We stood there, in a tucked-away corner of Innsbruck airport, surrounded by white-capped Alps, and Willem Bentinck-Stanley held out a hand for me to shake.
“I’m very happy that you could come,” he said.
We shook.
I smiled. I said, “So... dinner? I don’t have a stitch to wear.”
§
That luxury. That decadence.
Being able to step onto an airplane in one city, land in another. No luggage. Not even a carry-on other than my purse with my useless English money, a couple of cards, my cell phone, some lip gloss and powder, and some Handy Andy tissues.
That, and for it not to be a worry.
To know that I was being taken to dinner and that there would be clothes for me to change into, someone to do my make-up, someone for my hair.
Jeez, but he lived in another world entirely.
This was his normal. This was how it was for him.
My assistant – an assistant to dress! – told me the dress was by Jill Sander. Deep blue silk, off the shoulder with a sweetheart neckline and almost no back at all. The jewelry was simple, just a delicate Tiffany chain with three tiny diamonds and a matching bracelet. The make-up was Crème de la Mer and Dior, the hair by someone whose last job had been for minor royalty. And the shoes...
I wasn’t going to be wowed. I’d already decided that.
It was just money. Stinking big piles of money. That’s all it was.
I wasn’t going to be impressed. Not even by a pair of black, lace and satin, crystal-encrusted Manolo Blahniks.
Everything fit like a glove, like a second skin. There had never been any question of that.
And no. I wasn’t wowed.
I was beyond wowed.
If he was gaming me and this was his game, then I was along for the ride.
Does that make me sound shallow? Does it make me a tramp?
Maybe, in some people’s eyes. But I still had my sensible head on. I knew my limits, my boundaries.
And now, for the first time in my life, I knew what it was to be dressed from head to toe in clothes that could have been made for me, in a costume that for probably cost more than a year’s rent on my apartment.
My year had certainly turned around from that January that was only memorable for a bout of winter vomiting sickness and a burst water pipe. Whatever happened this evening, there was no denying that.
15.
I stood at the window of my suite. The white mountains all around were lit up in gold and bronze by the dying embers of the late summer sun. The hotel was a short distance out of Innsbruck, a grand white building that commanded a breathtaking view down its own Alpine valley. The walls were clad in Italian Carrara marble, apparently – Will had told me, before I’d reminded him about his tendency to show off. From the look on his face I wondered if he’d been about to tell me that he owned this place, another legacy of his family fortune.
Even as I watched, the colors on the mountain tops changed, softening and fading until the peaks were just dark, jagged shapes against the night sky.
A maid showed me to a private dining room a floor down from my suite. Will waited for me at a table set for two before French windows that gave the same awe-inspiring view down the valley.
“Okay,” I said, as I lowered myself onto a chair drawn back for me by a tail-coated waiter. “So all this... it’s on a par with your van Gogh and that little Rembrandt by the stairs in your massive country home. So why? Why me? What are you after?”
He poured wine, something incredibly dark, almost black. He looked up at me after a few seconds, and smiled. “I love that you’re so direct,” he said. “I love that you’re not fazed by any of this.”
“But still you try.”
The wine was heady, an intense hit of fruitiness and then something dry, tart almost. I’d never drunk anything like it.
“If you were hoping to get me into bed – I know you told your buddies at the wedding that you would have me.” He winced at that. “Well, it takes more than Rembrandt and private jets and incredibly drinkable and probably very expensive wine. Call me old-fashioned but I like to get to know a guy.”
“The wine,” he said, “it’s actually very reasonable. I know what I like.” Somehow he managed to put far more meaning behind that simple sentence than should have been possible. He knows what he likes, he gets what he wants. “And the rest? The Rembrandts are family heirlooms, the jet mere practicality, the best way to get you from London to here in time for dinner.”
I noted the plural for the Rembrandts: I’d only seen one at Yeadham Hall.
