The Diamond Ring. Primula Bond

you feel tense as a wire brush,’ he replies, running his warm hands over my sore skin until it starts to prick up in goosebumps of pleasure. ‘You still brooding over that meeting with Margot?’

      ‘That, and everything else.’ I try to wriggle away, but he places his hands over my breasts to keep me still. ‘I don’t like any silence between us, G. But I don’t have anything sensible to say, either.’

      Despite everything that’s whirling away in my brain, my body has other responses. My nipples shrink and poke against him, sending urgent messages of desire down my body.

      ‘Silence is fine, so long as it’s not secretive. You’re shaking, chérie. What is it?’

      ‘Where were you yesterday? You didn’t leave a note.’

      ‘This isn’t like you. Not far.’ He goes very still, his hands still clamped over my breasts. ‘Yesterday I had to attend to something that cropped up at work. You were dead to the world nearly all day. And this morning I was in the French delicatessen.’

      ‘I was afraid when I woke up and you weren’t here. You didn’t see the look your ex-wife gave me.’ I keep my eyes closed. ‘She says she had this place bugged, though you’ve not been able to find anything. But still, she knows where we live, Gustav. She knows everything about us. And she wants you back.’

      ‘She can’t hurt us. I won’t let her. But would it help you to know that I’ve taken the practical step of issuing photographs of her to all employees, at all our business premises, and told them she’s banned from coming anywhere near? Likewise, I’ve detailed the guys downstairs to question any visitor who claims to be a friend of ours.’

      ‘She’s the mistress of disguise though, isn’t she? A burly doorman with a photofit isn’t going to stop her if she really wants to get to us.’

      Gustav runs his hands thoughtfully over my breasts, making them swell with longing, then moves one hand lower, down over my stomach.

      ‘She’s past it, Serena. All she has in her arsenal is angry words. She’s incandescent that we’re getting married, but she can’t touch us now. I want you to see this diamond ring as your talisman. It tells you I love you. It tells her she has no place in our lives. And it makes me more determined than ever to get a date in the diary.’

      He breathes into my hair and I smile weakly. ‘So if nothing can touch us, why do we need to see Pierre?’

      ‘To make things absolutely crystal. I want to get back to the way we were. And then I want to focus on our engagement, and our future.’

      I lean against him. ‘He has never been inside me, Gustav.’

      His hand finds its way home, between my thighs. One finger starts to run over the damp crack.

      His fingers part me. ‘You’re all tight and tense, like a jittery mare. How about I find another way to relax you?’

      ‘We haven’t got time!’ I start to push him off, but Gustav’s black eyes are gleaming behind me in the mirror. His glossy hair is still secured in the ponytail so that the scary beauty of his face is accentuated. Despite his soothing words, he’s looking at me as if he’s far away. As if he’s never seen me before.

      If it wasn’t so terrifying it would be unbelievably sexy. Strangers in the steamed-up mirror.

      He catches my hands and slaps them up against the glass, and then I hear the rip of his zipper.

      ‘There’s always time.’ He kicks my legs apart, bends me over, and then his hardness is there, nosing its way into the damp softness. I stretch my arms so that the mirror is at arm’s length. His hands leave my body and press down on mine again. Our reflected eyes lock as he pushes further into me, then pauses. There’s that question again, flickering far back in his head.

      Is he asking where I’ve been? Or is he asking who I am? Or after the roughness and haste of the other night, and the scratches on my back from the brick wall in the alleyway, is he seeking permission?

      ‘Just be gentle with me, Gustav.’ My knees buckle. ‘I don’t want to talk any more.’

      ‘I don’t want you to talk,’ he mutters into my hair. ‘I just want you to come back to me.’

      My fingers squeak against the mirror, clawing for purchase, but there’s nothing to support me, just a smooth slippery plane of unforgiving glass. My mind goes as blurry as my reflection as the desire loosens and envelopes me. My lover, my husband-to-be, draws back to enter me with the strange new force that possesses him. His fingers tangle with mine up against the mirror, my arms press us both back as if we are resisting our own open-mouthed reflections, as if someone at arm’s length is doing this to us.

      He pumps harder, faster, and I push against him, away from the mirror. He is saying something through gritted teeth, like he did the other night. Only this time it’s not bitch, bitch, bitch. It sounds like mine, mine. Mine.

      All too soon the warmth of his climax starts to gush inside me as my body squeezes tight around him. I hold him there, bucking against him, and just as I come there’s the melodic tone of our doorbell singing round the apartment, interrupting, clashing.

      ‘Oh, God, he’s here. Spoiling everything.’

      I bow my head between my arms, panting for breath, my legs shaking like a newborn colt’s as Gustav sweeps my wet hair away and kisses my neck. He’s still inside me.

      ‘Whatever he did to you, just remember that you’re mine now.’

      He pulls out of me, zips himself up and backs out of the bathroom, still looking at me in the mirror until he’s out the door and hurrying along the hall to let in his brother. I gaze at the space he’s left, my body still clutching for him, still throbbing, longing for him to stay inside me.

      Slowly, reluctantly, I get myself dressed and check my reflection again. No make-up. No scent. I’m putting on no jewellery or pretty dresses or high heels to honour this state visit of Pierre Levi.

      I pad down the apartment towards the sound of the brothers’ deep voices. I pause at the entrance to the huge, light-filled sitting room. All you can see from this angle is the sky. For a wild moment I long to be a bird flying up there, far away from this room, this apartment. Even this city.

      ‘Hi, Serena. Thanks for – it’s good to see you. You look – you look a bit feverish. Are you OK?’

       I’m fine. My fiancé just took me from behind in the bathroom, that’s why I’m all flushed.

      I ignore Polly’s off-stage prompt, afraid I might start to snuffle inappropriately.

      The two men are standing on either side of the long mantelpiece, separated by the suspended, and unlit, fireplace. My eyes skate over them, unwilling to settle on either, and especially not on Pierre. Although they are already holding glasses of beer, there is too wide a space between the brothers, something awkward in their stance, the way they swivel quickly towards me when I come into the room as if I might offer some light relief.

      ‘Hello, Pierre. You got here quickly.’

      I take the glass of Chablis that Gustav hands me and sip from it as I walk past him towards the window. The wine flows through me and I know it’s making my face even redder. On an empty stomach it hits the spot instantly. The tension doesn’t release its grip, but it loosens a little.

      ‘Just in time, by the look of it, sis. Have you been in a fight? My God, if anyone has hurt you—’

      I round on him before I can stop myself. ‘I told you on the phone the other night. Don’t ever call me that!’

      I avoid Gustav’s eyes. Thank God I decided against a skirt and high heels. I’ve pulled on a slouchy pair of harem pants – glorified pyjamas really – and a creamy cashmere sweater and kept my feet bare. Even so, I’m prickly and self-conscious as I settle down on the wide windowsill, my favourite spot in the apartment.