Secret Surrender Read online

  Turning her body so that she was looking out over the sea, Alice stood on the balcony, a prick in each hand, feeling powerful and alive. She knew just what she wanted to do. She knelt down on the floor, opened her mouth and closed her eyes. She parted her legs, exposing the dark rose of her cunt with its coating of musky liquid, waiting to welcome whoever wanted to fuck her. She kept her eyes screwed shut, not wanting to know which man was in her mouth and which was in her pussy, but as a thick dick prodded at her lips, she felt the soft wiry hair of a white man’s bush and knew that it was Maurizio who would be fucking her in the face. His balls slapped on her chin as she greedily let her throat fall open to accommodate the long, smooth dick. She tasted pre-cum and drank it greedily down.

  Shuffling sounds and a warm presence behind her told Alice that Duke was getting ready to penetrate her yearning pussy. Her legs began to shake as the first probings of her vulva told her that this hard-on was as big as Alice had ever had, and then a little bigger. Duke seemed to understand, and eased his prick in slowly, using the tip of his penis to massage Alice’s G-spot, before building up to stronger, more rhythmic thrusts that tested the capacity of Alice’s cunt to its limit. Her natural lubrication helped her to accommodate the huge log as it drove into her hole, more merciless with every stroke. Alice screamed, her cries muffled by Maurizio’s thrusting cock and intensifying the sensation for him. She reached forward and began to rub her clit again, using her free hand to grab on to Maurizio’s leg. She opened her eyes, looked up at the perfect face and the model’s body which had made him famous. But few had seen him like this, his perfect features contorted with the effort it was obviously taking him not to come. And then there was that tanned, flat stomach with its faint line of hair like an arrow pointing from the navel to the dick. Just as Alice was savouring this visual treat, Duke began to thrust harder and faster than before, forcing her whole body to topple forward. Alice found that the force of Duke’s thrusts were shoving her body hard up against Maurizio, so that his dick was deeper in her throat than any, even Jacques’, had been before. The feeling of a man in each end of Alice’s body gave her a sense of completeness and fullness that she loved. She rubbed her clit as fast as her swaying, out-of-control body would allow, and her whole pussy began to flutter deliciously, always a sign she was mere seconds away from orgasm.

  Maurizio came first, as Alice knew he would. She felt his balls rise up into his body and saw the muscles at the sides of his arse and thighs tense up seconds before he pulled out of her. His orgasm delivered a jet of white milky liquid that did not hit her face but spilled out over her back and decorated Duke’s chin and chest. Duke was next, his climax forcing his dick so deep inside Alice she felt her internal organs squashed and she laughed with pleasure. Duke too pulled out the moment he had come, splashing his seed over her back and arse. Alice was left naked and on all fours, skin covered in the mixed-up spunk of two men but without the orgasm she craved. Brazenly, she rolled on to her back and spread her legs, her protruding and frustrated clitoris a challenge to either man to satisfy her. Both obliged by dropping to their knees. Maurizio took Alice’s right breast in his mouth and swirled his tongue over the hard little nipple, while Duke delved between her legs and flickered his tongue over Alice’s aching clit. Two men and two mouths finally achieved the release of tension that two dicks had not and Alice surrendered to an overpowering orgasm, feeling her convulsing cunt twitch and flutter in the balmy night air.

  The three of them spent the rest of the evening drinking naked on the balcony, laughing at the paparazzi just a few metres below them. Alice slipped back into her dress and tiptoed back into her suite at first light. The final image she saw as she closed Duke’s door behind her was of the two men reaching for each other. She showered and got into bed, relishing the experience she’d just had and trying to ignore the feeling that all she really wanted now was for Jacques to hold her while she went to sleep.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  AFTER CANNES, ALICE slumped into a deep depression. She and Pierre were living completely separate lives, and when he flew to Hollywood for talks with a producer he’d met at the festival, he didn’t bother to kiss her goodbye. She was alone. No Jacques, no work, no husband, with only a grainy, eight-year-old videotape for company. She didn’t even own a video recorder any more – and she wasn’t sure she could have borne to watch the tape even if she had. It would be too intense a reminder of what she had thrown away. Alice didn’t wash, didn’t answer the phone, drank wine instead of eating and didn’t leave the house for ten days.

  On the eleventh morning, something inside Alice changed. She woke early, shrugged off the mantle of self-pity and became steely and determined. She called Delphine, who sounded relieved and angry and told her that she had been so worried by Alice’s silence that she was on the verge of coming to her apartment and breaking the door down. Alice told Delphine that she would be in the office for a meeting at 9 a.m. – two hours’ time. Alice showered and washed her hair, feeling positive and confident.

  Delphine remained silent throughout the meeting as Alice told her everything. Her eyes grew wider and occasionally she let out a little laugh of disbelief.

  ‘I can’t believe you, Alice,’ says Delphine. ‘You had a secret past and a secret lover that I never knew about. I thought we told each other everything!’ Then she switched from friend mode into agent mode, brisk and businesslike and looking for a solution. ‘So. What are we going to do now?’

