The Golden Locket (Unbreakable Trilogy, Book 2) by Primula Bond Read Free Book Online Page A

attention. Her lace skirt rides up to her tiny matching knickers. Ridiculously I worry that she’ll smear something messy on the beautiful fabric.
    I catch Pierre’s eye over the top of Polly’s white-blonde crop as if he can read my dirty mind. He picks up Gustav’s cocktail shaker and tops up their glasses. He is still brazenly eyeballing me, but I can’t look away. I can’t ignore that what he also shares with his brother is the ability to render people speechless and immobile with just one smouldering glance.
    ‘I’m not sure I’d be safe travelling on my own with your cousin, Pol,’ he murmurs, watching me but tickling Polly as she protests weakly. ‘She’s always, I don’t know, so jumpy.’
    ‘That’s because I’m missing Gustav and I wish he was safely back here with us. But you’re jumpy too, admit it. Tonight is massive for you.’ I swizzle the pale fizz in my glass. I can’t shake off the feeling that he’s playing me. I also can’t help enjoying it, even though I know it’s wrong.
    Gustav’s brother and I stare at each other. A blue vein has come up on his right temple.
    ‘Yeah, you’re right. I’m jumpy as hell. It’s this place. All this opulence is unnerving,’ he drawls, glancing round the apartment. ‘I knew Gustav was rich, but since I last saw him he’s moved up into another league altogether. Maybe we should have chosen neutral territory for this meet.’
    I smooth my hand across the honey-soft suede sofa. ‘He’d be here now if he hadn’t had to fly off like that, straight after Christmas, but some problem arose with the sale of the Lugano house and Dickson needed him there to sign some papers or something. The sooner that place is sold, with its past and its memories, the better. It’s hanging over us like a guillotine.’
    ‘Shame to sell the old place. There were a few wild parties there, I can tell you!’ Pierre keeps his smile light. ‘It’s more of a shame that he stood me up, though.’
    I let out a breath I didn’t realise I’d been holding.
    ‘He’s stuck in the stratosphere, Pierre! He’s not standing you up.’ I’m damned if I’m going to tell him I’m also jumpy because that’s the inexplicable effect he has on me. ‘He wants to thrash this out once and for all.’
    ‘“Thrash” being the operative word.’
    Pierre’s voice invades the low-lit, airy space of my new home. Polly is half asleep with the drink. Her head is back and she’s jiggling her shoulders to a new track on the music system. It’s not like her to zone out, but I’m glad. There’s a ticker tape of questions and challenges clattering behind her boyfriend’s eyes.
    ‘Baiting me won’t work, Pierre. I’m not going down that road again.’
    He shrugs and falls back in the sofa, that broad smile disarming me again. ‘Point taken. So. What about the house in Baker Street?’
    ‘What about it?’
    I’m glad he’s changed the subject, but I don’t like to think of the images Gustav showed me projecting across the old walls in that house, the whips and masks, the sick excitement that infected me and had me dragging him home and begging him to whip me too. The loop of video showing Crystal being whipped by a masked Margot. Gustav disguised and participating somewhere in that writhing orgy. The agonising knowledge that he lived and loved there with another woman.
    ‘I sometimes walk past it when I’m in London.’ Pierre removes his hand abruptly from Polly’s breast, and she curls away from him. ‘It’s looking pretty bleak now. Gone to rack and ruin.’
    I cross my legs, too late aware, from the gleam in Pierre’s eyes, that I may have given him a flash of my crotch. ‘That’s all part of the Gothic façade. It’s still a functioning museum. The installations are still up and running. I think the exhibition earns him a fortune from collectors and visitors.’
    ‘You mean he still owns it?’
    Pierre’s face goes still, watchful. I shift on the sofa opposite