in Hollywood at that moment, she'd like to know who was. And he was hers. All hers. Of all the women in Hollywood, he had chosen to be with her. She couldn't be all that washed up, could she?
Her smile widened as Christian lifted his head from where it was squashed into the oyster satin pillow, revealing that impossibly handsome, deeply tanned face with huge lips and black hair, so very black that it had navy lights in it, dropping into smouldering eyes of a different blue, an intense, swimming-pool blue. The face that currently had all of Hollywood excited, Belle knew. That was starting to appear on the front of the men's magazines. All thanks to her. She had given him the contacts he had needed to make his dreams of being a Hollywood star come true.
Christian looked at her, and, as always, just as she had the first time she had met him, Belle felt a tightening in her groin, a rush in the mouth, a tingling in her nipples. He was a prime piece of beefcake. The best.
Their meeting had, she remembered fondly, been a classic ladyand-tramp situation. Or perhaps lady and cramp. It had been at a film industry party where Christian had been a human sculpture, painted silver and striking a pose which, he explained afterwards, had given him chronic leg ache.
He had soon recovered, however, and, that same night, Belle discovered Christian's ability to give her orgasms so intense they made her teeth rattle. Even after all the veneering, which seemed a double achievement.
She watched admiringly as the blue eyes opened for the first time that day, looked straight into hers, and, right on cue, creased in a smile.
"Hey, baby," Christian breathed. He had arranged his features into their usual smouldering, impenetrable pout into which undying devotion or cynical lack of interest could be read with equal ease. Belle always chose to read the devotion. But what Christian's silent smoulder was actually saying was that she really should get some clothes on.
He liked slim—who didn't—but making love to Belle was like screwing a set of steps. And while the odd nip and tuck was fine by him, there were more nips on Belle than a colony of goddamn crabs. It wasn't that Christian particularly prized authenticity, but there was nothing remotely natural about this woman. Belle was all fake, from the cascade of white-blonde hair tossing constantly about and the equally unremitting blaze of veneered teeth to the stretched skin of her face and the exposed and prominent rounded domes of her breasts—with a gap between them you could park a motorbike in.
Belle always denied she had had surgery, but Christian knew the signs. He didn't think she'd had a fanny tuck yet, but she'd definitely had lipo on her bottom that might have gone to the filling in her lips. And so every time her mouth sought his, Christian wondered if he was quite literally kissing her ass.
"You look gorgeous," he assured her.
There was a growl from beside the bed. Christian raised himself on his elbow and looked with dislike at a small, brown dog with a very big diamond collar. Belle's pet Chihuahua, Sugar, was, as usual, staring at him with enormous and very prominent black eyes.
Caninus interruptus. The dog had got him off the hook. Belle clearly wanted servicing, even though he'd done enough of that last night. Yet Christian could still not look at Sugar with anything other than hatred. He was aware that the animal returned his feelings in full measure.
How could anyone love a mutt like that, Christian wondered. Sugar was bad-tempered and vicious. Belle spoilt it rotten, and it wasn't grateful in the least. She lavished it with love, which it did not return one iota.
Belle swung her thin, brown legs off the bed and scooped the dog against her naked breasts. "Sugar!" Christian watched scornfully as she lavished the dog's bony skull with kisses. "This morning," Belle
J. S. Cooper, Helen Cooper