It was a small comfort but Grace prided herself on the quality of her fake orgasms. Unlike other girls she’d talked to, she didn’t go for the whole porn-star routine of flailing limbs and, ‘Yes, yes, fuck me, yeah fuck me, like that, just like that’ histrionics. Instead she’d fling her head back, give these little airless gasps and when the critical moment came, she’d clench everything she had in the way of pelvic-floor muscles. Grace liked to think that her performance was subtly sincere . . . and it had always got her rave reviews.
She quickly stubbed out her cigarette as Vaughn emerged from the bathroom nook and seemed to sniff the air appreciatively. ‘All yours,’ he murmured, now clad in boxer shorts. The front of him looked OK too, now that Grace was in a position to pass judgement. He didn’t have a six-pack, but Grace had never actually met a boy who did. Vaughn did have a spare, lean look to him, like he could actually order his own desserts and not have to rely on the kindness of other people’s sweet tooths. And she’d already felt the muscles in his biceps taut under her fingers as she’d clutched at his arms . . .
‘Seen anything you like?’ Vaughn enquired archly and Grace realised she’d been staring at him, possibly with her mouth hanging open as she often did when she zoned out.
She settled for a non-committal, ‘Hmm,’ as she edged past Vaughn, but he pulled her closer so he could kiss the top of her head. ‘Today was absolutely horrendous but you turned it around, so thank you.’
‘I thought you didn’t ever say thank you,’ Grace reminded him, as she stood in the cradle of his arms. Without heels, she was on an eye-level with the cleft in his chin, close enough to pout her lips and kiss it.
‘Well, I’m not going to make a habit of it,’ Vaughn said lightly, letting her go so she could scurry to the wash area.
He barely looked up from the book he was reading when she emerged in her Primark vest and shorts combo. As she climbed into bed and pulled the covers around her, Vaughn put down his book and reached over to turn the bedside lamp off.
Grace could feel her breath hitch in her throat as Vaughn settled down, plumping up his pillows and stretching out. She steeled herself for the inevitable arm hauling her in but it turned out that Vaughn wasn’t a cuddler. Or a sprawler. He arranged his limbs like a question mark and when Grace was sure he’d settled, she curled up in her usual foetal ball and willed herself not to fidget. Why was it that sleeping, just sleeping, with Vaughn made her feel more vulnerable than when he’d been fucking her? It made no sense.
‘Are you a light sleeper?’ he suddenly asked.
Grace had spent the last two years of her life sleeping on a sagging sofabed, or sometimes the floor, when she couldn’t find the optimum position not to get poked by the springs. She figured that a firm mattress and Egyptian cotton might take some getting used to, but she could deal with it. ‘Not especially. Are you?’
‘Yes, very,’ Vaughn replied emphatically. ‘So don’t move around too much.’
‘OK, I’ll try not to,’ she said, trying to get in some prime burrowing time before Vaughn threw a fit.
Which didn’t take long. ‘I can’t believe you’re comfortable under the covers when it’s so hot,’ he muttered peevishly.
‘I like to be tucked in,’ Grace grunted, because she was tired, she’d drunk most of a bottle of wine and she didn’t want to be pulled out of imminent slumber by Vaughn deciding that her sleep preferences were contravening some obscure clause of the mistress code. ‘Good night.’
Vaughn turned over and muttered under his breath but Grace ignored him in favour of shutting her eyes and falling asleep.
chapter fourteen
The other side of the bed was empty when Grace woke up nine hours later. She followed the trail of clothes that Vaughn had been wearing the night before to the bath alcove, where a mound of damp towels were heaped on the floor and his wash things were strewn across one of the counters; he’d even left a blob of toothpaste clinging to the side of the sink. She’d never have guessed that Vaughn was a secret slob, nor that he’d spend most of the night thrashing about so that only grim determination had made her go back to sleep each time she’d been knocked by a flailing limb.
She was drying her hair and wondering what to do about breakfast when he appeared positively glowing with exertion.
