The Golden Locket (Unbreakable Trilogy, Book 2) (8 page)

‘Everything is so much clearer now, Gustav. You and he have a long road to travel. But it started here, and that has to be positive.’ I aim the remote at the music player. ‘But, as you said at Christmas, I wonder if we can just think about ourselves for a little while now?’

As the soft jazz croons through the room, I start to sway to the music. I let the white dress fall off my shoulders but when he starts to drag me down onto the sofa I shake my head and lead him out of the sitting room. Away from the arena of so much discord and into our bedroom, our glass-walled, starry-ceilinged eyrie.

He follows me, a dark shadow in his rumpled dark clothes, the lights of New York glittering like hot coals around us. We don’t even pull the blinds. As I walk to the huge bed I let the dress slip right off me, and the whisper of air over my skin distracts me at last. I glance over at him. He’s stopped in the middle of the room, still watching me. I remember the first time I visited his town house in London, how he made me dance for him, how embarrassed I was to perform in front of that dark, watching face. But now he needs all that and more.

‘You were too long in Lugano.’

I lie down on the bed, naked, stretched out before him, and extend my wrist where the bracelet glitters. Once the silver chain ensnares me everything else will disappear.

He groans and at last I see the rise in his cheeks as a long-lost smile opens his face. ‘That sounds like a cruise-ship song.’

I laugh softly and he rips off his navy-blue pullover and his shirt. I can smell the musky sweat of him after his long journey, and I love it. I beckon to him like a true temptress. His eyes glitter in the strange light, their blackness reflecting the backdrop of night sky and relentless metropolis. He smiles wider, my wolf, his teeth white and glinting hungrily. He sits beside me and clips on the silver chain. Lets it fall onto the white sheet while he unzips his trousers, pulls them slowly down, teasing me. The stiffness of his arousal springs forward. It’s like a spear, so big and hard, shaped so perfectly for me, and now the soft seduction I was planning flees, because I want him badly, quickly, now.

‘You’re even more special than I realised,’ Gustav says quietly as we both stare at his hardness. ‘The only person who could take my mind away from what just happened. Just for a few minutes.’

My body bothers me with its urgent lust. I open my legs, hook them round his slim hips. I run my hands over his smooth, warm, unblemished skin, so different from his brother’s, but oh, God – suddenly Pierre is in my head, his black eyes blazing with all that wounded anger.

Gustav falls forward to hang over me. I pray he can’t read my mind. I shove Pierre away, cling to Gustav, push my open, wet mouth and my breasts at him, my stomach heaving with catches of breath, and then he lifts my body and runs his tongue up me like a large black cat until I’m whimpering with wanting. But he’s not licking for long, because he lets me drop onto the soft bed and roughly pushes himself into me, holds my arms down as he presses his still wet mouth down onto mine.

‘My God, in all the rush to get here, all the furore that met me when I arrived,’ he growls as he starts to move. I pull away, alert with anxiety, but his mouth, all of him, follows me to keep me still, his body possessing mine, locked inside me, his teeth nipping at my lower lip to keep me there. ‘I never kissed you hello.’

Focus, focus, focus. The photographer’s mantra. It’s been several luscious, lazy days since that traumatic New Year’s Eve with Pierre and Polly. Apart from that tricky meeting and some tentative emails back and forth between the brothers, Gustav and I have been cocooned from the world since before Christmas, which is exactly what we needed. So, apart from a commission for a gaggle of Park Avenue princesses yesterday, I’ve had more than two weeks off. I have to get back to work. I have to put the Levi traumas out of my mind, just for today.

If I look behind me I can just make out our apartment amongst the phalanx of towering, tough buildings planted along Central Park West. Before I left this morning Gustav hung a Union Jack onto the end of his big new telescope bolted to the roof terrace. It’s my Christmas present to him to improve on the spyglass he brought from Lugano, and the flag means I can always find my way home.

‘Is that our code?’ I asked, as I packed up my camera kit in the hallway. My hands were shaking as I fitted the lenses and tripod into their sections in the bags and tried to quell the butterflies flipping in my stomach. ‘I mean, if the flag isn’t there it means you’re not at home, like the Queen? It will mean you’ve been called away on business?’

Gustav took my shoulders and stood me in front of him. Stroked my face. Untwisted the golden locket to rest at the base of my throat where it constantly quivers with my pulse. Tucked wisps of hair into the heavy plait hanging down my back. Wherever he touched or brushed, he sent a ripple of tiny shivers through my skin. Every muscle was stalling, refusing to let me leave.

