Dark Secret (3 page)

Rowena couldn’t remember when she’d last seen her husband so enthusiastic. ‘What about Chris?’ she asked.

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Chris will go along with our decision. I bore his preferences in mind when I made out my list of essential requirements.’

‘I’m not sure she’ll stay, even if she takes the job,’ said Rowena.

‘She’ll stay.’ Lewis sounded supremely confident and it annoyed his wife.

‘When she said she wanted to broaden her horizons I’m not sure she meant them to expand quite as far as you intend.’

‘It will all be done very slowly,’ Lewis reminded her. ‘By the time she realises what’s happening she’ll be too involved to leave. Trust me, Rowena. If there’s one thing I do know about, apart from making films, it’s women.’

Rowena knew this was true. She’d had a lot of men herself, but never anyone like Lewis. He was everything she could ever have asked for, totally uninhibited and unashamed, prepared to go to any lengths to satisfy her needs and desires. Yet even that wasn’t enough, she thought bitterly. Even Lewis with his intelligence, good looks and sexual skill had been unable to help her. Which was why they were here, and why they needed Harriet.

‘Ring her tomorrow at six o’clock,’ said Lewis, getting out of his chair and taking the half-smoked cigarette from between his wife’s fingers. ‘By then she’ll be worrying that you’re not going to call and should accept straight away. Now get
back to bed, you look exhausted. And do stop smoking these things. They don’t help your skin or your nerves and I loathe the smell.’

‘Just because all your films are moral crusades, do you have to carry it over into your private life?’ enquired Rowena irritably.

Lewis smiled. ‘You more than anyone should know that I’m not quite what people think!’

‘Sometimes I’m not sure I know you at all,’ retorted Rowena.

Lewis reached forward and stroked her left cheek softly with the middle finger of his right hand. ‘You know all you need to know,’ he murmured. ‘Now go and rest. I have to work on the script.’

‘Is it all right if I show her photograph to Chris?’ asked Rowena.

‘No,’ said Lewis sharply. ‘I don’t want him to set eyes on her until she’s actually living in this house.’

They both knew that Rowena wouldn’t disobey him, because if she did then the delicate balance of the script would be changed, and the script was entirely Lewis’s responsibility.

At five past six the following evening the telephone rang in Harriet’s apartment. She had been pacing back and forth in front of it for the past half hour and almost snatched it off the rest in her haste. ‘Hello?’

‘Miss Radcliffe?’ asked the husky voice of Rowena Farmer.

‘Yes,’ said Harriet, eagerly.

‘I’m delighted to say that all your references checked out satisfactorily and I’d like to offer you
the job,’ said Rowena.

Harriet felt almost light-headed with excitement. The few things that had been troubling her, any doubts as to the wisdom of such a change, vanished in the wave of relief that the job was hers, just as Lewis had anticipated.

‘Are you still interested?’ Rowena sounded anxious, and Harriet realised that she hadn’t said a word yet.

‘Yes, yes of course!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’m really pleased.’

‘So are we,’ responded Rowena, and again Harriet wondered about her use of the word
we.
‘I was wondering if you could start next week? I didn’t bring my secretary with me and the correspondence is already beginning to pile up.’

‘Of course,’ said Harriet swiftly. ‘I have to make a few arrangements about the flat, but I could certainly start next Monday.’

‘And you’ll bring all you need then?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘I realised I didn’t show you your rooms,’ said Rowena, sounding embarrassed by her own error. ‘If you wanted to come and have a look before Monday that could easily be arranged. You’ll have your own bedroom, bathroom and living-room on the first floor. The rooms are all large here; I’m sure you’ll find them acceptable.’

Remembering what she’d seen of the house so far, Harriet couldn’t imagine otherwise. ‘I’m sure they’ll be perfect,’ she assured Rowena. ‘Honestly, I don’t need to come and look.’

‘Well, if there’s anything you don’t like we can always have it changed,’ responded the film star. In the short pause that followed Harriet heard
another voice, a man’s deep and soft, almost like a whisper. ‘Oh, yes!’ exclaimed Rowena. ‘There is one little thing I forgot. I’m afraid you won’t be able to have visitors here. It’s the film, you see. Everything is at such a delicate stage that I don’t want any word to escape and if …’

‘It’s all right,’ Harriet assured her. ‘I can always go out to see my friends. Really, there’s no problem.’

