Indulgence in Death (In Death #31)(70)

“Is there any lost between you and Sylvester Moriarity?”

“None.”

“Why don’t you tell me about it? About him.”

“Sly.” She sighed, sipped her water. “No woman forgets her first—husband I mean. You’re still on your first.”

“Planning to stay there.”

“We all do. I was crazy about him. Maybe I was a little crazy altogether, but I was young and rich and considered myself invulnerable. He was exciting, maddeningly aloof, and a little dangerous under all that polish. It attracted me—the undercoating, you could say.”

“Dangerous how?”

“Everything was immediate, and harder, faster, higher, lower than everyone else. It had to be or we’d be like everyone else, and that we would never be. We drank too much, did whatever illegals were in style, had sex anywhere and everywhere.” She angled her head. “Did your mother ever pull out that chestnut about if your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump, too?”

Eve had a flicker, very brief, of her mother’s face, and the loathing in her eyes for the child she’d borne. “No.”

“Well, it’s an old standard. We had to be the first to jump off the cliff. If there was a trend, we were going to set it. If there was trouble, we were going to make it. God knows how much money our parents pulled out of the coffers to keep us out of jail.”

“There aren’t any arrests on your records.”

“Greased palms.” Patrice swept her fingers over her palm. “It’s also a standard and works in every language. We were self-indulgent and reckless, then I did the most reckless thing of all. I fell in love. I believe he had feelings for me, which I thought were love—and might even have been, for a while, in some strange way. Then he met Winnie, and though it took me a long time to see it, Sly loved him more.

“Not romantically, exactly, and not sexually,” she added. “Sly likes women. But what I came to realize after we were married, after it became clear we couldn’t remain so, was he and Winnie weren’t like two sides of the same coin. They were the same side. They didn’t want anyone, not long-term, on that other side.”

“Did he ever hurt you, physically?”

“No, never. I think there might have been others, other women he did hurt, but never me. I was his wife, and that was, again in a strange way, a point of pride—for a while. Still, it was after we were married, a year or so after Winnie and Felicity broke up and Winnie was out and about with women, that Sly asked me if I’d be agreeable to experimenting with a third bed partner.”

She paused, sipped, studied Eve. “Felicity told me she felt you were very nonjudgmental.”

“I have no reason or cause to judge you, Ms. Delaughter.”

“Do me a favor, considering the topic. Call me Pat.” She set down the water, said nothing for a moment as conversations murmured around them, as people came in, as others walked out. “This takes me back. God, I really was crazy about Sly. I thought he was everything I wanted. Exciting, handsome, daring. And at that point in my life I was completely open to trying everything. Except initially I thought he meant Winnie, and that I wasn’t open to.”

“Why?”

She leaned forward. “I came to understand Sly wasn’t everything I wanted, and there was something in there that would doom or damn me, but Winnie? After Felicity broke things off, he was, again under that polish, vicious. There was something in his eyes, in his voice, in his body that sent alarms out. I don’t really know how to explain it to you, but young and adventurous as I was, I wasn’t willing to share a bed with him. And on that point I was very clear, very firm.”

“How’d he take that?”

“He barely spoke to me for the next two weeks, and in fact, took off without me for a few days to spend some time . . . God, I don’t remember where. It hardly matters. When he came back, and we made up, he told me he’d been angry because of my attitude, because I’d insulted his closest friend, and put restrictions on our own relationship.”

She smiled a little. “It didn’t change my mind about those restrictions, but I was relieved when he told me that wasn’t what he wanted either. He didn’t want another man, even his good friend, in bed with us, but another woman. And I thought, what the hell, that could be fun, and I had been pretty harsh about Winnie. So why not?

“He suggested hiring a pro, which would keep things very level. No emotional involvement. I liked the idea, I admit it. And at first it was very sexy, very exciting, strangely intimate. She was skilled and truly beautiful, and seductive. Patient with me as it was my first time with a woman or with more than one lover.”

Eve felt the buzz. “Do you remember her name?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t. I’m not sure I knew it, or if she used her name. Is it important?”

“It might be. Do you remember what she looked like?”

“Perfectly. It’s etched.” Patrice didn’t smile as she tapped her forehead. “Sly enjoyed watching us together for a time, and having us with him, around him. But then he began to hurt her, he was so rough, so unlike himself—or what I expected. I didn’t like it, but it didn’t seem to bother her. In fact, she soothed me. I remember drinking buckets of champagne, smoking some zoner, doing what I thought was Exotica. Then it all went a little mad. A lot mad. It turned frantic and mean. I had no control, no boundaries. And I have very little memory of the rest of the night, into the next day.”