‘Too risky. Remember how Theseus forgot to hoist the white sail on his ship as the agreed sign that he had slain the Minotaur, and his father, seeing the black sail still up, thought his son was dead? I will never go anywhere without telling you face to face or at the very least using this marvellous contraption.’ He tapped my nose with my little silver phone and dropped it into my pocket.

‘Now, deep breaths. You’re already back in the saddle with those débutante portraits you took yesterday. Today’s assignment will be different, admittedly. But you’ll do this job standing on your head. Which I would love to see, by the way.’

I stood on tiptoe and brushed my lips against his. Even now I half expect him to deflect me like he used to, turn his face and offer me his cheek instead, or move his mouth over my face, towards my throat, murmur in my ear, anything rather than actually allow himself full intimacy.

‘I’d rather go back to bed.’ I could hear the new huskiness my voice had acquired. The timbre of a happy, fulfilled, satisfied woman getting plenty. ‘I missed you when you were away.’

‘We’ve barely slept all week so you could show me how much you missed me!’ His breath mingled with mine as he wrapped his arms tightly round me, padded jacket and all. He lifted me right off my feet. ‘God, you’re still so hot this morning.’

‘All part of the service!’ Then I frowned, leaned my forehead against his. Suddenly serious. ‘I wanted you to forget all the things Pierre resurrected.’

‘And I did. For a few glorious few days and nights.’ Gustav squeezed me so tightly that I couldn’t breathe. ‘But it’s my job, not yours, to put everything right.’

‘By forgiving him everything, while he barely gives an inch?’

‘I’m the oldest. If giving more ground heals us, that’s the way it has to be.’ Gustav lowered me to the floor again. ‘But you are still my priority, Serena. It’s you I need to keep close.’

I stared at him, at the pulse throbbing in his neck, the silky question mark of hair bouncing with it. ‘I’ve never heard you talk like that.’

‘And I’ve never felt like this. My bella donna, I don’t want to let you out of my sight even for a day, in case you find someone else to tie up and tease.’

Every word he uttered made me shiver with desire. And then he kissed me, and all the shadows retreated once again. I was melting as he nudged my lips open, slid his tongue over the hypersensitive surface of my upper lip, then kissed my mouth closed again.

‘Me be unfaithful to you? Never. This bod is for your eyes only.’

I started to unzip the jacket, slid my arms under his suit, spread my hands to squeeze his firm bottom. He watched my face, his dark eyes flashing with amusement, his hands resting lightly on my face as I touched him.

‘You don’t know how beautiful you are, Serena. That’s the danger.’

I giggled softly, bringing my hands round to the front of his trousers. There it was, under the expensive fabric, straining against the zipper, always ready for me. ‘I can always re-arrange this commission for later. Stay here with you for the morning and then go with you to your meeting about the new exhibition space you’re developing under the High Line?’

He snatched at my wandering hands. He slid my soft green leather kid gloves over my fingers, one by one, pushing them snugly into the spaces, fastening the fiddly three buttons over each wrist.

‘My darling girl, rookie’s rule number one. You never postpone a commission. Rule number two, never stay home when your paramour suggests it. I’m rock hard just kissing you. I need to get my business head on. Go. This is a fantastic commission. The Weinmeyers are a real coup for your repertoire. If you hadn’t spent all last night practising your Girl Guide knots on me I’d have talked you through this already. They’re renowned for their art collections and fundraisers and general philanthropy. If you impress them your work will be plastered all over the walls of their mansion, and East Coast society will be flocking to see it.’

I picked up my kit reluctantly, then stopped. ‘You didn’t pull strings to get this job for me, did you? I’ll be livid if you did.’

Gustav walked me to the giant wooden door of the apartment and heaved it open. He pulled me close to him, kissed me hard again, then ushered me out onto the landing.

‘You impressed them with your talent at the London exhibition, Serena, but sometimes life is a system of favours, especially in business. You know how I like to make any working relationship official and documented at the earliest opportunity, and I suggest you do the same. Boil it down to I take, you take. I give, you give. And here you are, oh, yes, still giving. Still fulfilling your delicious part of our bargain! Your gorgeous body, that plump little ass, your mouth. Repaying me every night. Most mornings. And some afternoons when we have the time!’