‘I’ve been up for hours,’ he said, with too much smugness for Grace’s liking. ‘I’ve been to the gym and had a run around the tennis courts.’
That would be why he was dripping sweat over the floorboards. £5,000 a month wasn’t enough to get her out of bed early so she could kill herself on a treadmill. ‘I don’t do exercise,’ she growled, because she didn’t do talking before eleven either.
‘I’m going to jump in the shower,’ Vaughn told her, toeing off his trainers, ‘then I’m going to be working for most of the day so you need to make yourself scarce. I should be done by six.’
Of all the things Grace had expected from their first weekend away together, her absence wasn’t one of them. She stared at Vaughn blankly and hoped that she didn’t look offended or hurt that he found it so easy to resist her charms. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘OK.’
‘There’s no need to sound quite so forlorn. They’re expecting you at the spa after twelve, once they’ve finished buffing and polishing the blushing bride,’ Vaughn said over his shoulder. ‘You’ll just have to find somewhere out of the way until then. Oh, and ask someone to send up some coffee.’
Finding somewhere out of the way took ages. After Grace choked down her usual breakfast of two cups of tea, a muffin and a banana, the staff kicked her out of the House Kitchen so they could start preparing for the wedding. The terrace was equally out of bounds. The Pool Room was full of braying men in morning coats. The Study was a hubbub of women adjusting hats and cooing over outfits. Thankfully, the Library’s only occupant was an elderly woman in a lilac dress snoring loudly on one of the sofas.
Grace pulled down a copy of The Great Gatsby and tried to speed-read it in case Vaughn quizzed her on it later, but mostly she worked on version five of her knitted iPod holder, which was proving tricky, until it was time to head spa-wards.
It was 6 p.m., and from the sounds of carousing drifting in from outside, as Grace slowly climbed the stairs, the bride and groom were joined in god-holy matrimony. She knew she was being an ungrateful wretch, but she was starting to feel spa-ed out, though three and a half weeks ago she’d never even stepped inside one. She didn’t have an inch of skin left that hadn’t been poked, prodded, pummelled, exfoliated, depilated, oiled, moisturised and thoroughly pampered. Skirt were very big on spa treatments - in fact, Lily had been working on a spa special for the January issue - but never once had anyone written a piece on how exhausting being beautified was.
Grace stretched tiredly as she pushed open the door to find Vaughn sitting on the sofa, laptop on the coffee-table and a phone clamped under his ear. He was talking in rapid Italian, and as he motioned her into the room, he held up a finger to his lip. She could take a hint and tiptoed across the room to the bed, because that last deep-tissue massage had left Grace as limp as a bowl of day-old noodles.
Vaughn was still chattering away as she kicked off her flip-flops, eyed Kavalier & Clay warily and decided there was no harm in lying down quietly until Vaughn had finished doing art-dealer stuff.
Grace was woken up by a sharp knock on the door after what felt like hours. Disorientated, she sat up and saw a member of staff wheel in a trolley, which she hoped was dinner because breakfast had been a long, long time ago.
Vaughn sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘You’ve been dead to the world for the last three hours,’ he murmured, cupping her cheek. ‘I didn’t have the heart to wake you.’
Grace squinted at the clock; it was gone nine. ‘I always have a disco-nap before I go out on Saturdays.’
‘You barely moved. I thought about holding a mirror in front of your mouth to check that you were still breathing.’
Grace was profoundly glad that
he hadn’t. ‘Is that dinner?’ she asked hopefully. ‘You didn’t want to eat on the terrace again?’
Vaughn’s hand was trailing absently along her jaw and she wasn’t sure whether she should lean into the caress or ignore it. ‘I’m afraid we’re confined to quarters. I thought we could have a little picnic in here.’ His thumb pressed against her bottom lip. ‘You’re all rosy-cheeked. ’
‘I’m blotchy. I’ve just had a ninety-minute facial,’ Grace pointed out.
