Liberate Yourself (The Desires Unlocked Trilogy Part One) (38 page)

She slips the album into her black briefcase. She is bringing it with her. She wants to know where Theo got these negatives, and if he knows who the woman is. More than anything, she wants to know why he gave them to her. It feels as if these pictures set the whole ball rolling, pulling her into a deeply erotic world culminating in Leonardo’s club and the Dark Room.

She is just on her way out of the door when she hears her phone beeping inside her jacket pocket. She pulls it out.

Bring the Metsu painting with you
.

Just one line. No
How are you? Are you all right
? or
Love you
. Not even a smiley face. She is furious and texts back instantly.

Where are you? What’s going on
?

But Theo doesn’t reply. What a frustrating man. On top of everything, he now wants her to walk out of the flat with a priceless painting under her arm, if it really is an original as Gaby claimed. She is sure Garelli or one of his cronies has been watching the apartment the last couple of days. Moreover, there is also the blond man who accosted her at Marco’s party. She hasn’t seen him or his Smart car since Tuesday night, but instinct tells her she hasn’t seen the last of him. There is something about him that frightens her.

She glances at her watch. She has very little time to get to the station. What should she do? She rushes back into the study and considers the painting still hanging on the wall. It is quite small, she supposes. She hasn’t time to debate the wisdom of bringing it; she doesn’t want to miss her train. She grabs the picture off the wall and hunts around for something to put it in. There is no time to pack it properly. She sees her great-grandmother’s lace scarf abandoned on the chair, and she picks it up and wraps it around the picture. Not great, but better than nothing. She shoves the lace-bound painting in her black briefcase and runs out the door.

As Valentina weaves her way through the crowds in Stazione Centrale, feeling diminutive in the classical sweep of the grand
hall, she can’t help thinking she is being followed. She spins around and sees him straight away. Garelli, at a newsstand, trying to look engrossed in a magazine. Really, he is a useless detective, she thinks. Even so, his presence worries her. She could be walking around with a stolen painting in her briefcase. If he catches her, arrests her, she will look very guilty indeed. Moreover, she doesn’t want him trailing her all the way to Venice and finding Theo. In fact Theo could be right here as well, in the train station, running for the same train. She looks around, but the station is thronging with crowds and she can’t see him anywhere.

She glances at the clock. She has about three minutes before the train leaves. She has to get rid of Garelli. She walks away from the platforms and back out into the main hall of the station. Out of the corner of her eye she can see Garelli following her. She goes down the walkway to the lower floor, and makes towards the metro, before darting into the bookshop. He has probably seen her go inside, but if she is quick she can trick him. She runs through the bookshop and up the stairs inside the shop, to come back outside to the main hall of the station again. Just one minute now before her train leaves. She runs through the crowds to Platform 13. She sees the guard about to blow his whistle and she waves at him. Oh, the value of being a pretty woman in Italy! The guard opens the door of the train for her just in time.

‘
Grazie!
’ She blows him a kiss, making sure to give him a flash of her camisole.

‘
Prego, signorina!
’

She looks triumphantly out of the window of the train to see Garelli running down the platform, too late to get on.

He knows she is on this train, but he doesn’t know where she is getting off. It could be Brescia, Verona or Padova, rather than Venice. At least she has bought some time. She tries to push from her mind the worry that her lover has done something really wrong. Is she going to lose him anyway into the arms of the law, and for a long, long time? She tries not to think past today, as she checks her train ticket and walks down the corridor hunting for her compartment.

Valentina takes off her trilby hat and puts it in the luggage rack above her. Since its contents are so precious, rather than putting her briefcase up there, she tucks it in between herself and the window of the train. She is sitting in a compartment all on her own. She waits, expectantly. Any minute now, she thinks, Theo is going to enter the compartment. Yet as the train speeds away from Milan and the miles lengthen, it becomes apparent that Theo is not on the train with her. What will happen when she gets to Venice; where should she go? He will be at the station to meet her, she reassures herself. And if not, she’ll call him.

