Chrissie Rasmirez arched her back and thrust her hips forward, greedily pulling her husband deeper inside her.
‘Tell me you want me,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘Tell me you need me.’
‘You know I need you,’ replied Dorian automatically, nibbling Chrissie’s earlobe, and marvelling again at her fit, athlete’s body. He himself was in lousy shape, physically and mentally. So much so that he could feel his erection starting to fade, and tried doubly hard to focus on the job in hand.
Coming home to Romania had been bitter-sweet. As ever, Dorian’s heart leaped at the sight of the majestic Transylvanian landscape, the verdant Carpathians jutting against the sparkling blue sky like a string of giant emeralds threaded on the golden Bistrita river. Nestled amongst the jewelled countryside, the Rasmirez Schloss stood as tall and proud and ancient as ever, solid, unchanging and beautiful. Loxley was a romantic house, and the fields and villages surrounding it idyllic, but it was beauty on a miniature scale. Compared to the Schloss it felt like a perfectly rendered doll’s house. But Dorian missed Loxley Hall nonetheless. Or, rather, he missed the sense of calm that he had come to feel there. Certainly, there was precious little calm and order to be found at home.
Since he’d got back, Chrissie had been as demanding and complicated as ever. Her neediness, combined with the stresses of filming, establishing a new set in the Schloss’s East Wing and all the long hours of frustration that entailed, left Dorian permanently exhausted. And then there were the financial pressures. At Loxley Hall, Dorian had somehow been able to shut everything else out and focus on making the movie. The money, the distribution deal, that would all come later as long as the work was good. Build it and they will come, he told himself. But here, every day on set was a reminder of what he stood to lose if Wuthering Heights was not a success. The sleepless nights were back with a vengeance.
‘What’s wrong?’
The pace of Dorian’s thrusts had slowed. Chrissie could sense his distraction, feel him wilting inside her.
‘Nothing,’ Dorian lied, speeding up but feeling increasingly hopeless. He’d reached the point where no amount of visualizing Brooklyn Decker minus her Sports Illustrated bikini was going to help – and if Brooklyn couldn’t help him, no one could. Chrissie always took it personally when he didn’t come, and any excuses Dorian offered – tiredness, jet lag, work stress – only served to fan the flames of her anger. Especially after being apart for so long, now that he was home, Chrissie expected sexual fireworks on a daily basis. Dorian felt the performance pressure like a lead weight on his chest; or, more accurately, a slow puncture in his dick.
It was no good. Pulling out of her, he rolled onto his side and tried to hold her close, but it was like hugging an ice cube. Her whole body was locked rigid with anger.
‘I’m sorry, honey. It’s not you. It’s …’
‘Work. I know,’ said Chrissie contemptuously. ‘Until the damn movie’s finished, I should put up, shut up and forget about us having a sex life, right?’
This was hardly fair. It was eight o’clock in the morning and, although Dorian’s morning glory had admittedly turned out to be less than glorious, he had made love to her last night, as well as the night before.
‘You know, I think Princess Diana was lucky having three people in her marriage,’ added Chrissie caustically. ‘I only have one person in mine: me. I feel lonelier now than I did when you were in England.’
‘Honeeeey,’ Dorian remonstrated. ‘Come on, that’s not true. You know how happy I am to be home with you and Saskia.’
But even as he said the words, they felt wrong and contrived on his tongue. In fact, the overwhelming feeling Dorian had been aware of since he got back to the Schloss was nervousness. Quite apart from his work worries and bumpy re-entry into the marital atmosphere, inevitable perhaps after such a long stint on location, he was expected to become a father again overnight. Distressingly, he realized he had no idea what to do.
Yesterday, he’d taken Saskia to the local park on his own, after Chrissie insisted she needed ‘a break’ – oddly, given that Rula the nanny had worked the last four straight days since Dorian got back, with Saskia practically glued to her ample hip at all times.
‘It’ll do you good anyway,’ Chrissie had added, reapplying her lipstick as she ran out through the door. ‘You need to bond with Saskia again.’
