Тилли Бэгшоу – Scandalous (страница 2)

As always when she pleasured herself, she came to orgasm almost instantly. Yet another thing she did better than the men in her life. Opening her eyes, she sighed. How inconvenient that she’d only just got married again.

She would have to do something about that…

Three thousand miles away and some years later, in New York, another wealthy, beautiful woman watched the same man on the cinema-sized plasma television in the master bedroom of her palatial Upper East Side apartment. Just as she had watched him every night for the last five years.

Unlike his admirer in LA, this woman did understand what Professor Theodore Dexter was saying. Listening to him pontificate in the fake, fireside-chat voice she knew so well, she thought, I hate you. Why are you still alive? Why aren’t you suffering, the way you made me suffer, you treacherous son of a bitch?

One day, she vowed, Theo Dexter would get what was coming to him.

When that day came, she would show him no mercy.

CHAPTER ONE

‘Are you sure you want to do this Sasha? It’s not too late to change your mind.’

Sasha Miller looked at Will Temple’s naked body – the six-pack stomach, broad rugby-player’s shoulders, sturdy legs, and of course it – and marvelled again that such an Adonis had chosen her to be his girlfriend.

‘I’m completely sure. I just…I hope you won’t be disappointed, that’s all.’

Will Temple was nineteen and very experienced. At least, that’s what he’d told Sasha. Oh God, yeah. I lost my virginity when I was twelve. It was with the au pair. Bodil. Gorgeous Swedish bird, couldn’t keep her hands off me. She’s a top model now. Sasha was wildly impressed. Not that that was why she had fallen for Will. All the girls loved him because he was captain of the rugby team at school, handsome, rich and insanely popular. But Sasha Miller was drawn to another side of Will Temple. He was funny, and spontaneous. When he wasn’t with ‘the lads’, his posse of sycophantic hangers-on from Tonbridge, the local public school, he could be loving and sweet.

Sasha and Will had been an item for three months now. If Sasha didn’t do the deed soon, she knew there’d be a queue of girls from St Agnes’s waiting to take her place. She’d only been putting it off because of the rumours.

Rumours about it.

For weeks Sasha had been hearing that it was so huge, an appendage of such superhuman girth and elephantine length that sex was bound to be agony. So it was with immense relief that Sasha had watched Will drop his Simpsons boxer shorts to reveal a modest five and a half inches of manhood. Eager, certainly. Ready for action, unquestionably. But hardly the Eiffel Tower.

‘You could never disappoint me, darling,’ Will assured her. ‘Just follow my lead. I’ll take care of you.’

Kicking aside a pile of dirty sports kit, Will led Sasha to the bed and started taking off her clothes. Sasha closed her eyes. Downstairs she could hear the thump, thump, thump of music from the party and wondered if all Will’s friends knew what he was up to. Did boys talk to each other about things like that? She tried not to think about it, or about the faint but pervasive smell of mildew rising from Will’s sheets.

‘What’s wrong with this thing?’ Will fumbled with the clasp of her bra. ‘Why won’t it…open?’

‘Sorry. It’s quite old.’ Hearing the exasperation in his voice Sasha wriggled out of the offending garment herself. Two perfectly round, full, eighteen-year-old breasts tumbled into Will’s hands like ripe fruit from the tree of heaven.

‘Bloody hell, you’re gorgeous,’ he gasped.

He was right. With her flawless, milky skin, gleaming mane of black hair and sparkling, intelligent eyes, the same pale green as mint ice cream, Sasha Miller was a knockout. But she was also…different. All Will Temple’s previous girlfriends had been the cool, popular girls at school. Standard-issue blondes with tight jeans and the latest Top Shop heels. With her Marks & Spencer’s cardigans and sensible lace-up shoes, and her nose permanently stuck in a science book, Sasha Miller was a card-carrying nerd. But that was what Will loved about her. He’d had his fill of dating prom queens. Sasha knew even less about fashion than Will did, and either didn’t know that she was beautiful or set no store by her looks. She also had no interest in the local Sussex party scene, a scene of which Will Temple was the undisputed king.

But even kings could get bored.

Sasha gazed up at him, naked and adoring.

‘Thank you. You’re gorgeous too Will. I…’

The pain was sharp but it was over in a second. Sasha didn’t even remember Will taking her knickers off, but he must have because before her head hit the pillow he was inside her, pounding away like a jackhammer. Tentatively Sasha ran a hand over his bare back. She was debating whether or not it would be bad form to reach lower and stroke his bum – perhaps she ought to have spent more time reading the Just Seventeen problem pages when she was younger like the rest of her friends? – when Will let out a strange, yelping noise and pulled out of her.