‘I just want to show you, them, the world, that I can do this alone. I’m feeling a bit nervous, that’s all.’

A slight shadow still stained his face. So long as I’m not the cause of it, the occasional sweep of darkness doesn’t scare me any more, but it’s a reminder of emotions and complexities still to be unravelled.

He tipped my face towards him. ‘Look, I’ll admit I have fingers and toes in every pie. Back in the day my ancestors were hawkers and travellers. I set out my market stall, display my protégée’s wares and invite punters to roll up, roll up, take a look, buy it if they like it.’ He rubbed his finger and thumb together with a sly grin. ‘And give me my commission, of course. How else do you think we can afford this place?’

‘I can see you as a gypsy, now you come to mention it.’

I just wanted to look at him all day. Tall, lounging in the doorway, his tie hanging loose around his unbuttoned neck, his black hair brushed back over his noble forehead. His eyes roving over my body even though I was swathed in winter clothes. He’s the opposite of a chancer market trader. He’s the epitome of suave, sorted entrepreneur, and I am the beneficiary of all that, and much, much more.

Reading my mind, Gustav murmured, ‘Believe in yourself, Serena. A cliché, perhaps, but I mean it. The Weinmeyers flew all the way to London to see your show after your sensational private view. It’s your talent they’re after.’

‘Nevertheless. I feel nervous.’

He stepped round me to call the lift, and then kissed me yet again.

‘This is the first day of the rest of our lives, girl.’

The wind buffets me across the park now, past the cyclists and ice skaters and out by the Metropolitan Museum of Art onto Fifth Avenue. I’m too far south, so I turn north and the wind knocks me into a pile of snow banked under a starved-looking tree.

As I trudge my way between Park Avenue and Lexington, my kit is weighing me down. Where is Dickson the Driver when you need him? The surly chauffeur is locking up the holiday house in Lake Lugano for the last time. Goodbye to Switzerland. Goodbye to Margot and all that history.

Despite the weight on my shoulder, the weight in my heart starts to ease. All that remains is for Gustav and Pierre to neutralise the rest of the poison.

I walk right past the house at first, an old Upper East Side wooden mansion with curled wrought-iron balconies that looks as if it should be situated in New Orleans. The marble and limestone mansions all around here have long ago been split into apartments or donated to museums and schools, but this, I realise when the door opens, is still one complete town house.

The front door looks flimsy enough to kick in but it swings silently open as soon as I ring the bell. The petite façade hides an enormous wood-panelled hallway with black and white floor tiles and dominated by a staircase Scarlett O’Hara should be sweeping down. There’s no butler or housekeeper bustling about. Just an elegant blonde woman around Gustav’s age, maybe older, standing at the top of the stairs in a fuchsia-pink, diaphanous halterneck dress.

‘Serena, come in. How lovely. Welcome!’

She is silhouetted by the huge arched window behind her. The low winter sun is a perfect backlight, shafting straight through the voile fabric of her dress and rendering it see-through. I step further inside and the door snaps quietly shut behind me. Mrs Weinmeyer rotates one foot in a gold Louboutin sandal and I can see that her incredibly slim thighs are slightly parted, flickering with impatient muscles. She raises her leg to take a step down the stairs and the slit cut into the dress makes it float open at the top of her legs.

I drop my bags and equipment on the floor and get out my bigger Canon. ‘Hold it there!’

‘Why, sugar, what’s wrong?’ Mrs Weinmeyer halts as instructed, one knee cocked in front of the other, her slim arms reaching to each banister in an angular, Cecil Beaton pose. Her face is in shadow, but as I adjust the exposure I can see through the viewfinder my subject’s fuchsia-painted lips parting slightly in surprise, showing perfect American white teeth.

My finger slips on the shutter. ‘I didn’t mean to shout at you, Mrs Weinmeyer, but please could you hold that pose? Because I think I’ve got my Grace Kelly shot!’

‘Your cute English accent.’

Mrs Weinmeyer shrugs one pale shoulder, glances over it deep into my lens, twists this way and that, then continues to descend the stairs as I click the shutter. She has the taut, toned body of all upmarket New Yorkers, which makes them look as if they never bite into a Krispy Kreme. Not ideal for a photographic subject, but who am I to comment? If anything, that makes my job all the more challenging. Finding the curves and angles, the planes and shadows, in a body with little substance.