A Rage to Live (28 page)

‘I like courage in a woman. First things first then. Shall we go?’

‘Hold on. That’s what I want. You haven’t told me what you want?’

‘I think you’ve said it for both of us. I want what you want.’

‘That’s a cop out.’

He began to laugh. ‘Yes, it is. But basically true. A coat. You need a coat, it’s cold out there.’

Cressida ran back to the bedroom and returned with a soft black
cashmere shawl banded in a ruffle of black silk velvet. She draped it round her and it fell into elegant enticing folds. Looking up at him, she said, ‘I feel suddenly like a girl again, young and foolish and very naughty for running off with you like this. How did you get us out of Owen Merrick’s dinner of boredom?’

‘The truth is always the best. I merely told Owen that Carlos called and he can’t make it. He asked me to come round because your phone was out of order and explain things. I did, only to find that you were upset about his dinner party because you had double booked Thanksgiving and now ask Owen’s forgiveness.’

‘That’s pretty good, Sami.’ That was the first time she had used his name and he was suddenly aware of how much he liked her voice. ‘What was your excuse? I can’t wait to hear that.’

‘The truth. I have something else on my mind. I just can’t make dinner. Fortunately my reputation as a workaholic, and being difficult socially at the best of times, saved me. He had to accept and forgive my rudeness because he had no choice.’

‘What if we’re seen?’

‘I’ll see to it that we are not.’

He took her home. Home for Sami Chow was a glass penthouse, a vast studio and garden on top of a Fifth Avenue apartment building with a view of the park. Home, too, was a house on the island of Hydra where he spent several months of the year living and working. He had the reputation on the island of being pleasant but reclusive, a ladies’ man who brought his own entertainment with him: a new and exotic, long-legged beauty arrived with him on every visit. In Hong Kong another residence, and rooms in his family home in San Francisco. He was a traveller who made a home for himself wherever he was inspired and could work.

The doorman greeted him and he and Cressida walked to the rear of the lobby that had the patina of good taste and money. Sami placed his key in the lock of the private lift which took them directly into his flat.

The door slid smoothly open and they stepped into his studio. A push of a button and the room sprang to life with light and works of art. He took her by the hand and led her to the fireplace where he put a taper to the already laid fire. It flared up and the kindling caught at once. Sami removed Cressida’s shawl and draped it over the black leather sofa. ‘Would you like to see the house? I want you to feel at home here.’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I think the bedroom first. Not very subtle of me but it’s important that you should like that room.’ He tilted her chin up and kissed her lightly on the lips.

Cressida found it difficult to hold back from Sami. He was for her
incredibly touchable. She felt tactile about him, and sensed he felt the same about her. She distracted herself with looking round the studio. It was what one would have expected from a world class architect, aesthetically perfect, yes, but with a difference. In a class of its own. The home of an artist with a touch of genius, in some ways it was awe inspiring and it was then that Cressida realised so was he. As an artist, yes, but also as a man too. She said nothing, merely took his hands in hers and, caressing them, raised them to her mouth and kissed them. She let them go and distanced herself from him no more than a few steps, but enough speak to him in a more objective manner.

The studio had a minimal amount of furniture and two enormous drafting tables standing among the many works of art: paintings and constructions hung on the walls and were stacked around the room. Sculptures too. Rodin and Henry Moore caught Cressida’s eye, but there were many, many more under soft spotlights recessed into the ceiling. A Caro not far from a fifteenth-century Buddha, an Arp and a Smith and a Chadwick, and at the far side of the room a full-length ancient Greek Kouros, tall and slim and so very beautiful. As beautiful as Sami except that the statue had an arm and part of a leg missing. A roomful of treasures.

He walked to a door at the far end and she followed. Before he opened it he hesitated, wanting to say something, but he could not find the words. With his eyes he was telling her how important it was to him that she should go through that door. It was she who took his hand. With the other she turned the silver door knob and pushed the door open.

The bed was even larger than her own. It was set against a pair of eight feet-wide, fourteen feet-high panels of a natural dark honey – coloured wood. A great artist of the fourteenth century had painted a pair of huge, more than life-size tigers stalking an imaginary prey. They were great works of art. Cressida knew her art history. These were sliding doors that had once divided a room in some Shogun’s palace in Japan. She had only ever seen one other pair and that was in a palace of the same period where once an Emperor had resided. It was now a museum.

