Chapter Fifty-Two
Emme knocked on what she hoped was the right apartment door, frantic and cold, still wearing Tiago’s clothes under her lilac puffer. His boots had cut through the snow, leaving a trail from Chalet Stern to the building with the love hearts cut out of the balconies.
‘Who is it?’ said a gruff voice.
‘It’s me, Emme,’ she replied, her chest pounding.
Tristan opened his apartment door, gingerly, and looked at Emme. His eye was swollen and bleeding. His bare torso cut. Soul music played through the stereo in the warmly lit apartment behind him.
‘Jesus!’
Emme clutched his face in alarm, examining the damage more closely.
She hadn’t seen the extent of it at the time as, after helping Emme up and dusting her down, Tristan had shaken his head at the bemused crowd and walked out, pride and face both bruised.
He hadn’t realised until he got home that he had shards of glass jabbed into his left shoulder blade too.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked, examining Emme’s worried face.
‘Yeah yeah, none of it cut me …’
They appraised each other’s faces as Emme put her hand to Tristan’s split eye, to where Dimitri had landed the blow and cut his eyebrow with the edge of his Rolex.
‘Oh no …’ she groaned, before dotting it with three gentle kisses, the action coming naturally to her, knowing it was this softness he needed.
‘Gosh, Tristan, have you put ice on that?’
He shook his head and winced, then opened the door wider to let her in.
Tristan’s apartment was small, simple and homely.
It had mid-century European furniture, a neat kitchen and functional curtains.
It looked like a holiday rental rather than a billionaire playboy’s bachelor pad.
A fire roared from a small log burner. Al Green played through speakers while CNN rolled muted on TV.
In the low glow of a lamp, Emme sat side-saddle across Tristan’s lap and gently pressed a checked tea towel filled with ice to his eye, cleaning it as she dabbed.
She’d discarded Tiago’s boots and trousers and wore just a sweatshirt and her underwear. Tristan wore jersey joggers that showed the outline of his exceptional cock, his broad and tanned torso bare. Emme checked his shoulder blade for any last pieces of glass.
‘What a mess,’ Emme said.
Tristan put his hand on top of Emme’s to slow down her movements at his brow.
‘I’m sorry. Not my finest hour,’ he said, stroking the curve of her thigh with his free hand.
‘You didn’t do anything wrong today!’ Emme said defiantly, inwardly cursing the Greek man with the pointy face.
‘No, but I did,’ Tristan said, with some shame.
He certainly had. And Emme knew she was on a precipice as she looked at him and wondered if she should have come. He had hurt Vivian and slept with her sister. But she couldn’t not come. She had to see him tonight.
‘Vivian seems really nice …’ Emme said, regretfully.
‘She is,’ he winced. ‘I shouldn’t have messed her around.’
Tristan sighed and leaned his head back against the wall.
‘Maybe it was a fucked-up way of ensuring she’d hate me.’
Emme stopped dabbing his brow.
‘Why do you want her to hate you?’
Tristan took a laboured sigh.
‘Because she should hate me. I’m the son of Charles Joubert. My dad screwed her dad out of his most spectacular hotel. I twisted the knife when I sold it to the Russians.’
Emme looked at him, confused. He seemed to make life harder for himself.
Is that what he was doing with her sitting across his lap?
Getting involved with someone it could never go anywhere with?
Someone who would inevitably hate him? She was the help who worked for his friends.
Although now she thought about it, she hadn’t seen him talking to Lexy or Bill either at the party.
‘Vivian seemed willing to overlook it, but I know what my dad and I did caused Walter Steinherr heartache.’
‘Did Walter approve of you two?’
‘I never gave him the chance to.’
Emme studied his strikingly handsome face, his dark tousled hair pushed back off it. His thick straight brows sheltering an intense gaze.
‘So you were being cruel to be kind? Come on …’ Emme said, as if she was no fool. ‘Were you not just being greedy?’
Tristan pierced her with a look.
‘If Vivian’s father has picked her to succeed him with the Steinherr group, she can’t run the business and date me, not in the shadow of my family.’
He looked unnervingly neutral about it, which made Emme feel cautious.
‘So you want her but can’t have her?’
God this guy is a headfuck, Emme thought.
Tristan took Emme’s hand.
‘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 am fascinated by 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 between her 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.