Forty 2 Days Read online

  ‘All right,’ I say and open my legs wide.

  If he is surprised by my defiant submission he does not let it show. He lets the vibrator touch my clit. I jump.

  ‘Too sensitive?’ he queries softly, and moves it slightly away.

  He runs the vibrating tip along the wet folds, and very slowly while watching my face he inserts it into me. While I gasp with shock at its size he pushes it into me up to the hilt.’

  ‘Good?’ he asks.

  ‘Good,’ I reply, my chin lifted, my eyes widened, my fingers grasping the silk duvet underneath.

  So he fucks me with it and even though I beg him not to look at me as I crack apart, he stares at me possessively as I come.

  Then he gets up and leaves me.

  I lay there spread-eagled with the vibrator still inside me staring at the ceiling. The gadget makes a soft muffled sound that I have not noticed during my humiliation. I want to pull it out of me, but my limbs feel like lead. I am in love with him and he just hates me. If he had cared anything for me I would have seen in his eyes, but nothing! I finally understand. I am just a demon that must be exorcised before he marries the daughter of the Earl. I hear the front door close and the first sob escapes me. I try to be brave, hold them back, but they will not be stopped.

  Suddenly he is standing at the door. Through swimming eyes I watch him come to me. He sits beside me, pulls the vibrator out; it makes a sucking sound. He switches it off and bending his head licks a tear from my cheek.

  ‘Damn you, Blake,’ I whisper.

  He buries his face in my hair. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

  I stare at the ceiling. I am sadder than I have ever been. The doctor, the solicitor, Fleur, Madam Yula, The Fat Duck. ‘Are you re-creating everything so you can destroy it, Blake?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I thought I knew, but I don’t anymore,’ he confesses honestly.

  ‘What did you want?’

  ‘Revenge. I wanted to punish you. I had all kinds of humiliations planned for you, but I can’t hurt you without hurting myself. Maybe you are what my father said you are. My greatest enemy.’

  Automatically, my hands come up to wrap protectively around him. I know he is hurting too. I just don’t know how to make it better. I want to tell him about Victoria, but what good would that do? She would make a new and supremely dangerous enemy. ‘I’m not your enemy, Blake. I never meant to hurt you.’

  He laughs. Again it is bitter. ‘So what are you? A friend?’

  I sigh. Such sadness is in that sound. Does he hear it? Possibly not. In his mind I am a gold digger. Took the money and ran. Now I represent dirty sex. There is a chasm between us. It seems impossible to bridge. From her ivory tower Victoria smiles triumphantly and tells me I am not embedded in his life plan. I will never be.

  ‘Where do we go from here?’

  He doesn’t respond. Instead he gathers me in his arms and hides his face in the crook of my neck. Slowly he starts to suck. Automatically, my head twists away. Not in rejection, but in invitation. The dedication of his soft lips on my skin is delicious. His tongue burns a trail to my nipple. He takes it into his mouth and my humiliation, my hurt dissipates to nothing. Everything that happens between a man and a woman is a sacred journey, my mother once said.

  She said that when my father left her.

  A sound escapes my mouth. Silently, solemnly, he goes to the other breast. His teeth catch the nub and pull slightly. I writhe under the expert manipulation. He raises his head and looks at me as his palm skims the hardened tip. I am aching for him. Suddenly he is on his elbows and with consummate ease he pushes the entire length of his tongue into my aching folds. I grip the silky hair as his heated tongue thrusts in and out of me in sure practiced stokes. And then he begins to suck…

  Ah, the pleasure, the pleasure!

  He pinches my swollen clit in his fingers suddenly, and an intense pleasure like an electric current stabs me. I scream and come in a mindless explosion. Waves crash on the rocks below, but I fly high. When I come back to the bed and the room, Blake is still licking the wet walls of my sex. There will never be another after him, I think lazily, drowsily, sadly. He has done what he set out to do. Ruined me for all other men.

  I am so drained and exhausted I close my eyes and fall asleep with the sensation of his silky head on my thighs.