How he hated that word, bond. For some reason it always made him think of the Airfix model aeroplanes he used to build as kid. Bond the propeller to the wing …. If only parenthood came with a similar set of easy-to-follow instructions.
But to Dorian’s surprise, the playground expedition had actually been fun. Saskia had matured so much in the last two months, in her language, her expressions, her play; it was a delight to watch her. Dorian had enjoyed it thoroughly; right up to the part where an older child had pointed at him and asked Saskia if he was her daddy, and she’d looked pensive and said, ‘Sometimes.’ That was a long, cold glass of guilt in the face, and all the more hurtful because he knew he deserved it. He’d like to have confided his feelings to Chrissie, but he knew if he did she’d turn the incident against him and he’d never hear the end of it. Unbidden and unwanted, Sabrina’s words in the kitchen at Loxley came back to him: ‘Your wife’s so resentful she wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire.’
Was she right?
Lying stiffly in Dorian’s arms now, twitching with frustration, what Chrissie actually felt was a maelstrom of conflicting emotions. What Dorian read as anger, at him for not keeping it up, Chrissie experienced as acute anxiety: she was losing her looks, her sex appeal, her raison d’être. He doesn’t want me any more. I don’t excite him. If she no longer did it for Dorian, her adoring lapdog of a husband, who else was going to look twice at her?
Certainly not Viorel Hudson.
Chrissie had spent the week before Dorian’s return (which conveniently coincided with Viorel’s arrival) in a flat-spin panic about her looks – she was terrified of appearing old and raddled next to Sabrina Leon, but knew Dorian would hit the roof if she flew her dermatologist over from LA. So she had had her Botox touched up by some local quack in Bucharest and was convinced he’d made her look like Meg Ryan. When the film crew finally showed up, it was all a bit of an anti-climax. While Sabrina glided about the Schloss looking predictably perfect as she bemoaned her separation from her newly acquired, aristocratic fiancé to anyone who would listen, Viorel flew in from LA looking drawn, and immediately withdrew to his room. He’d spent the days since in a flat, humourless mood; not aggressive, as Dorian complained he had been in England, but gloomy and sullen. Gone was the flirtatious, devil-may-care rake who’d so entranced Chrissie a few weeks ago. Gone also was the spark that she had felt between the two of them the whole time she had been at Loxley. This Viorel was polite, distant, professional and painfully uninterested, at least in her.
Chrissie challenged him about it on the second day. Running into him in the Schloss’s magnificent library, where he was admiring the mind-boggling array of first editions and original folios, she’d slipped an arm coquettishly around his waist. Viorel withdrew as if he’d been stung.
Chrissie pouted. ‘I don’t bite, you know. At least, not unless you ask me to.’
But Viorel hadn’t asked her to. Instead, he’d had the gall to apologize, feeding her some line about Dorian and feeling guilty for what had happened between them at Loxley. ‘It’s not that I’m not tempted,’ he said smoothly. ‘But it mustn’t happen again.’
Chrissie tried to believe him, but the blow to her ego was severe. As always when rejected by one of her lovers, her knee-jerk reaction was to turn to Dorian for reassurance – but now he, too, seemed to be confirming her suspicions: I’m old and dried up. I’ve been in this place so long I’ve desiccated, like a Christmas orange stuck under the sofa. The high she’d felt in LA, with Harry Greene and the world’s press paying her so much attention, felt light years ago now.
Part of her wanted to stop chasing it, that elusive bright light, to be content in her marriage to Dorian and make it work. After all, they had been happy once, in the early days. And despite this morning’s lacklustre performance, she was sure he still loved her. But Chrissie couldn’t be expected to make all the effort. Dorian would have to try too. He’d only been home a week, and already his good resolutions about leaving the set on time every day and prioritizing family life were fraying severely at the edges. Last night, he hadn’t emerged from his editing suite until almost ten o’clock. Angry at being neglected, Chrissie had squeezed herself into a sexy red Hervé Léger minidress and heels, secretly hoping that if she caught Viorel’s eye it might reignite their flirtation over pre-dinner drinks. But, after forty-five minutes alone in the Grand Ballroom, one of the butlers told her that Viorel, Sabrina and the rest of the cast had all gone into Bihor to eat. Of course, nobody had thought to include her in the invitation. Sitting alone at the kitchen table, again, eating leftover chicken wings and salad for one, it was hard not to feel resentful.
