Eighty Days Red Read online

  I gave up trying to get his jeans off.

  ‘How do you get into these things?’ I laughed, as he wriggled up the bed with them still on.

  ‘I jump and pull,’ he replied. ‘There’s an art to it.’

  He grabbed my wrists and pulled me up onto the bed after him and placed his hand firmly on my waist, indicating that he wanted me to roll over.

  ‘On your knees,’ he ordered.

  By now I was so desperate to feel him inside me that I was in position almost before the instruction had come out of his mouth.

  He moved down, I felt his tongue wet against my ankle, rasping. He began to lick upwards, slow and rough.

  ‘Shh,’ he said, as I began to wriggle at the ticklish sensation. ‘Relax.’

  I concentrated on blanking my mind, pushing away all the other distractions and just focusing on the sensations arising within my body. His movements were firm and thorough. His mouth travelled up my calf, pausing to lick the crevice on the inside of my knee, then continuing up the inside of my thigh, where I was certain that he must have noticed the wetness that I could feel was now seeping down my legs. My breathing began to quicken as his tongue neared my pussy, where I desperately wanted him to linger, but rather than stopping in the obvious place he continued further upward and began to lick my arsehole.

  Dominik had done this once, in New Orleans, not long after I had danced for him on stage the day after we’d witnessed Luba’s act. I remembered feeling embarrassed at this most intimate of explorations and attempting to wriggle away, and how he had put his hand on the base of my spine to hold me still.

  I shook thoughts of Dominik from my head. He was long gone, and Viggo was right here, a hot man with a hotter mouth, and a rock star to boot. I might have been one of hundreds of women he’d made love to but I didn’t care. At least he’d had plenty of practice.

  I wriggled back further against him and spread my knees apart a little wider.

  ‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘You like it the Catholic way, I take it?’

  I remembered the shape of his cock, long and slim, perfectly built for anal sex.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘If you start slowly.’

  ‘I’ll be gentle, promise. But I’m saving that for later.’

  He reached over to his bedside drawer again and pulled out a box of condoms, a bottle of lube, and the biggest sex toy I’d ever seen. It was about a foot long, white with a blue ring around the ball-like attachment at the top, and attached to a plug, and an adaptor.

  ‘Jeezus,’ I said. ‘What the hell is that thing?’

  ‘You’ve never seen one of these before?’ He smiled wickedly. ‘You’re in for a treat. It’s a Hitachi magic wand.’

  ‘There’s no way that will go inside me,’ I said, anxiety tainting my growing arousal.

  ‘Don’t worry, my pet. It doesn’t go inside you.’

  He slid off the bed and plugged it into an extension lead, and then into the wall, before flicking it on. It made a sound somewhere between a lawnmower and an electric grinder, and the ball on the top was vibrating so hard, it visibly shook.

  ‘Relax,’ he laughed, watching my response.

  He resumed his position behind me and touched the head of the wand very gently against my labia. A wave of pleasure pulsed through my body like a lightning bolt. I felt as though I was going to come within seconds, a response that even with the most skilful lovers usually took a good thirty minutes of foreplay at a minimum to elicit from me. I gasped, and jolted forward in shock.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, still chuckling softly.

  I turned to look at him. He still had his jeans wrapped around his legs, inhibiting his movements, and a firm erection which he so far had not attempted to pleasure me with. His hair was backcombed into a messy bush with a few straight locks that fell over his eyes. He had a wolfish expression, good-natured and mischievous. I found it hard to believe that he had looked so savage, just minutes ago, when he’d been tearing a hole in my clothing with his pocket knife. ‘Yes, it’s just, I thought I was going to come. I never orgasm that quickly.’

  ‘It’s not like there’s a moratorium on orgasms, darling. You’re allowed to have more than one.’

  ‘I’ve never had more than one. In one go, I mean.’

  ‘Well then, all your other lovers ought to be ashamed of themselves.’

  ‘I don’t have any other lovers.’

  ‘A girl like you? I find that hard to believe.’

