“I’m not most women.”
“No.” He sipped from his Champagne. “No, you’re not.”
A group of women half my age stood a distance from us in slinky, sparkling outfits, noticing the famous actor making my acquaintance. One of them called out to him. He turned and gave them a warm smile, sending them into hysteria, before turning back.
“Admirers,” I said. “Does that get old?”
He considered that. “Only when I’m trying to focus on something else. Or someone else.”
Bryah broke into hysterical laughter, something François the musician said. Winnie was stroking the trimmed beard of her Frenchman, Devo, as if she thought it was funny. She’d grown very comfortable with him, and he with her. Serena was leaning in so close to the hunky race-car driver that they were on the verge of kissing.
So was I, I suddenly realized, as I turned back to Damon. “What project are you working on now?” I asked.
His eyebrows arched. “Right now, I’m working on you. How am I doing so far?”
He smelled so good. I was getting lost in those eyes. Dreamy was a word I used as a child, and I could see why. A fantasy. Someone else’s life, right?
“Tell me something nobody else knows about you,” I said. It felt exciting to ask. It felt intimate. It felt right.
He thought about that a moment. “I guess there is one thing,” he said, his eyes sparkling. “Whenever one of my movies comes out. I’ve never told anybody.”
“Tell me,” I said.
He brought his lips to my ear. The whiskers from his two days’ growth brushed against my cheek. He whispered to me, sharing something nobody else knew. Or so he claimed. But I believed him. I believed everything about him right now.
“I think that’s cute,” I said, when he was finished.
“Cute,” he repeated. “Cute.”
“No, I mean—it shows how much acting means to you.”
“A window into my soul? Something like that?”
“Something like that,” I said.
“Let me tell you something else.” He leaned in again. I felt a chill run up my spine. “I want to touch you, Abbie,” he said. “I want to put my hands on you. Tonight. Just one night.”
“Where?” I said without thinking. I was done thinking. I was finished with rational calculation. I was ready to surrender. “Tell me where you want to touch me.”
He never moved from my face. But he answered in a whisper, his lips tickling my ear. He told me where.
CHAPTER 10
SOMEONE HAD THE idea of returning to the casino. It might have been the chubby American, but whoever it was, the idea gathered steam, and soon we were piling into someone’s limousine. Damon sat across from me and didn’t take his eyes off me. It was like I was the only person in the limo. His eyes met mine, then they slowly lowered, then went back up, covering every inch of my body, up and down, before joining my stare again.
Someone made a joke and I laughed harder than I could remember ever laughing before. And I didn’t even know what the joke was. But everything was heightened: every comment was funnier, every sip of Champagne tastier, every moment more delicious than the last.
“You have been to the Grand Casino, yes?” It was the wealthy Frenchman Devo. I was pretty sure he was wearing a toupee, which made me howl with laughter.
“Serena’s a star there,” said Bryah, leaning against the Moroccan musician.
I looked over at Serena. She was busy nuzzling noses with the race-car driver Luc.
Then we were suddenly there, and out of the limo and making a grand display of our entrance. Damon walked up and took my hand and a jolt of electricity shot through my body. We weren’t three feet inside the ornate atrium and people were all over him, the big movie star. Everything was moving fast and spinning and then we were in a private room, different from the last one but with the same elaborate frescoes and lavish surroundings and the roulette wheel was spinning and everyone was cheering. At one point I was sitting down with money in front of me, too, and I was betting it all on number 4, as Serena had.
I was aching for him. I wanted to run my hands through his hair and over his chest and feel his hand slide up my leg, but he wasn’t there. Bryah was back at the table: I didn’t know she’d been gone, and she was giggling uncontrollably, something about how the toilet seat washed itself after you were done. That made me laugh, too. Anything and everything made me laugh. And the Champagne kept flowing.
“You are a very beautiful woman,” said Devo the Frenchman, sitting next to me. Winnie threw a playful elbow into him and I thought of his toupee and I started giggling again. I never giggled but now I couldn’t stop. Serena threw her arm around me and pulled me close and laughed along with me and I turned to kiss her on the cheek but she turned, too, at the same time, and we ended up kissing on the lips. That made Devo say, “Yes, yes,” in that cartoonish French accent and both of us howled with laughter and then kissed each other again.