She leans back and takes out the novel she is currently reading,
Jezebel
by Irène Némirovsky. She can’t help comparing the main character with her own mother. The beautiful, irresistible temptress Gladys Eysenach is a woman whose
vanity comes before her own child. A woman who is terrified of looking old, and will even commit murder to conceal her age. No, even her mother isn’t
that
bad. Despite Némirovsky’s lyrical prose, as soon as Valentina has read a few lines, her eyelids begin to drop. Last night she didn’t sleep at all, and she is exhausted from the drama of the Dark Room. She still doesn’t quite understand why Theo was part of it. How could he be happy about Leonardo touching her? Her relationship with Leonardo is how she thought her and Theo’s should have been: platonic, yet sexual. Are they friends who fuck? No, the dynamic is different. Leonardo is more like her teacher, a guide of sorts. She knows that most people would judge her for sleeping with another man, yet Theo is obviously different. When he first moved in, he said that they did not have to be monogamous. She agreed, yet she asked him never to tell her about other women he might be with. It is best to focus on what we have together, she thinks as she nods off, rather than all of the circumstances around us. Her last thought as she drifts off to sleep is of Theo’s lips, soft, plush, opening up her heart in the Dark Room.

She is kissing him. She can taste him. She feels his hands upon her shoulders, the brush of his stubble against her cheek. She opens her eyes, and Theo is right there in front of her.

‘Oh, Theo!’ she cries. ‘You’re here!’

He smiles, and his eyes crease.

‘Yes, I’m here,’ he says, and she can see that he is looking
a little tense, on edge. ‘You brought the painting?’

‘Yes, but why . . . I mean . . . what’s going on?’

‘Keep it safe, will you?’ he asks. ‘Until we get to Venice.’

‘Okay.’ She pulls him towards her. ‘Why are you doing all of this? The old photos . . . the club . . . the Dark Room?’

He looks at her questioningly.

‘Haven’t you worked it out yet, Valentina?’

‘But . . .’

He silences her with a kiss.

‘Time for words later,’ he whispers. ‘There is something I’ve always wanted to do on a train.’

She can’t help it. She is grinning at him. Oh, it is so good to see him, to feel him again.

‘Really, Signor Steen? And what would that be?’

He sits down next to her on the seat, and leans over, pushing her jacket off her shoulders so that it slips off to reveal her silk camisole.

‘Do you know what I want?’ He puts his hands on either side of her face, and forces her to look at him. She can see his pupils dilated to black, his chiselled cheeks and strong chin. ‘I want you, Valentina.’

Her breath quickens. Is Theo serious? Does he actually want to make love on this train? What if someone comes into the compartment or sees them?

Theo unbuttons his shirt and drops it on to the floor. He takes her limp hand and pushes it through his chest hair. Her hand cups around his heart. She feels its frantic beat, and she
looks into his eyes. She wants this too, she realises. She wants this moment of pure primal need with her lover, this spontaneity of passion that keeps love alive, just like when they first met.

‘I want you too, Theo,’ she whispers.

He stands up and undoes his jeans, pulls them down. He is wearing no underwear. His penis is erect, so beautiful, her darling Theo. She reaches out to touch it.

‘I am all yours, Valentina.’

She looks at him, a question forming in her head.

Am I really? But where do you go
?

‘You are my all,’ he says, taking her hands in his and pulling her up to face him.

It is as if she is in a trance. She undoes her trousers and slides them off her body. Now she is only in her silk underwear. She stands up to face her man, and he pulls down the straps of her camisole, stroking her breasts and erect nipples as it slithers off her over her bottom and legs. He puts his hands either side of her hips and pulls down her French knickers. As she steps out of them, she feels his hand stroking between her legs.

‘Oh yes, you want me, don’t you, Valentina?’ he says, and she looks into his blue eyes, hypnotised.

‘Turn around,’ he tells her.

Valentina turns to face the window of the compartment. The train is speeding through the Italian landscape, and she can feel it rocking beneath her feet.

‘Lean forward and put your hands on the window.’ She does as he tells her, and she can feel him spreading her legs. He is stroking her, widening her with his fingers, preparing her. The next moment he pushes up into her. He is so big that she feels as if he has reached her navel. She squeezes his penis tight as the train rocks beneath them, pushing them towards and away from each other.

‘I am going to fuck you now, Valentina, like you want me to.’