‘I’m so glad you understand.’ The relief in Rowena’s voice was clear and for a moment Harriet felt sorry for her, although she couldn’t imagine why. ‘We’ll see you on Monday morning then, let’s say at eleven-thirty. The household should be awake at that time!’

‘Fine,’ said Harriet. ‘And thank you.’

‘I should be thanking you,’ said Rowena softly, and then she hung up.

As Harriet started to dial Ella’s number, Rowena turned to Lewis, who had been standing at her elbow throughout the call. ‘There, it’s settled,’ she said triumphantly.

He nuzzled the nape of her neck while his arms wound themselves round her body and his hands caressed her breasts through the flimsy material of her blouse. ‘Well done,’ he murmured. ‘Now we can begin.’

They sank on to the carpet together and as his cool, clever fingers played over her warm flesh her last coherent thought was to wonder what Chris would think of their choice.

Chapter Two

ON THE MONDAY
morning, as Harriet packed the last of her belongings into suitcases, Rowena stirred sleepily in her four-poster bed. Lewis had awoken earlier, she’d heard him dress and leave, and remembering that today was an important one for them all Rowena decided that perhaps she should join him for a cup of coffee and some fruit juice before dressing.

She opened her eyes, but not a glimmer of light penetrated the room. Still half-asleep she turned her head towards the window, and realised with a shiver of excitement that she was wearing a blindfold. Instinctively she tried to move her hands, to test exactly what had been used to cover her eyes, but immediately a pair of wiry hands gripped her wrists, pinning them to her pillow.

‘Chris, stop it!’ she protested half-heartedly. ‘I have to get up this morning. Harriet will be here soon.’

‘I want to know about Harriet,’ he whispered in her ear, his breath warm against her skin. ‘Tell me
what she looks like. Is she beautiful? Will I want her enough for the plot to work?’

‘I can’t tell you,’ she explained, twisting her body in her efforts to free herself. Chris grasped her legs and pushed them roughly upwards so that her knees were bent against her ample breasts and then she felt him move over her until her ankles were on his shoulders and his erection was resting against her. She knew that she was already moist, already wanting him, and knew that Chris was aware of it too because he laughed softly deep in his throat.

‘Tell me,’ he taunted her, letting the tip of his penis brush lightly up and down her slowly parting outer sex-lips. ‘Tell me about Harriet and then you can have me.’

‘I can’t! repeated Rowena, wishing that she could just so that she could feel him hard and urgent inside her.

Chris rotated his hips slightly and she felt the soft tip of his penis caressing the sensitive nerve endings around her clitoris. Immediately she tried to arch herself upwards to increase the stimulation but her movements were restricted by the position he’d chosen and she whimpered with frustration.

Suddenly he withdrew from between her legs, pressed her legs down flat on the-bed, then lay on top of her, his hands going to her breasts. Still unable to see, Rowena’s breathing increased as she waited for his next move. She could feel her body trembling with need, a need mixed with the glorious fear that Chris always aroused in her. A fear that she had grown to need, to rely on for her greatest moments of pleasure.

Very softly his fingers closed round her right breast. They skimmed lightly over the surface and Rowena’s lips parted as she waited for what was to come. Very gradually, with tantalising slowness, his fingers moved across the surface of the rounded breast until it reached the aureola. Then the finger nails scratched lightly at the most sensitive part of the film star’s breasts and as her nipple rose with her increased excitement Chris lowered his head and sucked it into his mouth.

The pressure combined with the insistent scratching meant that Rowena’s hips twisted on the bed as she sought some kind of contact against the lower half of her body, but Chris moved to the side of her, denying her stimulation of any kind.

‘Tell me what Harriet looks like,’ he repeated and she could have cried because when he spoke he released her imprisoned nipple from his mouth.

‘No!’ She made her voice firmer, aware that no matter what he did this time he wasn’t going to have his way and he might as well know it now.

‘Why do you let him do this to us?’ whispered Chris, and to her amazement and gratitude she felt one of his hands straying between her thighs, idly caressing the soft, damp, swollen flesh. ‘We’re not social misfits, or politicians. He should stick to his dramatised documentaries, not use us to launch him into fiction.’

‘It isn’t fiction,’ Rowena said softly. ‘It’s faction. That’s why we’re so necessary, and I need this film, Chris. I need it badly. I’m thirty now, I can’t rely on my looks any more. I have to show that I can act.’