“And old-fashioned? I would never call you that. It makes good sense to get to know someone before you get in too deep. To know their quirks, their idiosyncrasies, their desires...”
This was different Will. This wasn’t the flustered, apologetic Will, the upper class twit who stumbled through life. It wasn’t edgy, predator Will either. This Will was in smooth control. His words were carefully chosen, every sentence like a thread in a spider’s web, designed to entrap, enfold.
Their desires...
“You didn’t bring me here to talk about the book, then?”
“Perhaps. I may have been too dismissive the other day.” Yet another snare set for me: keep that professional interest alive too, as well as all... all this. The setting, the jet, the clothes. All of it. Did he know I’d always been drawn to mountains, that my favorite childhood vacations were when we went skiing in the White Mountains of New Hampshire? That little lodge we stayed in near Attitash, where we could look out over the valley and make up stories about the twinkling lights of the other lodges and hotels. Was this all carefully chosen to play on that, or was that just coincidence?
And just where is that fine line between attention to detail and stalking?
Just then, the waiter returned with two plates. Diagonally across each plate was a line of delicate slices of pale meat, just a little pink in the centre, drizzled with a red wine sauce and accompanied by a few artfully arranged baby salad leaves and shoots.
“Quail breasts,” said Will. “I ordered ahead.”
The in-control Will. I didn’t normally like to be treated like this, but sometimes... well, what’s there to argue with a powerful man giving you what he knows you will love?
The meat was so tender it just dissolved on the tongue, and there was that subtle gaminess to it that I adored.
“So why all this?” I asked again. “It can hardly be that you need to get to know me. You’ve clearly done your research: what more is there to discover?”
He visibly winced again.
“I thought perhaps you could try your book pitch on me again,” he said, pausing with a forkful of quail in mid-air. “I thought we could spend some time together, try to work out why it is that I feel this intense attraction to you and whether it might be mutual. That kind of thing.”
Gaming me. Always gaming me.
“I have work in the morning,” I said. “Does your plan include getting me home after dinner?”
“If that’s what you want, yes,” he said. “It’s a two-hour flight, and then a car to your door. It’ll be a late night, for which I apologize, and I really should have made it clearer when I invited you, but I was fearful that you might have turned me down.”
“So, I can add deception to your list of crimes?”
“Economy with the truth,” he said. “Not deception.”
I looked down and saw that my plate was clean. I took my napkin and dabbed at my lips, then freshened up the gloss with the little Dior brush I’d been given back in the suite.
He watched me closely, which was just as well. He was meant to. He wasn’t the only one who knew how to play games.
“So why Austria? What brought you here? Family business? More James Bond fun and games?”
I didn’t expect the answer that I received. I expected him to be evasive, to drop hints about brave deeds, high-level negotiations. I expected him to tell me he was here t
o visit this little hotel he owned overlooking its own private valley in the heart of the Austrian Alps.
“A girl,” he said. “A girl and blackmail.”
§
“Sally Fielding,” he told me. “Her name is Sally Fielding. I knew her at Cambridge.”
“Old girlfriend?” Our plates had been removed, and replaced with tiny crystal bowls of champagne sorbet. To cleanse the palate before the entrée, Will had told me.
He shrugged, falling back into that slightly flustered act of his.
“That a ‘yes’?”
“A ‘kind of’,” he said. “Sally was a popular girl.”
I tried not to laugh out loud at that. My head was a mad rush of thoughts, foremost of which was the question of why he’d brought me here to tell me about an ex-girlfriend. “‘Popular’...?”
“Not like that,” he said. “You’re deliberately misinterpreting me.”
Sure I am. But only because you’re not telling it to me straight.
“So,” I said. “Sally Fielding?”
“There was a bit of a to do,” he said. “A falling out.”
That’s when I remembered something Charlie – or was it Ethan? – had told me. The three of them, Charlie, Ethan and Will, had been close at Cambridge. Then something had happened, a dispute over a girl, and they’d fallen out. The bad chemistry survived to this day.