Dorian’s hands were around her waist, caressing the smooth hollow of skin between her belly and her hipbone. She softened, turning around and kissing him on the lips.
‘How about I cook for us tonight?’ she said, her voice low and sultry. ‘I could do my special-recipe lasagna. We haven’t had that in years.’
‘That would be great.’ Dorian tried not to sound as surprised as he felt. Since their first year of marriage, he could count the times Chrissie had turned on an oven on the fingers of one hand.
‘I want it to be just us, though. Tell everyone we need some private time. I’ll have Rula put Saskia to bed. What do you think?’
Dorian was touched. He knew he’d been neglecting Chrissie and that things weren’t right between them. He wanted to bridge the growing gulf more than anything. ‘I think it’s a terrific idea,’ he said, pulling her closer so that her firm, apple breasts pressed against his chest. ‘Things are gonna get better, Chrissie. I promise.’
By four o’clock that afternoon, Dorian was slowly losing the will to live.
It was the first day of shooting Cathy and Heathcliff’s pivotal love scene. This was the moment when, after Cathy’s death, Heathcliff begged her spirit to remain on earth – she might take whatever form she would, she might haunt him, drive him mad – just as long as she did not leave him alone. For Dorian it was the most moving scene in the book, the crux of Catherine and Heathcliff’s tortured love affair. It had to be pitch perfect.
The day began badly. The temperature on set was unbearable, literally and metaphorically. The late Transylvanian summer was punishingly hot, almost a hundred degrees at noon and with the sort of humidity that drained the body of energy like a vampire sucking blood. Today’s scene was being shot in one of the old bell-tower bedrooms, a stunningly romantic backdrop, but one whose only ventilation consisted of a small, stone mullion window. As this was also the only source of natural light, blazing halogen lamps had been strapped to the ceiling, increasing the heat levels in the room threefold. Dorian, like the lighting and sound guys and two cameramen, was working topless and barefoot in a pair of simple cotton shorts. But Viorel and Sabrina had no such luxury. Sweating like a horse after the Grand National in his dark wool trousers and ruffled shirt, Viorel’s face was an oil-slick of smudged make-up. Sabrina, in full corset and crinoline, was even more overheated, although this didn’t seem to stop her from expending what little energy she had left on provoking Viorel rather than focusing on the scene.
At one point she asked for a minute in which to ‘find her centre’.
‘I’m sorry,’ she announced, looking directly at Vio, ‘but I really can’t project arousal unless I’m thinking about Jago. I need to get into the right head-space.’
‘For fuck’s sake,’ muttered Vio, pulling at his sweat-drenched shirt.
They’d done the scene again and again. But the only two emotions Dorian was catching on camera were hostility and heat exhaustion.
‘Cut!’ he shouted, for the third time in as many minutes. ‘What is this, amateur fucking dramatics night?’
Sabrina pouted petulantly and lit a cigarette out of the window. Vio merely stuck his hands in his pockets and scowled.
‘Grow up, both of you,’ snapped Dorian. ‘I’ve seen more of an erotic charge between the three little bears at Saskia’s nursery-school pantomime.’
‘Maybe the three bears had air-conditioning,’ grumbled Sabrina.
‘Yeah. Or maybe they brought their “centre” with them and didn’t need constant validation about their utterly uninteresting sex lives,’ snapped Vio.
Debbie Raynham giggled and he winked at her.
‘I don’t need validation,’ said Sabrina furiously, catching the wink. If there was one thing she couldn’t stand it was being the butt of other people’s jokes. ‘Maybe if you played your goddamn part, I’d be able to play mine. Heathcliff’s supposed to be smouldering with desire and distraught with insatiable need. He’s grief-stricken. He wants to fuck Cathy’s ghost, OK, so we can assume he’s got it pretty fucking bad. But all I see is a whiny little boy in a gay shirt getting pissy because he hasn’t gotten laid in the last five minutes.’
