The Pleasure Quartet Page 24

  I nearly asked the driver to turn around and take me back to my apartment. But somewhere in among the pounding of my blood in my ears and the pervading fear that raged inside me – fear of what? of moving forward? of turning back? – was an even stronger instinct which led me to Noah like a woman trapped on a sinking ship aims for a lighthouse. Was I running to him, or running from everything else? I didn’t know yet.

  We hit every red light and crawled behind every slow-moving vehicle all the way along the Avenida Atlantic. Each time a taxi passed travelling in the opposite direction, my heart fell through the floor, and I tried to catch a glimpse through the back window, convinced it must be Noah on his way to the airport, but none of the passengers were visible. All I saw was the flash of an anonymous shoulder or a profile in shadow.

  When we finally pulled to a halt, I handed over a bunch of real and didn’t even query the exaggerated fare or wait for my change.

  ‘Keep it,’ I yelled, as the driver waved the notes I had overpaid back at me.

  The building was monstrous, a giant tinted glass and concrete brick of a thing, a few blocks down from the Belmond Palace, where I had once spent an evening with Joao and his business partners. There were fewer hotels at this end of the beach, and the Windsor towered over all of them.

  I stood stock still for a moment, looking up, and swallowed hard. Water still hurtled from the sky and I realised too late that I had left my wet umbrella folded up on the cab’s floor. The driver had already pulled away. I rushed into the lobby, escaping the rain, but couldn’t move fast enough to avoid further dampening my hair and dress. The hem was soaking and glued to my thighs. I pulled at it in a futile attempt to encourage the fabric to hang correctly and succeeded only in producing a loud squelching sound, the suck of sodden-wet material peeling away from skin.

  All eyes were on me as I strode to the reception desk, trailing wet footprints across the terracotta-coloured, patterned marble tiles.

  I recalled Noah’s room number from the receipt slip for our meal, which the waitress had left unfolded on our table momentarily before Noah had whisked it up, ignored my offer to split the bill and asked her to charge it direct to him. But the door number alone was no good to me. I knew that I needed a security card to swipe through the elevator keypad and give me access to the upper floors.

  The desk attendant, a young, handsome Brazilian man with a full head of dark hair, dimpled chin and smart suit jacket slightly too wide for his narrow shoulders, was all politeness despite my bedraggled state. His nametag read ‘Victor’.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, plastering a broad fake smile across my face and keeping my arms pinned to my sides so he wouldn’t see my hands shaking, ‘I’m in room 2505, and I went out for a walk this morning and forgot my key. And my umbrella. Is there any way you could let me in? I think my partner is out enjoying breakfast, he’s not answering the phone.’

  ‘Sure,’ Victor replied. ‘What was the surname?’

  ‘Ahh . . .’ my mind drew a blank. ‘Zahova. Summer Zahova. But the room isn’t booked under my name,’ I stalled.

  He smiled at me sympathetically.

  ‘I’ll need to call through,’ he said. ‘For security. We need to verify all hotel guests and visitors, I’m sure you understand.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I replied. ‘Hopefully he’s back now.’

  Damn. I hadn’t wanted to explain my arrival to Noah. Just turn up at his door and think about what the hell I was there for when he opened it, but there was no backing out now, Victor had the telephone in his hand.

  ‘Yes, Mr Ballard. Your partner is at reception. Yes, Miss Zahova. She’s forgotten her room key. May we issue her another one?’

  I breathed a sigh of relief. At least I knew now that he hadn’t left yet.

  Victor hung up the phone. Swiped a key card’s magnetic strip through an electronic reader and handed it over to me.

  ‘Here you go ma’am. I presume you know your way?’

  I felt a flush of red sweep up my cheeks. Had he winked at me?

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I assured him, and then walked swiftly to the elevators, hoping that the same lift that I had taken to the restaurant on the fourth floor where we had met for lunch would carry me all the way to his accommodation on the twenty-fifth floor.

  That was providing that I had remembered correctly where Noah was situated. Things could prove awkward if I’d mixed the door number up and walked in on the wrong man.

