Pearl (The Pearl Series) (11 page)

The dinner with Pearl went beautifully. It was the perfect date. The meal impressed her, and the delicious wines I’d chosen had her as loosened-up as a young teenager left alone at home for the very first time; innocently wicked. Her eyes sparkled; her body language spoke to me in tones of abandoned curiosity. I felt that I had her in the palm of my hand.

After dinner, we relaxed in a bath laced with lavender oil—the lavender from my very own fields. Then I played Dom, albeit with a kingfisher feather. I tied her up with some neckties of mine; her legs splayed apart, each ankle knotted to the bedpost of my big, brass bed. Her wrists I’d bound together with the pearl necklace I’d given her, which she arrived wearing, setting off a chic, black dress which was neither overtly sexy nor too smart. The sort of dress which although stunning, gives you hints to what lies beneath and invites you to rip it off as soon as you feasibly can. I surprised myself with my Dom game. It wasn’t something I’d planned. It was all very spontaneous. But Pearl got off on it. She liked to be dominated. Strike that. She
loved
being dominated. And I was finding, more and more, that I liked being in control, too. Especially with her.

Mission number 2: make her come through oral sex. That was another thing I’d learned from my tutors. Don’t zero in on the clitoris. It can get numb and lose all sensitivity if too much attention is paid to it. Make the clit beg. Tease it. Brush past it with light whispery kisses. Taunt it and you’ll have your woman coming hard when you finally let it get its lustful way.

So I played all sorts of games with Pearl that night. I’d sent Elodie out on a date—didn’t like the idea of her being in my apartment, especially as I realized Pearl was a screamer, even though my apartment was vast—still, I wanted Elodie out for the evening.

I blindfolded Pearl, dribbled honey all over her torso, smeared her tits in cream and Nutella and licked it off her curves and valleys. Her wrists remained bound as I teased her, swirling my tongue around her nipples, getting her so worked up, that by the time I pressed my tongue flat against her clit, she was ripe for a big, pounding orgasm. I didn’t even have to do anything; just had to keep that pressure up and let her fuck my tongue at her own pace. She brought herself to climax, bucking her hips up and down against me. I felt triumphant, feeling her quivering quim ripple into a pulsating, tremulous orgasm right into my mouth. She was writhing about, screaming my name.

By that point, I knew she’d really fallen for me hook, line, and sinker.

Or so I thought.

A big shock was about to prove me wrong.

Pearl slept like an angel all night. The next morning, I don’t know why or how, but the conversation had somehow veered itself around to my childhood. Something I never discussed with anyone. In fact, I painted it to be better than it actually was. I told Pearl that my mother returned to us a year after Sophie and I left and she stayed with my father, too chicken to come with us. But she didn’t return a year later. It was
several
years later.

Pearl was shocked enough that my mother had abandoned her own son. She was less concerned about her not being there for Sophie because Sophie was my mom’s stepdaughter and she was already seventeen. But I was just seven.

I let Pearl know about how my sister and I had plotted to kill my father, mixing rat poison with his food and how Sophie attacked him with a knife to his groin. After that, we had to get the hell away from him for good. My mom stayed. She was too co-dependent. Too in love. Or too browbeaten to gather the strength to leave him.

I didn’t want Pearl knowing the true story; that Sophie and her sex worker friends were my real family. Still, I lay my heart open to Pearl—told her my deepest secrets. Or at least, a couple of them. Enough anyway, to be as vulnerable as a gaping wound. She, in return, told me about her brother, John, who had died ten years before of a drug overdose. I felt that Pearl and I had shared vulnerable parts of ourselves, and our jigsaw puzzle pieces were slotting together perfectly.

I was about to be proved otherwise.

We were enjoying a beautiful breakfast spread at The Carlyle. It was only 7 a.m. Pearl was wearing her elegant black dress from the night before, and high heels. She looked like a million dollars. Happy. Orgasmed-out. The way every woman should look every morning of the week. How every woman should feel.

I was spouting off a load of nonsense; something about the differences between French and American culture. Pearl was listening intently. I thought how pleasant it was that we were able to engage in interesting conversation—our relationship was not just about sex.

My cell had already buzzed a couple of times and I let it go to voicemail, but when the caller—Sophie, Claudine, Indira, Laura?—insisted, I thought that perhaps there was some kind of emergency, so I picked it up and listened to two frantic messages.

Both from Sophie.

The first:

“I was right. I knew there was something fishy about Pearl Robinson. Guess what, buddy? Your sweet little baby-doll-eyed-girlfriend is forty years old! Oh yes, fucking forty! You might be happily thinking that you are her
boyfriend
but she has other ideas: you are her TOY BOY! She’s playing with you, Alexandre. She’s out to get what she’s after and then she’ll dump you like a hot potato, you watch.”

Second message:

“Sorry, forgot to explain myself. Pearl Robinson was stalking us, like the cougar she is, when we met her in that coffee shop. Coincidence, my ass! Do you remember how she pretended she just so
happened
to be there? She works for Haslit Films, the ones who were hounding us to take part in their fucking documentary! She’s their producer! Do you remember that? The film company who were hassling us, wanting to do a piece about us? She was bloody well following us! Why the fuck aren’t you picking up your phone, Alexandre?”

