Twenty three
Lana Bloom
Today, I feel happy. Billie called to tell me the good news. The antineoplastons that my mother is on are working. The tests are back—the tumors are regressing. My mother will have to carry on her treatment for another three months, but she can return in two days’ time to England and carry it on here.
I am so happy I start sobbing.
To celebrate, Blake takes me out to dinner at Le Gavroche. I have already dined on the most delicious cheese soufflé cooked in double cream followed by grilled scallops, and my dessert, a raspberry millefeuille in praline-flavored chocolate, has just been put in front of me.
Blake has ordered the Le Plateau de Fromages Affines and I watch him cut a slice of strong cheese. It is almost transparently thin. He places it on a small square of cracker and slips it into his mouth. I imagine the flavors building up in his nose, the cheese melting on his hot, silky tongue, and cheesy liquids traveling down the back of his throat. I watch the movement in the strong column of his brown throat. The entire operation is fluid, elegant, almost a ceremony. It is his education. There is no greed in him.
Not even for me.
I look away and meet the eyes of another diner, a man. He is looking at me with the same expression I must have had in my face while I was looking at the banker. Now I know what lies in the belly of all those men who have ever gazed at me with desire in their eyes. I look down at my dessert, dip my finger into the praline-flavored chocolate and place it on my tongue.
I raise my eyes and Blake is watching me. ‘You are in bad trouble,’ he says.
I don’t take my finger out. ‘What kind of trouble?’ I mumble.
He smiles and is about to answer when a flash of surprised annoyance crosses his face. Its appearance and disappearance is swift. Very quickly his face resumes its neutral expression. I turn curiously to see what caused the disturbance. A silver-haired man is walking towards our table. When the man arrives, he totally ignores me, and looks only at Blake.
Blake’s lips twist. ‘Father, meet Lana. Lana, my father,’ he introduces.
His father glances at me. His eyes are pale blue stones. He pushes his glasses up his nose. He looks quite mild and harmless. If I had seen him in the street, I would have smiled at him.
‘Run along to the ladies and powder your nose or something. I need to speak to my son,’ he says.
His impatience and rudeness is so unexpected it makes me gasp. I pick up my purse automatically and make to rise, but Blake’s voice is like a whiplash. ‘Stay,’ he commands.
Surprised I meet his gaze. He is staring at me, his eyes forbidding and stern. I put my purse down, and he shifts his eyes from me to his father.
‘When I have finished dinner I will come to you,’ he says softly, and stands.
The old man says nothing. It is obvious that he is livid, but he turns around and leaves the restaurant.
Blake sits. ‘Sorry about that,’ he apologizes. ‘My father can be brusque sometimes.’
‘It’s all right,’ I say, but the incident has changed him. He has become remote and preoccupied.
He looks at my uneaten dessert. ‘Do you want coffee?’
I shake my head and he calls for the bill. He puts me into a cab and watches as I am driven away.
Blake Law Barrington
After putting Lana into a cab I hail another and tell the driver to head to Claridges. I check my phone: my brother has called. I call him back.
‘What’s up, Marcus?’
‘Have you seen Dad?’
‘On my way to him now.’
‘Any idea why he suddenly decided he must see you?’
‘Nope,’ I lie. We chat a bit more and then he hangs up.
I don’t immediately to go up to my father’s rooms. I stroll into the bar and order myself a large whiskey. A girl comes up to me.
‘Hi,’ she says. She is very expensively dressed and very seductive. A call girl. I can tell a mile off. ‘Want to buy me a drink?’
I sigh and raise my hand. Instantly, the bartender comes to my side. I move my thumb in her direction. ‘Get her a drink too,’ I say.
The girl smiles at me. Ah, the clothes were bait, the hook is her smile. She is very beautiful. She has long, shining blonde hair that I can see is natural and pearly teeth. I so want to be distracted.
‘You must be very rich and powerful,’ she says.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘The way the bartender left what he was doing to serve you first. It’s always a good sign of big money.’
‘Where are you from?’
‘Russia.’ I nod and almost smile. Cliché of clichés. Of course, she is Russian.
‘And you? You are American?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You are a very beautiful man. I’d really like to spend the night with you.’
I have never paid for sex. And then it hits me suddenly. I am paying for sex! It makes me laugh out loud.
‘What is so funny?’ the Russian asks.
‘Why did you become a hooker?’
Her eyebrows arch. She is pure sophistication. ‘Because I like nice things.’ Then she deepens her voice until it is like hot caramel. She is very good at this. ‘And I love a hot fuck with good-looking strangers.’ She eyes my crotch greedily. She does it well and if I didn’t know better I would think she was desperate for my body and not the contents of my wallet.
Lana’s white face when my father ordered her to leave the table flashes into my mind. I down my drink and signal to the barman.
‘Charge everything to my father’s room,’ I say, and leave a fifty-pound tip. My father is tight and actually goes through his hotel bills.
‘Enjoy your drink,’ I say to the Russian beauty, and make my way to the lift.
Upstairs, my father is waiting for me. As I expected the meeting does not go well.
‘Do you think you are the first Barrington to be tempted?’ my father asks me coldly.
‘Tempted?’
‘Tempted to throw it all away for a bit of flesh.’
‘I don’t want to throw it all away.’
‘Really?’