‘ENOUGH!’ Dorian’s voice boomed around the room, echoing off the stone walls like a ricocheting gunshot. ‘Enough. Both of you take fifteen minutes, get some water, cool down. We roll again at five. And if necessary at six, seven, eight, two in the fucking morning. We roll until I see some passion.’
Chrissie poured the dregs of the béchamel sauce over the squares of fresh pasta, dipping her finger into the empty saucepan and licking it. Delicious. There was something intrinsically erotic about cooking, she decided. The enticing smells and textures; the primitive feel of a waxy onion against one’s palms; the warm, creamy comfort of the sauces, rich and forbidden. She laughed at herself. I’ve got sex on the brain, she thought, pre-heating the oven and wiping her hands against the cook’s apron.
The kitchen at the Schloss was a vast room built to prepare meals for a village, not for rustling up a romantic supper for two. In addition to the twenty-foot oak table running down the centre of the flagstone floor, there were numerous sideboards, two six-door cast-iron ovens that looked as though they belonged in a factory, and a ceiling punctuated with sinister four-inch metal hooks, designed presumably for hanging meat, but which would have been equally appropriate props for a bondage movie. But, despite the room’s size and raw, functional décor, or perhaps because of it, it made the perfect setting for the night of seduction that Chrissie had planned. It was still light outside at the moment, but when the sun set and she lit the candles she’d scattered along the deep window ledges, the soft orange glow would transform the space, giving it a mellow, almost ecclesiastical feel. She and Dorian would eat, and laugh, and drink too much of the Châteauneuf-du-Pape ’59 she’d brought up from the cellar. Then she would lie back on the table while he made love to her, too excited to wait until they got upstairs.
I’m getting carried away. Tearing off a few bay leaves from the sprig on the sideboard, she began chopping them up for a garnish. It was so long since she’d even had to boil an egg for herself, Chrissie was gratified to discover her culinary skills had not deserted her. Particularly since moving to Romania, where labour was so cheap and a large estate like the Rasmirezes’ was expected to provide ample local employment, she’d lost touch almost entirely with the everyday tasks of normal life, and had forgotten how enjoyable they could be. Her lasagna was a thing of beauty, if she did say so herself, with or without the bay leaves.
Carefully pushing the dish forwards into the dark centre of the oven, she set the timer and closed the door with a satisfying thud. If the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, she and Dorian should be in hearts-and-flowers-ville in forty minutes exactly. But just in case it wasn’t, Chrissie had double-bagged the situation this morning by unearthing a cheap, horrendously slutty French maid’s outfit in a box at the back of one of her dressing rooms. How incredible that I kept it! She remembered buying it donkey’s years ago at a costume store in Westwood for Halloween. She used to wear it occasionally in her UCLA days, whenever she wanted to drive Dorian even wilder with desire than usual. If they were going to do a trip down memory lane, they might as well take the scenic route. Slipping it on, she was delighted to discover that it not only still fitted, but made her legs look endless and pushed up her small breasts till they could have passed for a C-cup. I’m in better shape now than I was in my twenties, she thought smugly. I can’t wait to see Dorian’s face when he sees me in it.
She looked up at the kitchen clock. Seven thirty. Dorian usually finished on set by seven at the latest and had asked for dinner at eight. He’d be in his office in the East Wing now, making calls to LA; or in the editing suite, glancing over the day’s footage. That gave Chrissie thirty minutes to shower, change and beautify herself while one of the maids set the table, after which all the servants were under strict instructions to make themselves scarce, as were the actors and crew.
Fuck you, Vio Hudson. I don’t need you. My husband’s twice the man you are, in business and in bed. Everyone in Hollywood believed the Rasmirezes’ marriage was a fairytale. Starting tonight, Chrissie decided, it was time to write her happy ending.
Up in the bell tower, the air temperature had dropped but tempers were still at boiling point. Viorel and Sabrina had run through their scene more than fifteen times, but Dorian still wasn’t satisfied.