The bed was covered in black suede and the pillows on it were large, soft feather pillows covered in tiger colours: brindle and brown and golden-tan and creamy white and black. There were no windows and the walls were a soft chalky white. Cressida could understand why he had hesitated before showing her the room. It was overpoweringly sensual, yet temple-like in its austerity. It was masculine and powerful and there was something, for all its elegance and beauty, its sensitivity, primeval and animalistic about it. It was a perfect reflection of its
owner. The virility of the tiger, the virility of Sami. That was his great sexual attraction: his lustrous, clever virility. He wore it too well. Like the scent of the tiger, you could not miss the power and the passion of this man.

Cressida turned to look at Sami. It was obvious to him. It was there in her eyes. She understood and was seduced by the room, by him. He wanted to pull her into his arms and bruise her lips with kisses, hold her, caress her, but he fought off his impulse. He knew that this woman was the most important one of his life. Lust would have to wait. Instead he kissed her cheek. He could feel her giving herself to him. As difficult as it was, he held her at bay.

‘You like it?’

‘You leave me speechless.’

‘It’s only the beginning.’

From a lacquer table a mere five inches off the floor he retrieved a remote control panel and pressed a button. The sliding tiger doors parted and slid away revealing behind them a glass wall overlooking the New York skyline. The stars diamonds on a black velvet sky. A cold white moon winking down on earth. The city lights, more jewels, arranged as skyscrapers. And the sight became more spectacular as it evolved as a panoramic view of the city once the doors were fully open.

‘Breath-taking. A cliché. Unforgettable, is that less of one?’ she asked.

He could hardly take his eyes off her. He didn’t want to miss a moment of her pleasure or surprise. He was testing, feeling his way with her, and she was rising to every occasion. He knew he could show her the last of the surprises the bedroom had to offer. He raised her hand and kissed it and turned her around to face the blank wall opposite the bed. He used the remote control again, and half a dozen floor to ceiling panels pivoted, reversed themselves from white plaster to mirror, and arranged themselves as a screen.

Many Samis and Cressidas standing together at the foot of the bed, many skylines of Manhattan behind them reflected in the screen. Had he watched himself making love with the exotic women he seemed to have a preference for in front of those mirrors? How erotic. A room full of beautiful people fucking.

Cressida had never met Sami before this evening but she had seen some of his women, had heard gossip about him and how he liked to make love to exotic women. She imagined him with an Indian girl from Bombay, an enchanting Chinese girl from Hong Kong, a very black beauty from the Ivory Coast, six foot six inches tall, who moved like a gazelle. They were the three she had met over the years who had been linked with his name. They were known to be erotically free,
adventurous, exotic women, and she was unreasonably jealous of them. Of their having watched themselves being made love to by Sami Chow in those mirrors.

He turned her away from the mirror to face him. Sami smiled at her and she forgot her jealousy, the other women. Together they watched the tigers slide into place and the city vanish. ‘At dawn. To lie in bed and watch the dawn rise over the city again and again in my mirrored screen, that’s something more to see.’

‘I can only assume there are other scenes you have seen as well?’

‘Yes. My screen is a great blank canvas. If you like we can create all sorts of scenes on it.’

‘Sami …’

‘No, no questions now, later.’

‘Just one?’

‘No. But I have one. A very important one. Do you think you can be happy with me in this room?’

‘I have not a doubt in the world about that,’ she told him.

‘Good.’

They walked to the bathroom, dark and rich and very sensual. Walnut and white marble with a raised bath two steps up on a dais. And the bath so deep that when sitting in it the water would come to above the shoulders, and large enough for three or four people to bathe at the same time.

Off that room they walked down a hall with walls lined floor to ceiling with books. It acted as his library. At the end through a door was a vast kitchen of stainless steel and glass, a large oak table with a huge glass bowl of red Amaryllis. Round it stood a number of square and chunky-looking black wooden chairs with cane seats. There were endless glass jars and pottery crocks of all shapes and sizes containing herbs and foodstuffs: dried apricots and prunes; preserving jars sealed whole peaches, pears and lychees; and lemons and oranges in sugar syrup. Pastas and flours, a variety of them, and rices, Basmati, Italian, Rissoto, Aborio. Strings of onion and garlic hung from hooks among the copper pots and pans over the cooking island which included a gas – fired wok. There was a smell of lemon grass, and freshly baked bread, vanilla, and cinnamon.

‘How about duck instead of turkey, can you live with that?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘And cellophane noodles and stir fried vegetables?’

‘You can cook?’

‘A hobby. But first things first.’ He went to the glass-fronted refrigerator, looked at her and smiled. She knew it was a tease and was quick to pick up on it.

‘Oh, dear. Not much like my fridge.’

‘No. Don’t you ever have food in the house?’

‘Well, I do when I think about it.’

