Goddess of Vengeance - Jackie Collins [16]
Usually he favoured high-class call girls – hookers had tricks that other women did not possess. Little tricks. Dirty tricks. Filthy things a man can only dream about.
Once in a while he came across a woman who was not for sale. This did not faze Armand, for he believed they all had a price. And sometimes it wasn’t monetary.
On occasion it intrigued him to discover what that price might be. It was a game he played for his own enjoyment, and when Armand played, he played to win.
His latest conquest was Nona Constantine, the wife of Martin Constantine, one of his rivals in the real-estate business, a man some considered to be almost as powerful as him.
How wrong they were!
Nona was exactly the kind of challenge he craved. Married, with a young child, she was a former beauty queen from Slovakia, with high cheekbones and slanted eyes. Her husband doted on her, but Armand’s canny instinct allowed him to guess that ever since she’d given birth, Martin was not fucking her the way a woman yearned to be fucked.
Armand worked on her slowly, and since they moved in the same New York social circles – art gallery openings, charity events, small dinner parties – it was quite easy to get close to her. Especially as he always had a girl on his arm. Only he knew that his so-called ‘dates’ were bought and paid for; that way they never gave him any trouble or made any demands. His unbreakable rule was never to use the same girl twice.
New York hostesses considered Armand Jordan a huge catch. They were always trying to fix him up, but he eluded their attempts. He was attractive in a slightly mysterious way, with a neat black moustache, thick eyebrows framing brooding eyes, and an impeccable dress sense. Only the best for Armand. He wore socks and underwear once, then threw them away. Shirts he might wear twice, but that was it. And his hand-tailored suits never stayed in his closet longer than a month.
The hostesses persevered, for not only was Armand mega-rich, it was rumoured that back in the small Middle Eastern country he originally hailed from, he possessed some kind of title.
He never spoke of that.
It took him a couple of months to get Nona to his penthouse on the pretext of showing her a rare Picasso he’d recently acquired. He did not mind the wait, in fact he quite enjoyed the anticipation of the conquest.
She arrived at eleven in the morning, an innocent time of day. She had on a pale pink Chanel suit with a lacy blouse underneath, and beige Louboutin heels that clicked on his highly polished marble floor as he led her around his penthouse, giving her the grand tour. Finally they ended up in the master bedroom, a masculine room, all deep burgundy leather couches and black cashmere throws covering the over-sized bed.
‘No family photos,’ Nona said, glancing around his stark bedroom. She laughed coquettishly. ‘Armand, you are such a man of mystery, and why do I always see you with a different girl? Surely you wish to meet a woman you can share your life with?’
‘Why would I want to do that when I can have a woman like you?’ he said, gazing into her eyes as if he meant it.
And just like that, all his hard work paid off. All the compliments and sly attention and flattery, flattery, flattery.
She was his. All his to use and abuse and humiliate.
Because that was his pleasure, that was his kick.
First he kissed her, roughly forcing his lips down on hers, thrusting his tongue into her mouth, giving her no chance to object. Then, without warning, his hand swooped under her skirt, and his thick fingers slid past her panties into the soft mound of flesh, wet and willing and waiting for discovery.
No foreplay for this one. She was turned on the minute she’d walked into his apartment. Nona Constantine wanted it. And he was about to give it to her. Hard.
Navigating his thick fingers through her mound of wiry pubic hair, the furriness excited him. He wound strands of hair tightly around his fingers until she cried out in pain. This pleased him. If he wanted a woman shaved like