Viorel groaned. Admittedly, the first nine takes were probably his fault. Sabrina’s mention of Jago was setting his teeth on edge. He could easily have put a stop to it by giving her what she wanted (attention) but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
But the last seven takes were entirely down to Dorian’s perfectionism. The light hadn’t fallen quite correctly across Sabrina’s face. Viorel’s forearm had blocked a split-second’s worth of shot. The ghost kiss was too long, too short, too contrived, too passionless. Grudgingly, Vio and Sabrina had bonded through adversity and finally started giving the scene their all. But nothing was good enough for Dorian.
‘When you go in to kiss her, I want it faster, rougher, more sudden,’ he berated Viorel. ‘So from, “I don’t care, Cathy, you can’t leave me,” move in and grab her forearms like so.’ Stepping out from behind the camera, Dorian grabbed Sabrina by the wrists and pulled her violently towards him. ‘We need to see the desperation.’
‘You can’t see desperation?’ drawled Vio. ‘Are you sure the camera’s switched on?’
‘You are losing her,’ continued Dorian, ignoring him. He was still holding Sabrina so tightly by the arms that her hands had begun to throb. ‘This is the woman that you love, the love of your life, and she is slipping through your fingers, literally. It’s anguish, OK – raw fucking anguish.’
He looked at Sabrina and for a moment his stomach lurched. She’d got it. At last she’d got it! Staring straight back at him, her eyes brimmed with such sadness, such pain, it took his breath away. For a second, Dorian stood transfixed. The suffering in Sabrina’s eyes was quite real, the line between her and Cathy Earnshaw erased utterly. I was so right to cast her, he thought triumphantly. How could Viorel not respond to that? How was he not howling and moaning and tearing at his hair when he saw that exquisite face so tortured, so wildly in need of rescue?
He ran back to his position behind the camera. ‘Roll!’ he shouted. ‘For God’s sake, roll!’
‘I don’t care, Cathy.’ Grabbing Sabrina as Dorian had shown him, Viorel pulled her towards him. But the look she gave him was nothing like the poignant gaze she’d just used on Dorian. Instead, with her face only inches from his, Sabrina’s eyes flashed with lust. And there was something else there too, a sort of bravado, almost a defiance. The look was unmistakably a challenge, a dare. Viorel rose to it, throwing Sabrina backwards and kissing her with a passion that bordered on hatred, grinding his lips against hers, pulling at her hair, her cheeks, the bodice of her dress. The kiss went on and on and on, a full three seconds longer than the previous take, which Dorian had nixed for ‘dragging’. But there was no dragging here. The sexual tension was so explosive that none of the crew dared breathe. When Vio finally released her, Sabrina stared back up at him, too shell-shocked to remember her line. Panting, lips slightly parted, cheeks red and scratched from his stubble, she looked as if she’d spent the last twenty-four hours in bed.
‘Hello,’ she laughed.
Viorel beamed back at her. ‘Hi.’
From the other side of the camera, Dorian felt his adrenaline pumping. It was a bizarre sensation. He ought to be delighted, and part of him was: that was the best piece of footage they’d shot so far, no question. But there was a distinct, bitter aftertaste to the sweetness of success. All day he’d been praying for the spark to ignite between his lead actors. But now that it had, now that he’d seen that look of purest passion on Sabrina’s face, he felt panicked.
‘Cut!’
Chuck, Debbie and the crew broke into spontaneous applause.
‘Desperate enough for you?’ Vio asked Dorian.
Pulling himself together, Dorian forced a smile. ‘Yes, Mr Hudson, it was. Now while the two of you are on a roll, I want to go back and reshoot some of the earlier stuff.’ A collective groan rose up around the room.
‘You’re not serious?’ Sabrina spoke for all the crew, but with more urgency than the rest of them. She wanted to talk to Viorel, alone, now. That kiss was more than just Cathy and Heathcliff and they both knew it. How could she go back to work after that? Her heart was pounding away like a jackhammer.
