Scruples Two (50 page)

“Ask for it,” Vito said.

“Never.”

“Ask for it.”

She used all the muscles of her strong legs to push them together, so forcefully that he was unable to keep them apart with only one hand.

“You ask,” Susan whispered, putting her own fingers over her tautly swollen clitoris and rubbing with a flickering expertise, seeming to be absorbed in the pleasure she was giving herself, watching him grow more avid as her rhythm quickened. Helplessly Vito saw her approaching an orgasm without him.

“Stop that!”

“Ask me nicely,” she panted without stopping.

“You win, you bitch!” he gasped. She took away her hand, opened her legs and tilted upward so that he could enter her immediately, both of them so consumed with each other and so inflamed by their long duel that they gripped each other and used each other more violently, more brutally, than they had ever used another person. They came together ferociously, in racking spasms that happened too soon, but lasted and lasted until they were weak and totally drained.

They lay together for many slow minutes, without speaking, half-asleep.

“Game, set and match, Susan Arvey,” Vito murmured at last.

“Well played, Vito.”

“Can I see you tomorrow?”

“No, I’m busy all day. But come for dinner, I’m having a party.”

He looked at her pink face, at the tumbled strands of hair, wet at the roots, at all the delectable disarray of a satisfied woman, and he covered the sticky hair of her mound with the palm of his hand and pressed down on it possessively.

“I’ll come for dinner, but you won’t be this Susan, I’ll see another person.”

“You’ll have your memories,” she said tauntingly.

“That won’t do. You know that. You know this is only the beginning.”

Mutely she nodded her assent, her eyes brilliant with anticipation.

“That roadhouse in the Valley, it really exists. I’m going to take you there next. And we’re going to sit at a table in the corner of a crowded bar and I’m going to make you come just using my fingers, no matter who’s watching, you know that, don’t you?”

Susan nodded again. She knew two tricks for every one of his. He had no idea of how she was going to enslave him.

As he watched Susan dress, Vito wondered if it was going to be more or less of a challenge to make Curt Arvey put up eleven million dollars to finance his next film. He’d never done business before with a man whose wife had already begun to obsess him. She was a thrillingly bad girl, a thoroughly naughty girl, and her long carnal punishment was going to be the most exciting experience of their lives. He knew already that there was nothing he and Susan wouldn’t do to each other before they had finished.

Susan pinned up her chignon, thinking of how she was going to instruct Curt to deal with Vito, for he had asked her advice about the appointment he had with Vito tomorrow. Curt must not say yes under any circumstances, no matter how taken he was with Vito’s potentially interesting and just as potentially impossible project. Nor must he give him a quick and merciful no.
Maybe
. It must be
maybe
for a long, long time. Only a tantalizing, elusive but very real and possible
maybe
would keep Vito exactly where she wanted him until she decided to end it—one way or another. She’d won today, but their tournament was only beginning, and one element must be missing in the wonderfully challenging months to come. There would be no fair play.

18

S
pider, was this really necessary?” Billy asked rebelliously as she marched into his office, carrying a large shopping bag from Saks. “I feel like a fool playing parlor games.”

“Humor me, Billy, sit down, put the bag down, and we’ll wait for the others.”

“Don’t tell me I’m the first?”

“Actually, you’re a few minutes early.”

“Probably because I’m the only one who didn’t cheat,” Billy said suspiciously, as she settled herself on one of the two large semicircular sofas that faced each other at one end of the office high in the same Century City office tower that housed the law firm of Strassberger, Lipkin and Hillman.

“I heard that,” Sasha said, rushing into the large room in a flurry. “I didn’t cheat, Spider said five minutes and I took five minutes exactly.” She carefully deposited her bulging shopping bag next to Billy’s. “I’ve been terrified that this thing would burst wide open all the way here.”

“You should use two bags, one inside the other, like I did,” Billy said. “Two identical shopping bags have roughly the tensile strength of a piece of luggage.”

“Really?” Sasha asked, impressed.

“I have no scientific proof, but it works.”

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re all here already,” Gigi wailed plaintively, as she came into the office, swinging a shopping bag from her arm. “I had to stop to get gas.” She was enveloped in an almost floor-length garment and she moved rather stiffly, although the cast on her leg had been removed two weeks ago. She sat down next to Sasha, put her bag on the rug, and waited expectantly.

“All present and accounted for,” Spider announced as he closed the door to his office and sat down opposite the three women. “Now, isn’t this nice? Which of you gentlewomen wants coffee?”

“This is not ‘nice,’ ” Billy muttered, “it’s like some kind of sick New Age consciousness-raising coven or an AA meeting. Why don’t you get up and say, ‘My name is Spider and I’m addicted to cross-dressing?’ ”

“Coffee, Billy?” Spider asked. “Maybe a Danish?”

“No thanks, I’ve finished breakfast,” she snapped.

“Gigi, Sasha?”

