Lace (78 page)

Lili had half expected something of the sort, but she certainly hadn’t expected the violence of her reaction. She had thought she would gently push him away. He was too young. But at his
touch her back arched, her stomach tightened, her nipples tingled and she felt as if they were connected to her groin by two invisible, tugging threads. She gasped, and for a few moments she
didn’t move, but her trembling body demanded that she respond. Unable to stop herself, she pushed her trembling fingers through his thick, strawlike hair, and stroked the sunburned nape of
his young neck. Neither of them spoke as he raised his eyes to hers. Her lips slowly parted as she gazed at the golden down on his cheeks, the aristocratic nose.

His hazel eyes looked oddly dazed as he lunged toward Lili; his large mouth brushed her cheek, then his mouth was on hers and she felt his insistent, silky lips.

Slowly, they fell back on the grass. Alexandre lay half on top of Lili and his eyes closed languorously as he sucked her mouth into his. At each pull, Lili’s stomach contracted, and her
body stiffened under Alexandre’s smooth hands. Suddenly she remembered that the hands of Jo Stiarkoz had felt like wrinkled walnuts. She felt a sudden stab of disloyalty as she smelled
Alexandre ’s musky odour, the erotic odour of fresh sweat on a young body. She sniffed the sweet fragrance of his hair, mingling with the green scent of the crushed grass beneath them.

Her slim arms wrapped around his body, then slipped up inside his T-shirt. She felt the rippling muscles of his back as with his eyes shut, he edged his way further onto her body until she was
firmly imprisoned beneath him. As if possessed, her hands slipped down the back of his jeans, slid under the rough, tough fabric and over his silken, hard buttocks. Oh, God, she thought, young,
firm
flesh. For a fleeting second she again remembered, with guilt and against her wish, the tortoiselike, slightly pendulous pouches of Stiarkoz, the doughlike sinking of his flesh when
touched.

Clinging to Alexandre, she felt his hardness through the bulging denim. Slowly he pushed his quivering hands inside her dress, slowly undid each pearl button, his lips still sucking at her
mouth. Her tingling nipples were erect and waiting for his hands. Gently he squeezed the soft whiteness and felt her hard little rosebuds under his palms. Then his hands brushed farther down her
body, as his lips ran clumsily over her breasts, sucking insistently first one pink nipple and then the other. Harder and harder he sucked, and with each gentle tug Lili felt a matching, yearning
tug deep in her groin. With one hand he pulled up her skirt and felt beneath the fragile fabric. Lili felt the hard warmth of his hand press against her naked stomach, then slowly slide downward
beneath the scrap of white lace. Softly, hesitantly, he touched her and she arched toward him, helpless beneath his hand. With growing confidence he stroked her, laced his fingers in her dark
silken hair and tugged it gently; then rhythmically, insistently, he stroked until she arched her half-clad body to the sun and gave one sharp, high cry among the rustling trees.

For a few minutes she was oblivious as sun freckled through leaves from the blue sky beyond. Then she felt his trembling hands tearing at her belt, unhooking it. She helped him to pull her dress
from her body. Together, they tugged off his jeans so that they both lay naked in the long grass. With a low moan, Alexandre flung himself on top of her, his eyes still closed. Again Lili felt that
wonderful moth-mouth settling on hers, his hands on her breasts, his hardness on the naked flesh of her soft belly. Aroused again to the point of frenzy, she felt for him. As she guided him,
throbbing, into her body she could feel the heavy beating of her heart against his own. More than anything she wanted to feel him inside her, to feel joined to this wild, hard-muscled boy bucking
on top of her, thrusting deep inside her body, groaning until he flung his head back to the sky, quivering as he called the name that had possessed his mind for the last three days. “Lili,
Lili, Lili!”

He clung to her, his eyes still closed, his downy lashes against the tanned face, and eventually he whispered into her ear, “Was it . . . all right for you?”

Lili wrapped her slender, brown arms around him. “It was wonderful,” she whispered.

So Alexandre made love to her again.

Afterward he was still unable to keep his mouth off her. Lili snuggled against the golden body, purring into his armpits, sniffing the soft down. She felt alive again, excited, exalted. She bent
her head so that her cloud of dark hair hung down, and then she trailed the black silken sheet over Alexandre’s body until he flung himself at her again.