  The journey upward took an age. The doors swooped open at half a dozen floors, collecting and depositing hotel guests.

  A middle-aged couple with matching bobbed sandy-blond hair who held hands and might have been mature honeymooners.

  A short, elderly Japanese man who wore an elegant silver suit jacket with a thin white tie and a broad smile and was partnered up with a brunette woman who displayed the graceful poise and firm figure of a dancer, balanced on precarious hot-pink heels. She was at least a foot taller than he was and a quarter of his age, and when they departed on the fifteenth floor, he guided her forward with his hand on the small of her back. A freckle the size and colour of a misshapen copper coin marked the skin below his middle knuckle. The soles of her shoes were red.

  At the level marked ‘pool and gym’, a woman who was likely in her fifties and carried a thick white towel under her arm stepped in and stood in front of me. She was dressed only in a Baywatch-red swimsuit with a low-cut back. Her broad arse was pale and dimpled, and deep blue veins trailed down the backs of her legs.

  I wondered what kind of sex they each enjoyed. Did the Japanese man lie back in the bathtub while his younger lover balanced with her feet on the sides and peed on him? Did the woman in the red swimsuit like to masturbate to violent pornography? Did the bobbed-blond fuck silently, or did he whisper terrible things into her ear as he loomed over her in the missionary position? The secrets people held.

  When the lift was finally empty and I only had two more floors to travel, I turned and peered in the mirrored panels and attempted to fix my hair which was still half damp and plastered to my skull, with a layer of frizz sitting like a halo over it. My face was unnaturally pale and my eyes looked bright and dilated, as though I had just woken from an unusually vivid dream. Goose pimples had broken out on my arms and hands from the hotel’s air-conditioning further cooling my already icy skin. Water continued to drip down my legs. The cold had hardened my nipples. I was not wearing a bra. Or underwear, for that matter, since I had left my apartment wearing just the dress I’d thrown on for comfort’s sake while I worked on my packing.

  Random thoughts and memories began to crowd into my mind. The feeling of the smooth slate tiles beneath my feet as I woke in the early hours of the morning at Joao’s villa and paced his corridors, bored, lonely and restless. The rush of cool water on my skin on the nights that I dived naked and almost silent into his pool, wondering if any of his servants were awake and observing me. Raoul’s heavy body over mine, pinning me down, and the fight in my mind as my internal sense of right, wrong and self-preservation battled with the desires of my wanton flesh, that part of me that wanted him even though I knew that he would hurt me – wanted him because he would hurt me.

  Odd sensory recollections came hurtling back to me too. Memories that still lurked in my subconscious and crept out to surprise me at the most unwelcome times.

  Like the burst of juices in my mouth as I bit into the apple that I had bought the morning after I had been released from the Kentish Town sauna. The faces of the men who had used me that night remained a blur, but I would never forget the sharp taste of that piece of fruit, or the way my knees had ached as I was bent over on the tiles, or the clouds of steam that had clogged my throat.

  Back in time further, to Dominik. The waxy sensation of the lipstick he had painted onto my nipples. His extraordinary tonal range as he moved through a series of moods in the course of our sex games; from good-humoured and seductive to commanding to insistent and severe. A streak of sunlight against sil
ver; the flash of his Tag Heuer catching the glare from the window in his study as he typed, and I interrupted him to offer a coffee refill, or tempt him into taking a break to indulge in a daytime fantasy. The smell of his old books that had lined shelves of the house we shared on the hill in Hampstead.

  So many other things about him were fading now. As if the Dominik that I had stored in my mind was becoming more ghost-like as the years passed. I could no longer recall the precise tilt of his features, or the exact shade of his hair, without looking at a photograph. Yet fragments from our time together that I would have preferred to forget still stayed with me. The everlasting silence as the Lana Del Rey record, that had been playing before I found him, ended. The red blinking light from his CD player. The particular shade of green that the uniformed paramedics who had collected his still-warm body wore.

  I remembered the smell of the rubbish bags in the alleyway where the two American sailors had dragged me. The sweet scent of decaying fruit skins, the bitterness of rotten meat.