I lost track of myself, time, everything. Expensive cologne and sweet Champagne and beautiful scenery and roulette wheels spinning and laughter and my best friends in the world and Damon, where was Damon—
And then some of us were in the limousine again and heading somewhere, I didn’t know where.
CHAPTER 11
A DOCK. THE COOL, fresh, salty air of the Mediterranean. The four of us were walking down a dock. Heels clanking on steel. Bryah’s arm was joined in mine. She was singing a song from her native South Africa—“Oh, take me back to the old Transvaal, there where my Sarie lives”—and I lifted my face up to the stars, thinking again about my friends: how did I get so lucky?
I spilled Champagne all over my dress and threw the glass in the water and found the whole thing funny. I said, “I love you, Bry,” and she kept singing her song and Winnie and Serena were climbing aboard this enormous yacht and then the fat American was opening his arm like a host, welcoming us inside.
Inside, Serena had her arms around the neck of the Grand Prix racer Luc. Winnie was stroking the beard of Devo the French Tycoon again and whispering something to him. “Drinks!” Devo announced and I laughed. I laughed at everything the man did now. But the hair thing aside, he had a commanding, confident presence and he had Winnie’s attention and there was something familiar about him, but I couldn’t place it and couldn’t imagine we’d ever met.
Racer Luc was showing Serena a large handgun and I did a double take and it should have bothered me, I was thinking, but it didn’t and Winnie said, “I want to shoot it,” and Luc said, “No, no,” and Devo said, “It’s okay, let her,” and Luc looked at Devo and said, “Vraiment?” and Devo said, “Yes, yes,” like he was annoyed and I didn’t know why Devo was suddenly the boss of Luc, why a race-car driver would take direction from a toupeed tycoon and I couldn’t imagine where they were going to shoot a gun unless we were going to start shooting each other and I started laughing and then Devo said, “You are afraid she’ll kill a fish?” and that made me laugh even harder. I had passed being drunk three stop signs back.
We went through two doors and then up some stairs and we were outside. It felt great out here with the breeze and the harbor was dark but the shadowy water beneath us looked beautiful and endless.
And then I jumped when the gun went off.
CHAPTER 12
“I LOVE IT!” Winnie said. I, on the other hand, didn’t love it so much and felt a little bit sick. Luc said, “Here, now,” and removed the gun from Winnie’s hand and placed it inside his jacket and the fat American—yes, he was fat and I was too drunk to feel generous toward him—the fat American was up on the deck with us and he was holding a camcorder at his shoulder. Bryah preened for the camera and then so did Serena and then they were hugging and laughing and the fat American was encouraging them. I was still staring out at the Mediterranean and I felt wobbly and then somebody said something that made us go back inside but I still felt unsteady.
Inside. An expansive room, bigger than my living
room, with plush gold furniture and a bar, as if we needed anything else to drink. The fat American whose name I forgot was still using the video camera and Devo the Tycoon said, “Now, drinks!”
I took a glass of something, whatever it was, and drank a toast to group something. The liquid was harsh and I spit it out and I said, “Wait, what? Group what?” And Devo said it again, “Group sex,” and I burst into laughter and Devo said, “Ah, l’Américaine laughs.” He was right, I was laughing and then Bryah started laughing, too.
Devo opened his hand to indicate Winnie and Serena and said, “Are your friends not beautiful?” I said, “My friends are gorgeous,” but I was still laughing and Bryah thought this was funny, too, except that she also seemed to be considering it, and Serena didn’t appear to hear what Devo had said or maybe she did and didn’t care; she was consumed with Luc the Driver, and I was drunk—as I may have mentioned. Everyone started moving toward another room, and I looked inside and I saw a bed and an elaborate light hanging over it and soft carpeting and then all of them were inside, Winnie and Serena and Bryah, who said, “When in Monte Carlo,” and then I felt it, I felt something snap.
