Chapter Fourteen
Lexy was quite right. Silantra definitely did want to fuck her. But instead of the time-honoured methods for signalling this – asking her to stay behind in her suite as all the other guests were ushered out of the party and then making a pass at her on the sofa, or going into the bedroom and calling Lexy through in sultry tones, only for her to find her hostess lying on the bed entirely naked – it had been handled much more formally. Silantra had described it exactly when she had told Lexy that her team would talk Lexy through it. On her arrival at the party, Silantra’s PA had taken Lexy into the meeting room of the lavish suite, where Silantra’s manager was waiting; sitting Lexy down, they had produced a contract for her to sign.
‘This is longer than the contract for my TV show!’ Lexy said, looking at the thick wodge of paper.
‘American lawyers,’ said the manager laconically. ‘Charge a lot, put out a ton of paperwork to justify it. This is all pretty standard – total confidentiality, in perpetuity. Which means if you ever talk about anything that happens between you and Silantra, even in forty years’ time, we come and we take your kids, your house, your savings accounts, your implants, your veneers . . .’
Lexy raised her eyebrows.
‘That’s pretty comprehensive,’ she said drily.
‘We hafta be,’ he said, spreading his hands wide. ‘You’re in the biz – you get it, right? Public face, private fun. Oh, and there’s a clause in there that says we can search you for video recording devices, just FYI. We had an . . . issue a year ago re that, sad to say. Some people are totally unscrupulous.’
‘I’m not carrying hidden camera pens,’ Lexy said. ‘I didn’t have time to nip to the spy shop.’
She riffled, fascinated, through the pages of the contract, her brain racing. When she had told Caroline that Silantra wanted to fuck her, she hadn’t remotely imagined herself taking up the offer. She had never had sex with a woman before, and, unlike many who regretted not having had a lesbian encounter before settling down with a man, it had not been on Lexy’s radar. Frankly, with all the men coming at her in waves, as it were, she hadn’t even had time to consider another option.
Of course, she should reject this proposition out of hand. She was only stalling, she told herself, because this process was so fascinating, and she wanted to find out all the details of how the real A-list ran its private life. And yet . . .
Lexy dearly loved a negotiation, and her financial success was a clear demonstration of how well she conducted them. It was impossible to resist exploring what concessions she could extract in return, how she could use this as the biggest career boost imaginable.
‘So what would I get out of signing something saying you can come and take my implants in forty years?’ she asked, setting down the contract. ‘You give something to get something, right?’
‘You want to negotiate a fee? Not a problem,’ the manager said, as if this were a perfectly normal request. ‘Want to suggest a ballpark figure?’
Lexy’s jaw dropped at the revelation that a fund existed for precisely this kind of situation. She supposed that she could understand it. Anyone banned from ever talking about something as juicy as sex with Silantra would have the same question that Lexy had just posed: what do I get in return for signing the kind of legal document that would financially eviscerate me if I break its terms by indulging in the juicy gossip I’m dying to share?
‘No,’ she said, thinking fast. ‘I’d love her to make an appearance on my show. We’re filming the next season now – could we set up something in the next few days, while she’s in London? My crew would definitely scramble to make that happen.’
‘Huh,’ the manager said. ‘She does have a day off tomorrow, as it happens. She was going to hit the boutiques, do some shopping. And she’s not scheduled to fly back till Wednesday, so we have some flexibility with the timeframe . . .’
He drummed his fingertips lightly on the wenge wood of the table top.
‘You guys wait here while I go have a word with her and see what she says, okay? She might actually go for it – she’s pretty spontaneous.’
He stood up. It was the make or break moment. Up till now, Lexy had been able to tell herself she had just been playing along with the situation, seeing how far she could push it. But if she let him leave the room, she was practically committed to doing this, cheating on Frank. It was something she had never done, never thought she would ever do. She loved her husband, was entirely committed to him. Although she certainly wouldn’t have ruled out getting married purely for the publicity and the photo rights – half the reality stars she knew had done it – her marriage to Frank was entirely authentic, and she had meant every word of her vows.
