‘DO YOU WANT to come to Graham’s party?’ Clare asked Daniel as she slicked on another layer of deep plummy lipstick. ‘I feel that I’ve got to go because Graham has been so good about taking my paintings but it’ll just be full of people from the art society talking about their children’s piano lessons and mortgages and...’ Daniel was already shaking his head. A thrill of excitement raced through her. She was going to the party on her own. ‘You look very pretty,’ Daniel said as he wandered into the bedroom. Clare smiled her thanks, feeling a little guilty over the effort she had been making. But she didn’t have anything to feel guilty about, she reminded herself . . . yet. ‘Shall I help you do that up?’ Daniel began to button up the back of Clare’s long red silk dress. It was stunning, but not in an obvious way, clinging tightly to the contours of her breasts and her waist before flaring gently out in a sweep of fabric that reached her ankles. She felt covered and yet revealed. The fe
WHEN CLARE GOT back to the flat in the early hours of the morning, Daniel was already in bed. When he asked where she had been she told him that she had stayed behind, with a few of the others, to help clear up after the party. Then, she continued, they all went back to Graham’s house for a night-cap. Clare claimed that a girl Daniel didn’t know had given her a lift home. He didn’t question her any further. ‘Come to bed,’ he murmured, stretching an arm out from beneath the duvet. Clare shook her head. ‘I want to get some painting done while I’m still in the mood,’ she told him. ‘Graham wants some more boat pics for the weekend.’ ‘But it’s the middle of the night!’ Daniel exclaimed. ‘And I’ve been waiting and waiting for you to come back so that I could help you off with that dress .. .’ A guilty shudder ran through her but Clare gaily shrugged her shoulders as she reminded him, 'You can’t choose when you're going to get hit with a flash of inspiration.’ ‘See if I care,’ he grunte
‘THOUGHT YOU MIGHT be thirsty,’ Daniel said, handing Clare a vodka on the rocks. He looked as if he had been crying. ‘What did you paint?’ he asked. Clare had thrown a sheet over the wet canvas at his approach. ‘Nothing good. It went wrong,’ she told him. He was almost lifting up the corner of the sheet. ‘Don’t look at it,’ she implored him softly. ‘You know I hate letting you see stuff that I’m not happy with.’ ‘I’m sure I would be impressed,’ he assured her but he let the paint-splashed sheet drop again. The next day, Clare decided, she would have to get rid of her latest masterpiece. ‘I’m sorry about earlier,’ Daniel told Clare as he stood with his back to her, surveying the mess of his own ruined painting. ‘No worries. It was my fault too. The fickle muse, eh?’ Clare replied, knowing that his temper tantrum should be far outweighed in the guilt stakes by what she had just found herself doing. ‘Let’s go into the other room.’ Even covered by a sheet, the portrait of the lover s
‘GET THE DOOR would you, Clare?’ Daniel screamed. Clare was painting in the studio, he was painting at their bedroom window, finally deigning to take some inspiration from the quaint little houses which spread out below. The doorbell chimed again. Clare and Daniel were engaged in a battle over whose work was less important, who could afford to put down their brush on the off-chance that it wasn’t the Jehovah's Witnesses. Clare lost. Clare opened the door to a petite blonde, about her age, but considerably better dressed, in a pastel blue suit. She offered Clare a hand which wore two subtly expensive rings and smiled to show a row of equally expensively cared-for teeth. Clare wiped her hand, complete with bitten nails, clean on the seat of her jeans and they shook. ‘Clare?’ she asked. The dark-haired girl nodded. ‘I’m Francesca Philip. I saw your paintings in the Dragon Gallery. I do hope you don’t mind my coming here. I'd like to commission you to do a painting for me. Graham gave
AFTER FRANCESCA HAD gone Clare stood at the window for a long while, just looking out across the houses to the sea, thinking. That evening the sea was very calm. Just a few wispy, cotton-wool clouds crossed the pinky blue sunset and were echoed by the tiny white horses riding the waves. The beach was deserted but for a boy and his dog. The boy threw a stick and the dog barked, the distant noise carried up to the window by the wind so that it mingled with the calling of the gulls constantly wheeling overhead. The view from the flat where Clare and Daniel lived was almost the same as the view from Steve’s hotel, though their flat was a little lower down the hill. Steve, Steve, Steve. What had Clare been doing? She had never slept with a married man before and had always thought of the guys who had affairs as rats. In fact she had decided never to do the dirty on another girl right after the birthday party where Susie Powell stole her man and her pre-pubescent self-esteem. But at the sa
CLARE STARTED WORK on Steve's portrait the very next day. She chose to work from the picture of him sitting on his car outside the ivy-clad house, his family home. She chose it because he was wearing a forced, for-the-camera smile. It wasn’t an expression Clare had seen on his face in the flesh and thus it was the nearest she could come to finding a picture which didn’t remind her of his naked flesh every time she referred to it for her preliminary sketches. After an hour or so Clare had produced a vague, compositional outline. She stood back and appraised her work. She felt no urge to slip her hand inside her blouse today. The picture wasn’t working. It wasn’t Steve. But so what? Francesca would think it was him, Francesca would see the jumper and the car and remember snapping the shutter on that strained smile and for her it would be Steven. Daniel wandered in and out of the studio with cups of coffee as Clare painted. He wasn’t painting. He was having another off day. ‘Mmm, nice