  The look on Noah’s face when he had found me there. Surprise and pleasure overwhelming any sense of fear, dread or disgust that another might have felt. And the sound of his voice when he called my name.

  The elevator doors opened and I hurried up the hall, checking the digits on each room as I went, my soggy shoes sinking into the thick carpet with each step.

  I reached 2505.

  Lifted my newly acquired room card to swipe it through the security device by the handle, and then knocked instead.

  The door opened. He was waiting for me.

  Noah, standing there, in a pair of jeans that were too loose on his waist and a black T-shirt advertising a band I hadn’t heard of.

  ‘Summer?’ he said.

  I burst into tears.

  He pulled me into his arms.

  ‘Shh,’ he said, ‘it’s okay.’

  He smelled of hotel shampoo, a fresh scent tinged with pine and cloves. His T-shirt was crisp and clean and freshly pressed as though it had just been returned by the laundry service.

  I pulled away from him.

  ‘I’m making you wet,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t give a fuck,’ he replied, and embraced me again.

  He ran his thumb over my cheek and brushed a tear from my face.

  Bent his head down, and kissed me.

  His lips pressed against mine. The pressure firm, but gentle.

  ‘Your flight,’ I whispered, when our mouths broke away from each other.

  ‘I don’t give a fuck about that either.’

  His smile was wide and tinged with warmth and humour. He glanced at the clock alongside the bed.

  ‘It’s not until two,’ he said. ‘We have an hour. Not nearly long enough.’

  He kissed me again, this time so forcefully that the weight of his body pushed me backwards and up against the wall. Our tongues met. He tasted of fresh coffee and mouthwash. His hands landed on my hips and he held me tightly, his thumbs drawing a line beneath the ridge of my pelvis.

  ‘Christ, Summer,’ he said, stepping back. ‘Have you been standing outside in the rain?’

  I laughed. And grasped the hem of my dress, preparing to pull it over my head but he prevented me, placing his palms on my forearms.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Let me.’

  Noah took my hand and led me to the bed. It was monstrous; an island of a thing that dominated the room, with a padded headboard covered in an oyster-coloured quilted fabric and a matching coverlet. To the left of the bed, opposite the door, the thick drapes were pulled back and revealed a view of the ocean, still murky after the recent downpour. The heavens had turned from grey to purple, the colour of an old bruise. Waves crashed against each other, stirring up a deep blue soup, white lines of froth billowing across the surface of the water halfway out to sea.

  ‘I love the weather here,’ I murmured. ‘So alive.’

  He had the air-conditioning switched off and there was no sound in the room besides the hush of our breathing and the whirr of the fan that turned slowly over the bed, washing a draught over my skin.

  A fluffy bathrobe, in the same muted silvery tone that permeated the rest of the décor, lay across the coverlet. He sat down next to it and I stood in front of him. He looked up at me, my hands still in his, palms turned up. His skin was so warm the contrast between his temperature and mine made me shiver.

  The three-day shadow that had lined his jaw and the top of his mouth when we first met had thickened and now formed the beginnings of a beard. He hadn’t shaved for long enough that his stubble was soft to the touch, not prickly. His eyes were as dark as the sky outside had been, during the thick of the storm. He had a deep tan, much darker than mine although he hadn’t spent anywhere near as much time beneath a South American sun as I had. His brows were the same deep chocolate brown as the rest of his hair, and animated when he spoke. He lit up when he smiled.

  Noah wore his emotions across his face. Watching him was a joy, his moods visibly changing in the turn of his lips, the arch of an eyebrow, the sharp intelligence in his eyes, the intensity of his gaze. Age lines had worn gentle furrows across his forehead, but he didn’t have that resigned, tired look of someone who has spent too long behind a computer. He could have passed for one of the whip-trim surfers who rose before the crowds did to dance across the breakers on Copacabana beach. A man of passions who saw the wisdom in indulging them.

  The pads of his fingers traced a map along the skin of my inner wrist up to my elbow and down again.

