‘I want you.’
He kissed Emme slowly and carefully while he adjusted his position, his elegant athleticism jarring with his sore shoulder.
Emme let Tristan gently slip his tongue inside her mouth. She raised her hands to his face, the cuffs of Tiago’s sweatshirt caressing his jaw as she stroked him with her thumb. She felt his hardness grow under her.
‘You do?’ Emme teased, pressing down a little.
‘So much. I amfascinatedby you.’
They kissed again, then Emme pulled back.
How could she trust a guy she had seen lie so expertly? Why hadn’t he got her number somehow? Called her from Geneva or London?
‘Really?’ she asked, as she put her hand on his cock, long and hard, rising in his lounging pants. He lifted her sweatshirt off with a wince of pain, then expeditiously removed her bra. She held his eye as her nipples were freed, level with his chest, as he stroked her breasts appreciatively. Emme groaned, before Tristan unwrapped the tea towel next to him on the sofa and picked up an ice cube. Without taking his eyes off her, he rolled it over Emme’s decolletage, down to one nipple, then the other. She moaned as water from the ice cube ran down betweenher breasts, then he licked and kissed each nipple with a considered tongue.
‘Oh Tristan…’ she groaned. ‘Can you…?’ she asked, wondering if he were up to it. She could feel a wetness in her underwear that she didn’t want to put a stop to. He nodded as he lifted her gently and slipped his hand inside the lace of her knickers, pulling them down her legs. Emme was fully naked now, sitting across Tristan’s clothed lap. She wanted to have him again, this time without hurry or haste. She wanted them to take their time and enjoy every second of the bliss that was about to come. She turned to fully face him and opened her legs to straddle him, while he raised them both off the sofa. Emme clung to Tristan’s pulsating arms as he kicked off his joggers and put his hands on her waist, positioning her glistening pussy over his throbbing cock.
‘Wait!’ she gasped breathily. And he instinctively leaned, arcing their clinch so he could grab a condom from the drawer of the side table at the end of the sofa, before slumping back down so he could skilfully slide it on.
‘God!’ he groaned as he felt the sweet tightness of her. She moaned too, then she lifted his chin so his eyes were on her.
‘Look at me,’ she commanded in a whisper.
They were going to make each other come, and she wanted him looking at her intently, so there was no hiding. She groaned as she eased down him and felt his shoulders finally relax.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Anastasia Steinherr sat in the back of a limousine, halfway to Germany, huge Gucci shades covering most of her bleary face. It had been a fretful night in the Kristall Palace, before she crashed out across the vast bed in the penthouse there, still dressed in carmine Valentino. When she had awoken at 4am, fuzzy-headed but defiant, she had showered and had the Kristall Palace yumbodriver take her to the Steinherr mansion, where she silently changed and packed a bag of clothes before creeping out before dawn.
At the car port at the edge of Kristalldorf, she met a waiting limo.
‘Where to, Mrs Diamandis?’ asked the driver.
‘The Black Forest.’
The six-hour journey to the luxury spa facility would give her enough time to send all the messages of regret and apology she needed to, and explain that she would be away for a while for some ‘rehab’. She sent the first one to Dimitri, who had made such a buffoon of himself, he almost didn’t warrant an apology. Fancy creating a scene like that! But she messaged him a few words to say sorry for the duplicity, and that she was going away for a while to work on herself.
As the driver wound through mountains and tunnels,past lakes and medieval turrets, Anastasia sent a message to Nanny Iris to tell her to give the children her love and tell them she kissed them while they were sleeping (not true), and that she would write to them at school (which was true– handwritten letters were Anastasia’s favourite form of communication). She didn’t make any pledges about being back in time for Christmas, although she knew it would be on Nanny Iris’s mind.
She didn’t owe her father or sister an explanation right now– their treachery had been too much– but she sent Lysander a message, saying she was going away for a reset, and that perhaps with space in New York he could reflect and see things from her viewpoint.
She pondered Walter. Whatwasgoing on with her father? He was making all these erratic decisions lately. From marrying Kiki, to now having chosen Vivian to run the empire over her. It felt like a dagger to the heart. He was probably about to have a baby with Kiki, he was behaving so wildly. Why wasn’t she at the Kivvi Christingle anyway? The migraine seemed a little unlikely.
The thought of Walter and Kiki having a child repulsed her, as the car skirted Lake Constance. Perhaps that’s what this was all about, although Anastasia had been intrigued to see a vast pile of Kiki’s Louis Vuitton suitcases on the luggage rack by the front door as she left the Steinherr mansion in the dark.
She didn’t feel any sympathy for Tristan Du Kok, although he had been an exceptional lay, on several blistering occasions. She thought about texting him, but decided he could wait.
As she looked at the sorry grey clouds gathering overthe long lake, she thought about one person she did perhaps owe an apology to.
Anastasia opened her messages to Cat and paused her thumb over the text box as she looked at the photo. A smiling face in ski gear. Wild black curls. A terribly sexy mouth that had done wonderful things to Anastasia’s body. But what was the point now, Anastasia pondered. She had only pursued Cat last New Year’s Eve because she could be a key to Seven Summits. If her father was selling the apartments, then Anastasia and Cat were done.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Emme woke in Tristan’s arms to the sound of the bells chiming in the square for Sunday morning service. His naked body spooning hers like a Trojan warrior as she emerged from a blissful sleep. They had made love to each other, passionately and intensely on the sofa, then again in Tristan’s bed in the middle of the night, and Emme already knew she was in too deep to question it.
‘Tell me about London,’ he whispered, realising from the sound of her breathing that she was awake. Emme rolled over to face him, her body curled in a foetal position, her knees almost to his chest.
She put her hands on his muscular, tanned arms.