FRANCESCA CAME TO see how the painting was getting on just a couple of days after Clare started to paint it. Clare was alone in the flat, Daniel having driven back to London for a couple of days to try and persuade some galleries to display his work there. Francesca explained that her husband was in the area on family business, turning some houses into flats for the tourists. She could only come down to see him occasionally because she had a business of her own these days, a boutique in Chelsea. Bought to keep her out of the way, Clare thought unkindly. She could imagine what it was like. Full of the kind of peachy pale clothes Francesca was wearing now, populated by bored housewives who giggled like schoolgirls and snatched up sequinned numbers for parties while their husbands were seduced by girls who wore jeans. Francesca stood behind Clare for a while as she painted. The blonde girl had one arm wrapped protectively around her body so that her hand caressed her hip, while the othe
LIFE IS WHAT happens when you've made other plans. The next day, when Francesca had finally gone back to London, Clare wandered down to the harbour, diligently avoiding the fatal café on her way. Since she couldn't find her foldaway stool in the chaos of the flat, Clare doubled up her jumper to make a seat on the cold, grey stone wall, and balanced the board she used for an easel on her knees. Graham wanted still more sea scenes. The woman in America was ordering them to be sent all over the place for Christmas. Clare mixed up a job lot of sea-green on the inside of her paint-box lid and began to work on three small scenes at once, like a factory production line. She hadn’t got much further than three wishy-washy horizons when he appeared. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’ 'Yes, fancy.’ Clare replied. Steve was swaddled against the cold in a huge cream fisherman’s jumper. He sat down beside her on the harbour wall without being invited and cast an eye over the paintings. ‘Hmmm,’ he said.
‘I'm off to bed,’ Harriet told Rowena. ‘It was a lovely evening.’ Rowena peered at her through the smoke of one of her rare cigarettes. ‘Did you enjoy it? You don’t look very happy.’ ‘I’m just tired. I’m not used to such late hours!’ ‘Have you seen my brother?’ ‘Chris went into the garden,’ Harriet told her. Rowena smiled. ‘He's drunk too much. I'll say goodnight to Lewis for you; he’s busy right now.’ The woman with her laughed. ‘He certainly is. Marita keeps most men busy. She nearly killed my husband last year!’ Rowena’s laughter joined her friend’s and Harriet fled upstairs, certain that they were secretly mocking her. She lay awake until six in the morning but Lewis didn’t join her, and she guessed then that the story must have been true and Marita had kept him busy. At first she wept, but then she told herself that crying was useless. A man like that was bound to be used to casual affairs — what she had to do was make herself indispensable to him, no matter what was nece
FOR THE NEXT two nights Lewis spent hours in either Harriet’s or his own room, bringing her time and again to the heights of ecstasy she had come to expect from him, and every time she climaxed, every time he taught her something new, she was bound more closely to him. The fact that he was slowly being bound more closely to her was something Lewis chose to ignore. Then, on the Saturday, everything changed. Harriet had been surprised to be invited to the dinner party, and had cancelled her planned evening with Ella because she didn’t want to miss the chance of a genuine film star’s party. Ella green with envy, had understood but demanded a full report in exchange for being let down. ‘I want to hear all about what Rowena wore, ate, drank and how she behaved,’ she told Harriet. ‘Of course. I'll tell you about Lewis too.’ ‘I’m sure you will,’ said Ella, who already had her suspicions about Harriet and the star's husband. When they finally sat down to dinner, Harriet found that she wa
Lewis’s own erection had now subsided but at the sight of Harriet being aroused to new and only dimly understood heights, he felt himself start to stir again. As the startling feelings continued to grow, Harriet’s breasts began to ache and after only a slight hesitation she reached up, drawing Lewis’s head down towards her. ‘Tell me what you want,’ he murmured. ‘My breasts,’ she moaned, thrusting them up towards his mouth. “They ache.’ ‘And what do you want me to do about it?’ he teased. Harriet didn’t know if she could tell him, but the insistent clamouring of her needy flesh won over her deeply ingrained reticence at vocalising her desires. ‘Suck them for me, Lewis, please.’ ‘Hard or soft?’ he asked, his hand still continuing its pressing movements and his finger drawing up the clitoral hood as he worked so that he could brush lightly across the top of the exposed nub. ‘Hard!’ she begged, her body now nothing but a pressurised aching need for the final stimuation that would a