Yet . . . this was the most famous reality star in the world, someone companies practically begged to pay huge sums for an endorsement of their products! An appearance by Silantra on Lexy’s show would take Lexy to a whole different level of fame, maybe even help her crack the US, something she had always dreamed of achieving. And Silantra was absolutely gorgeous; it would be very easy to get naked with her.
Was it really cheating if it was with a woman? Frank wouldn’t like it – well, that wasn’t putting it strongly enough. He would absolutely hate it. But he would never know! The beauty of the confidentiality agreement was that it protected Lexy as well as Silantra; since every single member of Silantra’s entourage would certainly have signed it, there was no way word could possibly get out . . .
She hesitated, visibly torn, taken aback to realize how powerfully she was tempted by the dizzying prospect of having Silantra on her show. If Lexy had been asked, before this moment, what she needed to take her career to the next level, she would have unquestionably put filming with Silantra at the top of the list. And now it was within her grasp, as if a fairy godmother had waved a magic wand and granted her a wish. Only, instead of leaving the ball before midnight, Lexy was specifically required to stay on. And she had always loved a good afterparty.
Lexy opened her mouth to tell the manager not to confer with Silantra. That she had been just playing around, that she had no intention of cheating on her husband. That he would be wasting his time.
But the words simply would not come out.
The cliché about big stars having lawyers on speed dial turned out to be entirely accurate. After a brief discussion with Silantra, who proclaimed herself more than happy to film with Lexy the next day, within a mere half an hour a one-page amendment to the confidentiality contract had been faxed through from Lil’ Biscuit and Silantra’s lawyers in LA, and duly signed by both the manager and Silantra herself. Lexy had signed the confidentiality contract then immediately rung her producer to scramble up her crew. The producer, near-sobbing with happiness on hearing that Lexy had snagged Silantra for her show, had immediately started tweeting the fantastic news.
‘Hey, let’s film us going shopping,’ Silantra suggested to Lexy as she lounged on the huge bed of the master bedroom. ‘My fans love the shopping scenes, plus I get shitloads of free stuff, too. What about my team ringing the PR of Harrods? We could do, like, an episode where you show me London. Remember what that jerk Darrell said? The queen of American TV visits the queen of British TV. You take me to Harrods, we shop for shoes and stuff, and then we have tea, but you have some champagne and we have that conversation about wine and being pregnant that we did in the theatre bar. You know, I say I hate not drinking and you talk about your wine hashtag and how things are different in Europe. Then I can say how I hate putting on weight being pregnant and we can talk about that and how you got the weight off. Then you can offer me, like, a cream puff, or whatever you eat over here for tea, and we can laugh about how many calories it has.’
Lexy stared at her, dumbstruck. Not only was this by far the longest speech she had heard Silantra make, but Lexy had completely failed to grasp how very well attuned Silantra was to anything that might work for her TV show. Lexy had thought they were just making casual conversation in the theatre bar; Silantra, however, had been processing every word through an automatic filter, deciding what was show-worthy and what was not.
‘You could get us approval to film at Harrods tomorrow, just like that?’ Lexy asked, when she had got her breath back. ‘Because that’s really hard to—’
‘I can get anywhere, pretty much,’ Silantra said casually. ‘Do you know how many followers I have on Instagram? Seventy million. Twitter? Fifty million. I’m top ten in the world on both.’
‘Fuck, I thought I was doing pretty well,’ Lexy said wryly. ‘Don’t ask me how many I have, okay?’
‘You’ll have tons more already,’ Silantra said matter-of-factly, ‘now that we tweeted a pic of us together backstage at the awards ceremony. Check your phone.’
‘I can’t!’ Lexy said, grinning. ‘They took it away from me and pretty much strip-searched me for hidden cameras.’
‘Yeah, sorry about that,’ Silantra said, looking entirely unapologetic. ‘This total bitch filmed me and her having sex last year and then made us pay a fortune to buy the footage. It was really good quality – like, not just a cell phone. Our security said she must’ve used a professional spy cam. So now we have to be super careful. She was an amazing fuck,’ she added wistfully. ‘I really miss her! She could just’ve asked and I’d’ve put her on salary as a stylist or something, you know?’