  I didn’t have a chance to respond, as he flicked the wand on again and pressed it against me. He pressed lightly at first, until I relaxed against him, then he steadily increased the pressure. At first I felt an increasing warmth, as if all of my nerve endings had become radioactive, and then an orgasm ripped through my body like a wildfire, one huge burst of energy rushing in through the tips of my toes and out through my head. It was the most intense climax I’d ever had.

  I couldn’t speak. I collapsed on the bed in a heap, suffused in a warm glow, my skin alive to every brush of air or slight movement in the room.

  ‘You get one minute’s rest,’ he said, ‘then I’m going again.’

  I lay silent for a few moments before I was able to gather my wits to respond.

  ‘What are you, my personal trainer?’

  ‘If that’s what it takes. Sounds to me like you have some catching up to do.’

  He began to stroke my buttocks gently, running his nails over my skin.

  Viggo was true to his word. Within a minute, though it felt like only a few seconds, the whirr of the wand’s vibrations filled the room so loudly I thought that the noise must be interrupting the party downstairs.

  He pressed the head of the toy against me and again within moments a second orgasm tore through my body. This time, though, the pleasure teetered on the edge of too intense and I jumped, nearly hitting my head on the wall in my effort to escape.

  ‘Stay still. Or I’ll have to restrain you.’ His tone was amused, but with a hint of steeliness. ‘Seriously,’ I pleaded, ‘I can’t take any more.’

  ‘Yes you can. Hold onto the headboard.’

  I gritted my teeth and wrapped my hands around the white metal border that framed the head

  of the bed. He didn’t restrain me, but the power of his instruction, and that formidable pride which refused to let him win had kicked in and I locked myself into place as he made me come again and again.

  By the time he let me rest, my body was twitching and my lips were swollen and bruised. I was sweaty and bits of my hair stuck to my face. I was overcome by a flood of exhaustion. The sky was beginning to lighten outside. Viggo didn’t have any blinds in his white room; he must enjoy the light. A crimson-coloured sun was rising. It must be around 7 a.m., I guessed, meaning that we had been up here enjoying our party of two for about five hours. Neither of us had had a minute’s sleep. Fran, under normal circumstances, would be awake by now – she had always been an early riser – but since she had been working in the bar, she’d become more nocturnal. The rest of the band were like bats, awake all night, and asleep during the day. So we had a few more hours to relax before anyone would expect to see us.

  Viggo lay down next to me, tracing his finger gently from the base of my earlobe across my jaw and then along the curve of my neck. He lingered on my throat, increasing the pressure in the pads of his fingertips as if he was measuring my heartbeat. I shivered involuntarily in response. The journey of his hands continued, trailing over each of my breasts and around my nipples. His touch was so light he barely grazed my skin, but I was so wired from our previous exertions that the slightest contact made me twitch.

  Eventually he reached the base of my navel, as far as his arms would reach while he was lying down. He snuggled into my back, drawing me close against him, and his cock, still rock hard, poked against my lower back. I tried to turn to face him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I should really do something about that.’

  ‘Plenty of time for
that later,’ he replied. ‘I’m just warming up.’ His voice trailed off into a sigh, and I felt his cock gradually soften against me. He was asleep in moments.

  I followed him into dreamland shortly after, but not before spying, out of the corner of my eye, the pocket knife lying on the floor near the door. The blade was folded back into the handle, and the slice of silver from the back of the knife glinted in the light. It looked harmless enough, a pretty weapon, abandoned. But my last thoughts as I drifted into sleep were ominous, and I awoke a few hours later with the unshakeable sense that something was wrong.

  My phone was buzzing in the pocket of my denim skirt which lay in a heap alongside my top and ripped tights, which I had removed along with my boots before we settled down to sleep.

  It was full of texts from Fran and Chris.

  From Chris: ‘Are you up yet? We’re cooking pancakes.’

  From Fran: ‘Wake up, dirty slapper!’

  Both brought a smile to my face.