‘This isn’t acting,’ exclaimed Chris, and behind the darkness of the blindfold, Rowena was startled by the sudden insertion into her vagina of a gently rounded vibrator that Chris immediately switched on to the higher setting.

As its pulsations spread through her, as her outer nerve endings were stimulated by the strength of the movements within her, Rowena’s body began to climb to orgasm. She felt her nipples standing erect, felt the hot melting sensation deep within the core of her and when Chris’s spare hand gripped her right breast, her head began to move almost imperceptibly on the pillow and she heard herself moaning.

‘Do you want me instead of this toy?’ he asked, his own voice trembling with excitement.

‘Yes! Yes, please Chris, now! Quickly!’ Rowena was frantic to feel him inside her, to know that he was there when she finally toppled into orgasm.

‘Then tell me about Harriet,’ he demanded.

Rowena’s stomach was rigid with sexual tension and her thighs began to shake as the orgasm drew closer. ‘Please, Chris, I can’t. Just take me, take me now.’

‘Bitch!’ he muttered, and to her horror the vibrator was withdrawn, her breast released and the blissful sparks began to die away. Without thinking Rowena’s own hand moved between her thighs, to finish what Chris had so abruptly ended, but his hands stopped her and he kept her imprisoned flat on the bed, still unable to see because of the blindfold, and only released her when her body had finally returned to its former unaroused state. Then he pulled off the dark scarf and stared down at her.

‘You shouldn’t have done that!’ cried Rowena. ‘It wasn’t fair.’

‘You and Lewis shouldn’t have chosen Harriet without asking my opinion.’

‘He’s my husband and the director of the film, whereas you’re—’

‘Just a small-part actor?’ he queried.

‘No, of course not, but he has to run this his way. He wants it to be as accurate as possible, that’s why we need Harriet. He chose the characters and he wants to see how they really react to the situation his film characters will face. Don’t you see how real it will make it? No one will be able to say “that’s not how people behave” because we’ll already have behaved like it. We
are
his film.’

‘He’s trying to get rid of me,’ said Chris.

Rowena reached up to brush his fair curly hair out of his eyes. ‘He could never do that, Chris,’ she assured him. ‘I couldn’t live without you, you know that and Lewis knows it too.’

Chris leant over her and kissed her deeply, his tongue thrusting into her mouth just as she’d wanted his erection to thrust a few minutes earlier. Her arms went round his neck and she arched up so that her nipples brushed the soft down on his chest. ‘Please, let’s do it now,’ she begged him.

‘No,’ said Chris curtly, and he pushed her off the bed. ‘Get dressed. Your husband’s probably waiting for you.’

‘Sometimes I hate you,’ said Rowena, refusing to let herself cry because it would ruin her looks for the rest of the morning.

Chris laughed. ‘It didn’t look that way earlier.’

‘What’s wrong with us?’ demanded Rowena. ‘Why can’t we be …’

‘Normal?’ enquired Chris. He smiled his most boyish smile. ‘I’ve no idea. Perhaps Lewis will discover the answer as the plot unravels.’

Harriet was surprised when Rowena Farmer opened the front door to her in person. Now that she’d accepted the job she hadn’t expected the film star to bother to be even professionally friendly. Ella had made it quite clear over the telephone that this star in particular was one who took her position as a sex goddess very seriously.

‘She wants to be known as an “actress” too,’ Ella had informed her friend. ‘That’s probably why she’s here. The Americans think that the best serious films are made in England. Incidentally,’ Ella had added, ‘Ms Farmer just happens to be married to the hottest director in the States at the moment, and I mean hot. He’s the new Oliver Stone and incredibly handsome. I saw him once on a clip of film showing them together and one glimpse made my knees go weak!’

‘I don’t suppose I’ll see much of him,’ Harriet had responded, and then thought very little more about it.

Now though, as Rowena motioned for a waiting maid to take Harriet’s suitcases and then led her through to the drawing-room she remembered Ella’s words, because Rowena was talking about her husband.

‘You must meet Lewis before I show you your rooms,’ she said gaily. ‘He’s usually locked away in his study working on the script or talking on the telephone, but I’ve told him that when you’re
not busy with my work he can borrow you – I didn’t think you’d mind – so he’s taken time out to meet you.’