to find something to say. Anything. A tease, a flirt, anything to stop that feeling of falling, of being drawn to him, of wanting him.

He did not let her hand go when he stepped back from her. He reached in his pocket to withdraw a handkerchief, then delicately removed a tiny smudge of pink from her upper lip. He stroked her hair and rearranged a lock of it. She could not be unaware of the passion in his eyes, the emotion in his face, nor the way he swallowed hard before he said, ‘You want me as much as I want you. Tell me I’m not wrong about that, Lara.’

She found it difficult and confusing coping with her attraction to Jamal. To confess her desire to be made love to by him was impossible. If only her plans with Sam had not been thwarted, she would be safe in his arms at this
very minute. Any further thought of safety and Sam and love completely vanished when Jamal placed his hands on her waist and rocked her gently into his arms. Naively, she closed her eyes, hoping to hide the excitement she felt when he caressed the swell of her breasts beneath the silk taffeta. It was in vain.

An accomplished seducer of women, Jamal knew she was hopelessly attracted to him sexually. And that spurred him on. ‘How lovely, you’re naked under all this silk.’ She said nothing, but the blush of pink on her face told him he was right.

‘All naked. Not just your breasts?’ he asked. There was something about the look in her eyes that touched him deeply. A look of both innocence and carnal desire. He felt an overwhelming hunger to take her sexually, not only for his own pleasure but for hers as well. He recognised in her a far greater sexual passion than he had thought her capable of at her young, inexperienced age. Who had primed her for this? Certainly not Sam.

Jamal knew about their sexual encounter. He had been in the far corner of the room, in a high-backed wing chair, its back to the doors where Sam and Lara had been standing. Peeping around the corner of the chair he had seen and heard all. He knew, when Lara had raised her skirt, how ready she was for more sex. He also knew then that he had to have her. He had thought of little else since he had seen her naked from the waist down, except the many things he would like to do to her. Her cunt, hidden under that patch of soft blonde-blonde pubic hair, became in his mind a beautiful obsession that he would have to satisfy. Fate had delivered her to him, and he was ready to meet it. Now he was thrilled to see that so was she.

This time when he kissed her, her lips parted. He had a first taste of her as their tongues met. He felt her give
way in his arms, and he asked again, his own passion rising, ‘Answer me, Lara.’

He could feel her heart pounding, and was astounded when she did answer, ‘Yes, naked. And I am never going to wear anything under my clothes again. I want to be free and open and ready, and feel like a loose and sexual libertine, even if I can’t be one.’

It was courageous desire talking, and brave honesty, and female insecurity crying out in all innocence, and Jamal was enchanted by it. ‘I kiss you for that,’ he said, and found her to be telling the truth when his hands closed on her nude bottom and slim naked hips, and his fingers toyed with that triangle of blonde hair he was so enamoured with.

This was child’s play; he had more than this on his mind. He intended having sex and the thrill of moulding Lara into his own sexual delight. He withdrew his hands, enfolded her with one arm and said, ‘You’ve knocked me out. I pray that it is the same for you. I want to make love to you, to have sex with you. I want us to be libertine lovers and to know an excess of love together. Let me make of you an erotic woman who will seduce any man you want into becoming your sexual slave.’

Lara’s heart skipped a beat when she realised from his own lips that he too was suffering from the shock of love at first sight. If she had had any hesitation about giving herself to Jamal, his confession of love for her dissolved it. A double
coup de foudre
– irresistible, impossible to run away from. She was already putty in his hands, even before he offered to make of her the sexual enchantress she thought would bring her the love and attention she craved.

He could see in her eyes that he had got to her, that there would be no rejection here. She would be his to do with as he wanted, and he knew that he would make her
happy, more content with her sexuality than ever Sam could make her. How could Sam rival him? Sam loved her too much. And his love blinded him to the dark side of Lara’s sexual fantasy. Jamal had a clear vision of his young sexual protégé and was anxious to tap into her secret desires. Fascinated to see just how far he could go with her.

‘We shall go to the opera. But after that I must be allowed one night with you. Let me fuck you. Stay with me until I have made you well and truly mine. There will be no rest for either of us until we have had each other in that way. Only then will we know where our love will take us. You must consent.’

He gave her his hungriest tortured look, a look few women had been able to refuse. ‘Consent,’ he implored her again. ‘Consent.’

‘David must never know. I couldn’t bear it if he were to find out.’

David. Odd she hadn’t said, ‘My brothers mustn’t know.’ So it had been David who had been playing sex games with his little cousin. David who had brought out the sexual side of this beauty’s nature. The sly devil! That had to be why she wanted him never to know. She was right, of course. It would end his and David’s friendship. When Jamal recovered from his mild surprise, he asked, ‘Is that consent? You must say yes. I need you to want me, want us.’

‘Yes.’ Not a nervous, inexperienced yes. There was passion and excitement in it. Lara placed her arms around his neck and kissed him on the cheek, then on his eyes and last his lips. And now it was Jamal who was aroused by the erotic nature of this young woman.

In the car on the way to the opera, their feelings for each other intensified. He was ruthless in leading her on, exciting her to want him more than she already did. He
became more bold: he unzipped, and placed her hand on his penis. He detected none of the anxiety he had expected in imposing such intimacy on her with the cars whizzing down Fifth Avenue on either side of them. Rather, a willing submission that made his head spin with fantasies of what might be with this naive beauty.