  I slipped out of bed and slid open a few doors until I found an en suite. Viggo was still sleeping soundly, with his shoes on and his skinny jeans holding fast halfway down his legs. His dark hair was matted and spread out on all sides like a dark halo.

  Freshly showered, I slipped back into yesterday’s clothes, sans tights, and made my way downstairs to find the kitchen, led mainly by the smell of butter burning in a pan.

  Dagur was standing over a frying pan deftly flipping rounds of batter to brown each side before sliding them onto a plate that was already stacked high with pancakes. He was shirtless, clad in just a pair of jeans with frayed slits under each cheek of his arse, revealing a hint of bare skin when he leant forward that suggested he was naked underneath. He had a tattoo on his back of a beautiful and rather feminine horse’s head, a delicately rendered piece of art that contrasted with his thick, swarthy musculature. He was ripped. I hadn’t noticed it last night. No wonder my sister had found him captivating.

  Fran danced like a pixie around the kitchen alongside him, pulling open cupboards and drawers until she found plates, cutlery, maple syrup and all the other accoutrements to spread over the breakfast bar.

  Chris, Ella and Ted were balanced on stools, poised with forks in hand waiting to tuck in.

  They looked much fresher after their night’s sleep than I felt.

  ‘Morning. Did you lot find beds, then?’ I asked with a forced brightness that I wasn’t feeling.

  ‘Some of us did,’ Ted said, laughing under his breath and looking pointedly at Fran, who looked pleased as punch, not a hint of a blush on her cheeks.

  Chris was sitting with his shoulders slumped, in the posture of a defeated man.

  I didn’t want to know what my sister had been up to, providing that she was happy, but neither did I want to see my best friend looking sad.

  I stood alongside him and threw my arm over his shoulder, giving him a squeeze.

  ‘Whatcha up to today?’ I asked, hoping to distract him from the sight of Fran flirting with the handsome drummer.

  ‘Back to the studio,’ he replied. ‘Need to clear up our stuff, get used to the idea of normal life again, and hope that the reviews are good. Or that we even get a mention.’

  ‘Of course you’ll get a mention. You guys were amazing, the crowd loved you.’

  ‘Thanks, Sum,’ he said, putting his arm around me. ‘We’ve got a gig in Brighton next week, if you want to come.’

  ‘Sure. I love Brighton.’ I’d only been once for a weekend. Maybe another couple of days by the seaside would be just the ticket to bump me out of my recent creative slump.

  ‘Has anyone here seen Luba? The dancer?’ I asked, after we’d finished breakfast. I wanted to know whether she’d got hold of Eric, the roadie who had been in charge of moving all the gear.

  ‘Not today,’ Dagur replied. ‘I thought she ended up in bed with you.’

  I blushed as I realised what he meant, and that he was being completely serious. He had noticed then, the effect she had on me.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘I haven’t seen her since last night.’

  ‘I’ll check on your violin, Sum,’ Chris said, anticipating my concern before I’d had a chance to voice it.

  Viggo still hadn’t stirred by the time the band disappeared to collect the gear and Fran raced to catch her shift at the bar. I almost went with Chris, but a nagging feeling in the back of my mind made me stay behind. I told the others I didn’t want to leave without telling Viggo goodbye, and Chris and Fran both stared at me suspiciously.

  ‘Not like you to be sentimental,’ Fran said. ‘Are you in love?’

  Naturally, I protested vigorously, but the truth was I rather fancied Viggo. He had a humour and sense of mischief about him that I found attractive, not to mention his ability and desire to make me orgasm. That and a streak of arrogance which made him unpredictable, and I liked to be kept on my toes.

  I settled into Viggo’s vast and empty living room to check my emails and surf the internet on my phone while I waited for him to wake up, or Luba to appear.

  There were two from Susan, both wondering what I was up to and advising me in no uncertain terms to get in contact with her so we could plan my future. One from Simón, a friendly update of his current circumstances. He’d lengthened his stay in Venezuela and the orchestra had taken on a temporary substitute. I had a pang of homesickness for him, for New York, and the life that we shared together. We hadn’t been right for each other but I’d loved him nonetheless and I missed his affection, his company and his instinctive understanding of my career and the travails of a classical musician.