  Alice sketched the outlines of the plan she had made.

  ‘No,’ said Delphine firmly. ‘No fucking way. It’d be career suicide.’

  ‘What career?’ wailed Alice. ‘Starring in another one of Pierre’s crappy romantic comedies? None of this is the real me. With Jacques I can be true to myself. Sex with him is the only time I feel truly alive. I’ll go back to doing theatre work, I’ll start at the bottom again, doing the work I want to. Jacques would have understood that it isn’t about fame or money.’

  ‘I think you’re a crazy lady,’ said Delphine. ‘But you’ve convinced me. Let’s do it.’ Alice opened her Birkin bag and handed the tape over to Delphine, who examined it as though it were a bomb about to explode, then sighed and flicked through her contacts book. She made a call to her technological advisor, Laurent, and once she had confirmed that it would be easy for him to transfer an old videotape on to a disc, summoned him to the office. He was there in half an hour.

  ‘OK,’ Delphine instructed Laurent. ‘There’s a huge bonus for you if you sign this confidentiality agreement before you start.’ Once Laurent had signed, Delphine handed the cassette to him and said, ‘Edit this down to half an hour.’

  Delphine watched slack-jawed and amazed at the footage that Laurent worked with, and poor Laurent crouched awkwardly over his computer screen in a vain attempt to conceal his hard-on.

  ‘Can you edit it so that the other people’s faces aren’t visible?’ asked Alice, thinking of Julie and Francis. ‘So that it’s just me and Jacques you see?’

  Laurent nodded, and showed her how he could zoom in close so that while the dick play between Francis and Jacques was visible, their faces were not. Alice nodded her approval.

  ‘Christ, Alice,’ Delphine sighed in a breathy, low voice that betrayed her arousal. ‘This is hot stuff. Are you sure you want us to do this?’ Alice nodded, unable to speak, fixated on the moving image of Jacques’ cock, the column of flesh sliding in and out of her pussy. She crossed her legs and squeezed her thighs together to give some small gratification to her swelling clit.

  By noon that day, an edited version of the film, with Julie’s and Francis’s identities obscured, had been posted on the internet. By 12.30 every journalist in Paris had called Delphine demanding to know if it was really Alice. Delphine played the game for a while, pretending she didn’t know anything about it, and insisting that she was sure her client had never taken part in a pornographic film. The ploy worked: the story made the front page of every newspaper in France,
all the British tabloids, and gossip magazines in the USA and Australia. Headlines speculated on Alice’s identity with undisguised relish. Even the serious-minded broadsheets covered the tape, praising it as a beautifully shot, tender and sensitive piece of filmmaking.

  Pierre got his secretary to call Delphine, saying that he was suing Alice for divorce.

  ‘Best news I’ve heard for ages,’ said Delphine to Alice, who felt only relief.

  After two days of frenzied press speculation, Delphine issued a statement saying that she could confirm that the images on the film did indeed portray an eighteen-year-old Alice Daumier, or Alice Hill as she was then known. Her statement was curt but to the point. ‘My client made the film when she was a drama student and it was prior to her relationship with Pierre Daumier. I am also saddened to announce that Monsieur Daumier has asked for the marriage to be dissolved with immediate effect.’

  Now it had been confirmed that it was indeed Alice in the footage, speculation about the others’ identity grew. Journalists assumed that it must be one of the other three participants who had leaked the tape – it did not occur to anyone that Alice Daumier would sabotage her own career in this way. Julie and Francis they could not hope to identify, but Jacques’ face, frozen in orgasm, was plastered over front pages under the banner: ‘Who’s That Guy?’

  Alice waited for him to give her a sign that he was watching her but none came. She braced herself for somebody from her past – distant or recent – to contribute to the story. But neither Julie nor Francis came forward and to Alice’s gratification, Sylvie was true to her word and maintained a dignified silence. She had never expected Jacques to sell his story. But she knew that he would know that all this was a plea for him to get back in touch with her. She had taken a gamble and she had been so sure it would pay off. As the days passed, Alice had to confront the terrible possibility that she had exposed herself and ruined her career and marriage and that Jacques still wasn’t going to come for her.

  Alice moved into a hotel on the Rive Gauche which she and Delphine made into a miniature office. It was the only place she could get the privacy she craved. They spent hours poring over the various offers of interviews from television and print. They decided that they would have much more impact if she made a live announcement on television, to tell everybody exactly what had been going on. After all, in print, journalists can twist your words and put their own meaning and spin on to things. On camera, especially when the broadcast is live, there is no room to hide and no possibility for manipulation.

  Alice decided to give her only TV interview to Sandrine Boucher, a formidable talk-show host in her late forties whose evening programme invariably dominated the ratings. Alice rose on the morning of the interview feeling like Marie Antoinette about to go to the guillotine. And, like that French queen, she dressed to impress for her execution. She decided to play up to her new image as a scarlet woman and wore a red wrap dress that clung like a second skin around her waist, but flared out around her hips, the hemline resting demurely just below her knee. Her hair was piled up on top of her head, and held in place with a single chopstick, a little tribute to Julie, who she hoped would be watching, somewhere.

