by Lynne Graham
And he lifted her up and sank into her so hard and deep and fast that she cried out with excitement.
Bastian groaned with sensual satisfaction. ‘Hot...wet...tight, khriso mou, my every dream come true.’
Emmie was on a high of rapturous sensation. He rode her with abandon, pleasuring her with hard rapid strokes that stoked her excitement to feverish heights. She was out of control, her heart thundering as she flew high on his erotic rhythm, her body rising to meet his. At the apex of her climax she convulsed around him, shattering in the devouring waves of pleasure that consumed her.
‘On a scale of one to ten that was an eleven, khriso mou,’ Bastian breathed raggedly, releasing her from his weight only to snake an arm round her and hold her captive to his long lean length.
His comment jarred, slicing like a blade through the cosy cocoon of relaxation Emmie’s body was embracing, because she was too well aware that in bed she had nobody she could compare him to. It made her feel cheap to think he might be comparing her to past lovers and she stiffened defensively.
Her movement made Bastian look down at the arms he still had wrapped round her restless body. Faint colour accentuating his high cheekbones because he was uncomfortable with his own unfamiliar behaviour, he freed her abruptly, but not before he had dropped a kiss on her furrowed brow.
‘So where do we go from here?’ Emmie prompted.
Bastian hated questions like that and he thought it was typical that Emmie would put him on the spot and want immediate answers. ‘It’s just sex,’ he parried very drily. ‘Let’s not get too worked up about it.’
Face burning in receipt of that demeaning response, Emmie froze and gritted her teeth together.
Bastian knew he had said the wrong thing but he was too arrogant to take it back. He also didn’t know the answer to her question and was already mentally sidestepping all the many complications he imagined lay ahead of them. She was carrying his kids and that made her much more than a lover. He tensed, not in the mood to think about that reality and suddenly very keen to be distracted from such troublesome and confusing thoughts.
‘Let’s go out to eat,’ he suggested abruptly.
‘I was going to make a meal.’
Bastian didn’t want to share an intimate meal in the apartment because he foresaw more difficult questions hovering like storm clouds on his horizon. ‘I can’t stay long,’ he told her, sliding out of the bed with fluid grace. ‘I’m flying to Australia tomorrow and moving on into Asia to check our operations there. I’ll be away for a while.’
Taken aback by this first reference to his imminent departure, Emmie sat up, feeling ridiculously lonely and lost. It’s just sex. His bronzed profile was hard and taut, his tension palpable to her. He didn’t want her attaching fancy labels to their lovemaking or attaching strings of commitment to him. She might be pregnant with his babies and he might still want to have rampant sex with her, but he was not prepared to offer her a more serious relationship. Had she really expected anything else? All over again she had tumbled into bed with Bastian without thinking about what she was doing, without worrying about how he thought of her or wondering about where it would lead.
Bastian’s silence, his patent eagerness to leave gave her an answer she really didn’t want. A hard lump filled her throat and she couldn’t swallow. She felt hurt, desperately hurt and rejected. Obviously she wanted more from Bastian than she was currently receiving. Equally obviously she had been in proud denial of what he could make her feel. Yet again she had ignored the clear limits of their association, for she dared not call it a relationship.
‘If you don’t feel like going out, I’ll order food in,’ Bastian volunteered, buttoning his shirt, grabbing up his jacket.
In that moment she hated him more than any man alive. ‘I’ve already eaten,’ she lied.
‘You know you need to be eating more when you’re being so sick,’ Bastian reminded her darkly.
Sensing his impatience, Emmie simply nodded agreement. ‘You order,’ she advised, snaking out of bed to snatch up her dressing gown and vanish into the bathroom.
She had never felt less hungry in her life, she acknowledged wretchedly. It’s just sex. Those three words had ripped her apart and forced her to re-examine the consequences of allowing Bastian to pay her bills and maintain a roof over her head. Did he see her as something less now? Had he ever had any respect for her? It’s just sex. Even worse, did he now think of her as his mistress? How did a very rich man regard a woman whom he was already keeping? Certainly not as an equal. Emmie knew she had a big nasty decision to make but she would have to handle that later when Bastian had gone. Right then the bravest thing she had ever done in her life was shelve all her messy emotions, walk back out of the bathroom, throw on the only jeans that still fitted her and join him in the lounge where he was already ensconced watching the business news.
Korean food was delivered. While he watched she nibbled, chased the food round her plate, drank a lot of water. ‘You need to eat more,’ Bastian told her again and he leant out of his chair to close a big hand round her thin forearm. ‘You’re getting ridiculously skinny.’