‘But you don’t think about it much?’

‘No.’

‘And you don’t have anyone else to think about it for you?’

‘No.’

‘Are there many men who take you out and dine you?’

‘You’re fishing, but I don’t mind,’ she told him charmingly. And of course he was. He seemed to be waiting for an answer. She found his interest endearing, so she answered him.

‘I have waves of domesticity when I want to cook, then I overbuy and cook up a storm and wear myself out and don’t want to see a pot or a pan again, ever, and certainly not a supermarket. I like cooking, but I don’t like entertaining. And cooking for one, well, it’s not very rewarding, so it’s usually gourmet take aways or beans on toast, a withered carrot from the fridge might even do, depending on my mood. A pizza. My favourite: a take away from Ho Ho’s Chinese Experience. Are you appalled?’

‘Not at all. It sounds very “beautiful, busy, New York career girl” to me. When you get to know me you will learn that I don’t shock easily.’

‘Will I get to know you?’ It was such a leading question. She hadn’t meant to say it but she saw no point in either of them covering up their feelings.

He seemed still to be waiting for something more from her. So she told him what she knew he wanted to know. ‘Yes there are men who take me out to dine. Many? Only if they’re in a party of people. I am very fussy about men. I think that should about cover the question.’

They gazed into each other’s eyes. Neither of them spoke. It was one of those profound moments that happen between two people where what they are to each other is established once and forever.

He handed her the bottle of champagne and from a cupboard two glasses. ‘You go to the studio, by the fire. I’ll be right there.’

He joined her with a tray, on it a kilo tin of the best Beluga caviar in a bowl of crushed ice. A plate stacked high with small pancakes, a bowl of sour cream, and two jade caviar spoons. He placed the tray on the ottoman and pushed it close to the fire. They sat on cushions on opposite sides of the tray. He filled their glasses and they drank and watched the leaping flames.

Chapter 22

Cressida and Sami came to love sexually aware, sexually experienced, and with the erotic an important part of their life. The libido, that craving for sexual fulfilment inherent in everyone, was so strong in both of them that they were able to approach an intimate life on an equal footing. For that reason there were no surprises, no anxieties, just the divine pleasure of taking sex slow and easy and of enjoying every nuance of their sexuality.

Cressida did not have the most perfect body that Sami had ever seen, but she did have a sensuous and voluptuous body that was unique to her, and it was her he fell in love with. Cressida, the whole person.

For Cressida it was different. Sami had a near perfect body that enthralled her. He was a virile, sexual man, a whole person, a genius, a great artist, and that was what she fell in love with. Their attachment was so strong it was easy to give themselves up to each other. They gained back twofold whatever they gave.

Sami and Cressida sensed that the lust they were feeling for each other was the crowning glory of affection, admiration, sincere love, everything they wanted from each other. So, in front of the fire on their Thanksgiving together, and over glasses of champagne and spoonfuls of caviar, they took the time to get to know each other.

‘I want to know all about you. Everything. What you were like as a little girl. Your first love, the first time you had sex. Tell me about your work, your family, your life. I’d like to crawl into your skin and be part of you. I wish I had been there to have known you always. I want to know the good and the bad,’ he told her.

‘Oh, do you think there
is
bad?’

‘There has to be bad. I hope so anyway.’ They both smiled over that. ‘How you like to make love, if you have a lover, or have had many lovers. If you have been married.’

‘You first. I want to know all about you,’ she demanded, ‘and hold nothing back.’

‘Will you?’ he asked.

‘No, nothing,’ she answered.

‘Good,’ he told her. Sami ignored her request, too anxious to know
about this woman, the stranger he had so rashly fallen in love with. ‘Were you a happy child from a happy home?’

He wanted her so much, what did it matter who revealed what first? Happily, she opened up to him. ‘Rosemary was my mother, and Byron – Byron Vine – is my father. I had two brothers, Hal and Tim. They were the happiest times any child would ever want. A glamorous mother, a handsome and famous intellectual for a father, brothers who adored me, and Hollihocks. That was my home, a wonderful place on the edge of a bay where for as far as the eye could see there was nothing but ocean. There were horses and gardens and sailing yachts and swimming and fishing and a small New England town, New Cobham, where my pilgrim forefathers had landed. The town and that part of Cape Cod was a joy to grow up in. Oh, yes, I was happy, never happier. It set the foundation for my life and gave me what I needed to face less happy times.

‘And you?’ she asked.