She sighed.
‘Oh well. So yeah, now everyone I hook up with gets searched. And my staff has my phone, too. Just in case you sneakily take photos of us on it and send ’em to yourself.’
‘That’s shitty,’ Lexy said. ‘You getting set up like that, I mean.’
Silantra shrugged phlegmatically. ‘Yeah, it sucked, but what can you do? I wouldn’t want to be her if Biscuit ever tracks her down, though. He was royally pissed. Forget suing her – he’d go hardcore on her ass.’
Lexy refilled her glass with champagne from the bottle standing beside her in a silver cooler. It had been considerately placed near her armchair by Silantra’s PA. Once the little party had run its course, the other guests, including Caroline, had been gently ushered out with the excuse that Silantra had decided to film with Lexy the next day and the two women needed to discuss what scenes they would shoot.
Silantra had promptly retired to the bedroom, followed by Lexy: once the PA had made sure they had everything they needed, they had been left alone. Now, Silantra uncoiled from the bed, moving with impressive grace and ease for a woman who was four months pregnant. Gliding over to the wet bar, she took a flute from the stack of glasses on its marble surface.
‘Hit me up,’ she said, perching on the wide arm of Lexy’s armchair, holding out her glass.
‘So you’re okay drinking a little in private?’ Lexy said, filling the glass.
‘A little? Watch me!’
Lifting the glass to her glossy lips, Silantra drank its entire contents down in one gulp and then held the glass out to Lexy once more.
‘Hit me again, babe,’ she said, her eyes now glinting with mischief.
‘Fuck,’ Lexy said, frowning. ‘I’m all for taking the edge off, but that’s too much. They say you can have a glass a day, tops, when you’re knocked up. You’ve got to think of the baby.’
Silantra took the bottle herself and refilled her glass, manoeuvring her long fingernails with the expertise of a woman who has been sporting them ever since the age of fourteen. Then she leaned over, put one hand behind Lexy’s head and kissed her, long and hard. It was an excellent kiss, full of passion and technique, again with the expertise of a woman who had been pimped out by her mother since the age of fifteen. Before marrying Lil’ Biscuit, Silantra had regularly been required to make trips to Dubai which were billed as shopping expeditions, but were actually to rendezvous with billionaire Saudis prepared to pay seven-figure fees to spend the night with her.
‘You ever fucked a girl?’ she asked when she released Lexy.
‘Kissed a few, fingered each other a bit,’ Lexy said frankly. ‘But just at school. Once I got on a dick I never looked back.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle,’ Silantra said, standing up. She downed another half a glass of champagne, set down her glass and then reached round to unzip her dress. ‘And you don’t have to do anything you don’t want. But I would really like to fuck you. I have this great strap-on – it really hits the G-spot. Wherever yours is, I’ll find it!’
Lexy blinked. It wasn’t a surprise to her that Silantra had a strap-on; everyone who had watched her infamous sex tape knew that she liked to dish it out as well as take it. But the nonchalant way she talked about it was almost . . . professional.
Silantra’s dress was dropping to the floor, and Lexy did a double take at the sight of what Silantra was wearing beneath it. She had assumed that Silantra would be in shapewear: all of them wore it. Awards ceremonies and red carpet events weren’t about being comfortable, they were about looking fabulous, and that meant being as streamlined as possible, no bulges or lumps for the media to mock.
Lexy was well aware of the existence of maternity shapewear: she had relied on it during both of her pregnancies. But the beige bodysuit that Silantra was wearing looked very different from what Lexy had worn back then. Its texture was weirdly foam-like, as if it were moulded onto her body, bulking it out, the opposite of stretch fabric intended to hold her in . . .
Silantra’s hands were still behind her, unfastening something else. Bra? Corset? Velcro ripped open, a wide strap came loose, then another . . . and then Silantra widened her grip. Her hands came into view, and she lifted the whole front of her body up and away from her, swollen breasts, pregnant stomach and all.
‘No way,’ Lexy said slowly. ‘You’re not knocked up after all!’