‘Sure I’m serious,’ said Dorian. His earlier, irrational panic had subsided. This was good; it was all good. Looking around at the sea of hostile faces, he shrugged his shoulders innocently. ‘What? Come on, guys. We can’t waste this. Mike,’ he turned to the exhausted runner, ‘go get us some coffee and sandwiches. You can’t make cinema history on an empty stomach.’
They finished filming just before midnight. Dorian, who’d been running on raw energy since breakfast, suddenly stood up and found he was dizzy with hunger. Only after everyone had gone to bed and he walked back to the private, family wing of the Schloss did he go into the kitchen to forage for a sandwich and see it.
Candlelight.
Flowers.
The beautifully laid table.
Dinner with Chrissie. It was tonight.
Fuck.
The evidence mounted. One clean plate, one dirty plate. A half-drunk bottle of extremely expensive red wine. A cold dish of lasagna, hardening to a greasy crust on the stove-top.
She’s gonna kill me.
Walking upstairs, he rehearsed explanations in his mind.
If we got it right today, I knew I’d have more time off to be with you and Saskia later.
No. Lame. She’d never buy it.
I wouldn’t have been able to give you the attention you deserved if I’d missed what we shot tonight. Chemistry like that is once in a lifetime.
As an actress, Chrissie might at least understand that one. But would she forgive it?
When you see that scene, honey, you’ll understand. This movie’s for us. If it’s a hit, we’ll never have to worry about money again.
Not strictly true. But as the truth was, ‘I forgot about dinner,’ probably a safer option.
Pushing open the bedroom door with a guilty creak, Dorian saw that the bedside lights were still on. Chrissie was lying face down on the bed, apparently asleep. Unless he was seeing things, a possibility after the day he’d just had, she appeared to be wearing a French maid’s outfit.
Oh my God. Not ‘a’. ‘The’. That was the maid’s uniform she used to put on for me when we first started dating.
Dorian’s heart swelled first with love, then with remorse. Suddenly he knew there were no excuses he could offer. She’d made a titanic effort to please him, and he’d let her down.
‘Honey?’ Perched on the edge of the bed, he rested a tentative hand on the small of Chrissie’s back. ‘Sweetheart? Are you awake?’
Slowly, Chrissie turned around. Dorian winced. Her face was puffy and swollen, her eyes red raw from crying.
‘Chrissie, I don’t know what to say. I’m really sorry.’
He braced himself for the firestorm, the screaming, the insults, the hysteria. Instead, he got silence and a blank, empty stare. It was infinitely more chilling.
‘I’ll make it up to you, I promise,’ he babbled, nervously filling the silence. ‘Sabrina and Vio were so incredible tonight, I got caught up in it and I couldn’t get away. I truly am sorry.’
‘It’s OK,’ said Chrissie. ‘I understand.’
Her words should have comforted Dorian, but they didn’t. It’s the voice, he thought. She sounded strange, different, as if she were a dummy into which some hidden ventriloquist was throwing his voice, reading from a pre-prepared script.
‘The good news is we nailed it,’ he said, trying to sound normal himself. ‘We’re actually ahead of schedule now, so I can take some time off. We’ll go somewhere, just the three of us.’
For a moment, Chrissie emerged from her stupor, narrowing her eyes in puzzlement. ‘Three?’
‘Sure,’ said Dorian. ‘You, me and Saskia.’
At the mention of their daughter, the curtain fell back over Chrissie’s features. ‘Fine,’ she said dully. ‘I’m tired, Dorian. Let’s go to sleep.’
Ten minutes later, exhausted from the day’s exertions and relieved that the expected Hurricane Chrissie had not materialized, Dorian was in a deep sleep and snoring loudly.
Next to him, rigid-backed and wide-eyed, Chrissie stared at the ceiling.
If I had the strength, she thought, I’d kill him. Right now. Put the pillow over his fat head and hold it down till he stopped kicking.
She was so filled with hatred, it was hard to breathe. Hatred for Dorian, hatred for his cursed movie, hatred for Viorel, hatred for herself for caring so much. The worst part of all was that Dorian hadn’t even wanted to make it up to her sexually. His idea of a ‘do-over’ for their romantic night together was a family outing with fucking Saskia. He might as well have come to bed with the words ‘I don’t want you’ tattooed across his forehead. He’d said nothing about her outfit, about how sexy she looked. He didn’t even try to touch me, just rolled right over and went to sleep.