  We were suited in so many ways that sometimes I wondered whether we could have worked it out, if we had tried harder, but he’d taken that decision out of my hands. In a way I was relieved. It had meant that I didn’t have to make the choice, to admit to myself or to him that finding the right person to have sex with was more important to me than all the other qualities he offered in our relationship. Short-term vanilla sex was lovely, and scratched an itch, but long term, I didn’t want to commit to someone who didn’t want to do the things to me that I craved. Dark things, dangerous and hurtful things. The sorts of things that Dominik had enjoyed so much.

  Recurring thoughts of Dominik made me uncomfortable and restless, and I began to wander the room, running my hands over the walls and furniture to feel their textures, rough against my skin. I replayed the memory of Luba’s dance in my head, and despite last night’s countless orgasms and the feeling of my bruised and swollen labia I was aroused, again. But more than anything I missed my violin. I wanted to feel the Bailly in my hands, to wear out the mixed emotions that swamped my brain, with a song.

  Viggo had said that he had a number of instruments in the basement. I didn’t feel entirely right about going to investigate without his express permission. I’d never been one for snooping. But I wasn’t prying, I told myself, just borrowing something that he’d said only twelve hours earlier that I was welcome to use.

  After looking for a few minutes, I found the door that led to the basement and followed the spiral staircase downwards with some trepidation. You would think that he’d have been able to install a lift, but I hadn’t seen one. There were two more floors below the entrance, art space and kitchen area where we’d had breakfast. The first was surprisingly light and airy, considering that it was underground. He must have oxygen pumping in, I thought, perhaps as a way to preserve the art on the walls. The room was like a gallery with a number of pieces tastefully distributed on the walls, and a couple of modern sculptures, more like installations in the middle. I knew very little about art, and didn’t know whether the pieces were genuine or knockoffs, expensive or fakes. Some, I thought, seemed like a joke, an example of Viggo’s unusual sense of humour. One was a small coloured ball suspended in the air by a fan blowing beneath it, so it appeared to be floating, untethered in space. It was situated in such a way as to entice the viewer to snatch it up, but there was an unspoken rule firm in
my mind, the knowledge that one reveres art and doesn’t touch it, that made me watch it closely from a polite step away without disrupting its trajectory.

  The next floor down was a much darker room with, at its centre, a swimming pool. It was more like an indoor stream than a swimming pool. The water seemed to be fresh rather than chlorinated, and instead of the traditional rectangular concrete box of a regular pool, this one curved through the room and was laid with stones and surrounded by ferns and even a waterfall at one end.

  So the rumours about Viggo having tanks in his house for women pretending to be mermaids were true after all. Luba was sitting on a stone next to the waterfall, looking for all the world like a mermaid, wearing a metallic swimsuit which was slick with water and stuck to her skin so her hard nipples were clearly visible through the fabric. Her long hair was wet and clung to her shoulders.

  She smiled at me, but didn’t say anything, as if she had expected me to find her down here all along and wasn’t in the least bit surprised.

  My eyes had adjusted to the dimmer light in the room, and I noticed that the walls in here were also decorated with art pieces, but here they were mostly scattered around the walls or hanging from the ceiling, seemingly at random, and the pieces were much wilder, and darker, I thought. Viggo had the bones of an animal’s face, attached to a long pair of antlers, hanging over the door. There were carved figures of nymphs and grotesques, some sensual and some frightening. I lifted my head and looked up to see that he had a series of metal sculptures, presumably rust-treated, fixed to the ceiling over the pool, so that someone lying on their back, floating in the water, would be able to look at them. At the end of the room was another heavy door, the first I had seen so far that appeared to be locked. That must be where he kept the really expensive stuff, I guessed, and couldn’t blame him for it. Security in this place seemed surprisingly low, considering the number of people he must have roaming around at most of his parties. His insurance premiums must be enormous.