The Pairing(56)

“I just told you.”

“No, I mean . . . what are you doing?”

“I’m taking risks! Aren’t you happy?”

Beside the slipway up to the megayacht, a man speaks animated French to a passing caterer, a bottle of wine in each hand. I can tell it’s his yacht by the weight of his flax linen shirt and his Cartier watch, but what really convinces me is the label on the wine: Pétrus, the only winery on the Pomerol plateau situated entirely on a blue clay deposit. Every somm I know would shiv their mom for one taste of that wine, and he’s waving it around like it’s Franzia.

“What’s the vintage?”

The man turns at the sound of my voice. Sunlight flashes on a thin gold chain against sandy chest hair.

I’m pleasantly surprised to see he’s strikingly good-looking, in a Cary Grant or Marlon Brando kind of way, old Hollywood with a palpable air of bisexuality. Angular jaw, full lips, dirty blond hair, eyes the same clear blue as the harbor. The crinkled corners of his eyes and salt-and-paper stubble place him around forty.

“2005,” he says, a curious tilt to his smile. “Have we met?”

“I’m Theo. Theo Flowerday, of the Ted and Gloria Flowerdays. Do you know of my parents? Eleven combined Academy Awards? If you’ve ever been to Cannes, I’m sure you’ve seen them around.”

In case none of this is enough, I point toward Kit, who is helpfully bending over to tighten his sandals.

“He’s with me.”


émile has an utterly unplaceable accent. It’s part Greek, part Swiss German, part Ivy League American, and a secret fourth thing, a sumptuous quality that brings to mind silk ties and dessert wine. He reminds us to take off our shoes before we step on the teak, then tours us around his enormous yacht, stopping in the chef’s kitchen to taste a sprig of lemongrass for the canapés and give us each a flute of champagne. Then he takes us out onto the main deck, where the party is well and truly raging.

Models lounge on chaises, drinking vodka on the rocks and rubbing coconut oil onto their skin. Grand Prix drivers throw down euros over a poker game. Some people swim in the pool on the deck, while others jump from the back of the boat into the sea. Waiters bring around trays of high-concept hors d’oeuvres and glasses of pink champagne. Music throbs over the speakers, clouds of vapor and cigar smoke waft from laughing mouths, and everyone is so goddamn hot.

“Enjoy yourselves,” émile tells us, his hand skimming Kit’s waist. Something between possessiveness and arousal buzzes in my veins.

When he leaves, Kit turns to me in disbelief.

“You got us onto a yacht,” he says. “What now?”

I suck down my champagne and grab another from a passing waiter.

“Unbutton your shirt,” I say, already taking mine off and throwing it over the nearest chair.

“Why?”

“I want to see if I can get someone to do a shot out of your belly button.”

“Oh, sure,” Kit says reasonably, complying.

We drink, and we dance, and we swim, and I find, to my slight annoyance and much greater pleasure, that being a renegade Flowerday is actually pretty fun. The daughter of the Belgian ambassador shows me how to take bumps of caviar off the back of my hand. Kit takes to yacht partying like a fish to water, swanning around in his little yellow swim trunks, flirting outrageously with anything that moves. He’s from another world. I want to bite him.

At some point, émile rejoins the party, and he seems to gravitate back toward Kit or me every time someone pulls his attention away. Kit notices too, giving me a significant look when émile puts his hand on my thigh during a card game. By now, I’ve had at least a bottle of champagne and a few hits off someone’s designer blunt, so I let myself enjoy Kit watching someone want me. I enjoy watching someone want Kit too.

When Kit and I were together, we were known to take someone home with us every so often. We weren’t open, but we did sometimes enjoy watching each other receive pleasure from a third-person perspective, or competing to see who could get someone off first, or—well, there were a lot of things we liked doing.

I’m kind of starting to think we might like doing émile, a suspicion confirmed by the tone of Kit’s voice when he leans into my ear and says, “We’ve just been invited up to the private deck.”

I gaze at Kit, trying to read his vibe, except for how I’m mostly staring at his nipples.

“Should we go?” I ask.

“That depends,” Kit says. “He’s definitely trying to have a three-way with us.”

“I mean,” I say. “It’s not like it would be our first.”

“Those were different,” Kit says with a significant look. We were also having sex with each other separately at the time.

“I’m not worried about it,” I say airily. “Are you?”

Kit tosses a lock of hair out of his eyes. “Oh, you know me. Daddy issues. Try anything once. We’re firmly in my wheelhouse.”

“How far are you willing to go?”

He looks at me for a long moment. Just looks at me.

“As far as you want,” he says. And then, “If it’s just me, will you watch?”

I imagine sitting in a hot tub while Kit and émile tangle up on a chaise nearby, Kit’s competent fingers undoing émile’s belt. Heat licks lazily at the base of my spine.