  Twelve

  I wake up with the duvet pulled over my naked body, but alone. I turn my head and gaze at the vast expanse of bed that is spread out on one side of me and the unused pillows and sigh. Pushing my legs free of the duvet I dangle them out of the bed and savor the cool air. Then I slip out of bed. I can hear the fain sounds of Francesca, Blake’s personal shopper, rummaging around in the kitchen. She is always as silent as a mouse. I pull on some clothes, brush my teeth, and go to the kitchen. She is updating her list on her iPad.

  ‘Ciao,’ she greets brightly. She is from Naples. ‘I remember, you like jam and I bring you two extra bottles.’ She holds them up in her expressive hands. ‘You like?’

  I go forward and take them in my hands. ‘I like. Very much. Grazia, Francesca.’

  She dimples prettily.

  Tom drives Billie, Sorab, and me to The Royal China in Bayswater. We find a table and order our dim sums.

  I take the bottles of jam out of my rucksack and stuff them into the back of Sorab’s pram and Billie grins. ‘The perks of pimping you out,’ she says. ‘By the way, Jack called me looking for you. Your mobile must have been switched off.’

  ‘Oh! What did you tell him?’

  ‘The truth, of course. You were with Blake.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He went dead silent for a while, and then he asked me if I thought you were safe. I said I didn’t know, but that you thought you would be. Then he hung up.’

  I bite my bottom lip.

  ‘You should call him. He worries about you.’

  ‘I will. This afternoon.’

  ‘So how’s it going at casa Blake?’

  I expel my breath in a rush. ‘I don’t know, Billie. I might as well be a blow-up doll for all the use I am to him. It’s really just sex. He’s so remote, so angry, and so hurt. I don’t believe I’ll ever be able to reach him. He wants revenge, but he doesn’t have the stomach for it.’

  ‘What kind of revenge?’ An edge has crept into Billie’s voice.

  ‘Sexual humiliation. Last night he used a…vibrator on me.’ I flush bright red. The words were almost impossible for me to get out.

  Billie laughs. ‘You are so weird. That’s not sexual humiliation. Everybody uses them. If anyone offers to use one on me I’m going to lie back, open my legs as wide as they will go and ask them to knock themselves out.’

  ‘You don’t understand, Billie. He did it because he understands that I’m sexually repressed.’

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake. You cried, didn’t you?’

  I nod and play with a chopstick. ‘What would you do if you were me, Billie?’

  ‘First off, I’m not you. I don’t think I could ever be in such a fucked up situation.’

  ‘But if you were,’ I insist.

  ‘Then I would drink at least half a bottle of vodka and challenge him to do his worst. Press all his buttons and push him mercilessly until he loses his tightly reined sense of control. And then it would all be over and done with. Mind you, I wouldn’t if I thought he was capable of truly hurting me. But you’re a thousand percent sure Blake is not, right?’

  ‘A thousand percent. He is cold, not cruel.’

  I pay the bill with the new Platinum credit card that I have not applied for, but arrived for me this morning. Billie raises an impressed eyebrow but says nothing.

  Afterwards we spend a pleasant afternoon in Whiteley’s Shopping Centre. There is nothing I want, but I treat Billie to a really cool pair of cowboy boots, which she adored, and we buy some divinely soft bedding for Sorab. Stuff I could never afford before.


  Everything goes on the new card. It has a ninety thousand pounds credit limit on it.

  After Tom drops Billie and Sorab off I phone Jack.

  ‘Are you all right?’ is the first thing that Jack utters.

  ‘He’s not capable of hurting me, Jack,’ I reply.

  ‘It’s not him I’m worried about.’

  ‘Victoria won’t do anything to me.’

  ‘Lana, she paid you two hundred thousand pounds to get lost. You took her money and now you’re back with her guy and you don’t think she’s going to retaliate?’

  Oh God! Put like that it did seem I was being stupid in the extreme. ‘I didn’t go looking for him, Jack. He found me. Besides it’s only for 42 days.’

  ‘42 days?’

  ‘He just wants me to finish my contract. There’s 42 days left of it. Well, forty-one now.’

