The Secret Life of Girls

by Chloe Thurlow

Genres: Erotic & Steamy Romance

Synopsis

After the gardener spanks her bottom and a nun at her elite finishing school seduces her in the catacombs, Bella realises that sex was what she was born for. She adores wearing a dildo and deflowering virgins just as much as she adores indulging the roguish Christian Thomas with his addiction to fruit salads and bondage. Then Bella's world comes tumbling down. She learns that her beloved Ickham Manor doesn't belong to her, it belongs to her wicked stepfather. Sex has been fun. Now it is the weapon she uses to put her world back together again. Bella entraps her stepfather in a lewd act on video. She stars in a porn flick and, as her song on the soundtrack makes her a tabloid celebrity, Bella is at the beginning of an erotic ride into the showbiz world of pain and perversion, of domination and glorious submission.

Release date: November 12, 2010

Publisher: Accent Press

Print pages: 240

Sample

Chapter One

THE FIRST TIME I had a wet dream was a summer night when I’d gone to bed exhausted after one of those tedious talks with Mother. Something had been welling up inside her for weeks and it had been a relief when it finally came spilling out.

‘Something awful has happened, Bella. Awful,’ she said. ‘I can’t even tell you.’

‘Mummy?’

She took a deep breath and composed her features.

‘Daddy put all his money into that, that ... business and ... he lost it. Everything. If it wasn’t for Simon I don’t know what we’d do.’

Simon was Simon Daviditz and he had been a regular visitor since Daddy died. At the funeral he was holding Mother’s hand but I remembered his eyes that day considering me across the grave as if I were a piece of bric-à-brac at the flea market he wasn’t sure whether or not to invest in.

Mother started sniffling. ‘We have to do something. We have to,’ she cried. ‘You won’t even be able to go to your new school. It’s all gone, gone.’

She dabbed her eyes repeatedly with a handkerchief while I sat there feeling cross. I was going to the finishing school of Saint Sebastian the Holy Martyr to re-do my A levels and I really didn’t like my plans not turning out as planned.

I left her to make her phone calls and went to bed. I fell into a deep sleep and the sun angling through the lattice windows woke me with a sense that life was starting anew and I should stop worrying about poor Daddy.

My T-shirt was up around my neck and my hands like explorers in a foreign land were moving over my breasts, my tummy, my hips and down between my legs. It was sticky there as if honey had been spilled over my thighs and I had the odd thought that in the night someone had been packing my bags and I was about to begin a long journey.

There was a white dress draped over the chair. I pulled it over my head and slipped barefoot into the garden. Plump insects buzzed and hummed among the flowers. Red butterflies spiralled like dancers in the updrafts of air rising warmly from the lawn. The cat stopped, stared as if he’d never seen me before, then sauntered off to his place in the apple tree where he would watch for birds.

Sylvester was a killer and nothing gave him more pleasure than dragging wriggling, half-expired game into the house where he would display his spoils on the white tiles of the kitchen floor.

I had thought I was alone but heard Mr Lawrence softly whistling in the shed. The gardener was what Mother called a local yokel, which meant he was subnormal and she could tell unkind stories about him over the phone to her friends. I had always thought of Mr Lawrence as old and only when I entered his domain that day did I realise that he was the same age as Mr Daviditz, about 40, loads older than me, but younger than Mother.

He was preparing cuttings, trimming them with a knife with a worn shiny blade. He glanced up, nodded as he relit his roll-up, then continued whistling. In the air was the tang of cut grass, wood polish and the moth ball smell of old Jake, the Labrador, sitting immobile like a black statue beside the bench. Tools with wooden handles hung from brackets with a sense of calm and order, and ranged along the shelves were jam jars full of nails and screws.

Through the small windows the light moved in dusty sheets and I had a feeling I was in one of those old French films Daddy would often be watching late at night when I woke from a bad dream and couldn’t get back to sleep again.

My underarms were damp and perspiration rolled like glass beads over my skin. I watched absorbed as Mr Lawrence positioned the cuttings in the tray, his movements slow and steady as if he was enjoying the job and was in no hurry to get it done. He made a hole in the black earth with his thumb, selected another stem, and pressed the soil sensuously back in place. He had wide, strong fingers that fondled the fragile shoots with the same delicacy you need to sew on a button or write someone’s name on a birthday cake.