He couldn’t stop touching her. Every soft stroke of his hand felt as if he were holding something fragile and precious.

They slithered naked down the bank and stood, waist-high, in the water. Lili felt her toes sink voluptuously into the soft mud as Alexandre pulled her, laughing, spluttering, into the clear
water of the stream. For a few minutes they struggled playfully. Then gently Alexandre lifted her dripping, satin body and laid her on the river bank where he sat and looked at her. Slyly, as if it
were forbidden, his gaze travelled down her wet brown body. He exulted. He gloated. Like a young wolf, he was unstoppable. He leaned forward and ran his mouth over her breasts again, tugging harder
now at the nipples. Lili shuddered in ecstasy as she felt the warm tongue move down her ribs, the wet warm tip trickle across her stomach, dip lovingly into her navel, then trace its slithery route
south. She felt his breath in her dark hair and his tongue flicker over her quivering flesh, gently insistent that she yield totally to the pleasure he was giving her.

Afterward they waited in the wood until Alexandre reckoned that everybody was gathered in the drawing room for drinks. Quietly, they slipped from the trees at the side of the
lawn to the door of the orangery. Alexandre looked like a tawny, sleepy beast. He was hugely pleased with himself and he still couldn’t keep his hands off Lili, whose hair was a wild tangle
and whose dress was grass-stained and ruined.

Inside the glass-walled orangery stood dark green tubs of fragrant white camellias and sour, sharp-scented scarlet geraniums. Orange and lemon trees stood between the carved stone benches that
were placed every five meters.

On the end bench, sitting upright in tangerine satin, was Maxine.

Earlier that afternoon, Mademoiselle Janine had pressed her forehead to the window of the blue salon as Lili and Alexandre wandered across the lawn toward the wood. She was not the only person
to have noticed their departure, but she was the only one who immediately moved over to the coffee table and murmured the news to Madame la Comtesse. Maxine was suddenly possessed by a violent
jealousy that swept away all logic. Like everyone else, Maxine had noticed her son’s infatuation, but she had hardly expected her star guest to take much notice of a fifteen-year-old boy,
especially when there were so many more suitable men present. Try as she might, Maxine found that she couldn’t ignore the situation. She was bursting with indignation and rage. She guessed
that they would not be back before sunset, when (if Alexandre was anything like his brothers or his father) they would no doubt enter by the little hidden door to the orangery where the woods came
nearest to the château.

As they changed for dinner, Maxine asked Charles to look after their guests for a few minutes. He gave her a swift, worried look; something was up when Maxine used that carefully casual voice,
but he judged it better to say nothing and do as she wished.

Quietly the door to the orangery opened and they slipped inside. Alexandre immediately pulled Lili to him again and bent his head down to her throat, but she gently laughed.
“You must
never
touch me when anyone might see.”

“Then may I come to your room tonight?”

“You will go to
your
room
now,
Alexandre.” It was his mother’s voice. Caught off guard, the tall boy suddenly looked like a guilty six-year-old who had been
caught stealing candy.

He hesitated. Lili gave him a little push toward the corridor and he fled.

Shaking wth anger Maxine looked at Lili. “Couldn’t you leave my son alone? Did you
need
to seduce a fifteen-year-old boy? Can’t you leave
any
man
alone?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.
He
seduced
me.
. . . Is he
really
only fifteen? . . . I thought eighteen . . . or maybe seventeen.”

“I hate to think of his
touching
you.”

“But what is so dreadful? It was obviously not the first time.”

“He should love someone of his own age and his own kind.”

“I’m only twenty-four.”

“I don’t care
how
old you are. You’re no better than a whore.”

Maxine had gone too far. Lili was suddenly furious. “You are
jealous
because I had him and
you can’t.
”

Stepping forward, Maxine slapped the face of this creature who had bewitched her youngest and favourite son.

As fast as a fighting cock, Lili flew at Maxine and her hand flashed across the older woman’s face. Blood flowed in three small trickles down Maxine’s cheek.