  As the theme tune played, Alice walked down the steps to the sofa where the interview was going to take place. To her delight, the audience gave her a standing ovation. The lights of the studio were blazing hot, and Alice basked in their comforting heat. Sandrine had no script and began with one single question.

  ‘Welcome, Alice. Now, will you please tell us what is going on?’

  And Alice talked, feeling a surge of euphoric relief as she unburdened herself of the secrets she had been carrying around for her whole adult life. She started her story where it had begun, as a naïve eighteen-year-old leaving London for a new life in France, going on to describe her first meeting with Jacques, her sexual awakening, her regret at leaving him. She did not tell Sandrine about her more recent adventures, the games and the punishments and the torches and the sweet surrenders that had made her feel more alive than at any time since she had first met Jacques. Those were not for sharing, not with the nation, not with anyone but Jacques.

  ‘I was crazy to leave,’ she said. ‘I know now that what Jacques and I had was so rare that if you find it, you don’t throw it away. What can I say? I was eighteen, ambitious, I thought that career and love were incompatible. I have since realised that all the money and fame in the world is worthless if you betray yourself and your body on such a fundamental level.’

  ‘And who do you think leaked the tape?’ demanded Sandrine. Alice looked at her lap, hoping to look demure and innocent and also because she could not hide the smile that played about her lips.

  ‘It could have been any one of them, I really couldn’t say. I don’t know why they have chosen this moment to expose me like this. But I suppose they have done me a favour. Now the public gets to see the real me. And hopefully, I will have made some of my fans very, very happy indeed.’

  A ripple of laughter waved through the audience. Alice laughed with them, and Sandrine had to repeat her next question.

  ‘Alice,’ she pressed. ‘Alice, where is Jacques now?’

  Alice turned to the camera. It was time to give the speech that she had rehearsed in her head. ‘I don’t know. If he was near me, I would know, because his body would call mine, and I would respond. I could not help but respond. I have faith that he is watching me now, and I know that we will be together soon.’

  ‘We will end on that intriguing note,’ said Sandrine. ‘Alice Daumier, thank you for sharing your story with us tonight. I think we can all agree that whatever happens, life will change very much for you in the future. I for one think you are a fabulous, sexy, creative woman who has been stifled by her own ambition, by a shallow industry and by the wrong marriage. I hope that you find your wild horse, and that the pair of you run free together.’

  Alice was incredibly touched by Sandrine’s words, and fought back tears. She was grateful when the studio lights dimmed and the theme music blared out of the studio speakers. Removing her microphone from her lapel, Sandrine leaned forward and whispered into Alice’s ear, ‘And if you ever fancy another Sapphic adventure, do call me. I’d love to eat your pussy.’ Alice gave a surprised, flattered giggle. And as she took off her own microphone, and made her way backstage to where Delphine waited, the adrenaline rush of being on live television and the suggestive thrill that Sandrine’s words had sent through her made her feel invigorated, alive, gave her a hint of the feeling she had missed.

  Delphine was in the green room, her mobile phone attached to her ear, but she flipped it shut when she saw Alice approaching.

  ‘The phones are going wild,’ she said, kissing Alice on both cheeks. ‘Your gamble paid off. Everybody loves you. The phone is ringing with offers of work. Far from destroying your career, I think you have just gone from star to superstar.’

  ‘But did he call?’ Alice asked, urgently. Delphine shook her head sadly. Alice shrugged. The hope she had hardly dared to nurture had been dashed.

  A security guard approached Delphine and had a hushed conversation with her.

  ‘There are too many paparazzi outside,’ said Delphine. ‘I think we’ll take you out of the back way, because otherwise it’s just gonna get crazy. I want you to have all this attention, but I don’t want you to get hurt. And besides,’ she said with a smile, ‘it never does any harm to always leave them wanting a little more of you.’

  ‘That’s fine by me,’ said Alice, who did not want to emerge from her triumphant interview with her face crumpled with disappointment that Jacques had not been in touch.

  The security guard led them through a warren of corridors in the TV studio, bare breeze-blocked walls that seemed to go on for ever and twisted and turned until it was impossible to retain any sense of direction. The security guard stopped and pointed them towards a fire exit at the end of the long corridor and told them they would be able to make their way into a back s
treet which would be free from photographers.

  ‘Which street?’ Delphine asked the guard. ‘I need to tell the car to come and pick us up.’ He gave her an address and Delphine flipped open her phone to notify the driver of the change of plan. ‘Damn,’ said Delphine. ‘I can’t get a signal. Wait here, Alice, I’ll meet you back down there by the fire escape once I’ve spoken to the driver.’

  Alice nodded, grateful to have the chance to be alone at last. She closed her eyes, inhaled and exhaled slowly. Her breath echoed along the corridor’s bare walls. Idly, slowly, Alice walked down the end of the corridor towards the door. When she saw something on the floor, in the distance, something that may or may not have been a small, square, pale blue slip of paper, she caught her breath and dared not hope. She sprinted in her heels and bent down to read.