‘Rosy-cheeked,’ Vaughn insisted. ‘It suits you. Usually you’re so pale.’
‘My grandmother made me have two spoonfuls of cod liver oil every morning because I was so pasty,’ she found herself admitting, though she didn’t know why. ‘It tasted absolutely gross.’
‘You need to learn how to accept a compliment.’ Vaughn held out his hand and Grace let him lever her off the bed, so they could sit on the sofa and eat dinner, as they watched a DVD from the pile the staff had thoughtfully provided. Grace suspected that it wasn’t Vaughn’s usual speed for a Saturday night but he didn’t seem to mind. On the contrary, he was more relaxed than Grace had ever seen him; feet propped up on the coffee-table as he enthusiastically munched his way through a ham and cheese sandwich and swigged from a bottle of designer beer.
The film, something in black and white with subtitles, wasn’t really holding Grace’s interest, but mindful of Vaughn at the other end of the sofa, a decorous twelve inches between them, Grace tried to keep the fidgeting and the running commentary down to a bare minimum. Vaughn was OK with the odd, ‘So is he one of the good guys?’ and, ‘I thought she was dead,’ but Grace was just wondering out loud if the person who’d written the subtitles was on crack when he suddenly got up without warning.
Grace was about to start apologising when Vaughn opened the mini-bar and called, ‘Milk or plain?’ - even though he allegedly didn’t do carbs after six.
‘Whatever. I’m not fussed.’ Grace paused. ‘Actually, have they got anything salty? Peanuts or crisps or something?’
When he got back, hands full of calorific treats, which he dumped in Grace’s lap, he sat down next to her, and patted his leg. ‘Let’s make ourselves more comfortable,’ he said, and Grace thought about sitting on his knee, which actually would be incredibly uncomfortable for both of them. Instead, she swung her legs up and into his lap. His hands immediately encircled her ankles, his grip warm and strangely comforting.
Grace tore open a bag of Kettle Chips and pressed ‘play’ again.
By the end of the film, Vaughn’s eyes were almost closed, teeth gritted, his head flung back. It had started off innocently enough, her feet in his lap, which actually worked out really well because it meant she could nudge him when he tried to bogart the Kettle Chips.
He’d been surprisingly docile about it, until Grace had poked him with her foot and discovered that Vaughn was hard. Correction: rigid. Grace had frozen for a second, then a sudden wicked impulse had made her flex her foot. Vaughn had swallowed compulsively, fingers tightening around her ankle. Grace had known she was on dangerous ground, but when did she ever err on the side of caution? Since never.
Now, as the final credits rolled, Grace was still curling her toes round the stiff outline of Vaughn’s cock and taking great pleasure in watching him lose every single ounce of self-possession as he bit his lip and tried not to groan.
‘For God’s sake, will you stop that?’ It was almost a growl, and before Grace could begin to retreat in panic, one of Vaughn’s hands was clamping round her thigh and tugging her closer.
It was only when he kissed her and Grace willingly mashed her mouth against his, that she realised that goading Vaughn beyond his endurance got her seriously hot. There was no hesitation, no reticence; she kissed him right back, only pausing so she could help him pull off her dress and slip out of her knickers.
‘Don’t stop kissing me,’ she ordered breathlessly, once his T-shirt had joined her frock on the floor.
Vaughn didn’t snap to it, but stared at Grace for a moment probably because she was every nympho cliché made flesh, what with the straining breasts, the flushed cheeks and the way she was undulating against his dick like a professional lap dancer. ‘I can’t wait to fuck you,’ he enunciated very precisely, despite the urgency of the moment.
Grace planted a line of kisses against his set jaw as she lifted herself up slightly, so she could unzip his jeans, reach one hot little hand into his boxers and close her fingers around the thick length of his cock. ‘Then fuck me,’ she said, because she was this close, closer than she’d ever been, and she didn’t care that normally she hated going on top because she didn’t like the way her tits bounced or her belly rippled.