I called Sophie back, my eyes on Pearl. I couldn’t believe what I’d heard but I knew my sister; she would have done her homework. Sophie never made mistakes. Wow, Pearl had me fooled. First of all, she looked not a day older than thirty, with that tight, smooth body that even a twenty-five year old would have been proud of. I’d been dumb. I was so wrapped up in the romance of our relationship, I hadn’t bothered to find out who she really was, what she did for a living. Damn it, I probably could have known everything within ten minutes, just by Googling her.

Pearl was gazing back at me, her face ashen. She knew something was wrong. My eyes had turned as cold as two sharpened flints—I could feel it myself. I never had been good at hiding my anger.

I looked at her.
Pearl Robinson, you’ve fucking betrayed me. I trusted you.

Sophie picked up on the first ring and continued her rant without even saying hello. “Fucking Americans! They always have an ulterior motive. Always out to get something from you. Pearl Robinson is a fucking snake in the grass! I suppose you’re shagging her as we speak!”

“No, I’m not, actually,” I said coolly, my heart feeling as if it had been ripped out of my chest. Talk about a good performance. Pearl had me conned. Really fooled. There I was imagining that she had desperately fallen for me. I was the one who had fallen. Fallen hard.

Fallen on my goddamn face.

Sophie went on, “I hadn’t put two and two together because it was her boss, Natalie something-or-other who’d sent me all those emails, begging us for an interview, to take part in their fucking spy-film. What have you told her, Alexandre?”

“Nothing,” I lied.

“Because if you’ve spilt the beans about our business, it will be all over the papers, soon enough, or edited into some bloody documentary for the whole world to see!”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, my heart pounding. Fuck! Pearl knew so much about my past. About Sophie stabbing my father in the groin. Me, trying to kill him off with rat poison…a fascinating story it would make: the CEOs of HookedUp both belonging in a loony bin.

“Does she know about the gems? Does she know about our highly illegal Mumbai deal?” Sophie screamed at me.

“Of course not.”

“Get the fuck away from that scheming, lying bitch and never, ever see her again.”

“Sure,” I answered sadly, my eyes still fixed on Pearl’s beautiful face. My insides were churning like a cement mixer. “Bye, Sophie, I’ll call you later.”

I pressed ‘end’ and let out a disappointed sigh. I shook my head, “Oh Pearl, oh Pearl.” I was wondering how I’d be able to bear it—how I’d be able to stand not having her in my arms, not be able to fuck her, make love to her, see her face when she came, hear her moan with desire.

Her big blue yes widened with guilty innocence. Damn, she was a good actress. “What?” she asked.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me who you were?” I was waiting for her to admit what she did, to offer me a reasonable explanation, but she just dug her grave deeper.

“What do you mean?” she said, her finger touching her nose.
Such a giveaway.

That
was her fucking response—that’s the best she could come up with.

My lips pressed tightly together, my body tensed. I’d given her a chance to wriggle out of her deceit, but she’d blown it. I hissed between gritted teeth, “Is this what all this means to you? Having breakfast with me, spending time, making love? All this so you can go back to your fucking editing suite and plot out the next scene? The scene where Alexandre Chevalier and Sophie Dumas’s pasts are revealed? Was
that
what it meant to you when we were in bed together? A ploy to get intimate with me and make me spill the beans about my private life?”

“NO! I mean…I…let me explain, Alexandre—”

“Explain what? That you lied to me? Oh no, not lied, that would have been too obvious. You omitted information. Omitted to tell me what your game plan was. Why didn’t you just come out with it?” I lower my voice, “Because if you wanted to fuck me as part-and-parcel of your deceitful little package deal, I would have done that for free. The only difference is I would have fucked you harder, cared a little less,” and I leaned down and whispered in her ear, “I would have fucked your ass off, pounded into you ruthlessly like you fucking deserved, so you couldn’t walk for several days afterwards.”

The people in the hotel restaurant were staring at us now. Fascinated by our domestic scene. Pearl’s eyes were brimming over with tears—mascara running down her cheek. But she still couldn’t come up with a decent excuse. She did what every woman does when they are caught out—she pulled out the sympathy card. But I wasn’t falling for it.

“Don’t fucking cry on me now,” I said coldly.

“Please Alexandre,” she whimpered, dabbing her tears with a linen napkin. The sympathy card wasn’t working, so she laid out her next card on the table: The Queen of Hearts. “I love you,” she sobbed.

Her words pinched my heart but I took a big breath and muttered, “Good try, baby.”

She babbled on incoherently about the coffee shop—how she’d missed our talk, something about not giving a toss about HookedUp but wanting to focus on important things, like exposing arms dealers.

More important stuff.
My point exactly. Sophie and I were just pawns to her.

I stood up, heat flushing through me, not wanting to listen to her bullshit, lame excuses anymore. She’d proven to me that she was your typical, ambitious, ball-busting career woman. Tough. Ruthless. Trampling over others at any cost to get what she wanted. I slapped a couple of hundred dollar bills on the table to more than cover the check. “Keep the change,” I snapped. “Oh yeah, you left your gifts at my place—the pearl necklace, the kingfisher feather. I’ll have them delivered to you—a little keepsake, a souvenir,” I said bitterly, “so you can remember our time together.” I turned on my heel and strode out of the room, not looking behind.

Pride before a fall.

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