Both of them declined, too eager to see the contents of the others’ shopping bags to be interested in anything that would require waiting.

“Who wants to go first?” Spider asked. None of them answered. “Sasha, how about you?”

“Why me?”

“Well … let’s see … in the first place, because I said so. In the second place, because you’re the one who collects catalogs. If it weren’t for you, none of us would be here. In the third place, you have the fattest shopping bag, and it’s splitting down the side as I speak.”

“All right,” Sasha agreed, “but you all have to realize that I still haven’t bought any clothes for California, so I had to pick from a completely urban closet.”

“Look, gentlewomen all, this is not a competition. I simply suggested—” Spider said.

“Suggested?” Billy said, with a cranky toss of her dark curls. “You insisted.”

“Correct. I
insisted
that you each spend exactly five minutes in your closets, imagining that a fire was approaching rapidly, and you had to choose whatever absolutely indispensable items of clothing you could pack into one paper shopping bag. The Five-Minute Fire Drill Wardrobe. It doesn’t matter where you live, Sasha, or for what climate you dress, or for what kind of life, the only thing that matters is what
kinds
of things you picked. As I said yesterday, you will not be judged on the contents of your bag.”

He’d never expected Billy to be so resistant to his idea, Spider thought, but then he’d never seen the size of Billy’s closet. Or was it that she didn’t like doing exactly what he’d asked Gigi and Sasha to do? Was she so used to being the boss of any enterprise that she felt uncomfortable as a team player? This February morning was their first official day in the planning phase of Scruples Two, and maybe she was just nervous, afraid of failure, although failure in the shopping-bag experiment wasn’t possible. Perhaps he should have suggested having this meeting in her office, but since his contained the comfortable circle of couches, and since he and Billy were equal financial partners in this venture, he hadn’t thought it mattered.

Sasha was gingerly extracting from her bag a black vinyl trench coat lined in bright red. She sighed in relief. “Here’s what was making it so bulky. I packed the smallest things first, so I’d know how much space I had left for the big things. The coat goes over everything, rain or shine, day or night, I’ve had it three years.” She laid it on the rug in front of her feet. Next she pulled out a black cardigan sweater in a medium-weight wool. “This goes over everything too, you can use it as a jacket or by itself, over pants or a skirt. You can dress it up or down. If you unbutton the three top buttons, belt it and wear lots of necklaces, you can go anywhere at night in it, or you can wear it backwards and it makes a tunic top.”

“How long have you had it?” Spider asked, as she placed it next to the trench coat.

“More or less forever. Maybe five years, maybe six, it’s seen better days, but in a fire I’d take it because I don’t know where I could get another.”

“What else is in there?” Gigi asked.

“My favorite black pants,” Sasha said, hauling each item out one by one as she spoke, “my favorite gray pants, my one and only ancient glen plaid blazer that never goes out of style, the only pair of black high-heeled pumps I’ve ever been comfortable in, my two favorite plain white silk shirts, because with the pants, the cardigan, the coat, and shirts I could go around the world, if I had to, and my lucky dress.” She held up a limply dangling rag of red jersey. “This can’t guarantee a peak experience, but it tends to operate in my favor.”

“How old
is
that thing?” Billy wondered, as impressed by Sasha’s presentation as she was by the way the girl looked. She was wearing beautifully cut navy trousers and a true red turtleneck sweater that brought out the jet of her hair and eyes. She’d matched her lipstick perfectly to the sweater. Did they come more passionately alluring than Sasha Nevsky? Billy wondered. If so, she didn’t want to know about it.

“Four years old, but that doesn’t matter. Only the neckline matters to me in a dressy dress, and the fit.”

“Sasha, did you just go into your closet and haul these things out in five minutes, or did you think about it beforehand?” Spider inquired.

“Are you kidding? I made a list first. It took about twenty minutes, maybe more. I always make lists, doesn’t everybody?” Sasha asked. “And,” she added, “when I moved here last month I gave away everything I didn’t really wear a lot anymore, so there’s almost nothing left in my closet, anyway. It took me the whole five minutes to fold these things neatly and cram them into the bag. You never said we shouldn’t think about it, Spider. Actually, if I only had five minutes to think
and
pack, I’d take my jewelry, my cash, my credit cards, my driver’s license, my bankbook and my cat.”

“Bravo, you get the Forbes Four Hundred humanitarian award,” Billy murmured. She knew she’d been right about Sasha. She had a rock-solid sensible brain under all those lashings of hair, that theatrically femme-fatale witchery and her deliberate use of exaggeration.

“Great, Sasha, leave it all right there, please,” Spider directed. “Now Gigi.”

She got up and turned around slowly. “I’m wearing all the bulky stuff,” she announced. “You didn’t say anything about getting dressed, Spider, so I used four minutes to put on my best underwear, a plum-colored pullover in a color I know I’ll never find again because there must have been a mistake in the dye vat, my turquoise turtleneck cashmere sweater that I got on Orchard Street for almost nothing, my finally broken-in white jeans, my antique silver-and-turquoise Mexican belt that cost a fortune, my favorite silver earrings, my best cowboy boots, a great pink blazer I got on sale, and this eggplant-colored cape that looks as if I stole it from Beau Brummell. It’s from a secondhand store in Hackensack.”