He is breaking their golden rule. Talking during sex. And yet his dirty words turn her on. She feels herself clenching him tight, sending vibrations through her body.

He withdraws slowly, so that she is almost bereft with need, and then suddenly slams into her. She gasps, pressing her hands against the window. A thought comes into her head: what if they get to a station or go through a town? People will see them. But she doesn’t care. She wants Theo to bring her so outside herself that she is a screaming dervish, all her wild elements dancing gleefully inside this train compartment, celebrating her abandon. She pushes her bottom up against him, and he slams into her again, gradually building up speed. He is touching her so deeply, right down inside the heart of her sex. She clenches her teeth, pulling her dark self outside of her and looking it full in the face.

‘Fuck me!’ she hisses urgently. ‘Fuck me!’

The train picks up speed and so do they. It is as if they are all part of the same mechanism, rocking, fucking, moving
forwards. She is gloriously close to release, and as she comes, she feels her palpations having an effect on her lover’s cock as he climaxes inside her. Her hands slip off the window of the compartment and she loses her balance. They collapse on the floor, still joined together. He lies on top of her, and despite his size, she is comfortable. She closes her eyes, feeling as if she is liquid, so light now that the dark part of her has gone. She sinks into the floor of the compartment, drips down underneath the train and showers the rails with her essence. It litters the tracks like pearls among the gravel.

They lie like this for a few moments, Theo kissing the back of her neck. She shifts under his weight, and she feels him lifting himself off her, pulling her up and back into his arms, cradling her naked in the first-class compartment.

‘
Mio Dio
, I can’t believe we just did that,’ she whispers.

Theo stands up, pulling her with him.

‘We’d better get dressed.’ He winks at her. ‘Better not push our luck.’

He looks himself again, Valentina thinks. And she realises that he hasn’t seemed quite so happy since before the time of the miscarriage.

‘Theo?’ she says, pulling on her trousers over her silk underwear. ‘What is going on with this painting?’ She taps the black briefcase. ‘Is it stolen?’

He sits down next to her, chews his lip.

‘That’s a difficult question to answer.’

‘How so? Either you stole it, or you didn’t.’

She can’t really believe she is seriously asking her lover this question. How could Theo Steen, critic and art historian, with his privileged and very civilised upbringing in New York, be an art thief?

‘Well,’ he says slowly, holding her with his magnetic eyes. ‘I did steal this painting, you could say, but you could also say that it is not actually a stolen painting, not any more.’

She gasps. This is a nightmare.

‘Oh my God, Theo. Who
are
you?’

She stares at his familiar face. She doesn’t know this man at all, does she? And yet she feels she does. She cannot believe that he is a criminal.

‘What will we do?’ she says in a horrified whisper.

He clasps her hands.

‘Trust me, darling.’

She shakes her head.

‘You have to trust me.’ He glances at his watch. ‘I can’t explain everything now, but I promise you I will later.’

He stands up, smoothes down his crumpled shirt.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I have to get off the train at Verona. I’m picking up a car there.’

‘But why?’

‘It’s better if we travel separately. You stay on the train, with the picture, and I’ll see you in Venice.’

She folds her arms and glares at him.

‘Why can’t I go with you?’

The train begins to slow down as it pulls into Verona station. She feels seized with an unaccountable panic. She doesn’t want Theo to go. He has to stay with her. And yet she doesn’t want to show him the rawness of her need. Stay calm, Valentina, she lectures herself. Keep your distance until you know what’s going on.

‘What if I get caught with the picture on me?’ she snaps. ‘Have you thought of that, Mr Art Thief?’

He stops in the compartment doorway, all tousled hair and devilish blue eyes, and laughs. He actually laughs.

‘I promise you, Valentina, that if you get caught with that painting, you will not get into any trouble.’

He has made her cross again. Why does she keep swinging between rage and desire when it comes to Theo? The train pulls out of Verona, and she peers out of the compartment window, but Theo seems to have disappeared into thin air. She sighs. Well, he told her he would explain everything later. She just has to be a little patient. But she wants to know
now
. She is too agitated to read her book. She sits back in her seat and crosses her legs. That’s when she sees the envelope on the floor of the compartment. Right in front of her eyes. When did he put that there?