  ‘Lana, I’m a man and I’m telling you no man wants a woman for just 42 days. It’s not going to end in 42 days. I can give that to you in blood right now. You’re going to be his mistress until the day comes when he is finally bored with your body. Is that what you want for yourself?’

  That feels like a low blow and yet it is the truth. ‘I don’t know what I want anymore, Jack. All I know is at the moment I am with Blake for forty-one days. I’m playing it by ear.’

  Jack sighs heavily. ‘All right, Lana, but promise me you will take care of yourself, though. The first smallest sign that something is not right you will call me.’

  ‘I promise. Jack?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Please don’t worry about me. I’m a big girl now. I can take care of myself.’

  ‘Just be careful, OK,’ he says gruffly, and then he is gone. I lean back, but I do not think of Jack and his warning. Something else is bothering me.

  As soon as I get into the apartment I go to my computer. Into the browser I type in the word cunt.

  And I am shocked to learn that the word cunt is the most offensive word in the English language with the highest power to shock, but that it only became obscene around the time of Shakespeare. Before that it was actually the root word for the words queen and cuneiform, the most ancient form of writing. The word itself derives from kunta meaning female genitalia in Sumerian.

  So: when a man calls a woman a cunt he is actually calling her the queen who invented writing and numerals—one of the finest compliments a woman can be given. The Irish apparently even use it as an endearment!

  I also learn that cunt is the only word in the English language that describes the whole of the female genitalia. Vagina refers only to the inner entrance and vulva to the clitoris, outer labia majora and minora. To talk about a woman’s entire incredible sexual orchestra in all its stupendous glory one needs the word cunt!

  At that moment I claim the dreaded word for myself.

  When Blake called me a cunt I had only pretended to be offended. The real truth is that years of avoiding the word, and despising others for allowing something so foul and disgusting to sit on their tongues, fled and all I felt was its raw sexual pull. Yes, I am a cunt and I want your rigid hot dick deep inside my cunt. I realize that no matter what Blake said his actions were teaching me that my body is my temple. That between my legs is an altar called cunt where he comes to worship.

  And now I have a plan. A plan that involves my cunt.

  Thirteen

  Blake sends a text to say that he will be around at 8:00 pm.

  By seven thirty I am showered and standing in my new black stockings and garters. Carefully, I slip into the black dress that Fleur sent for me to wear to the opera and fasten the row of black pearl buttons. I look at myself in the mirror and marvel at the intricate beauty of the dress. It must have cost a small fortune.

  The chest and the entire back is made of black patterned lace and lightly sprinkled with rhinestones, but the lace is so delicate it appears like a tattoo on my skin. I adjust the material into place around my body and hips, and then turn back to see the effect of the plunging back. It looks really cool and perhaps even sexy. I fluff out my hair and sit down to do my make-up. When I am done I slip into black stilettos and walk into the living room, the dress swirling gently around my shoes.

  I pour myself a triple vodka and swallow it neat in four gulps. Wow! That makes my veins sing. I pour another double, top it up with orange and walk onto the balcony. I am actually very nervous. Make that very, very nervous. Tonight I will see him without his mask. I will provoke him into holding nothing back from me. I look at the time. 7:59 pm. I turn to find him standing at the door. He is watching me silently. Trying to figure out the scene he has come upon.

  I turn fully. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Are we going out or are you dressed like that just for me?’

  ‘We’re not going out.’

  An eyebrow rises. A mocking smile. He comes towards me. ‘We’re not?’

  I shake my head slowly. ‘I need a favor from you.’

  ‘Are you allowed to ask favors?’

  ‘You’ll like this one.’

  ‘You’ve got my attention.’

  ‘I want you to hurt me.’

  He becomes very still. For a moment neither of us says anything. We simply look at each other. And then he says, ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? I thought you wanted revenge.’

  ‘I’ve tried rough sex and I didn’t like it.’

  I am shocked by the intense flash of burning jealousy that rips through me. He has already done this with someone else. There is no new territory that I may claim for my own. ‘Maybe I do.’

  His eyes narrow. They become like stones. Cold. Unreachable. They remind me of his father’s eyes. I shiver involuntarily. Feel afraid. What if I am wrong? What if he is capable of really hurting me? ‘What do you know about rough sex?’