  He let go of my hands, took hold of the bottom of my dress and pulled it up. I wriggled, helping him shift the sodden fabric over my head.

  Noah’s eyes ranged over my body. There was no judgement in his scrutiny, only lust, curiosity and kindness. He seemed to be drinking me in, as if he intended to memorise all of my perfections and flaws and replay them again later.

  He reached forward and brushed over my skin, the flat of his hand, knuckles, and sometimes his fingertips caressing my breasts, my torso and down to my slit where he grazed across my lips with a feather-light touch before moving away again.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, softly.

  ‘You’re cold.’

  He picked up the robe that lay next to him and wrapped it around my shoulders.

  ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Tell me why you were crying.’

  How I wanted him to keep touching me. When he pulled his hand away, I felt bereft, as if my anchor had been cut and dropped into the sea.

  ‘Lie down,’ he told me, and tugged my wrist, motioning that I should join him on the bed.

  Noah scooted backwards so his whole body was supported by the mattress and propped his head up onto his elbow. I did the same, and we lay facing each other, a few inches’ gap separating our bodies.

  He lifted the soft towelling fabric that had slipped over my waist to cover my legs as if he were pulling back a curtain. Continued to explore the surface map of my body. My nipples had stiffened again. This time, the room temperature was not to blame.

  I searched for the right words to answer his question. How could I possibly explain all the events of a lifetime, try to tell him who I was and what secrets I carried inside me? As if he were my confessor and I his supplicant. Even if we’d had all night, I could not have helped him understand. How could he, when I so often didn’t even understand myself?

  ‘I’ve done so many things,’ I answered him. ‘Terrible things.’

  ‘And so many terrible things have been done to you.’

  His touch skittered across my jaw. He rested his index finger for a moment on my lower lip.

  ‘Things that I wanted,’ I insisted.

  ‘I don’t think that’s always been true.’

  ‘I suppose that depends on how you look at it. If you could see into my mind . . . my thoughts. The things that I dream about.’

  I was convinced that if he really knew me, he would want me no longer.

  ‘We all have our shadows, Summer,’ he said. ‘I’ll show yo
u mine, if you show me yours.’ He smiled at his own joke. ‘Besides, your shadows are what I want. I want all of you. The dark parts as well as the light. One day, you can tell me everything. Lay bare whatever it is that you think is so terrible.’

  I closed my eyes. Tried to blank out the whirring of my thoughts and concentrate on the pressure of his fingertips that now lingered on the curve of my buttocks. My body shifted on the mattress as he moved, redistributing his weight. His hair tickled my breasts. One of his hands moved down to my upper thigh, pushed it down onto the bed, rolling me onto my back. The firm denim of his jeans and crisp cotton of his T-shirt scraped over my torso as he crawled down my body. His lips followed the pattern of his retreat, pressing a path down to my groin.

  I realised what he was doing and froze. Threaded my hands through his hair and tugged, gently pulling him back up towards me.

  ‘I want to see you,’ he said, ‘all of you.’

  He took hold of my other leg and pushed it down. I was spread open, my inner thighs trapped in the vice of his grip.

  Dominik had done this to me, I recalled. In the dim shadow of his study, he had examined me beneath the fierce glare of his desk lamp.

  At first, Noah didn’t touch me. Just looked.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ he said.

  I felt utterly bare. There was a transgression inherent in the act, the most intimate parts of me on display to him in the broad light of day, without the presence of any distraction at all in the form of music, alcohol, or the usual swift fumblings of lust. This was slow and deliberate.

  He lowered his head to my delta and began to lick.

  ‘Oh, god,’ I breathed.

  The flick of his tongue turned the desire that was slowly simmering inside me into a full tide of lust. My muscles tightened and I squirmed as he lapped at my clitoris. He pinned my legs down in response, ignoring my attempts to escape the sensitivity that the firm point of his tongue had aroused.

  His explorations continued for an age. I was writhing, grabbing his head, the cushions, the coverlet, anything to try to quell the orgasm that I teetered on the brink of before it tore me apart.