She felt like a hooker, cheap and worthless. Except men actually want to sleep with hookers. Dorian would rather pay to see me in a burka and a fucking chastity belt.
Lying there seething in the still silence, something inside Chrissie Rasmirez snapped. To any outside observer, it was as if nothing had happened. The break was clean, quiet and irrevocable, like a silk scarf floating softly down onto a Samurai sword and splitting into two. Chrissie didn’t stir, or speak, or blink. Instead, while her husband snored beside her, she softly sailed past the point of no return.
Back in the West Wing, Sabrina lay on top of her bed in just her bra and pants, breathless. Even at this time of night the heat from the day lingered, stored in the walls of Sabrina’s whitewashed bedroom and seeped into the linen bedclothes. After three straight hours of erotic scenes with Vio, Sabrina felt hot and sultry, conscious of the damp saltiness of the sweat glistening on her thighs and running in a trail between her breasts.
Where the hell was he?
She’d expected Viorel to show up in her bedroom a few discreet minutes after she’d gone to bed, to pick things up where they’d left off. The thought of fucking him at last had her practically hyperventilating with excitement. But as the minutes passed, ten, twenty, thirty, anticipation turned to anxiety. Surely, she couldn’t have misjudged the erotic vibes she’d got from him in the bell tower? Could Viorel actually be that good an actor?
Her cellphone rang. Maybe he was calling to check the coast was clear? She answered instantly. ‘Vio?’
‘No, darling. It’s me.’ Jago’s voice sent a wave of disappointment flooding through her veins.
‘Oh, hi. I was just going to bed.’
‘Hmmmm,’ said Jago dreamily. ‘What are you wearing?’
Before Sabrina could tell him she was in no mood for phone-sex, her bedroom door opened. There was no knock. It just opened. Bloody Romanian maids. Didn’t they know what time it was? Instinctively, Sabrina grabbed the edge of the sheet and pulled it up over her body. She opened her mouth to scream, then closed it again. Viorel stood in the doorway, staring at her intently. Sabrina stared back. In pyjama bottoms and a plain white T-shirt, his black hair still wet from the shower, sleek and gleaming like an otter’s pelt, he looked as sexy as she had ever seen him. Better still, the look in his eyes was unmistakably predatory.
Jago was still talking. ‘Tell me about your panties …’ Yesterday, Sabrina might have been aroused by the dirty talk. But today, coming from Jago, it sounded ridiculous.
‘Erm …’ Sabrina cleared her throat. Her head felt heavy suddenly and her mouth had gone dry. It was hard to concentrate. ‘They, er … I mean …’
Viorel walked slowly but deliberately towards the bed, his eyes never leaving Sabrina’s, and removed the phone from her hand. ‘She’s busy,’ he drawled into the receiver. ‘Call back later.’
He clicked the phone shut, then switched it off.
‘That was an important call,’ said Sabrina, feigning outrage. It was difficult with Viorel standing over her, so close she could smell the Floris shower gel on his newly washed skin.
‘No it wasn’t.’
He pushed her back on the bed. Sabrina stretched out her arms above her head. Her hair fanned out across the bedspread like an arc of peacock feathers, iridescent in the lamplight, and her breasts rose and fell beneath the delicate lace of her bra like two ripe peaches quivering on a tree.
Viorel stroked her face, slowly tracing one finger along her jawline and down to her collarbone. She shivered.
‘You’re nervous.’ He smiled.
‘No,’ she lied, reaching forward to grab his face in her hands to try to kiss him. Gently, Viorel removed her hands.
‘Stop,’ he whispered. ‘Stop trying to be in control. That doesn’t work with me.’
Bending his head lower, he kissed the tops of her breasts, his hands moving languorously down over her ribs and belly, his fingertips tantalizingly brushing the elastic of her panties, but not venturing beneath. Sabrina moaned, arching her body upwards against him.
