Bad Sisters Page 2

  She flung her arms above her head as if she were reaching for something, but there was nothing for her fingers to grasp; the walk-in shower was huge, and there was no way she could touch the tiled walls. Instead, her uplifted hands met the full force of the shower, water cascading from the tips of her fingers down her arms, over her breasts, onto her flat stomach as she bucked and heaved against Juan’s mouth, his tongue, fighting to get where she wanted, where he was inevitably taking her, the shower so loud that its steady downpour drowned out the ever increasing noise she was making, the screams that reached their climax as she did, coming again and again. Juan’s thickly muscled arms were more than strong enough to hold her, stop her slipping on the tiled floor as the orgasms hit her in swift succession, rippling her body into an arched bow. She drove her pelvis into Juan’s mouth in quick frenzied beats, determined to wrench every last moment of pleasure, until her legs gave way completely and, gasping, she collapsed against him.

  Deeley’s eyes were closed, her body throbbing with the aftermath of her orgasms, and as Juan pushed himself to stand up, she was hanging over his shoulder. He didn’t bother to switch off the shower; he carried her into the bedroom, threw her down on the bed, where she landed starfished out, her eyes still shut. Deftly he rummaged in the drawer of the bedside table and pulled out a condom. Deeley heard his zipper being dragged down, his trousers being kicked off along with his shoes, the condom wrapper being torn open, and she braced herself. What had just happened had been all about her.

  What was about to happen would be all about Juan.

  She was so wet from his mouth and from her multiple orgasms that Juan’s hard cock slid right into her in one stroke, provoking the first sound she’d heard him make that afternoon: a deep grunt of primitive male satisfaction. And then he was pounding away at her in a fast, frantic rhythm. Deeley opened her eyes; he was above her, arms braced on either side of her, the dark curls low on his bull-like forehead dampening with sweat as he worked away, his lips drawing back from his teeth in a grimace, his thick stocky torso thudding into her as he worked himself to his own orgasm. No variation of stroke or speed, no sophisticated techniques, just a machine-like piston stroke, slamming into Deeley again and again and again as she lay there, spread wide for him, knowing that nothing was expected from her. No participation, no moans of encouragement, though she was gasping deep in her throat with every stroke.

  He was almost there, Deeley could tell; his strokes weren’t speeding up, but his grunts were growing louder, his cock swelling as he worked away at her. His upper lip curled into a sneer as he finally froze for a split second, juddered against her, and let out a long groan of satisfaction as he spilled himself. Deeley felt his cock jerking inside her and closed her eyes to let the full delicious final rush of sensations flood through her, her own body throbbing in response to his.

  It was through a haze that she felt Juan kneeling back, carefully pulling himself, plus condom, out of her, and padding into the bathroom to dispose of it. Still in a haze, she felt the creak of the mattress as he sat down heavily on the side of the bed to pull on his trousers and shoes.

  He didn’t even bother to take his socks off, she thought, smiling to herself. Pretty much the definition of a quickie.

  Juan stood up, looking down at her. She opened her eyes fully, still smiling, and fluttered her fingers at him as a goodbye; he nodded at her in return, one swift acknowledgement of what they had just done, his face once again impassive. This was the most communication she and Juan ever had during one of their encounters; from the first time onwards, they’d barely exchanged a word during or after, being much too busy concentrating on the act itself. Smoothing down his t-shirt, he walked briskly from the bedroom. She heard him slide the glass door shut, considerate of her nakedness.

  Dreamily, Deeley rolled over on her front, savouring the aftermath, her nerve endings still shimmering with pleasure.

  That was such a good call – the best beauty treatment is really great sex. I’m going to look amazing in the photographs tonight . . .

  ‘You got laid, didn’t you?’ Hervé challenged her, his eyebrows shooting up as he swivelled her chair till her face was fully in the light. ‘You little slut! You totally got laid today! Don’t lie to me, sugar. I can always tell.’

  Deeley smirked as Hervé plonked his huge make-up travel case on her dressing table and plugged in his heated rollers.

  ‘It does half your work for you,’ she pointed out. ‘You shouldn’t complain.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not complaining,’ Hervé said. ‘I’m just jealous. You’re glowing like a nuclear reactor.’