They agreed on discretion in public. Hers was a cool, somewhat aloof demeanour that went beyond discretion. A performance, or just good breeding? Whatever it was, it unnerved Jamal. He thought he was losing her, that she had been teasing him. He felt insecure about her. This lovely-looking girl had promised herself to him. Now she had him on the run.

She turned more heads than he had expected as they cut a path through the crowds in the lobby. She was that delectable kind of beauty that older roués lust after, and young blades like to conquer in bed and sport on their arms like sexual trophies. She wore that still uncorrupted bloom of girlhood like a delicate dew gleaming on a fresh white rose. No one but himself must have her. He had already discounted Sam. He had been an error of timing, and only just, at that.

Several times during the evening a gaze passed between Lara and Jamal. He saw no flicker of passion for him in those dazzlingly seductive green eyes. During the intermission he took her by the hand and rushed her through the crowds. They paused only to be accosted by a friend, remained only long enough for civil introductions. Then he fled from the opera house with her.

No one had yet possessed Lara. Her cousin might have loved her, toyed with her, but Jamal knew David: he had done no more. Sam might have taken her virginity, forestalled him there. But that boy had never possessed her. No man had. He could see that in her eyes. Now
he would. He would possess Lara Stanton as no other man had or probably ever would again. As God was his witness, she would be his, he would mark her with himself. He would make her his in a very special sexual way that few men would ever match. Theirs was already a carnal obsession.

In the lobby she managed to stop him. ‘No scandal. You promised. Not David, not anyone, must ever know. Promise again. Not until I want them to.
We
have to be
our
secret.’

The urgency of passion. In her eyes, a yearning to place herself in his hands. He adored her candour. She had hidden behind a curtain of reserve. Now she was raising it. Here was another glimpse of her erotic nature. She would be his. He told her what she wanted to hear, ‘I promise.’ And they hurried together into the night.

Jamal kept a
pied à terre
, a charming place, where he took women. It was separated by a glass-domed conservatory from the New York family home, a twenty-five room flat with a staff of ten in the exclusive River House. The entrance to the
pied à terre
, a small brownstone, was on East Fifty-Third Street. Once its garden had backed up to River House. Jamal’s father had bought the house in order to make the garden part of his River House apartment. At a later date it had been turned into a conservatory. For his eighteenth birthday Jamal had been given the house for sex and no scandals. He had responded by having a secret door built into the conservatory wall behind a bubbling fountain.

River House was where Jamal took Lara. The
pied à terre
was where he had wanted to take her, but that would come later. For the moment the River House apartment was a better move. She knew the palatial twenty-six-storey cooperative apartment house well. At the River Club on its lower floors, her brothers played squash, she played
tennis and swam with her best girlfriend Julia who lived in the building. They had danced in the ballroom, and Julia’s father kept his yacht at the River House dock where all the best yachts had tied up before the land had been appropriated for the FDR Drive.

The post-opera supper party was being given by Jamal’s mother, Chantal, in the Ben El-Raisuli River House apartment. They would be expected to attend but until then the house, occupied only by the servants, was quiet. Jamal and Lara would have a few hours before they would be expected to make an appearance. A word to Rafik, the major domo of the household, and privacy and secrecy were theirs.

The windows overlooked the East River. The panoramic view of lights on the other side of the river was a flickering distraction for Lara from the immediate feeling of excitement – or was it fear? – at being alone with Jamal in his bedroom.

A click of the lock made her jump. She spun around to face him. His sultry, overly handsome features struck her again as more sensual than she ever remembered. Too sensual. She would try and get out of it, with some sort of grace, some sort of dignity. Much as she wanted him to take her, possess her, bend her to his sexual will as he had promised he would, there was fear of losing herself to this man.

Her instinct was to run back to Sam where she knew she would always be safe. Run back to Sam? She could hardly remember how he looked, how sex with him had been. Only the overwhelming sensations of sexual intercourse were real to her, nothing else. Not Sam and their love.

She took a step forward and was about to speak. Jamal was too quick for her. His lips closed on hers. There was fire in his kiss. It burned her, but he tempered the kiss
with gentle words of welcome, promises of carnal bliss. What reason had she to disbelieve him? Only fear of the unknown did its work. She made a feeble attempt to extricate herself. Yet he had only to kiss her hands, caress her breasts, and her fear became quiescent.

Jamal sensed the turmoil within her sexual yearnings. It only served to hone his lust. He took command. An arm around her shoulders, he walked her through his room, turning on the lights. Lara had never seen a room like it. There was a sophistication about Jamal’s bedroom that made her gasp. The navy-blue walls were lined with books and full-length eighteenth-century Moroccan portraits of handsome desert warriors. They sported flowing white robes and startling white turbans. Jewelled daggers hung at the waist from magnificent gold belts that also crossed their chests. Dark skin and hard, fiercely beautiful masculine faces stared down at her. The carpets were of a great age, patterned in a faded pomegranate colour with large silvery white flowers. One Persian design showed a hunt, fawn and deer and boar being chased by men on horseback. There were deep, comfortable easy chairs in black and navy-blue silk damask, and a multitude of cushions thrown on the sofa and floor. A panoply of jewel-like colour, yellow and red and white, gold and silver brocades. Tables of dark rich woods. A mother-of-pearl screen. And the bed – a large four-poster, draped in black and navy-blue silk damask and lined in a plum-coloured silk. It had been turned down to display white linen, pillows of shiny white satin and silk, and a plum-coloured cashmere blanket.