One Stolen Kiss (19 page)

Still rolling her nipple thoughtfully between the fingers of one hand, his other started where it had left off – from under the lavender silk nightdress in Holland Park, midway between navel and nowhere in his bedroom, when they had argued over the clothes shopping. Christie melted beneath him, feeling his knuckle trailing down her lower midriff again, even more slowly, the contrast between the light caress below tugging internally for attention against the soft pinching of her breast. She was sure she had lost all sense of gravity. The bed could have been inverted on the ceiling for all she knew.

Slowly, unbearably, he closed in on the centre of her immediate need.

“
I want you,” she blurted.

He uncurled his finger and drew it straight down across her, burning through her heat and desire, sending the room cascading around them. She clung to his hand on her breast, her modest fingernails having no effect on his grip, as she dug them into his forearm to stop herself from screaming out loud.

“I want another kiss first,” Adrik muttered, darkly, when her shaking had ebbed.

He didn’t mean, on the mouth. He drew a slick circle around where he meant, igniting more fireworks inside her.

“Christie…” he urged, and his hand left her breast, stroking its way down to her hip alongside, showing that he meant business. “It’s not too late to say no. You can stop me if you want.”

Her face was burning, even more new levels of awareness still waiting for her, making her dizzy.

“I want you, Adrik,” she repeated. Wise or unwise, she didn’t care. “Please – don’t ever stop…”

He took what he wanted, reminding her in every way of the kiss she couldn’t have – hadn’t yet earned. And she writhed, and screamed into a pillow, bit her own tongue until it nearly bled, every muscle in her body being held hostage on a tightrope above Niagara Falls, giving up control and succumbing to unknown rapids below.

She was faint and weightless, after what seemed an hour in purgatory. He moved, and appeared above her, cupping her tear-stained cheek.

“
You’re hot,” he murmured, reached into the ice-bucket and found a handful of remaining ice chips in the chilled water. “In more ways than one.”

He popped them into his mouth, and fed them to her one at a time, allowing their dampened, chilled lips to barely touch. He moved down again to kiss and soothe her breasts, both nipples now bruised by his teasing. The effect of the ice-water on them from his tongue was like magic, reviving her, reawakening her still-aching need, deep inside.

“Do you want to go on?” he asked, his hands now roaming over her, soothing and possessive, almost afraid of being denied and wanting to remember every nuance. “I lost count of all your screams.”

“
Yes,” she whispered, and his arms closed around her waist, his teeth nipping her neck. She ran her hands, flat, over his back, his embrace safe, familiar, new and daunting all at once. “Are you practising safe sun?”

He raised his head, with a knowing glint.

“Sex,” he corrected her, and his eyes became a playful smoulder. “Well, I was stupid enough to let Lucas pack my things, so I’ve been finding them in every damn pocket.”

He knelt up, and drew out a square packet from the back of his board shorts, which she moved to help him tug down, while he placed the packet in the corner of his mouth for safekeeping.

“Job for you,” he said, and passed the packet to her own lips, directly from his. The board shorts vanished to the floor, presumably in the same direction as the bikini. “You’ve earned my trust on this occasion.”

A spark of hope flared inside her, but she said nothing, tearing the foil open with her teeth and sliding out the condom.

“Try and get it the right way around,” he teased, when she examined it for a second too long.

He helped her raise herself from the pillows to sit up in front of him, and she felt her mouth dry again, seeing his naked urgency ready and waiting for her, more of it than she knew what to do with. She’d never done this part before – should she hold it still? Did it require three hands? She recalled some long-ago sex-education class, where the loudest schoolmistress on the premises had bellowed at them all, squirming in humiliation in the senior games hall, that it was ‘not like a sock’ and that was the only thing any of the students could remember afterwards, re-naming the unfortunate schoolmistress accordingly.

Adrik smiled kindly, noting her current squirming. He leaned forwards, to kiss her on the ear.

“
Pinch the bubble on the top first,” he whispered, and guided her hands to him.

She felt his heat pulsing and hardening further as she rolled the protection slowly into place, and heard his own breath catching when she smoothed it down.

“Enough,” he hissed, and dropped back onto his heels, catching hold of her wrists. He lifted her arms to twine around his neck, and let his hands slip down, both thumbs circling around her breasts, en route to grasp her hips. “Kneel up, across my lap.”

What? Not missionary?

She moved tentatively astride him, her sore nipples brushing against his chest as she inched forwards on her knees, his hands leading her.

“
Wait…”

What now?

He cupped her behind with one hand, while his other stroked her again, holding her back and leading her right to the edge of screaming once more. She bit into his shoulder and cussed him, clinging tightly around his neck.

“
I speak French, remember,” he chuckled, kissing the soft inside of her arm pressed to his cheek, and tasting the perspiration on her. He took her beyond, so that she threw back her head as the room spun around again, gasping, crying, dissolving in his arms. “Now…”

He lifted her from her knees so that her legs wrapped around him, rising to meet her, tilting her back onto the pillows. One hand still under her hips as they stretched out, he guided them together, at first with only a gentle pressure, letting her get used to the feel of him against her.

Christie could sense him ready to penetrate, to thrust into her, as he held himself in check, resting on his elbows either side of her. She could feel her own pulse beating against him, throbbing in its own denial.

“
You can still say no,” he whispered against her lips. She felt a tear escape from the corner of her eye, into her hair. “It’s not too late.”

“
I still want you,” she murmured. She let her hands wander as his had done, needing to remember him, to feel him against her, inside her. “All of you.”