  He looked over his shoulder at Serita, who was bustling in with a garment bag over her arm and a Samsonite pull-case containing the shoes and jewellery she’d picked out for Deeley.

  Serita, angel? Hair thoughts?’

  ‘Down, down, down,’ Serita said in her breathy baby voice. ‘Cascading down the back, super-simple but with lots of body. Like she did a hair commercial and then fucked the director.’

  ‘Don’t say another word,’ Hervé said happily. ‘I totally get it.’

  Serita was extracting the silver Cardin dress from the garment bag as worshipfully as if it were a just-discovered Old Master painting. She laid it on the bed and stood back to survey it, clasping her heavily ringed hands at her bony ribcage.

  ‘To die for!’ she sighed. ‘I mean, completely!’

  ‘Oh, that’s gorgeous,’ Hervé agreed, patting base carefully onto Deeley’s face.

  ‘She’s got such a lovely figure,’ Serita said, looking over at Deeley in her silk kimono wrap. ‘I mean, she’s not exactly skinny – forget sample sizes for this one! But she’s perfectly in proportion. The tiny waist! And those boobs! I love dressing those boobs! I mean, I’d hate to have to do it all the time, but every so often, it’s so much fun!’ Serita concluded happily. ‘It’s like picking out clothes for a gigantic Barbie!’

  ‘Tits and ass can change your life. They sure . . . changed . . . mine!’ Hervé warbled playfully.

  ‘A Chorus Line,’ Serita said, setting a gigantic bangle and a pair of diamond earrings on the dressing table. ‘I love that movie.’

  During her first months in LA, Deeley had been totally thrown by the way stylists, make-up artists and personal trainers talked about their clients as if they weren’t even present. Now she was so accustomed to it that she didn’t blink an eye. Which was useful, because Hervé was presently employed in gluing individual lashes to her lids to transform her already naturally thick eyelashes into a miracle of nature.

  To hear Serita and Hervé talk, Deeley reflected, you’d think that she was a plus-size model, instead of five foot eight and an English size 10. Though mind you, nowadays that probably would make her a plus-size model, she thought, amused. By contrast, Serita was so skinny that her chest, shown off by the low V of her neckline, looked like a slatted window blind.

  ‘But you know, this is what straight men like,’ Hervé said, finishing his eyelash application and standing back, squinting, to make sure they were even. He gestured at Deeley’s body. ‘Tits and ass. All the married guys in LA cheat on their skinny wives with pole dancers with some meat on them. And she’s perfect for Nicky!’ Hervé added cheerfully, starting to wind Deeley’s hair around the rollers. ‘How hetero does a man look with this on his arm? I mean, she’s like some life-size blow-up doll!’

  Serita, kneeling in front of Deeley, strapping on the gold platform slingbacks, giggled madly.

  Though Deeley might not particularly relish being compared to a blow-up doll, when she was finally allowed to see herself in the full-length mirror, she had to admit that Serita and Hervé had done her up in a way that belied their words. The silver dress, fitted to hug every curve, clung to her like a lover; Serita’s styling genius meant that the dress, though sexy, managed to avoid being vulgar. The sequins slid over Deeley with a dull sheen echoed in the soft gold of the high heels and the antique bangle; diamond studs glittered in th
e thick waves of Deeley’s hair, which an artful colourist had lightened to a rich deep caramel. Her dark eyes looked huge, and, to tone down too much overt sexiness, Hervé had cleverly painted her lips a subtle shade of golden coral.

  ‘Wow,’ Nicky said from the doorway. ‘You look brilliant, Deels!’

  Deeley pivoted elegantly on her heel, flicking her hair back, one hand on her hip, facing her boyfriend. In a light grey Tom Ford suit, so snug at the waist that only a lean gym obsessive could wear it, buttoned over a white silk shirt, Nicky was handsome enough to take anyone’s breath away. His tan set off his tight gold curls and bright blue eyes, and his smile was heart-melting. The icing on the cake was that the smile was genuine; he really was as nice, sweet and gentle as he appeared. Deeley beamed back at him in utter contentment at her good luck.

  ‘Love you, Nicky,’ she said happily.