‘It honestly hasn’t crossed my mind.’
‘Do you think I am a fool? Do you think I cannot see what she is to you? Each one of us has a personal siren summoned from some demonic place, who enters our lives in the most mundane way, leads us to the very edge, and sings as we fall to our destruction. I had mine. Many years ago.’
I stare at him. A memory struggles to surface. A voice in my head, ‘Don’t go there, boy.’ So I do not. Instead, I turn almost gratefully to my father’s story. Even the thought of my father being in love is foreign, impossible.
He smiles frostily, his voice is calm and unemotional, but the memories must have been bitter for his mouth is a tightly controlled slash in his face. ‘She was a redhead, a fledgling star. Every time I saw her, I could have ruined everything for her, but I fought it with every ounce of my being.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘Dead.’
‘What happened?’
‘It got so bad your grandfather paid a man to run off with her. She became a drug addict and died in a motel room. I saw the pictures and even then I felt an indescribable loss. But now, when I think back, I realize that my father was right. She was the enemy carefully chosen for me by fate. A beautiful butterfly. After she had destroyed me, after I’d lost everything, she would have carelessly moved on to the next flower.’ He looks intently at me. ‘What would happen if I paid your girl to leave you?’
Despite myself, I flush with anger. I turn away from him and start walking towards the door. ‘I’ll thank you to stay out of my business. I don’t want to leave everything for her. It is only a fling. A temporary thing.’
I am so angry at my father’s suggestion to pay Lana off that I walk the streets of London for almost an hour feeling strangely confused and lost. The only thing I know for sure is that I ache for her. With every fiber of my being, I ache for her.
I tell myself it is just lust. But I know, I know it isn’t. It isn’t lust when you want to reach out and wipe away her tears and press her body against your own. I don’t just want to fuck her, I want to hold her after that. She fills the void inside me that has never been filled by the best schools, the most beautiful women, the fastest cars, the most expensive champagnes, or the most glamorous parties.
I take a cab back to St John’s Wood and let myself in quietly. For a moment I stand at the mouth of the corridor. The living room is dim. Then I walk towards it—my feet soundless on the thick carpet—and stop at the threshold. Only the lampshade by the sofa is lit.
She has fallen asleep on the couch. Her fingers are slack and trailing down. There is an empty glass that has rolled away from her. I go to her and gaze down at her sleeping form. She is unbearably, impossibly beautiful. I put my hand under her neck and the other under her knees and lift her up. She moans softly, and I smell the alcohol on her breath.
‘Don’t leave me,’ she mumbles.
I freeze. For a time I am completely still, but she does not awaken so I carry her to our bed and put her down. I bend down and kiss her soft lips. She is half-asleep, but she opens her mouth and I deepen the kiss. Her hands come up to my hair, her fingers entwine in the silky strands. She moans and arches her body towards me. I support her body with my forearms, and lifting her towards me begin to suck at her exposed throat.
‘Please, Blake…’ she gasps and molds her body into mine.
I let my mouth trail lower. At the soft swelling where her breast begins I stop and suck again. This time longer. I will leave my mark on her. She groans with pleasure. I take my mouth away and look at the red mark possessively. I feel like an adolescent again. She is mine. Mine to mark. I put my mouth on another part of her creamy skin and suck diligently.
Her hands are moving towards my belt. They are urgent but useless against the metal buckle. She is more than half drunk. I put my hand into her pajama trousers, slip it under her panties, and touch her between her legs. Her sex is wet and tingling for me. She has never begged me to enter her before. I want her to. I rip open her pajama top. A button hits the mirror in the room and makes a sound. She does not hear it.
I grab the ends of her trouser legs and tug. They slide off her and I fling them behind me. I tear at her panties. Then I latch my mouth on her nipple. Her head falls back and she sighs with abandonment. I gaze at the body exposed to me, mine to do with as I please. I have never felt the need to sexually possess anyone like this before. But she I must. She is like a craving. An addiction.
‘Tell me you’re mine,’ I order hoarsely.
‘I’m yours,’ she says.
‘Beg me to enter you,’
She obeys instantly. ‘Please Blake, enter me. I want you to. Badly.’
‘Open your legs and show me your pussy.’
She opens her legs and I see how wet and glistening her open flesh is.
I take off my shirt and my trousers while she watches from the bed. Her eyes are huge and strange with desire. I have never seen her like this. I want this woman so bad it feels like a forest fire is raging in my dick. I stand a moment longer savoring the way I feel. Hard, ready and so horny. That feeling of animal passion. This is my mate.
I own her.
I climb on the bed—the mattress gives under my weight—and enter her sweet flesh. She cries out, and then she is gripping me so hard, her nails dig into my flesh. I let her climax before I allow myself to. She falls asleep almost instantly and I lay my palm, the fingers spread out to full on her stomach. I recognize the possessiveness of the gesture. I turn to look at her sleeping face.
An image of my father flashes into my head. What the fuck am I doing? This is my fuck doll. Not my mate. Victoria smiles in my head. I cannot ruin my father’s plan. They are also my plans. Soon. Soon I will tire of driving my dick deep into her sweet pussy.
Some deep part of me knows it is a lie, but I go to sleep snuggled against her warm, soft body, pretending to feel good. There is still time. Plenty of time to sort it all out.