She felt the pressure tighten, and as it increased to breaking point, his mouth fell upon hers. After a split second of resistance, her body surrendered, yielding to his strength, welcoming the spear of pain that lanced through her – and he tasted her surrender, transforming the pain into an ecstasy that she never wanted to end.

* * * *

Adrik couldn’t leave Christie alone afterwards. He stalked her into the shower, came up behind her, and teased her body with his hands and tongue until she screamed blue murder in French, pinning her to the colourful mosaic tiles while the crushed rose petals disappeared gradually down the brass drain.

It was the need to eat and drink that eventually brought them back out onto the terrace in the late afternoon. Christie submitted to the sun-block, perching in front of him on the same lounger, squashing bread and olives together and dipping them into balsamic vinegar and oil.

“
Only because you really can’t keep your hands to yourself now,” she said wryly, as he massaged the cream into her shoulders and back, around and under the strings of the recovered bikini-top. “Will you be re-negotiating the terms of this arrangement accordingly?”

“
You’re going to have to stay sitting in front of me for a bit longer,” he told her, avoiding the question. “Or the next paparazzi boat to whiz past will think they’ve spotted a light-house.”

“
Again?” Her eyes widened.

“
Give me a chance to eat something first, and I’ll oblige,” he grinned. He tickled the base of her spine with a sun-cream-slick fingertip. “Or you could just move up onto my lap right here and go
alfresco
.”

“
You’ll be
alfresco
,” she pointed out. “Unless you’ve got more of Elsie and Lucas’s love-letters in your shorts.”

He checked another cargo pocket on the leg, and gave her a look of triumph, holding up a shiny purple square.

She shied away from his challenge, but ten minutes later he succeeded, in the pool.

* * * *

They were joined for candlelit dinner that night in the main house by people whom Eileen referred to as her ‘real neighbours’ – authentic and permanent residents of the Lake Como community. Another elderly artist and photographer, a retired Swedish actress and her Italian movie director husband, some ageing Sicilian business types that Christie was fairly certain would be Mafia, a couple of former politicians, and a celebrated local property developer and restorer of the many classic homes dotting the area.

“
My apology to you all for the great debauched circus that will be arriving tomorrow,” she toasted them, under her headgear of pillar-box sequins and an Art Deco-style veil. “And also to anyone who may be cruising the lake.”

“
Paparazzi?” Christie queried.

“
Oh, them too. Hopefully not too many, the boats are all fully-booked… my scarlet macaw, Xaviér, is being evicted, as usual. He will be out on his yacht
Flint
, with his beloved Consuèla for company. It would not be good for the convivial mood or pleasant expressions in the photos to be hearing
‘Puta! Puta!’
hollered in the background all day. The last time I let him stay for a party, when it was raining, people in the photographs looked like they had been sucking lemons all evening. Not
your
lemons, Giovanni. You grow the most beautiful lemons…”

After the smoked salmon, they were served wild boar and black olives with a potato gratin and buttery fine green beans, greeted with enthusiasm by the guests. The peppery, blackcurranty dark red wine was delicious with the meal, and Christie, who was not a wine buff in the slightest, found it hard to limit herself to tiny sips as it complemented the food so well.

“How do you think she would react, if I asked her if we can always come here for dinner after sex?” Adrik whispered.

Christie’s nerves danced.

“Depends,” she murmured, trying to hide the blush in her cheeks behind her linen napkin, with one hand. Hopefully they’d all think it was the wine, getting to her. “How often do you like to eat dinner?”

“
At least six – maybe seven times a day,” he teased.

In danger of making the antique bronze fork rattle against her plate, Christie set it down and tried to think of a smart or witty retort.

“If I said that word now that you were saying earlier…” she mused. “
More-zhna
– how would
you
react?”

His eyes seemed to dilate even further in the candle-light.

“I would say,” he began, and he leaned in closer so that his lips brushed almost against her ear, sending ripples of yearning chasing through her. “That you had better learn what it means.”

He was right. Christie immediately wondered what on Earth she had either called him, or implied.

“You will meet the dreadful little PR man tomorrow, Adrik,” Eileen called down the table. “He has just come out of hospital in time. A transient ischemic attack, it was. Ha! I have one of those every night! It’s the only way I get to sleep at my age… that means a little tiny stroke, Giovanni… Oh! You devil…”

“
Derek Goldman?” Adrik asked, sitting back upright and picking up his glass. Christie’s blood froze. “I recall you talking about him, yes.”

“
Apparently he woke up after a party, and could not remember why he was in London,” Eileen continued, and the guests chortled knowingly. “I know! We have all been there, have we not? Ridiculous!”

“
I don’t know where I am right now,” sighed the Swedish actress, already onto her third glass of wine, and her husband nodded at Christie and Adrik resignedly.

“
Well, anyway – he still remembers me, and what he does for a living,” said Eileen. “So – as he is still the best, I thought it would be good for you to meet him in case you need any advice for the wedding. Who are you painting next? I won a picture in your auction. Of the Republican chap. He has called a hundred times trying to buy it from me, and it hasn’t even arrived yet. I think I might put it in one of the guest bathrooms.”

“
I have a commission,” Adrik told her. “Just a regular family portrait. Then I’ll wait and see what inspires me.”

Christie only realised she had drained her glass when the elderly photographer, who barely spoke, leaned over and sweetly refilled it for her.

She wondered how likely it was that she’d be able to avoid bumping into Derek tomorrow.

By the sound of things, the great mansion was due to be heaving. But she wasn’t worried about him seeing her. He’d always pretended she wasn’t there. That was the way their relationship had worked. And the way he had completely blanked her and dumped her stuff, she guessed that wasn’t likely to have changed – unless his mystery illness, which was news to her, had done something drastic to his personality.