That girl must have been Sally Fielding.
“So why are you telling me this now?”
“Because Sally’s back on the scene and she’s in trouble and you asked me why I was here in Austria. I came out here to help. There were drugs and shady characters involved. Money. Of course there was money, where Sally was involved. I’d have helped her anyway. She didn’t need to resort to blackmail.”
“What is there to blackmail you about?”
“Everyone has something to be blackmailed about. But if you’re someone who gets involved in hush-hush business on behalf of his family and country, then you’re even more exposed.”
I wondered then if I’d got him completely wrong. Up until that point I’d taken it for granted that he’d brought me here to wow me and then get me into bed. But if that was the case would he really be telling me all this?
“So why me? Why am I here?”
He shrugged. “You’re here because you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever had the luck to encounter,” he said. “You’re here because I can’t get you out of my mind. You’re here because I keep making an absolute arse of myself to you and I hope I can redeem myself, at least a little.” He spread his hands, and looked at me with eyes I could easily get lost in. “You’re here because I’m having a shit time and I’m selfish and you’re the most glorious, indulgent, beautiful distraction for me. You’re here–”
“Enough,” I said. I put my hand on one of his, pressing it back down to the table between us. “Just enough, okay?”
He could show me all the van Goghs and Rembrandts, the artists who were old friends of the family. He could put me on a private jet and fly me anywhere in the world. He could dress me in fine clothes and jewelry from Tiffany, have my hair done by a hairdresser to a princess. He could do all of that and, while it would be a thrill, it wouldn’t really work. I’m not that shallow.
But say those words, describe me as the most glorious, indulgent, beautiful distraction while looking at me with those dark, dreamy eyes... Do that and I just melt.
§
He’d brought me here so that I could find out more about him, so that he might just start to redeem himself in my eyes.
So I learnt that he had studied at Harvard for a year, around the time I’d been at Yale. I learnt that he could, of course, pilot that private jet of his, just as he flew his own helicopter. I learnt that he was a champion fencer, and could easily have competed at the Olympics if he’d had the time. I learnt that he grew orchids in a hot room in one of the wings of Yeadham Hall.
I learnt that he wore a cologne that was both spicy and citrus, something I half-recognized but then decided I didn’t. It was somehow the perfumier’s equivalent of that dark, intense look of his, a scent you could lose yourself in.
I learnt that his jacket, tailored to hug his physique, just slid off his shoulders, its sheer lining sliding smoothly against the fine high thread-count Egyptian cotton of his shirt.
I learnt what it was like to have that five o’clock shadow stubble that he favored dragging gently against my own soft skin, as I fell into his embrace, his cheek against mine, that stubble rasp, that hard line of his jaw, the whisper of his breath at my ear.
I learnt what it was like to melt into those strong arms.
This wasn’t flustered, apologetic Will.
This was the in-control Will. This was the Will who took my in his arms by that window, the valley unfolding before us, our entrees sitting untouched on the table; the Will who held me close and whose heart I could feel beating against mine, whose growing hardness now pressed against the pit of my belly, whose hand in the small of my back held me close against him, whose hand at the back of my neck positioned me for his kiss.
16.
The private dining room was part of his suite, of course.
He started to undress me at that window, peeling my dress slowly down my body.
The backless dress and low sweetheart neck meant that I wore no bra, and so I stood there, leaning back against the frame of those French windows, my dress pulled down to my waist, my breasts lit silver by the moonlight reflected from mountain snow, the nipples dark, hard nubs which, now, he lowered his head to.
That rasp of stubble, dragging down one breast, the softness of his lips. A tongue-flick against a nipple.
Teeth. The sudden sharp pain of teeth closing on my nipple, and then the softness of that wet tongue again, flick, flick, flicking.
I buried my fingers in his hair, holding him there.