Crying with indignation, Lili again flung herself at Maxine, pounding at the older, bigger woman with arms flailing, engrossed in her rage and her need for revenge. Aghast, Maxine flung up both
arms to protect herself from her attacker and kicked Lili away with one tangerine satin toe. But Lili sprang back at her, eyes narrowed, lips drawn back.

Maxine was ashamed, mortified and alarmed. She had never hit anyone in her life, not even her sons when they were children. Yet she had now allowed herself to behave as badly as this slut. She
broke away and fled to her room, her hair falling down on one side, her cheek bleeding and her dress torn.

She flung herself on the blue silk bed, grabbed the ivory house telephone and dialed the housekeeper. With difficulty she kept her voice calm. “Please pack Mademoiselle Lili’s
clothes straightaway, and tell Antoine to bring her car to the front door. She will be leaving immediately.” Then she rang for the butler to come to her bedroom.

She changed quickly into her bathrobe, brushed and pinned her hair into place, bathed her scratched cheek, which had stopped bleeding, and dabbed Concealstik on the wounds. When the butler
arrived she simply said, “There has been a slight disturbance, Lamartine. Miss Lili is leaving. I want you to see that she is out of this house within half an hour. And Lamartine—the
meal had better wait until she has gone. We do not want to disturb the other guests, and we don’t want a scene. Serve more champagne, please.”

Lili was already flinging her clothes into her suitcases. She left the house with head held high, conscious of the expressionless, watchful Lamartine in his role of upper-class bouncer.

Shrouded in twilight, the beautiful château receded in the rear-view mirror as the Jaguar sped down the drive. As soon as the car had nosed out of the gate, Lili pulled to the side of the
road and collapsed in tears.

But the episode had not yet ended. In the following issue of
Paris Match
there was no photo coverage of Maxine ’s glamorous guests at her anniversary ball. Instead
there was a single colour spread under a banner heading that read “Chateau de Chazalle—A Place to Make Friends.”

It was the first of an idyllic series of photographs of a young couple lying in a forest clearing.
There,
unmistakably, lay Lili in the long grass and it was undoubtedly Alexandre who
leaned over her.
There
was a close-up of Alexandre’s mouth and his hand on her breast.
There
they were clasped together and laughing as they fell through the spray of river
water.

It was fairly discreet as these things go—no nipples, no pubic hair, no sex organs, no navels—but it was unmistakably erotic.

Andi Cherno’s telephoto lens had snapped another scoop.

When she saw it, Maxine sat up in bed and burst into tears of mortification.

So did Lili.

So did Alexandre. He had been painfully humiliated. Lili had left without a word, and he had then been ferociously punished by his parents. Nevertheless, after
Paris Match
appeared, he
could feel the wordless, amazed admiration of his father and brothers and the awed respect of every single boy in his class.

But he would rather have had Lili.

T
HE WINTER OF
1975 was unusually cold in Paris, and the scarlet Jaguar skidded slightly as Lili drove—rather too
fast—along the cobbled streets.

“Slower,” Zimmer suggested, as they slid sideways toward an ornate, dark green urinal. Lili steered into the skid, straightened and continued as fast as before. Zimmer said, “I
don’t know what’s got into you, Lili, but I know something’s wrong.
What is it?
We’ve made nearly a dozen movies together, and in the last year or so you’ve had
two wonderful parts. You’re only twenty-five and you’ve won every European acting award there is. What’s eating you?”

Lili was silent. After Stiarkoz’s death, she had felt like an outsider among the rich. She buried her grief in the one distraction that had never failed to absorb her—her work. She
started to work with a passion and discipline, as if her life depended on it. Which it did. Even Zimmer was surprised by her fierce concentration and tenacity. He’d always known she had star
quality, but it had originally been hampered by lack of ambition, lack of self-discipline, lack of direction. Now, at twenty-five, Lili seemed to know what she wanted, where she wanted to go. There
was no holding her.

And Zimmer was the perfect counterbalance of their relationship. He knew, with cynical self-awareness, that he wasn’t egomanic enough ever to be a
great
director, he couldn’t
be tough enough with himself or anyone else, but with Lili his work was outstanding and so was hers. She trusted him completely, she seemed to know instinctively what he wanted and he always drew a
first-class performance from her. Until now.