“Is that fair?” Billy demanded heatedly. “Gigi didn’t pack. No wonder she can hardly walk, she’s wearing sixteen layers of clothes.”

“Everything’s fair if I didn’t say not to,” Spider decreed. “What’s in your shopping bag, Gigi?”

“Since I only had a minute left, I grabbed a pair of decent brown velvet pants for places you can’t wear jeans, about a dozen different scarves, all different sizes, because they give me a dozen different looks, my best belts, the art deco costume jewelry I’ve been collecting, and the black velvet vest Billy gave me years ago because it’s still my favorite thing of all. Oh, and here’s a dear little bunch of artificial violets I couldn’t bear to leave behind.”

“No shirts?” Spider asked.

“I figured I could always buy a shirt or T-shirts—this fire isn’t going to destroy the stores too, is it?”

“No.”

“Actually … it took me.… well, about twelve minutes to pack my bag because I couldn’t decide which were my very favorite belts and scarves and I got hung up trying them on … I should have just taken them all,” Gigi confessed sheepishly. “I guess I flunk. I spent sixteen minutes altogether. I could have spent two hours in there.”

“How long did it take to put in the pants and the vest?” Spider asked.

“Less than a minute.”

“Okay, I’m writing that all down.” He grinned at the culprit. “You can take off your cape now.” She looked so adorably guilty in her bulky clothes, covered by an eighteenth-century cape that could have been rented from a costume supply house, that he had a fugitive desire to give her a kiss of reassurance. He hadn’t realized that they were all going to take him so seriously or to try to figure out ways to get around his fire-drill suggestion. Were women more literal-minded than men? Or just
these
women?

“Well,” Billy sniffed indignantly, “I see I’m the only one who stuck to the rules. I had Josie with a stopwatch inside my closet and I didn’t think about it first and make a list, or wear what I should have packed.”

She thought of herself racing around her thirty-foot-square dressing room, practically caroming off its lavender silk walls, barefoot on the ivory carpet, banging herself black and blue on the Lucite accessory island in her haste to find the few indispensable clothes among the hundreds and hundreds of garments, so many of them never worn, that hung on the long racks. Of course, she told herself wrathfully, if the girls hadn’t taken an apartment together in West Hollywood, claiming that they were too accustomed to their independence to move into her house, she could have supervised the way in which they did their shopping bags, to make sure they didn’t cheat, as they both most certainly had.

“Good for you, Billy. I knew you’d play fair. Now let’s see what you brought,” Spider said, as coaxingly as a first-grade teacher to a timid child on show-and-tell day, for he’d finally realized that her irascibility came from shyness rather than from anger. He’d always known Billy was shy, ever since he’d had to do all the inviting for the first Scruples party, but she managed to hide it, even from him. It was one of her most endearing qualities, although she’d never believe him if he told her, which he wouldn’t, on reflection.

She was just barely thirty-nine, he knew, since he was eleven months younger, which made them officially the same age each year for the month between his birthday in October and hers in November, and she was probably finding it embarrassing to be placed in the same position as these younger women. Billy was used to traveling with piles of expensive luggage, she probably hadn’t packed for herself since she married Ellis Ikehorn, and she would have trouble limiting herself to a shopping bag’s worth of clothes.

“I decided to take everything from one designer so it’d be coordinated,” Billy said, poking in her bag. “Saint Laurent, he’s the most practical. Here’s a pants suit, black, a cashmere sweater set, black, a chiffon blouse, black, a white silk shirt, a red suede boxy jacket that goes over everything like a short coat, and a matching skirt, plus a long plaid trench coat made of waterproof silk lined in quilted red satin. I don’t know how old they are exactly, but they all work together.”

“That’s almost the same as what I have, except it’s the real thing and not the knock-off,” Sasha said in surprise.

“And no one would know the difference,” Billy added, “unless they looked at the labels, because I picked the simplest and most classic things I have, and so did you. We could go around the world together, as a twin act, the red-and-black team.”

“Doesn’t anyone want to see what I brought?” Spider asked.

“You? This catalog is only for women,” Billy said, surprised.

“It seemed only fair,” Spider responded, getting a shopping bag from behind his desk and putting it on the floor. “Okay, here’s my double-breasted blazer, a dress shirt, and my gray flannel trousers, that’s as dressed up as I ever get, and I hate to go shopping so I brought them; here’s my Burberry trench coat, a cable-stitched navy sweater my mother gave me five years ago, that I live in, a couple of favorite V-necked cashmere pullovers, three work shirts and a pair of jeans. And my reading glasses. Didn’t anybody else bring reading glasses?”