His other hand was working at my dress, trying to slide it down over my hips.
“The back,” I gasped. “A catch at the back.”
He turned me roughly, surprising me with his strength, with his urgency. I’d thought he would be a gentle lover, but no, he was rough, strong, domineering.
He pushed me against the glass, my nipples so sensitive to the sudden chill. I felt his hands on my hips, one at the base of my back, a sudden easing as my dress was released, and then he was against me, pressing himself against my ass, the hardness through his pants a sudden, maddening tease.
I reached back, slipped my hand between us, found that hardness.
I tipped my head back, knowing what my long auburn hair must look like, waterfalling down my bare back in the moonlight.
I fumbled at his buttons. I needed that hardness.
He stepped back, loosened his tie and started unbuttoning his shirt.
I stayed where I was, just stepping out of my dress and kicking it away. Now, only in a silk thong and those Manolo Blahniks, I stood with my hands above my head, palms flat against the glass. My face was against the glass, too, turned to one side so I could look back at him, watch him undress. My breasts, squashed against that cold glass, the nipples hard from the chill, hard from arousal.
The last of the buttons undone, his open shirt revealed a hard body, tightly muscled, and covered with a fine mat of dark body hair, thickening at the nipples and lower belly.
His belt, the buttons of his pants. Kicking those pants free and then pulling his short, black socks off.
Black boxers, the fabric stretched taut.
I wanted to turn. I wanted to go to him, take him in my arms, reach down for that hardness again, explore it.
I stood at the window, instead, and he came to me.
That hardness against the divide of my ass. The fabric of his boxers was wet where the head of his manhood pressed.
He moved against me, aligning himself so that his shaft ran up between my buttocks.
One hand stole around, found the flat of my belly, held me, and then, slowly, move
d lower.
The other hand buried itself in my long hair, pulling my head back so that his mouth could find my throat, while all the time that other hand worked lower.
His hand pressed against my mound, the palm lying over the flimsy fabric of my thong and the narrow strip of hair beneath. He pulled at the thong, sliding it down around my thighs and then that hand returned. His fingers cupped me, pressed, and the tip of his middle finger dipped into my wetness.
I’d had strong lovers before. Charlie liked it rough. He liked me to feel his strength. But I’d never been taken quite like this, never felt myself so totally dominated. His arm was like steel around me, holding me in place while that palm pressed and those fingers stroked and pressed. That fist buried in my hair seemed to lock my whole upper body in place, pulling my head back almost painfully, but a pain that was so close to pleasure that the two blurred, merged, and it was all part of the same sensation as his mouth explored my neck. His teeth dragged across taut skin, his tongue gliding and pressing. His lips... that rasp of stubble.
Everything was alive, everything intensified.
He turned me, in one powerful movement, his hard body driving me against that glass, lifting me to my toes, almost clear of the ground.
Now it was my turn to take over.
I buried a hand in his tousled hair, pulling his head back as he had done to me. I kissed his jaw, his neck, down across his collarbone. I reached down and pulled his shorts down to his thighs and his manhood sprang out.
It was hard like steel in my hand, broad and long...
The head was wet, as I swirled my thumb and forefinger around it.
It tasted salty and slightly sweet as I lowered myself and took him in my mouth, still hanging onto the base of that impressive shaft.
I swallowed him deep, but still there was length enough for my hand to wrap around that shaft. I started to bob my head back and forth, my lips pursed tight, sucking hard each time I pulled away.
Now it was his hands on the window, his head thrown back.
With my free hand I cupped his balls, squeezing and rolling them together, one long finger pressing hard behind them, applying pressure to that so sensitive area.
I thought he was going to climax right then, after those few seconds of my sucking him deep like that. His body stiffened, he started to thrust harder, and then his hands found my head, fingers burying themselves in my hair once again.
Shades of Submission: Fifty by Fifty #1: Billionaire Romance Boxed Set Page 39