  ‘You too, babe,’ he said fondly.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Sean, Nicky’s trainer, exclaimed, appearing behind Nicky. He slung one arm around Nicky’s shoulder, looking Deeley up and down. ‘Deeley! You’re sex on a stick!’

  ‘Well, got to bustle!’ Serita said, nipping out of Deeley’s bedroom, pausing to kiss Nicky on the lips as she went. ‘Too fabulous, both of you. I could kill myself now and die happy.’

  ‘Remember to touch up the lippy in the limo,’ Hervé reminded Deeley, as he packed up the last of his equipment. He winked at Sean and Nicky on the way out, his heavy make-up case bumping over the metal of the door frame.

  ‘And you two – stay pretty, OK?’ he added appreciatively.

  ‘Aww,’ Sean cooed, planting a big kiss on his lover’s full pink lips. ‘He will if I have anything to do with it!’

  ‘He’s a sodding slave-driver,’ Nicky sighed. ‘I was running up and down the stairs at the Hollywood Bowl all morning! And the bastard made me do all sorts of things this afternoon—’

  ‘Oh, I just bet he did,’ Hervé tossed over his shoulder as he trundled his case around the swimming pool. ‘Careful, hon! That stuff’s packed with calories, you know . . .’

  Deeley, Sean and Nicky cracked up at this perfect exit line.

  ‘Hervé’s a trip,’ Sean said, grinning widely.

  ‘And he’s not completely wrong, is he?’ Nicky said flirtatiously, sliding his hand down to squeeze Sean’s bottom.

  ‘Oh, please! No kissing and telling!’ Sean squealed as Nicky pinched him.

  ‘Hello.’ Nicky rolled his eyes. ‘What do you think Juan was doing in Deeley’s place this afternoon? Taking the temperature of her bathwater?’

  ‘God, Deeley, you lucky thing,’ Sean said enviously. ‘Dirty pool boy sex. Yum yum.’

  ‘I have to get it somewhere,’ Deeley pointed out, turning to check herself out in the mirror again. ‘I mean, it’s not like my boyfriend’s going to give me one any time soon, is it?’

  ‘I hope not!’ Sean giggled.

  ‘Oh, darling, I think you’re safe there,’ Nicky said, wrapping his arm round Sean’s waist. ‘I mean, if I’ve had Deeley across the way for five years and haven’t laid a finger on her yet, I’m not exactly going to be consumed with mad passion for her now, am I?’

  Sean grinned at Deeley, his perfect teeth white against his warm brown skin. ‘Nah,’ he said cheerfully. ‘If you’re not getting a hard-on looking at her all dressed up like that, I’d say you’re 100 per cent homo.’

  ‘Ssh!’ Nicky lifted a finger to his lips. ‘Stop it! We’re off to the Dyslexic Teen Aids benefit in an hour, and I have to put my best hetero face on! Let’s go have a glass of champagne. It always helps me lose my inhibitions and grope Deeley on the red carpet.’

  ‘Vodka and diet soda,’ Sean said sternly. ‘Champagne has too many carbs.’

  ‘Ah, fuck,’ Nicky sighed, as a voluptuous raven-haired woman in a red silk sheath and four-inch spike heels stalked into the room.

  ‘Lovely way to say hi, Nicky,’ she said.

  ‘Carmen, you know I wasn’t . . .’ Nicky started nervously. Everyone in Hollywood was intimidated by Carmen Delgado, publicist to the stars and iron hand in the most elegant of iron gloves.

  ‘I was joking, pretty boy,’ Carmen said, raising her perfectly plucked eyebrows at him. ‘When I’m cross with you, believe me, you’ll know.’

  Carmen took in Deeley in her silver-and-gold glory and her red-lipsticked mouth pursed into a whistle of approval.

  ‘Very hot,’ she commented. ‘Serita and Hervé do earn their money.’

  ‘Really,’ Sean gushed, only to have Carmen swivel and fix him with a steely stare, making it more than clear, without speaking a word, that the opinion of a personal trainer weighed with her about as much as that of a tabloid journalist.

  ‘I need a moment here, OK?’ Carmen said.

  With me?’ Deeley said, taken aback.