Hot colour splashed her cheeks and then receded again as she wondered if he found that thinness unattractive. Her bright blue eyes rested on his handsome features, lingering on the spiky black lashes shading his dark golden gaze, the strong blade of his nose, the hard cheekbones and the beautifully modelled mouth. She swallowed hard, taking a mental snapshot of him because she already knew it would be a long time, if ever, before she saw him again.
‘I’ll phone when I can,’ Bastian told her at the front door, looking down at her, wondering how she could look so beautiful and yet so painfully vulnerable at the same time, wishing he could take her abroad with him to give him something to look forward to at night other than an empty hotel suite. She needed looking after though, not foreign travel, he acknowledged grudgingly, and he had never looked after anyone before and didn’t quite know where or how to begin.
Tears trickled down Emmie’s face as she checked the train times online to plan her journey home to the Lake District. It would be madness to stay where she was when she and Bastian wanted such different things. She wanted more than sex from Bastian but she suspected that he still saw her as little more than the escort he had hired at such great expense to attend his sister’s wedding with him. How on earth had she contrived to fall in love with him? He might be great in bed but he had to be the most insensitive man alive! And yet Bastian’s constant phone calls and visits had still become ridiculously precious to Emmie in recent weeks. She blinked back the tears, ashamed of her weakness, her wanton desire to stay on in London and settle for whatever he was offering. Bastian was being as supportive as he knew how because it was his fault she was pregnant. Beyond that did he feel anything for her but basic sexual attraction? And how long would that last once she began to resemble a blimp? No, Emmie told herself angrily, she had to cut the connection and leave while she still had her pride. Sleeping with Bastian again had been a serious mistake but staying on in an apartment he owned would be an even worse mistake.
* * *
‘Emmie’s moved out...are you sure?’ Bastian growled down the phone at his PA. After months of unanswered calls and considerable concern on his part he had finally caved in and asked Marie to check Emmie’s apartment for him.
‘Well, the wardrobe and the drawers are empty but she’s left her teddy collection behind in a box on the bed,’ Marie told him, working tactfully at keeping the amusement out of her voice. ‘Oh, wait a minute, there’s an envelope here with your name on it. Looks like she’s left you a note.’
Bastian wanted to know very badly what was in the note but he refused to ask his PA to open it and read it to him over the phone. Some things were private. On the other side of the world he stared blankly at the wall of his hotel suite: Emmie had walked out o
n him. Rage momentarily electrified him. Diavelos, she was expecting his kids, she had no right to stage a disappearance when he had been doing everything possible to make her feel happy and secure! Well, possibly not everything, conscience bade him admit, discomfiture infiltrating his angry sense of betrayal.
* * *
In the following months since Emmie had travelled to visit her sister Kat, everything had turned out very differently from what Emmie had initially expected, she reflected wryly, while conceding that different didn’t necessarily mean bad.
Firstly, her plan to help her sister run her guesthouse had died the very first day when Kat admitted that business was very poor and she was actually on the brink of bankruptcy. Luckily, a very wealthy Russian had come out of the woodwork to save the day for her sister. Mikhail Kusnirovich had invited Kat to stay on his mega yacht and act as hostess to his guests. While Kat was away Emmie stayed on in the farmhouse to keep her youngest sister, Topsy, company during the school holidays. A few weeks later, Kat admitted that she and Mikhail had fallen in love and that she was moving into his Georgian country mansion, Danegold Hall, to live with him as his partner. Within months Mikhail and Kat were married.
Denied her elder sister’s company aside of occasional weekends spent in the lap of luxury at Danegold, Emmie had been thrown very much on her own resources. She had taken a temporary job as a shop assistant in a local supermarket but was currently engaged in looking into the possibility of opening a gift shop/café in a property available for rent in the village. Her new brother-in-law, Mikhail, had blithely offered her unlimited funds with which to start up her own business.
‘I don’t care what it costs me. Kat’s worried sick about you. If she sees that you’re making a new start in life on a decent income, she’ll stop worrying about you being a single parent,’ Mikhail had told Emmie cheerfully, not even trying to hide the reality that his main motivation was to make her sister happy.
As the months passed and her pregnancy advanced, Emmie had suffered less from nausea, and holding down a job and working regular hours had become a good deal easier. Yet when her twin, Saffy, had announced that she was remarrying her first husband, Zahir, Emmie had used her health as an excuse not to attend the wedding and she was still ashamed of that. Her sister was now the wife of the King of Maraban and a future queen. And as Saffy had always enjoyed a good deal of natural dignity and assurance, Emmie believed her sibling would be a stunning success as a royal. Unfortunately, Emmie’s own deep unhappiness had persuaded her that she would be a sad spectre at the feast if she attended her twin’s wedding and that she would only cast an unwelcome pall of gloom over her sister’s big day. When all was said and done, after all, her sisters already pitied her for being pregnant and alone, and Emmie had been equally quick to notice that even Kat was shy of expressing her love and affection for Mikhail in her sister’s inhibiting presence. No, the unmarried pregnant sister had been wiser staying at home when she had the excuse.