Snap.
I stumbled backward in my heels but stayed on my feet. My head was spinning and my stomach was in revolt and I suddenly felt the weight and volume of what I had consumed over the last fifteen or sixteen hours.
“No,” I said, taking another step back.
“No?” Devo said to me.
“No.” I took a deep breath, my legs shaky beneath me.
“Quel dommage.” Devo nodded respectfully and closed the bedroom door behind him.
CHAPTER 13
I WASN’T SURE what to do. I paused momentarily, wondering if I should knock on the door or something, but I heard Bryah’s muffled laugh and then Serena’s, too, and I knew Winnie could handle herself so I walked out of the room adjoining the bedroom to place some distance between us. I really wasn’t in the mood for sound effects.
“Damon,” I said. Where had I lost him? The casino, I guess.
I walked into the next room of the gigantic yacht, the main room, where we started. I heard a noise on the dock outside the boat. It must have been the fat American. He hadn’t joined the fun in the bedroom. I hoped he wasn’t still carrying around that stupid camcorder.
My head was beginning to roar from the booze, laser shots of pain against the inside of my skull. There was a refrigerator in the corner of the room and I fished around for a bottle of water.
“Damon,” I said again.
The boat moved a bit, and I could tell that someone was coming aboard.
“I believe that’s my cue.”
That voice, like a song. I turned and straightened up and there he was, at the opposite end of the room. My heart started pounding. Headache—what headache? It all came back in a rush, the intoxication, the giddiness, the loss of inhibition. I realized it then: it wasn’t the booze that had turned me upside down tonight.
“Have we met, monsieur?” I asked.
Damon took a step toward me. His eyebrows pitched, a hint of a playful smile. “Sorry I’m late.”
I took a step forward. We were inching toward each other. Every switch inside me had been flipped on. My legs didn’t feel shaky anymore.
“But you’re here now,” I said.
A scene in a movie, I thought. Ironic given my dance partner, a man with his own star on Hollywood Boulevard.
Damon reached for his shirt, started to unbutton it.
“No,” I said.
He didn’t move. “No.” He didn’t say it as a question, but I knew it was.
“No,” I repeated. I walked toward him. Damon Kodiak, international film star, stood silent, watching me.
I reached him. I placed my hand where his was, at his collar.
“Let me do it,” I said.
CHAPTER 14
ONE BUTTON AT a time. Slipping it out of its buttonhole. Slow, measured, careful. As though each one were a tiny gem that required concentrated precision. His breathing quickened; his powerful chest expanded, contracted.
There. All done.
My hands began above his waist, over his rocky abdominals, slowly gliding upward into a thicket of curly dark hair. Then his chest. Feeling the curve of his muscle, then his nipples. His heartbeat ricocheting into the palm of my hand.
“You’ll let me know when it’s my turn,” he said.
I put a finger to his lips. I ran my hand down his unshaven face, then his neck. His shoulder. He spread his arms, allowing the shirt to fall to the floor.
I took my time with his belt, a rich leather. Sliding the long end out of the belt loop. Pulling it back and slipping the prong out of the hole. Once undone, two quick tugs around his waist and it was on the floor, too.
His breathing continued to accelerate.
Now the pants. He was visibly excited. My eyes met his briefly and I smiled. Mischievously. I worked the button and the zipper. Then I looked up at him, our eyes locked now. I watched him struggle to restrain himself as I pulled and yanked until his pants had dropped.
“Abbie—”
“Don’t say my name.” I shook my head slowly. I was someone else. Someone else with her hand inside his cotton boxers. Someone else touching, caressing, stroking. Not too quickly. Not too slowly.
“Okay,” I said. “It’s your turn.”
CHAPTER 15
HE WAS BEHIND me, unzipping my dress slowly, sliding his hands inside, running them along my ribs. The dress dropped to the floor. His hand over my throat, my shoulders, my breasts. His other hand gripped my hair forcefully, a gasp escaping my mouth at his sense of entitlement, his ownership of me.