He took another puff on his cigarette then left it balanced on the side of a silver tin. There was a spray gun on the bench and when all the cuttings were standing in neat lines he misted the tray with several short, sharp tugs on the trigger. I had moved closer than I meant to and the spray was cool on my hot cheeks.

For as long as I could remember, Mr Lawrence had avoided looking in my direction but now his dark eyes made me flush as they met mine. There was a faint smile on his lips as he moistened my face, my neck, and he kept on jerking the trigger on the spray gun, soaking the top of my flimsy dress. My breasts had begun to tingle and my nipples like the green shoots in the seed tray seemed to burst into life and were trying to burst through the fabric.

Mr Lawrence moved round the bench. He aimed a long jet of water down my spine before returning the container to the worktop. He ran one hand slowly over the bumps of my back and cupped my bottom. With the fingers of his other hand, he rubbed the tips of my nipples in a circular motion that made the breath catch in my throat and warm dribbles began to run down the insides of my legs. The earth on his fingers stained the dress in two perfect circles around my breasts. He moved his fingers over my swollen lips and, one by one, I took them into my mouth.

I had forgotten to put on any knickers and his other hand was stroking the tense bare flesh of my bottom. His fingers slipped into the sticky pool between my legs and I often wonder what may have happened next, the next in this case being the door bursting open and Mother standing there with the light behind her like the monster that woke me from my dreams.

‘Bella. Bella. You. You ...’

She crossed the shed in one long stride and hit Mr Lawrence across the face with such a hard slap it left four white stripes on his cheek.

‘You animal. You oaf. Get out this minute!’

Jake must have wondered what all the fuss was about and stood there with his pink tongue lolling from his mouth. Mr Lawrence stroked the dog’s head. He stared boldly back at Mother and the look they exchanged I would think about later that day.

Mother turned to me. ‘What would your father say? What would Mr Daviditz say?’

After the momentary shock of Mother’s appearance I did the only thing I could do. I ran back through the garden and into the house crying and didn’t stop until Mother became bored and said she didn’t care what I did or who I did it with as long as we kept it from Mr Daviditz because he was a solicitor and a Christian and a man who wouldn’t tolerate that sort of thing.

‘Bella, you have to know, you’re very ... Mediterranean,’ she said, as if the word had the taste of a stale olive. ‘You’re the type.’

‘The type?’

‘The type men are going to interfere with.’

‘You think so?’

‘Look, I really can’t deal with you as well as everything else,’ she said. ‘Don’t you get it, your father lost everything. There’s no money, no new school, no future. Nothing.’

I turned and looked into her eyes. ‘Everything’s going to be all right,’ I told her.

‘You don’t understand anything.’

‘That’s what you think,’ I said and she pretended not to hear.

We became quiet and watched Sylvester through the french windows. Simon Daviditz was coming for lunch and I was thinking about what I was going to wear.

I kissed Mother on the cheek, something I rarely did, and bounded three at a time up the stairs.

I put on the first CD I laid my hands on and sang along to the music as I peered into the wardrobe. One thing I had learned is you have to dress for the occasion. I opened the drawers and went through my blouses and T-shirts, tight jeans, hipsters, cargo pants, flares, little halters, long pants, hot pants; it’s all so very difficult. I took off my clothes and studied myself in the long mirror.

My breasts were round and full and stayed propped up by themselves. They were lovely and I really couldn’t resist touching them. My hips and bottom were small like a boy’s and my thighs that tingled still didn’t quite touch when I stood straight. Daddy was an Italian and, like him, I have brown eyes, honey-coloured skin and thick dark hair I’d always worn in pigtails, even when I knew it had become old fashioned for a girl of my age. Just as my breasts had started filling out, so silken threads as fine as angel hair had formed in a triangle that was now dense and soft, a little nest below my bikini line.

I’d read in one of Mother’s magazines that for a woman, less is always more and so a bikini must be perfect. I had a yellow one with red flowers that was a size too small and, when I put it on, I looked like a girl who didn’t know she had grown up and looked more girlish from not knowing it. I turned to look at my rear. My shoulder blades stuck out and my bottom that I’d thought belonged to a boy had grown perfectly round and now belonged to me. I had wanted to be a boy for as long as I could remember but sensed there was a lot more to being a girl.

I ran the tips of my fingers over my pink nipples. They prickled as if from pins and needles. I turned for a sideways look and really had to blink several times and look again. Mr Lawrence had tricked my breasts into growing a whole half size bigger since he’d tried to plant me in one of his pots.