‘Would you like a condom?’ Sasha offered helpfully. ‘I’ve got one.’

‘A bit late for that, I’m afraid.’ Will grinned. ‘Sorry, darling. You’re so sexy I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t hurt you, did I?’

‘Erm, no. Not really.’

Wow. So that was sex. It was quite a lot shorter than I expected. But that’s probably only because Will’s so good at it, it doesn’t take him as long as other people.

‘Shall we go back down and join the party?’ Will was already pulling on his jeans. ‘Of course I’d much rather be here, making love to you.’ He kissed Sasha on the forehead. ‘But I feel a bit rude. You know, being the host and everything. Jago’s probably nicking the silverware as I speak.’

Will’s parents were on holiday in Spain. With a faith in their eldest son that owed more to love than judgement, they had left Will in charge of Chittenden, their beautiful sixteenth-century farmhouse in the Sussex Weald. Tonight’s party was his third in as many days.

‘Oh, gosh, totally. Of course. You should go down.’ Sasha scoured the floor for her underwear. ‘I have to get home anyway.’

‘You’re not staying over?’ Will looked genuinely crestfallen. Sasha sighed. He’s so lovely.

‘I can’t. It’s my dad’s birthday, remember? I promised him I’d be home for supper. Mum and I always watch him unwrap his presents.’

‘Hmmm. Well, I suppose that’s fair enough. After all, I’ve already unwrapped my present.’ Will pulled Sasha to her feet and kissed her on the lips. She felt ready to burst with happiness.

Will Temple loves me.

Will Temple has made love to me.

I am a woman at last!

Chittenden was in the village of Tidebrook, about a ten-minute drive from Sasha’s parents’ cottage in Frant. It was just past seven o’clock, and the last rays of summer sun were still sinking into the woody, Sussex horizon. I love it here, thought Sasha, driving through the familiar countryside. I’ll miss it when I go away to Exeter.

In a few weeks Sasha would have her A-level results. Not that there was ever much doubt what her grades would be. Sasha Miller had been a straight-A student since she started school at four years old. By that age she could already read fluently, and knew considerably more about the solar system than her primary school teacher, Miss Rush.

‘I hesitate to use the word “obsession”,’ Miss Rush told Sasha’s father at her first parent–teacher meeting. ‘But Sasha is inordinately interested in space. I’m wondering if you could try to introduce some other interests? Just to create a balance.’

‘Such as what?’ Don Miller, Sasha’s father, was a keen amateur astronomer himself. He shared his daughter’s delight in the unknown world of stars and planets, and wasn’t sure he liked the cut of Miss Rush’s jib.

‘A lot of the little girls are keen on princesses.’

‘Princesses?’

‘Yes. Princesses. Mermaids. Even the dreaded Barbie!’ Miss Rush let out a tinkling little laugh. Don Miller shot her a withering stare.

‘It might help her make friends, Mr Miller. Sasha…how shall I put this? She doesn’t quite fit in.’

Sasha never did learn how to fit in. Princesses, mermaids and Barbies passed her by in much the same way that in later years drugs, nightclubs and celebrity culture remained a deliberately closed book. Thankfully, as she grew older, her teachers became more encouraging of Sasha’s ‘obsession’ with astronomy, and her emerging genius at physics.

‘Your daughter is a uniquely gifted scientist, Mr and Mrs Miller.’ Mrs Banks, the headmistress of St Agnes’s, stated the obvious. ‘We have high hopes for her at university.’ Don and Susan Miller had strained every financial sinew to afford their daughter’s private school fees. They had high hopes too.

‘What about Oxbridge?’

‘Well.’ Mrs Banks shifted uncomfortably in her high-backed wooden chair. ‘That’s certainly a possibility. Of course, Oxford and Cambridge both require interviews.’

Nobody doubted Sasha’s intellectual ability. It was her social skills that had always been the problem. Speaking in public was her worst nightmare. But even speaking in private could be a challenge, if the subject didn’t interest her. These days, Cambridge colleges were looking for more than straight-A grades. They wanted ‘rounded’ students. Pretty, confident girls who could hold their own at interview. Sasha was fine once you got her onto particle physics or the latest debates raging in game theory. But she had no facility for small talk. As for the dreaded UCAS form, with its two pages devoted to ‘Hobbies and Other Interests’, Sasha could only stare at it in bafflement. Why would somebody need to have another interest, when their specialist subject was the entire universe?