THAT EVENING CHRIS and Rowena went to the opera. Lewis hated opera. ‘Good music spoilt by bad acting,’ was his opinion and nothing he saw ever made him change his mind. After they'd gone he went in search of Harriet and found her reading a book in the comfort of the drawingroom. ‘We've got the house to ourselves,’ he said with a smile. ‘How would you like a nice bath? We can use the tub in Rowena’s bathroom - it’s meant for two.’ Harriet lifted her eyes from the page. ‘I had a shower this morning, thanks.’ For a moment Lewis couldn’t believe he’d heard her correctly. “You don’t have to be dirty,’ he said with a laugh. ‘It’s meant to be a sensual pleasure.’ Harriet smiled in an absent-minded way. ‘I’m sure it would be, but I’m a bit tired tonight.’ Since nothing in his imaginary script had prepared Lewis for this he was totally at a loss. ‘I'd like it,’ he said slowly. ‘Doesn’t that matter to you?’ With a soft sigh Harriet put the book to one side. ‘Of course it does, Lewis, but
Harriet felt that she was going to explode. Her body was being racked by liquid fire and then the incessant drumming of the pulse between her legs changed to a startlingly intense tingling that felt hot and rushed upwards through her with terrifying speed. She shouted out loud, knowing that she could no longer keep her body still even to please this man who meant so much to her. At the sound Lewis moved his fingers to the side of her clitoris and rubbed the slippery tissue with tiny circular motions as he moved in and out of her, his own body straining for relief from the continuous sexual tension as much as Harriet’s. It was Harriet who came first and as her body went taut with the first fierce contractions of her orgasm her vaginal walls contracted tightly around Lewis so that she felt as though she was milking him. She heard him groan and then he was thrusting without thought for her, thrusting solely to give himself the satisfaction that he knew Harriet was about to get. Harri
LEWIS STARED AT Harriet, hiding his anger behind a mask of indifference. Inwardly he was raging, not only at the fact that she had come into the room uninvited but also at his own stupidity in allowing Rowena to persuade him to make love to her at a time when he should have been concentrating solely on Harriet. ‘Rowena will be with you in a moment,’ he said smoothly, his arousal dissipating at great speed. Harriet’s eyes were wide and she stared at her employer as Rowena, ignoring the younger woman's presence, continued to move herself up and down on Lewis until with a cry of pleasure her body gave itself over to the warm flooding joy of orgasm. Harriet knew that she should leave the room but her legs seemed unable to move. She stayed rooted to the spot watching Rowena’s total abandonment to her sexuality. She felt almost consumed by envy, having spent most of her waking hours imagining what her next sexual encounter with Lewis would be like. Now she was forced to face the fact tha
Harriet was shocked by his casual acceptance of what they’d seen. Rowena was his wife, and even an open marriage didn’t usually include letting your wife have sex with her half-brother. She decided he was simply good at hiding his emotions, and that this was the only way he could cope with the situation. She was wrong. Lewis was drawn to Rowena sexually; like most men he admired her body and found her sexual magnetism alluring, but emotionally he was untouched by her. Their marriage had suited him as much as it suited her. The joining together of his analytical, muchadmired director's brain and her renowned sexuality and beauty had attracted almost as much attention in Hollywood as Marilyn Monroe’s marriage to Arthur Miller. Looking into the bedroom again, Harriet realised that Rowena’s first priority didn’t seem to be freedom from her bonds so much as freedom from her frustration, for once she failed to loosen her wrists she got to her feet and stood in front of one of the bed-post
WHEN LEWIS LED Harriet into a tiny room two doors down the landing from his bedroom she thought first that she was in a cupboard, but as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness she realised that it had originally been intended as a dressing room, although the adjoining door had now been filled in. There was little furniture there, only a high backed chair and a two-seater settee in front of a square window, which let in no light at all. She turned to Lewis in bewilderment. ‘What is this room?’ ‘Sit here next to me on the sofa and look carefully at the window,’ he said softly. Puzzled, she stared at the glass, and after a few seconds realised that she was looking into a distinctly feminine bedroom lavishly decorated in various shades of lilac. As she watched, a figure crossed her line of vision, and she saw Rowena walking totally naked from her adjoining bathroom back to her bed. Harriet ducked down and Lewis laughed. ‘She can’t see you, it’s a two-way mirror.’ ‘You mean, anyone
Every nerve in Harriet’s body seemed to be alive now. She was trembling with excitement and frantic for more intimate touches but when she reached for his hand to try and move it where she wanted he shook his head. ‘It’s better to wait,’ he assured her. In the adjoining room Chris felt his own breathing quicken. Lewis was playing her with consummate skill, and her restlessly moving legs and upthrusting young breasts were testimony to her arousal. He himself was hard, and longed to be allowed to join in, to take the girl in the ways that he liked, the ways that kept Rowena enthralled. He was surprised by his reaction. Normally he would simply have wanted Rowena more than ever, but he knew that he was going to have to have Harriet before too long. At last Lewis took pity on Harriet and lightly kneaded some of the lotion into each of her breasts in turn. He heard her breath catch in her throat and her eyes were grateful. Then, to Harriet’s surprise, he moved himself up the bed so that