Mother says I’m immature. Perhaps I am. I still behave like a girl but my inspection that autumn day revealed in the mirror all the angles and curves, all the pouts and pleats, all the magic and mystery of a woman.

Wow!

I took my hair out of pigtails and combed it over my shoulders, turning the ends under. I studied the new style, then changed it back again. Daddy had once told me that although I was growing up I shouldn’t be in too much of a hurry. Latin men understood these things and I suppose it was the Latin in me that had awoken that morning.

My gold crucifix was hanging over the side of the dressing table. I put it on, squirted perfume in the air and stood in the shower as it rained over me. I was about to leave the bedroom when I heard Mother opening the door. Mr Daviditz had arrived. I waited until he was in the drawing room, crept down the stairs and out through the kitchen to the garden. I had my iPod, a towel and a bottle of sun cream which I set down on the lawn where the apple tree obscures the view from the french windows.

‘Bella, Simon’s here,’ I heard Mother call in her sugary voice and I rushed off like an eager puppy to greet him.

‘Ah, Bella, bella as ever,’ he said.

He thought this was awfully clever and had said it before.

I was breathless from all my running about, my heart was beating like a drum and, as he lowered his glasses, his eyes fell piously to the gold cross throbbing in the dark hollow between my breasts.

Mother’s expression made it clear that she intended telling me to go and put on something more fitting, but was so relieved by my warm display she decided to let it drop.

Mr Daviditz was dressed in white trousers and a dark green polo shirt that welled in a soft balloon over a woven brown leather belt. He had lots of fine pale hair of which he was clearly very proud, red cheeks, damp hands and a wispy moustache that he fiddled with incessantly. He was carrying a bouquet for Mother and broke off one of the blooms for me. I put it between my teeth and skipped off back to the garden.

Sylvester bolted up the tree and sat there cleaning behind his ears. I covered my front with cream and slid the ear pieces into my ears. I tried to calculate how long it would take before Mr Daviditz came but grew tired of the game and just listened to the music. I had made a point of being unkind to Simon Daviditz since that day at the funeral but, according to Mother, abrupt mood swings in teenagers are the result of hormones and perfectly normal.

My skin was just beginning to get that tight feeling that comes when you stay too long in the sun when a shadow brought a welcome relief. Mr Daviditz carried a drink complete with a straw and ice cubes that tinkled against the glass.

‘A spritzer,’ he said like a conspirator.

He knelt down beside me as I drank: fizzy water with white wine and quite repulsive. I sucked long and hard on the straw.

‘Delicious,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said and paused. ‘Yes, indeed.’

‘I can’t reach my back, would you?’ I gave him the sun cream and his hands were shaking as he took the bottle.

I turned over and loosened my top. He spread the cream over my shoulder blades, his cautious hands moving slowly across my back, down my arms, around my waist, one leg, then the other. He pulled each one of my toes, then moved with greater confidence back up my legs.

He began massaging the base of my spine, each downward motion peeling back my bikini bottom as if he were paring a ripe apple just fallen from the tree. As if by friction, with each movement I eased the weight from my hips. For some reason I had started thinking about Mr Lawrence and it only occurred to me now that he had the same eyes as Daddy, the same as me.

‘That feels lovely,’ I said. ‘You have such soft hands you should have been a doctor.’

‘I did consider it. Then the law got me.’

I gave an encouraging laugh. ‘What a pity, you could have examined me all over when I was ill,’ I told him.

He was gasping like an old train as he carried on working his palms up and down, up and down, and before I died of boredom I activated his secret plan by eliminating the pull of gravity. I raised my hips clean from the ground and, with one more tug at the elastic, Mr Daviditz had my bikini briefs down around my knees.

I lowered myself to the towel and wriggled like a freshly caught fish.

He dribbled sun cream on my back and began fondling the two moons of my bottom. I waited for that moist feeling to come but it didn’t happen this time and I imagined Mr Daviditz didn’t have the touch. He finally spread my cheeks with trembling fingers and we remained motionless as if time were suspended and I thought this strange little man was clearly obsessed to be kneeling there in that uncomfortable position peering inanely up my bum.

‘Lunch,’ I heard Mother sing out from the kitchen, and I couldn’t help laughing as Mr Daviditz fell backwards and hit his head against the tree. Sylvester leapt down from the branch from where he’d been watching, hissed and ran off.

