Read Online The Pleasure Quartet by Vina Jackson - Free Book Online Page B

playing so near the edge, but I knew that he was only half teasing. Part of him had worried about me, venturing too close to danger.
    ‘One day we’ll go too far,’ he’d say.
    ‘I hope so,’ I’d quip back.
    My heart beat faster. I was dizzy. The music roared in my ears and the lyrics blurred, Lana del Rey turned into the rush of the sea on the shore heard through the trumpet of a shell held close to my ear.
    I felt myself falling.
    A sound escaped my lips. A croak? A scream?
    For a few seconds, there was nothing, only the blackness in my mind and the echo of the music playing.
    Then I heard Andrei’s voice, cutting through the noise.
    ‘Bring her down.’ His tone roused me.
    He said nothing more. My bonds were removed rapidly and a glass of water pressed to my lips. Someone handed me a bar of chocolate. Aurelia was kneeling on the floor behind me, ready to cover me with a blanket when the ropes were pulled away.
    It was nearly morning.
    I slept through the day, until we returned again to port. Dreamlessly.
    I glanced in the mirror one last time, tried in vain to smooth the fly-away frizz from my drying curls, packed the remaining items back into Aurelia’s beach bag, set my shoulders back, sucked in my stomach and returned to the table.
    ‘You look exquisite with that on,’ Aurelia murmured, eyeing me with undisguised appetite, the way she did most people, both predatory and with admiration.
    Our waitress was already hovering around the table, visibly irritated by our presence, jealous of our appearance maybe. She was almost a carbon copy of the woman in charge of the reservation book, young and pert with a set of breasts that seemed unfeasibly large above her small waist, slim legs and wide hips, dark hair cropped around pointed ears and a face that settled naturally into a scowl.
    We quickly ordered. Pork ribs with sweet and sour pineapple for me and marinated tuna served with mashed potatoes for Aurelia. It was not my first visit to Zaza, and I had already sampled nearly all of the cocktail flavours on the menu. I opted for a lime caipirinha.
    ‘Sugar?’ purred the waitress. ‘Or sweetener?’ Her tone suggested that I should choose the latter.
    ‘Sugar,’ I replied, and hoped as she walked away that she wouldn’t spit into our drinks.
    Aurelia turned and watched her saunter towards the kitchen.
    ‘Nice arse,’ she observed.
    ‘Shame the same isn’t true for her personality.’
    ‘True,’ she shrugged. ‘Most people only need one or the other to get through life, I suppose.’
    She may have disliked us, but to her credit, she wasn’t slow with our order. Our drinks arrived in minutes, along with a basket of warm crusty bread and fresh butter, and a bright blue ceramic bowl filled with plump green olives.
    Aurelia popped an olive between her lips.
    ‘Cheers,’ she said, with her mouth still full.
    ‘Cheers,’ I responded, cautiously knocking my short, thick tumbler against the far more fragile looking white and black chocolate-coated rim of her long-stemmed martini glass filled with icy pink liquid. A strawberry bobbed precariously close to the top. I took a large gulp of my caipirinha, She downed her dubious strawberry, hot pepper and basil concoction nearly in one.
    ‘Now,’ she said, as soon as we had set our glasses back on the table, ‘let’s get down to it. There’s just a year to the Ball in Iceland, and much of the work has been put in motion. We need you now, for the finer details. Not right away, but within the next few weeks. I suppose the cold will be a shock,’ she added, looking around at the other patrons sitting near us, all of them in skimpy outfits, ‘but I’m sure you’ll enjoy it there. It’s a beautiful place. Stark, bleak. We’ll leave this to you, of course, but I expect that the performances will be very different from the last, to suit the atmosphere.’
    I picked up a piece of bread, smeared it with a thick coating of butter and bit into it, stalling for