Chapter 46
Aida
‘Well?’ Simone says, dropping her enormous Bottega Veneta tote on the soft carpet of the Lanesborough’s drawing room with what some might say is excessive drama. ‘You can’t leave me hanging like you did.’
I sigh and settle onto the overstuffed couch. We’re having a quick coffee while the crew gets our suite upstairs prepped for our latest interview. ‘Yeah. Sorry.’
‘I don’t want sorry. I want details. Omit nothing.’
I roll my eyes at her. One of Britain’s finest newsreaders is, in fact, a dirty little ho for other people’s gossip, especially when it involves sex.
‘It got out of hand,’ I say matter-of-factly.
She leans forward. ‘In a good way or a bad way?’
‘In a great way, I guess.’
‘And who let it get out of hand?’
I consider. ‘I insisted on going to this party I knew would be wild. He turned up in a full balaclava like he was gonna commit an armed robbery, and I went along with every single thing he suggested.’
She arches her perfect eyebrows. ‘Willingly?’
‘I was the most enthusiastic consenter in the history of consent.’
We pause and smile politely at the fresh-faced server who comes to take our coffee order. Nothing to see here. Just two household names discussing kinky sex.
‘Hmm. How extreme are we talking?’ she asks when our server has trotted off.
I roll my tongue over my bottom lip while mentally preparing a litany. ‘Let’s see. Exhibitionism, I guess. I let him go down on me against a pillar in the middle of what was basically an orgy.’
She spits out a shocked laugh. ‘No.’
‘Yes. In my mind, I had a mask on, so that was ample protection.’
‘Right. Good logic. And it was hot?’
I run a hand over my fabric-covered thigh. I’m in a black jumpsuit for today’s interview. It’s tailored, extremely chic, but deliberately edgier than my Centre Stage wardrobe.
My monkey brain dives back of its own accord to the other night. The dim, smoke-filled room. The pulsing, soaring music. Cal, mask on and shirt off, on his knees in front of me, his skilled tongue working my pleasure centres until I went up in flames around him. Fuck.
‘It was extremely hot,’ I say shakily.
‘I bet it was, you dirty little bitch,’ she says, and I laugh. ‘Fuck. Good for you. Seriously. Then what?’
‘Oh, God.’ I bend my head and press my fingertips to my temples—lightly, so as not to ruin my immaculate makeup.
‘Hey. Don’t get bashful now, darling. You’ve got to go upstairs in a few minutes and confess on camera, remember?’
I laugh. ‘The camera’s getting an abridged version for sure. Azure would pull that contract so fast.’
But I tell her.
I give my dear friend a blow-by-blow account.
Literally.
The cuffing, the pearl necklace, the choking me with his dick, the flipping me over and, yep, spitting on my pussy and taking me from behind, all while he was in character as some dangerous, hooded thug whose commands were terse and whose moves were rough.
Then, when it looks like she might have an actual heart attack, I tell her about the shower. How sweet he was. How careful. How tenderly he looked after me.
But I don’t tell her about him coming to see me on Friday, because that episode is a shiny, fragile bauble, a secret so delicious and so new I want to wrap it in cotton wool and warm it next to my beating heart.
The things he said.
The kisses he gave me.
The way he was with me.
Or the way I’ve been feeling all weekend: a pot-pourri of precarious and hopeful and incredulous and dreamy and perplexed.
Because the public doesn’t get to consume or enjoy or dismiss or mock or excoriate those intrepid new seedlings.
Only Cal and I get to do that.