Chapter Thirty-Nine
There were two apotheke pharmacies in Kristalldorf, which rotated late-night opening during the ski season, to cater for all the tourists’ blister, pain relief and knee-support needs.
‘You can use some of mine?’ Emme said, proffering her moisturiser. The kids were in bed and Bill was watching a Jack Reacher movie. Lexy frowned. There was clearly no way she would put Clinique on her porcelain skin.
‘Would you be a doll and pop to the pharmacy? They stock Dr Levy serum there …’ Lexy fawned, her own face taking on the appearance of a sweet, porcelain doll. Lexy was in her bath robe, white towel wrapped in a turban on her head, having spent the evening trying to cling onto her youth.
Emme was about to head back to the apartment when she thought fuck it and decided to extend her walk a little.
Make Lexy wait. Emme needed to walk and mull over just how right that had felt in the clothes store, when she knew he was so wrong.
So she pocketed the skin serum and wound through a backstreet and down a tiny alley whose wooden-beamed huts and small stone houses almost touched overhead.
The street was shrouded in darkness and silence, except for distant music coming from a nearby bar.
A couple walked past, wrapped up and giddy, and the man reminded her of Tom. She considered Tom, and how it hadn’t been him she was yearning for in the boutique this afternoon. The woman smiled at Emme as she rested her head on her partner’s shoulder. Emme smiled back as the couple passed.
The silhouette of another figure appeared at the top of the alleyway, backlit by the lamps of a busier street behind him.
A long shadow approached and the figure edged into a locked hut’s doorway to make way for Emme.
It was only as they were almost side by side, strangers in the dark trying to avoid touching, that she realised the man was Tristan.
‘Oh.’ Emme said, stopping in her tracks and relaxing a little. ‘It’s you.’
Tristan narrowed his eyes to focus.
‘Hey,’ he said, softly but assuredly.
Their bodies were close; encased by the cobbled street and its buildings.
The air was crisp and cold, carrying the faint scent of pine, snow and Tristan’s musky fragrance.
He was wearing his grey down jacket and a scarf; he carried his gloves, as if he were just about to put them on. He looked stunningly sexy.
Emme felt a jolt ripple through her body. She gazed into his eyes, caught in a slice of moonlight.
‘What was that about earlier?’ she asked with a smile, but something about Tristan looked haunted and her eyebrows knitted into a frown that mirrored his. ‘Everything OK?’
‘Yeah, yeah, busy night,’ he said, pointing his thumb over his shoulder behind him. ‘Just dropped my buyers back after dinner.’
Emme pictured him at dinner, enchanting his wine buyers, wondering if he’d lingered on their encounter in the boutique. She hadn’t been able to get it out of her head.
‘What about you? What are you up to?’ Tristan asked, warmly.
‘Just running an errand for Lexy,’ Emme smiled, silently acknowledging how demanding her boss was. Tristan recognised it in all Emme didn’t say.
‘Yeah, she used to make me run errands for her.’
Emme was surprised.
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, like I said, she used to boss me around when I was a kid.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘On holidays in Africa.’
Emme still couldn’t imagine their families being entwined. Or Tristan doing anyone’s bidding. She took the serum out of her pocket and waved it.
‘Well, I got her face cream, so now she can get her beauty sleep.’ Emme said it wearily. She didn’t want to talk about Lexy. She had been gifted a chance encounter with this sexy – conflicting – man who made her feel a million things all at once.
They locked eyes until Emme broke the beat.
‘You know, you didn’t need to buy me that stuff,’ she said, wondering if it was a little problematic. This was not Pretty Woman and she was no one’s whore. But god, she fancied Tristan, shrouded in the shadows.
‘I know,’ he said, gloves in his left hand, as he pushed his hair back with his right.
‘But I wanted to.’ He shrugged and smiled. ‘And you wear it well.’
The night was thick with anticipation as Emme and Tristan found themselves edging closer, the moon drawing them together like the tide being pulled to the shore.
He looked at Emme, and she felt the pent-up passion of his gaze.
‘I want you,’ he leaned in and said, breathily and blatantly.
She smiled. She felt it, although she wasn’t sure why he wanted her.
She arced her body as he met her with his, almost proffering her neck. Tristan took the cue and kissed it, pressing his full lips from her collarbone up to her jaw.
Emme let out a hopeless breath. She didn’t want to be another conquest but her legs were trembling, that delicious wetness from earlier rising inside her again, until she turned to face to him and he cupped her cheekbones with his hands.
Fuck it.
Emme rose on the balls of her feet and their breath mingled, then their lips, then their tongues.
His kiss was as gentle as it was passionate, their bodies pressing together feverishly as their embrace got faster and more frenzied.
Their hands drew to each other’s hair; Emme felt Tristan’s hardness in her abdomen as the world beyond the backstreet faded into oblivion as if they were the only two people on the planet.
Emme broke for air and let out a groan as Tristan went back to her neck, now ravaging it as he pushed her into the wooden doorway and his hard-on grew bigger.
Emme breathed frantically. She remembered what his cock looked like on the balcony.
How beautiful it was sheathed by his boxers.
She remembered how softly he’d circled her for a few stolen seconds.
‘We can go back to mine?’ he suggested.
Then Emme remembered the women. Sisters.
This is crazy!
She pulled back and shook her head. She could feel the coldness of the building’s exterior behind her. The warmth of his strong, hard body in front on her.
‘No,’ she said, flustered. ‘I can’t.’
Tristan studied Emme to see if she was serious.
‘OK,’ he said, respectful disappointment filling his smile.
Another couple entered the alley, two male friends talking through tomorrow’s skiing schedule, and Emme and Tristan hurriedly and instinctively hugged each other tight, shrouding their faces into a secret embrace so as not to be recognised.
The men passed and they released each other from their cocoon.
Emme took a deep breath.
‘Want me to walk you home? If you are going home …’
‘I am. And I don’t. But thank you,’ Emme said, before walking away, utterly confused.