  ‘Show me what there is to know.’

  ‘Is that what you really want?’ His voice is soft, dangerously soft.

  ‘Yes.’

  His hands come up to my face. I cannot help it. I flinch and he smiles. A cold, knowing smile. Gently he brushes my cheeks with his hands. ‘You’re a baby. You don’t know what you want,’ he says, and he is about to turn away when I swing my arm with all my might and let my palm crash into the side of his face. I hit him so hard his head jerks away, and my hand is stinging painfully. The alcohol has made me strangely light-headed. I even feel removed from my own actions. I stare with dull fascination at his cheek, at the white imprint of my fingers. My eyes travel to meet his. They are stormy and furious.

  ‘Feeling better?’ he asks.

  As an answer I swing my hand clumsily out again, but he is prepared this time and he catches my hand easily. I rush towards him and bite his neck. Hard. His growl is annoyed.

  ‘You inherited all this money so everybody treats you like some kind of god, but you’re just a little coward hiding behind a façade of superiority; a spoilt rich kid who has to do anything and everything Daddy tells him to do.’

  He begins to laugh, really laugh, and suddenly I realize I have never seen him happy. Never seen his head thrown back and his throat open and vulnerable.

  ‘I wonder what you would be without great-granddaddy’s money?’ I taunt.

  ‘I’d still want to fuck you senseless.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ I shriek and as if possessed by some crazed demon I begin to kick at his legs and punch his hard body with my free hand. Like a sack of potatoes I am lifted up by sheer male strength and thrown over his shoulder. For a moment the shock of being turned upside down stills me and then I continue to pummel his back as he takes me into our bedroom. ‘You don’t trust anyone, you don’t love anyone, you’re just an emotional bonsai,’ I scream.

  He hurls me on the bed. I fall on my side, winded but unhurt. My head is still, but fuck me, the room is spinning around like a merry-go-round. Still, the important thing is I have lost all fear and apprehension. My only goal is to goad him into losing that tight control that dictates his every move. I look at him, my eyes taunting him.
‘Scared of a cunt, Barrington?’

  His head jerks slightly with surprise. ‘You really want rough sex?’ he asks.

  I nod.

  His mouth twists. He unbuttons his shirt, yanks the ends out of his trousers. Opens his fly, flings his underpants behind him and takes a step to the edge of the bed.

  ‘Here it is, my love,’ he grates.

  In one smooth moment he hauls me up, catches the hem of my long dress and flicks it over my head. He stands looking at me, upper body and head covered, but lower body obscenely sprawled with garters, stockings and inelegantly splayed legs. Then, before I have even recovered my balance, he grabs my hips, his fingers digging painfully into my flesh, and brings me to my hands and knees. He grips my ass and very roughly spreads apart the cheeks, kneading them as if they are two pieces of dough, and drives his dick into my wetness, so savagely that I actually cry out with the shock of it. That stops him cold as if he too is shaken by the ferocity and violence of his own thrust.

  ‘Don’t stop,’ I hear myself say, in a voice I do not recognize.

  And he slams again into me. This time he does not stop even when I cry out. My entire body becomes a rag doll shuddering and rocking to the deep thrusts. I want to scream, but I dare not for fear he will stop. His stomach continues to pound my spread ass. His hands travel up my sweat-slicked body, digging, grasping in an effort to push as deep into me as he can. He grinds my rear so hard into his groin that I feel him to the very ends of me.

  Every thrust is torture, but in the hurt there is a strange and exquisite pleasure. After he comes, he bends forward, kisses my shoulder blades and slowly eases out of me.

  My slit is so sore it stings, burns and throbs painfully as he withdraws. It is over, I think. Then I feel his mouth lightly licking the reddened, raw skin around my cunt. He slips his velvet tongue gently inside, but even that hurts like hell. I moan and he takes his tongue away, starts lightly sucking my clit. I forget how sore I am and come in a moment, white with shockingly intense pleasure. As if my nerves have been made more alive by the pain, the pleasure is far more powerful than anything I have experienced before.