He pulled my head back, his tongue grazing my neck, his breath hot in my ear, his free hand brushing my stomach, then sliding inside my panties.
A noise from my throat, something guttural and foreign, as his fingers explored me, then slowly, expertly glided inside me. I was weightless. I was his.
“Show me,” he commanded in a whisper.
My hand joined his now, directing him. A kernel of sensation, unfamiliar and primitive, began to build and he felt it in the urgency of my hand on top of his, in the quickening of my breath, in the vibration of my pulse, and then an exhilarating rush and I cried out in a voice I didn’t recognize, someone else’s voice, and my entire body spasmed and collapsed against him.
And then there was nothing else. We were animals gripping and pawing and pulling. Then he was on top of me, his muscular arms spread on either side of me, palms flat on the carpet. He slid inside me easily and I called out, I don’t know what I said, Right now you have me, you own me, and we found a rhythm, writhing and moaning, and his jaw was clenched and I pulled his hair and This isn’t who I am but maybe, maybe it’s what I am becoming and I wrapped my legs around him and my heels dug into his back and I felt it again but this time I recognized it and I let it wash over me and I want him inside of me forever and I want this, I want whatever this is, I have never known this but I don’t ever want to lose it, whatever this—whatever this—what—
I cried out and then his back arched and he thrust one last time and let out a wail, his eyes shut, his body shuddering.
We were motionless, panting, for a time. Sweat from his forehead dripped onto my neck. My hair was plastered to my forehead and cheeks. He eased himself out of me and I sat up. He pulled me to my feet and we stared at each other, each of us spent but still curious. He’d found a bottle of water from the fridge and took a drink, then gave me some. I took his warm hand and led him into the next room, a bedroom. I knew he needed time to recharge his batteries, but I thought I might be able to help him. So I did, pushing him against the wall, dropping to my knees. I helped him. Slowly at first, playfully, then more urgently and then his fingers were lacing through my hair and he started responding, and I smiled and I helped him some more and then he was standing at attention. He was ready.
Or at least he thought he was. I climbed him, attacked h
im, kissing his mouth hard and gripping the thick hair on his chest. He slapped a hand on each of my buttocks and lifted me into the air, my legs wrapped around his waist. We were greedy and selfish and grunting and moaning and I begged him to go faster and I laughed, for some reason I laughed, incomprehensible laughter, and I felt tears in my eyes, and I didn’t know what had taken me so long to find this, I didn’t know where this—this, whatever it was—had been hiding inside me.
I am lost, I am lost in this, it is happening and I don’t know anything, I don’t know anything but this, it is all I am, it is all I want.
I was free and open and vulnerable and angry and relentless and then I was dreaming, and in my dreams I didn’t recognize myself and I didn’t recognize my lover and I knew something had happened, just like that—
Pop-pop-pop-pop
—and everything was different.
Everything would be different, forever now.
When I opened my eyes, the sun was on my face.
CHAPTER 16
BY THE TIME the sun had come up, he was long out of Monte Carlo, driving north on the A8 toward Lyon. Traffic was sparse. It was a Saturday at dawn. Who in their right mind would be driving now?
He chuckled, betraying his nervous energy. Was he in his right mind? Arguably not, after what he’d just done. But maybe his mind was right for the first time. Maybe this was right, and everything that had come before was wrong.
He stretched his limbs as he drove. He was full of electricity but he knew it was induced by the adrenaline; he knew it was temporary; and he knew he would crash hard when it was over. He hadn’t slept, after all, and he still had more than two hours to drive.
He pulled off the highway near Rousset, a village near Aix-en-Provence, one of the most picturesque parts of France, but the scenery wasn’t on his mind this morning. He needed to urinate, he needed caffeine, and he needed something in his stomach. Nothing more. In a perfect world, he wouldn’t stop at all; he would remain alone and anonymous in the automobile, driving straight to Lyon. Nobody to see his face. Nobody to remember him later, to recount to the authorities: Yes, now that I’m thinking of it, he did seem rather nervous. Like he was hiding something.