‘Relax,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘We have time. We have all night.’
And miraculously, Sabrina did relax, abandoning herself to him, to his touch, his voice, his tongue, to all the incredible, indescribable things he was doing to her body.
Jago was a good lover, unquestionably, and Sabrina had slept with plenty of sexually talented men in her life. But Viorel was on another plane altogether, reaching her in ways that she had never experienced before, arousing feelings that transcended physical pleasure and spilled over into something else, something far deeper, more intense, more frightening. Comparing Jago with him was like comparing a bicycle with a fighter jet, or an Olympic swimmer with a real, live shark. Pointless. Ridiculous.
For the next two hours, Sabrina surrendered herself completely to Vio, aware of nothing but the rush of joy that flooded her senses like a tsunami. She had no idea when his clothes had come off, or how. She lost track of how many times she came, how many positions he put her in, whether a specific sensation was being caused by his hands, his mouth, his dick. For the first time she understood what her character, Cathy, had meant when she said that she and Heathcliff were one person and described him as ‘more myself than I am’. To Sabrina, sex had always been a tool, something she had used to exert power over others, over men. With Viorel, all of that fell away. She was naked, not just in body but in soul.
When they finally finished, she lay beside him, shaking violently. Pulling the bedclothes up over her, Viorel was shocked to see tears streaming down her face.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, genuinely concerned. ‘I didn’t hurt you, did I?’
Sabrina didn’t answer, but started sobbing more loudly.
Vio looked panicked. ‘Oh, God, Sabrina, what is it?’ He’d been so lost in his own pleasure – having denied himself Sabrina’s body for three long months, and spent the last four weeks in agonies believing he would never have her, tonight had been the best, most explosive fuck of his life – he’d missed the emotional storm building up inside her.
‘Please don’t cry. I’m sorry. I thought it was what you wanted. You seemed, you know … into it.’
This was such an understatement, Sabrina laughed, much to his relief. But the tears soon returned.
‘It was what I wanted,’ she mumbled, between sobs. ‘It is what I want.’
‘So why …?’
‘I’m frightened, you fucking moron!’ she shouted at him, sitting up. Without thinking, she drew back her arm and swung a punch at his face. Vio only just ducked in time.
‘Whoah!’ he said, tentatively sitting back up. ‘Easy. Frightened of what?’
The question seemed to enrage Sabrina. Letting out a frustrated yell, she lunged at him again, but this time Vio was too quick for her, grabbing her wrists and holding tightly till she at last stopped struggling and broke down in tears again. Finally, she looked at him, her face a picture of misery.
‘I think I love you,’ she said quietly.
Now it was Viorel’s heart that began to race. The silence hung in the air after Sabrina’s words like an unspoken death sentence. Gazing into her liquid eyes, still holding her hands in his, he caught a glimpse of the chasm of need and longing inside her and felt as scared as he had ever felt in his life.
She’s the most beautiful, most desirable woman in the world, he told himself. She’s talented. She’s sweet underneath all the bullshit. She’s the best lay you’ve ever had. And she loves you.
Say something, you asshole.
‘I love you too.’ The words were out of his mouth before he knew he’d thought them. Just as Viorel was thinking how uncomfortable they were, how wrong, like an ill-fitting suit, Sabrina collapsed into his arms like a demolished building, all the tension and terror magically released. Viorel held her, shooshing her like a child, murmuring meaningless words of comfort – it’s OK, it’s all right, I’m here. Very quickly she was asleep.
Laying her down on the bed beside him, he covered her again with the sheet and bedspread and turned out the light. For a long time, he lay there, staring at her. After today’s scene, making love to Sabrina hadn’t even been a choice any more. It had been a necessity. It felt right.
So why, watching her sleep peacefully beside him now, did he suddenly feel so wrong? Like he was playing a part; a part intended for somebody else. But then so much of his life had felt like that: England, Eton, Cambridge – maybe it had simply become second nature for him to question everything, or at least to question everything good.
I have to relax, he told himself. Learn to enjoy it. Who knows? Maybe a challenge like Sabrina is exactly what I need?