‘Deary, deary me, look what’s happened.’

Mr Daviditz jerked the red-flowered briefs back in place before lurching to his feet. I turned and I was unable to conceal my breasts as I reached for my top. I looked coyly up into his eyes. Mr Daviditz seemed so intense it was as if we’d just been to another funeral and I thought old people took things which were only a bit of fun far too seriously.

‘Come on,’ he said. I took the hand he offered and he studied my face as if written in my flushed cheeks were clues to his own destiny.

‘Thank you,’ I whispered before he could say anything and it occurred to me that, not one, but two men had interfered with me that day and if I’d kept a diary it would have given me something to write about.

Mother watched us making our way back across the lawn. There was a look in her eyes, the same look she had given Mr Lawrence when she slapped his face, but now that look was for me.

‘Bella, you’re not a child. Do get dressed,’ she said.

I did, demurely, in a kilt and white blouse. Mr Daviditz at lunch was very attentive to both Mother and his moustache and, while he practically ignored me, I sat there studying Mother’s vile collection of teapots arranged on the shelves. I skipped pudding and wandered through the rooms looking at paintings and ornaments, the family snaps in silver frames, the polished beams on the low ceiling.

Ickham Manor was my house, left to me in a trust, and now that Daddy was dead I wanted everything to remain the same. I sat at the piano but my mind just couldn’t focus on Mozart and I gave up trying. I settled in the alcove at the end of the drawing room and flicked through an old picture book with a girl and a pony on the cover.

The story was about poor little Lizzie Dripping who wanted to ride her pony at the gymkhana, but the pony had a tummy upset just like people. Lizzie had washy blue eyes, a yellow ponytail poking out of her riding hat and was so exceedingly dull all she could do was sit and cry until the pony felt so irritated by her it got better. Lizzie went to the gymkhana and won a pink ribbon. I had read the book a hundred times when I was little, but now it made me want to go to the bathroom and yuck up the spritzer.

I scrolled down to the new Dallas McTee on the iPod and was just about to stretch out on the floor when Mother and Mr Daviditz appeared looking awfully pleased with themselves.

‘Reading, that’s a good sign,’ he said.

They sat together on the sofa. Mother is an English blonde with the blue grey eyes of the Atlantic and was wearing the same intense look as Lizzie Dripping.

‘We’ve got something to tell you,’ she said.

Mr Daviditz’s cheeks were redder than ever as he took her hand. ‘I’ve asked Hester, your mother, to be my wife,’ he announced.

There was a long silence while we all waited for someone to speak. I noticed the nerve in Mother’s neck throb with a moment’s impatience.

‘Are you happy?’ she finally asked.

I studied them both and wondered if they were going to have children.

‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘Very.’

Mr Daviditz looked relieved. ‘Now, we should do something to celebrate. What would you like to do?’

I took a big breath, put my finger to my lips, and gazed about the room.

‘Anything you like,’ he added.

I was still thinking. ‘Come along, Bella,’ said Mother.

‘I know,’ I replied. ‘Let’s go out and buy some new underwear.’

Chapter Two

IN MY RED BLAZER with a buttoned white blouse tucked into the waistband of a pleated navy blue skirt, with my clear eyes, my hair in a long plait down to the middle of my back and a straw hat with a ribbon resting on my knees, I was everything the neat clean schoolgirl ought to be.

My uniform combined the colours of the Union Jack and, despite my Mediterranean inclinations, a sense of triumph touched me when I glimpsed the flag waving from the chapel spire at the Convent of Saint Sebastian the Holy Martyr. I was sure we were going to be happy together.

We had driven for an hour through the Kent countryside to the coast. The convent stood on grass-trimmed chalk cliffs, a yellow brick building laced with ivy and protected behind high walls that made me wonder if they were designed to keep people out or the girls in. Why we were forced to dress in uniform I had no idea, it was so 20th century, but the nuns had their habits, and it was thought that students were more obedient and learned more in traditional dress.

We passed through the open gates and crunched over the gravel drive below tall trees that were shedding their golden leaves along the way. It was the end of September, the smell of change drifting in from the sea as I stepped from the car. Mother marched off to the Bursar’s office and the nun waiting at the entrance with her hands gripped behind her bustled down the steps with an intense expression and guided us to the dorms. ‘Sister Theresa, geography,’ she said in introduction and leaned forward to gain traction like a duck racing across the surf. . .