‘Oh, yes. I was very happy. Born in San Francisco, a big house on the best hill. San Francisco old money and lots of security. A household of love. My mother was American right down the line. She is a great beauty and very sweet, and she is a grande dame of San Francisco society, as was her mother, in spite of having married a yellow man with slanted eyes. My father is third generation Chinese-American, from a mandarin family that once served as advisers to the Emperors of China. He is a handsome, cultured man of exotic tastes. He has enormous charm, my father, and is still besottedly in love with my mother. I have four sisters and three brothers. I am somewhere in the middle. A large loving bunch who are more like a troop of gypsies, living in San Francisco, Hong Kong, mainland China, Paris. We are a solid family but dispersed. We all have our interests, all have our work, we are all high achievers.’

‘And you are the highest?’

‘Better for you to know the worst right now. I’m not just a high achiever, I’m a workaholic.’

‘I already know that about you.’

‘And what more?’

Cressida held out her glass to be refilled while she spooned some caviar on to a small pancake and placed a blob of sour cream on top of it. She leaned across the ottoman and offered it to him. Taking a sip of her wine, she told him, ‘Sami Chow a legend at twenty. At twenty – four you were the architect’s architect. The master of your profession, following in the footsteps of innovators such as Le Corbusier and Mies Van Der Rohe. Your architecture is sophisticated, elegant, pure sculpture. People say about you that you are a reluctant star of the
architectural world. That you are out there in public for your work, to teach, to be admired, being social, having a great time, but that you have a private side to your life that is reclusive. That you are a very private man.’

Sami looked decidedly embarrassed. ‘Well, is there anything else I don’t have to tell you about myself?’ he asked.

‘Let’s see,’ she teased, amused at his modesty. ‘Things I have heard about Sami Chow. Just as you said, a workaholic. Painting and sculpture are your life’s blood, the beat of your heart. True?’ she queried.

‘True,’ he answered.

‘You receive the best commissions in the world and are the envy and admiration of your peers. I have heard women describe you as unusual, exotic, handsome, with a charm that can melt the coldest of hearts.’

He began to laugh at that. ‘Don’t stop now,’ he teased.

‘I once heard a
very
young,
very
pretty girl talking about a date she had with a man. She described him as being inscrutable, with a very American physique: tall, broad-shouldered, well-built but thin, a face that was sensuous, large eyes but most definitely oriental, a smile that warmed, a seductive soft voice. Voracious in bed and in sex.’

‘You’re making that up.’

‘Am I? Shall I prove that I am not?’

‘I am almost afraid to say yes.’

‘You should be.’ Cressida watched him dip his spoon in the caviar. She waited for him to follow the taste of the delicacy with a sip of champagne. She liked watching him. His every move was sensuous, so seductive. ‘You wear double-breasted suits of impeccable tailoring, or grey or putty-coloured oxford bags, a white or blue button down shirt open at the collar and a cream or black cashmere jumper on your back like a shawl and tied in place by the sleeves across your chest. Right or wrong, Sami?’

‘Right. I had no idea women talked to women about their men. This is fast becoming an education on myself. Don’t stop now, if there is more. Maybe I’ll find something to refute.’

‘The lady in question described you as having sexual charisma, and claimed that both men and women admire your looks, the cut and thrust of you as an artist and a man. Women for bed, men as someone to emulate.’

‘I think I have heard enough about me. I want to know about you. Your first love. Your first sexual experience.’

It was quite extraordinary. Cressida
did
want to tell him about Kane Chandler, and somehow it seemed important that he should know about the men who had been in one way or another responsible for
forming her life. She told Sami everything about Kane and how she had loved him. The only other person she had told about her grand passion for Kane had been Carlos.

Cressida held nothing back and Sami found the story of her first sexual experience with Kane Chandler both very sexy and heartbreaking. He was moved enough to push the ottoman away and to rearrange the cushions on the floor so that he might be close to her. He raised her hand and kissed it. He wanted to undress her and make love to her right then and there. But he made no move and he knew he was right not to when she stroked his hair and asked, ‘And you? Who was your first sexual experience?’

‘She was a friend of my mother and father, twenty years older than I was. She was wonderful, magnificent. She taught me how to enjoy a woman. She knew how to make love to a man and turned me on to sex, the erotic. Through her I learned to understand the difference between lust and love. I had always wanted to fuck women. From the time I was fourteen years old I had erotic fantasies, but no place to go with them until I met her. Those preppy girls I found at school and then later at University were more teasing than interesting. Not for me. I found my way round their bodies but they never had the passion, the lust for life and sex, that inspired me. They wanted love
and
sex. I wanted sex. And then that mature woman came along and I learned how important sex is in a man’s life, what fun it can be, what a special pleasure orgasm is. You were lucky too to have as your first sexual encounter a man to liberate you from a frustrated libido. I could only have wished for your first time that it should not have ended so abruptly, left you so unhappy.’