  She barely had any dealings with Carmen now, apart from the odd briefing session where Deeley was summoned to hear Carmen’s feedback on how she was coming across in the press. In the beginning, when Deeley and Nicky had first moved to LA, Nicky, as the star of a much-hyped new series, had hired Carmen to manage his image, and Carmen had been at the house all the time. Coaching Nicky on how to handle the press. Restyling him into something less ‘English poof’, as she charmingly put it, and more US-friendly. And working out a whole backstory for him and Deeley – how they met, how long they’d been together, what their plans for the future were.

  It had been a fairy story for Deeley. She’d met Nicky in London a year before they came to LA, that much was true. But, contrary to their meet-cute version of events (Nicky had seen her walking in a London park, picked some flowers and given them to her in tribute to her beauty, then begged her for a date) they’d actually bumped into each other on the dance floor at GAY. They’d happily bumped and ground for the rest of the night, swapped numbers and been friends and fellow clubbers ever since. Nicky was a struggling actor, with some decent stage and TV work on his CV, but desperate for his big break. He’d been over to LA for pilot season the year before, acquired an agent, even shot a pilot, but nothing had seemed to come of it, and he’d returned to London, dispirited.

  And then the miracle happened: Nicky’s pilot had killed with the focus groups. He played a sexy chef-cum-private detective, who had a different gorgeous love interest each episode, but whose real passion was for his Siamese cat Mitzi. Originally turned down by straight male studio execs, the pilot had been picked up by a female one who had immediately seen Nicky’s appeal. And now, five years later, Cooking up Murder was a smash hit; it was going into syndication, which meant untold riches for everyone associated with it.

  Nicky couldn’t have known, of course, how big Cooking up Murder was going to be. But he had panicked at the thought of hiding his sexuality all alone in LA, knowing there was no way the public would accept an unknown gay actor as the latest TV heartthrob. So he had turned to his friend Deeley, who photographed like a dream, and as Serita and Hervé had just said, with her killer curves, would make any man by her side look like the most red-blooded of heterosexuals.

  Carmen, all business, had promptly applauded Nicky’s good sense and drawn up a contract for Deeley to sign. An initial bonus, bed and board, her own car, and a yearly allowance index-linked to Nicky’s salary; Deeley had signed it without even reading it through. No way could she be worse off than she had been back in London, living in a crappy shared flat in Acton, waitressing and working as a hostess at trade shows to scrape a living, constantly having to fend off the groping hands of male employers. Well, that was one hazard she certainly wouldn’t have in her role as Nicky’s devoted girlfriend.

  It had been utter bliss. Carmen had told Deeley she needed to lose some weight, and she’d freaked, but Pilates, plus the low-carb eating plan Nicky was on, had melted off some pounds without her even trying, and comments on the online gossip columns were so positive about Nicky’s girlfriend having ‘real curves’ that Carmen had backed off. In interviews, Nicky was usually asked about what he
liked in a woman, to which he would blushingly confess that maybe he was old-fashioned, but he loved that Deeley wasn’t a stick insect. In fact, he would add – to the delight of the entire female readership – he’d be even happier if she put on a few more pounds.

  It was all going absolutely perfectly. And when Nicky had fallen for Sean and moved him into the house, it had been the easiest thing in the world; the success of the Nicky/Deeley love fest had meant that no fan would ever believe that Sean was anything but Nicky’s trainer and nutritionist.

  So why was Carmen looking at Deeley now as if she were about to fire a bolt pistol into her skull?

  Deeley sat down slowly on the chair in front of her dressing table, her legs suddenly feeling weak. Carmen’s piercing stare had that effect on people. Strange, because Carmen was a stunningly good-looking woman. But you didn’t notice the attractive pattern of a cobra’s scales when it reared up in front of you and fixed you with a beady stare.

  ‘So! Five years!’ Carmen said, smiling.

  The smile’s even worse than the stare, Deeley thought nervously.

  ‘Congrats! Job very well done!’ Long black earrings glittered in the dark mass of Carmen’s curly hair as she paced the room, pulling out a cigarette packet from her diamanté-encrusted Judith Leiber clutch. ‘Nicky’s straight as a ruler,’ she lit her cigarette, ‘Cooking up Murder is still killing in the ratings,’ she shoved the packet back into the clutch and took a long drag on her cigarette, ‘plus Nicky’s first two features are doing fantastic box office!’