Thigh muscles screaming with the effort, she slowly lowered herself on to Vaughn as he let out the breath she was still holding. Grace took a moment to savour the feeling of him buried deep inside her, but Vaughn was already raising her up so she could slam back down, jarring her so she lost the rhythm. Lost the insistent ‘fuckmenowfuckmenowfuckmenow’ pulse of her clit. Her feet, splayed in an ungainly fashion on either side of Vaughn’s thighs, were crunching over discarded sweet wrappers and the moment was gone as swiftly as it had appeared. So Grace did what she always did - closed her eyes so they wouldn’t give her away, and pretended that what she had was enough.
It was the insistent buzzing of a phone that woke Grace up. She’d been sleeping fitfully anyway because Vaughn had tossed, turned, thumped his pillows at regular intervals and sighed in a way that had her twitching with irritation. But she’d pretended to stay asleep because she had a hunch that if she so much as fluttered an eyelash, Vaughn would accuse her of keeping him awake.
She heard Vaughn grunt before he sat up and answered the phone in a terse whisper. Grace risked rolling over on to her tummy to get more comfortable. Then the mattress shifted as Vaughn inched back his half of the duvet so he could swing his legs over the edge of the bed and reach for a bottle of water on the nightstand.
‘Get a driver here no later than five thirty.’ His voice was at normal speaking volume now and there was no point in feigning deep slumber any more. Grace sat up and peered at the time on the digital clock as she pushed her hair out of her eyes and yawned. It was four in the morning and only God should be awake. Vaughn glanced over at Grace and his face twisted in a grimace that she hoped wasn’t aimed at her. ‘No, you did the right thing in calling me,’ he said tersely. ‘I just wish Grant would schedule his creative crises on Greenwich Meantime. Come and meet me at JFK and you can fill in the blanks.’
He put the phone down and got to his feet so he could stretch in a half-hearted way. ‘Go back to sleep,’ he told Grace.
Grace experimentally shut her eyes but they wanted to stay open. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, stifling another yawn.
‘Well, that makes one of us,’ Vaughn said, and going back to sleep was the safer option because right now he was made of cranky.
However, she couldn’t resist saying, ‘You’ve got some uppity artist who needs talking down from the ledge?’
Vaughn started gathering up his clothes, which were liberally scattered around the room. ‘At this precise moment I’m thinking about pushing him off the ledge. Do wonders for his resell value and I’m sure I could find a lawyer who’d plead justifiable homicide.’
‘Do you want me to make you a cup of tea? I’m going to have one.’
Vaughn paused on his way to the bathroom. ‘I’d love one, and if you wanted a cigarette I could probably get a sizeable hit from your second-hand smoke.’
That was all Grace could do to help, though she yearned to stage an intervention and do Vaughn’s packing herself because he had to start all over again when he couldn’t get the zip to close, which almost sent him over the edge.
Grace had reached the wired, teeth-grinding stage of being awake, when there was a discreet tap at the door. She managed to get to her feet and retrieve Vaughn’s phone, which was still on his nightstand.
‘Don’t forget this,’ she said, walking over to place it on his outstretched palm.
Vaughn frowned, as if he was discarding some of his opinions about her and creating shiny new ones in their place. ‘If I’m still in New York at the end of the week, maybe you can fly out and join me?’ he murmured, tugging a lock of Grace’s hair so he could pull her closer and press a kiss to her forehead. ‘Go back to bed. There’s a car booked for midday that will take you home. We were going to stop for lunch on the way but I’ll be somewhere over the Atlantic.’
‘Have a good flight.’ Grace nudged Vaughn with her hip, but decided a kiss on his cheek was more appropriate. ‘Don’t take any crap from uppity artists.’
It teased a smile out of Vaughn. A small, forced smile that showed up the tiredness around his eyes, but it was a smile nonetheless. This mistress thing was a piece of cake, Grace thought smugly, before he said curtly, ‘And if you’re not going to sleep naked, then buy some slips or something. The vest and knickers is really doing nothing for me.’