‘Nor the second.’

‘The second?’

Then she told him about Tommy. When she had come to the end of her story of love and betrayal she told Sami, ‘I hadn’t meant to make this sound like sexual confessions, but these things did happen and these experiences are facts of my life. The woman I am, would I have been the same had those men not become part of my life? Those, and one other man, Carlos. He is for me what your first woman was for you.’

‘And what about us?’ he asked.

‘Us? We’re something else. Something apart from Carlos.’ And having said that Cressida unclasped the opal holding her dress in place on her hip.

‘I know that we want each other enough but do we like each other enough?’ he asked.

‘More than enough,’ she answered.

‘And love? Do we love each other enough?’

‘Only time will tell us that.’

‘Cressida.’ He took her by the hands and together they rose from the cushions on the floor. Her black velvet dress fell open off her hip to give Sami just a glimpse of a long and lovely leg and thigh, the more sexy for the black stocking that was held in place high up on it by a lacy garter. The neckline fell open to reveal only a partial view of her breast with its seductive aureole, that halo at the base of her nipple. An enticing, voluptuous, sensual breast, so full, rounded and firm as if ready to burst with milk.

Sami removed his jacket. His tie was already undone, he slipped that from round his neck to drop it on the floor. He never took his gaze from her eyes as he slowly, very deliberately, slipped his fingers under first one of his black and white checked braces and slipped it off his shoulder, then the other. He placed an arm round her waist and they walked together to the bedroom.

They took their time discovering each other’s bodies until they knew every inch of them as their very own, lying naked against the bed pillows on the black suede bed cover. The stalking tigers were behind them, and reflected across the room in the mirrored screen were many more of the magnificent beasts. The first time Cressida and Sami came together, they were holding hands, fingers tightly entwined, and kissing: open mouths and tongues sucking tongues voraciously. Cressida was mounted on top of Sami in a squatting position facing him, her feet flat on the bed. She was using them for leverage to ride her lover’s cock up and down with small circular pelvic motions.

It was crazily exciting for them both, screwing at its very best, and made even more raunchy for Sami because he had a view in the mirror of them, many Cressidas and Samis to incite his lust further. Then that moment arrived where love is lost and lust takes over. They called out in wild passion, bit into each other’s flesh, and were still coming when he rolled Cressida over on to her back and, remaining still erect, took over their fucking with abandon. They had watched dawn rise over Manhattan and had sex yet again before the sun was high in the sky and a new bright morning had arrived.

The Thanksgiving holiday meant a long weekend for most, but not for Sami. It might have been different if he had known that fate had deemed he was to meet the great love of his life. But he hadn’t known and had not been prepared. His day began when they were still asleep and the phone started ringing. He was hours into his work when Cressida finally awakened. But he was into love, too, so he returned briefly to their bed.

Sami Chow had two passions now. Cressida and his work, and he
could never get enough of either one of them. After four days it was confirmed to them, what they had known instantly at first sight, that they had something very special going for them which was not going to end for a very long time, if ever. After five days Sami Chow asked Cressida to move in with him.

‘I thought I had moved in with you,’ was her reply.

‘With only a St Laurent evening gown? My blue jeans, my shirt?’ He laughed. ‘That’s all right with me. But I was thinking of something a little more permanent. Like bring the cat, all your clothes, your books, music, your bubble bath and blusher. Sell your flat, cancel the milkman.’

‘I have no cat. And I will come and live with you, even bring my electric tooth brush, but I won’t give up my flat.’

‘I don’t think you understand.’ They were sitting on the black leather sofa in the drawing-room. He pulled her gently on to his lap and opened his shirt that she was wearing to caress her breasts, lick her nipples. Then he continued, ‘I want this to be permanent.’

‘Sami, there is nothing permanent in your life, except your work.’

‘It could be my work
and
you. I want us to get married.’

‘I will come and live with you. But don’t do that, think about marriage, because I won’t.’

‘You will,’ Sami told her.

There was such certainty in his voice that Cressida could not help but wonder if it were not possibly true. ‘Maybe one day. But our lives would have to change. I know mine would, and radically, if I am ever to make a commitment like that. And just look at you. You are already committed, very much married to your work. I seem to have a penchant for men of genius who are committed elsewhere. I am attracted to them, fall in love with them, spend my life adoring them, wanting them. But I’m not so sure they give or have ever given me what I’m looking for. Until I know what that is, I will never marry.’

‘And how will you know that?’