To avoid such negative thoughts, Emmie had spent every spare moment researching local craftspeople to supply merchandise for the gift shop while also checking out the strict requirements for running a café. That project had kept Emmie extremely busy. Although she had little time to mope she often lay awake late into the night picturing a lean, darkly handsome face and aching unbearably as though she had lost a limb. In spite of the fact that she had found it impossible to envisage a feasible future with Bastian, walking away from him had still hurt like hell. But it would have been crazy, she reasoned, to hang around on the outskirts of Bastian’s life, sleeping with him in the forlorn hope that he would eventually want to take their relationship to another level or assume a regular paternal role once the twins were born. She needed to get over him and she needed to do it fast, she told herself impatiently. And in her opinion seeing too much of Saffy’s and Kat’s deliriously happy marriages to the men they loved was unlikely to help her to recover from her own unrequited love any more quickly. Indeed her sisters’ success and contentment on that front only made Emmie feel like a total failure in the love stakes.
* * *
For the second time in as many weeks, Bastian drove up to the Lake District. A glossy celebrity magazine lay open on the passenger seat beside him and every time he noticed it he gritted his teeth, a ferocious sense of injustice assailing him. On this occasion, Bastian needed no directions to reach his destination because he knew exactly where he was going as he nosed his Ferrari into the driveway of the farmhouse, parked it, dug the magazine into his pocket and sprang out to stride impatiently to the front door.
Emmie groaned as the doorbell buzzed because she was in the middle of making pastry and her hands were covered with flour. She wiped her hands on the front of her apron, surprised as she always was to feel the firm swell of her pregnant stomach arching out in front of her. She was the size of a small house, which, according to the local doctor, was only to be expected with twins on the way. She trundled to the front door and pulled it open, lashes fluttering up on startled blue eyes as she focused on the tall black-haired male on the doorstep.
Sheathed in a dark suit and a cashmere overcoat, Bastian surveyed her with brooding intensity, narrowed dark eyes glittering like polished jet. ‘Surprise...surprise...’
CHAPTER NINE
EMMIE STEPPED BACK and Bastian stalked through the front door, slamming it shut in his wake with an imperious hand.
‘I wasn’t planning to invite you in,’ Emmie snapped.
‘Given enough rope you really will hang yourself, won’t you?’ Bastian riposted with derision. ‘Perhaps you’d like to explain why I only qualified for one sentence of explanation when you staged your disappearing act. In fact, what exactly was “This isn’t working for me” supposed to convey?’
Emmie stiffened, acknowledging that while she hadn’t wanted to go emotionally overboard in her goodbye note she had perhaps tried a little too hard to play it cool. ‘I don’t want to discuss it.’
Bastian threw back his wide shoulders and stared down at her with blistering force, his handsome mouth a hard ruthless line. ‘We’re going to discuss a lot of things before I leave here, glyka mou.’
Emmie stared at him, unwillingly captivated by the sheer gorgeous potency of Bastian in the flesh. Radiating masculine energy and buckets of authority, Bastian towered over her, scanning her appearance in a red roll-neck sweater, apron and jeans. ‘You’ve put on weight...’
‘Duh! You noticed?’ Emmie shot back at him witheringly, turning on her heel to march back towards the kitchen.
As she stood briefly sideways Bastian focused on the swell of her pregnant belly pushing out the apron and stared, taken aback by the size of her. ‘I meant...you haven’t lost any more weight, so I assume the sickness wore off—’
‘Weeks ago,’ Emmie confirmed, turning back to face him again with open reluctance, blonde hair tumbling round her flushed cheeks.
‘And yet you didn’t think to get in touch with me and tell me that?’ Bastian fired back at her furiously. ‘Didn’t it occur to you that I’d be worried about you? When I last saw you, you were far from well!’
‘I thought with you it would be a case of out of sight, out of mind,’ Emmie admitted truthfully, straightening her slender shoulders and standing her ground in the kitchen doorway lest he get the idea that she was intimidated by him.
‘Those babies are half mine!’ Bastian launched back at her wrathfully. ‘When did I ever give you the impression that I was so irresponsible?’
Emmie pretended to think deeply. ