Naked Angel (16 page)

“The difference is, it only took me about three minutes to get your clothes off.”

“Okay, let’s not go there. I’m almost a married woman,” Mallory said, waving her ring finger.

“Yeah. So when’s the big day? Shouldn’t you be getting all bridezilla about now?”

Mallory sighed and gestured for Bette to help her get into her Liz Taylor as Cleopatra costume. “I should,” Mallory said. “But I’m too busy thinking about Vegas.”

“Is that all there is to it?” Bette said.

“Yes. Of course. What else would it be?”

“I don’t know. Just checking.”

“Well, thanks for your concern, but I’m fine. I will set a date and think about actually getting married when things slow down.”

“And Alec is fine with that?”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t he be? Besides—I need to coordinate with your schedule.”

“Why with my schedule?”

“How can I get married without my maid of honor? Or, in your case, maid of dishonor.”

“Are you serious?”

“Sure. Why do you look so surprised?”

“I thought you would ask one of your happy housewife friends—Julie or Allison.”

“I’ve known them for a lot longer, it’s true. But I really don’t believe Alec and I would be together today if it weren’t for you. You forced both of us to change in ways that saved our relationship.”

Despite her efforts to maintain nonchalance, Bette beamed.

“Glad to be of service. And for the record, I’d be happy to be your maid of dishonor. You just might have to get married at whatever film set I’m on. Now step into this bodice. I don’t know how that British chick creates these things.”

Justin turned his key in the apartment door, making sure Martha was close behind him. He had encouraged her not to drink too much at her birthday dinner at Per Se, and as a result she was now sober enough to appreciate the spectacle that awaited her.

“Surprise!” A chorus of costumed well-wishers greeted them with shrieks, popping corks, and clapping.

Martha turned to him with gratitude shining in her eyes.

“I can’t believe you did this,” she said with a smile as broad and genuine as any he’d ever seen from her. He was relieved. Ever since their conversation about paying Gemma Kole a retainer, things had been frosty between them. Or maybe the coolness was just a figment of his guilty conscience. And in the meantime, as much as his cock was aching for Gemma, he had avoided her so he could stall for time to get the money he’d promised her.

But she was there tonight, the party as much her brainchild as it had been his own. She was dressed as Brigitte Bardot—or maybe it wasn’t a costume and she just looked like the French actress. Regardless, she was the embodiment of every erotic fantasy he’d ever had. With her hair in a messy loose ponytail, her big eyes smudged with dark liner, and her gap-toothed smile, it took all of his control not to break through the crowd and grab her.

The living room had been transformed into an Academy Awards theater, with rows of seating and a stage. Alec would be acting as host. Justin had worked with Alec and Mallory to write joke “awards” for their friends—Best Hamptons House, Best Divorce—and Mallory had found a Web site to order fake Oscar statuettes online. And for entertainment, they had The Painted Lady women to perform as Hollywood legends. He knew he should focus on the party agenda, but all he could think about was the possibility of getting Gemma upstairs.

He checked to make sure Martha was occupied, and sure enough she was already enveloped in a crowd of friends. Justin broke free to head to the bar, where he found Alec drinking a beer and talking to an editor from
Vanity Fair
. Justin felt a slight pang, once again missing Billy Barton and the days when
Gruff
magazine always had the scoop on the Baxter parties.

“What time do you want to start the show?” Alec asked.

“Eight thirty. Give everyone a chance to mingle.” Justin ordered a scotch. “I’ll go check and see how the girls are doing upstairs.”

Justin took his drink, the ice clinking reassuringly against the crystal glass. In the narrow foyer between the living room and the bar, he saw Gemma. He wanted to believe she had been looking for him, but knew that was probably wishful thinking.

“You did a great job,” he said. “This place is absolutely transformed.”

“Your staff was quite helpful,” she said in that clipped, British way of hers.

“I’m going upstairs to check on the performers. Want to help make sure the costumes are all set?”

“Sure,” she said.

But once up the stairs, he veered in the opposite direction from the girls’ dressing room, pulling Gemma into his bedroom instead.

“How did I know we would end up in here?” she said.

He closed and locked the door, then turned her back to him so he could unzip her dress. The silver lamé fell to the floor.

He cupped her breasts from behind, then pushed her gently onto the bed. She tried to turn over on her back, but he held her on her stomach and spread her legs. He pressed his face between the curve of her ass and the edge of her pussy, and inhaled deeply. He saw her hand clutch a pillow, and he hoped it was because she wanted him as much as he wanted her. He licked the folds of her pussy lips, then stuck his tongue inside, his hands holding her ass. She squirmed under his grip, and he let her turn over. At the sight of her full cunt spread before him, already glistening wet, he lost any sense of pacing and hurriedly pulled off his pants. With his cock unleashed, he knelt before her at the edge of the bed. He wished she would take him in her mouth, but he knew by now that she would do nothing to him—that the most he could hope for was that she would allow him to touch and lick and fuck her until his feverish need was quieted.

He moved on top of her, his mouth tugging on her nipples while he inserted his cock inside her. As usual, she was still as a doll while he thrust and grunted like a clumsy schoolboy. He felt he could come already, and he tried to calm himself down. Who knew how many weeks he would have to wait to get her alone again—he needed to make this last. And yet the throbbing pulse in his cock told him there was no mental trick that would delay what was sure to be a monstrous orgasm.

“Wait,” she said.

“What?” he managed to gasp.

“Stop.”

It took every ounce of will to pull out of her, but he did. He held his red, angry penis in his hand, stroking it gently.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

“I came up here to talk to you.”

“To talk,” he repeated, rolling onto his back and trying to ignore the urge to finish.

“Yes. You’ve been scarce these past few weeks. I’ve been working on the costumes. You owe me some money.”

“Okay,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“I’m . . . I’ll have it soon.”

“You don’t have the money, do you? It’s all Martha’s.”

“She’ll support what I need for the club.”

“Oh, really? I hope so—for your sake. I’m not doing another stitch until you live up to your end of the bargain. So you can explain to Mallory why her girls won’t have their precious costumes. And you won’t be laying a finger on me ever again, that’s for damn sure.” She jumped up and pulled on her dress.

Justin was helpless to do anything but watch her unlock the door and walk out, slamming it behind her. Incredibly, his cock was still hard, and in an act of absolute defeat, he rubbed himself until the hands that had moments ago been touching her were left with nothing but his own mess.

G
emma pushed open the gates of Justin’s apartment building and hurried down Bond Street. Her heart pounded as she dialed her phone. She couldn’t believe Violet had been right after all. Thank goodness she’d only put her off, not blown her off.

“It’s Gemma, the costume designer,” Gemma said when Violet answered on the second ring.

“Oh, hello, London. Are you calling to invite me to the Baxter party? I was just reading about it on Twitter. Sounds lame. I’d be happy to get some action going.”

“I just left the party,” Gemma said.

“Bravo. So what can I do for you?”

“I want to take you up on your offer.”

“Hmm. Hate to say I told you so. Let’s get started, then.” Violet gave her an address on West Fifty-seventh Street. “Take the elevator to the fifth floor. When you get there, give my name at the front desk.”

“What is this place?”

“It’s a private club. Don’t be late.”

*   *   *

Max took a canapé off a tray held by a Judy Garland lookalike dressed in full Dorothy regalia.

“I guess I’m not in Kansas anymore,” he muttered to himself.

As a prominent member of the New York City fine arts community, he had been invited to a variety of Baxter parties over the past few years. Despite the parties’ reputation for beautiful women and debauchery, Max had never been particularly interested in attending, and his initial impulse had been to ignore the latest evite, too. But when he overhead Nadia mentioning the party on the phone with Mallory, he gave it more consideration.

Then he received a follow-up evite with a listing of performers. Sure enough, “Naughty Natasha” was on the bill. And so he had RSVP’d yes.

Max had not told Nadia that he would be going to the party. He knew she would ask him not to go. He could already tell that her strategy for dealing with their disagreement on this issue was to just polarize their relationship: She would have her time with him, and her nights at The Painted Lady, and the two would never intersect. He knew—and was sure she knew on some level—that would never work.

Tonight was a chance to see if the woman he was falling in love with was really determined to do this, or if she was, as he believed, simply distracting herself from the difficult work of finding a new kind of place for herself in ballet. He supposed the real question he needed to answer was about himself: Would he be able to deal with her choice if it was to be a burlesque performer after all?

The seats in the theater room were filling up. Max was surprised not only to see the number of A-list celebrities in the room, but to see that they had played along with the dress-up theme. It truly felt like a bizarro world Oscar night. The only thing missing was Joan Rivers on the red carpet.

He found a seat near the back next to one of the actors from
Mad Men
.

The pop music that had been pulsing through the room receded, and in the sudden quiet the buzz of conversation dulled to a subtle hum just below the surface. The overhead lights dimmed, and Mallory’s boyfriend took center stage in front of the red curtain.

Max looked around the room, but didn’t see any of the girls from The Painted Lady. He knew Nadia was probably tucked away in another part of the townhouse, getting into her costume. Still, he continued to hope that he might catch a glimpse of her.

Alec Martin’s monologue—lots of in-jokes about Justin Baxter and Martha Pike—was getting laughs from the crowd. Max supposed he would have had a better chance of appreciating the humor if he had known a thing or two about the couple hosting the party, which he absolutely did not.

“And now, ladies and gentleman, our first performer of the night is a woman who needs no introduction and whom you will next see in Ben Affleck’s upcoming film
White Picket Fences
, the gorgeous, the glamorous, the
dangerous
. . . Bette Noir.”

The song “Lola” by the Kinks filled the room, and the curtain parted to reveal Bette Noir perched on an old-fashioned barrel, smoking a cigarette and dressed in a retro cabaret outfit: a top hat, bloomers, garters, and stockings. Her hair was styled in a 1930s waved bob, and her eyebrows were penciled into a dramatically thin, high arch. Max couldn’t help appreciating the way she brought Marlene Dietrich’s most famous character, Lola Lola, to life.

Above her, a sign read “Blaue Engel.”

The audience clapped and shouted her name. Most of them appreciated the tribute to the place where Bette Noir had first made a name for herself.

Bette tossed her cigarette to the stage floor and ground it with the toe of her shoe. She sauntered to the front of the stage, then stood near the edge, gazing off into the distance while she gyrated her hips and slowly unhooked the first few catches of her corset top. She bent forward, pressing her breasts together as she leaned toward the audience to show her cleavage. After receiving a round of shouts and applause, she continued undoing the small front hooks. When the corset was fully unbuttoned, Bette held it closed with both hands, then flashed it open, revealing her completely bare breasts. This surprised Max for a few seconds before he realized that because they were in a private home and not a club, the performers didn’t need to cover their nipples with pasties. He wondered if the dancers were going to take advantage of this freedom to get completely naked, and the thought of Nadia’s doing that made his gut clench.

He watched Bette climb onto the barrel, standing on top of it and dramatically stretching out her leg as she unhooked one garter. She peeled off one stocking with painstaking slowness, then tossed it into the audience. She removed the other stocking, then slipped back into her high-heeled shoes.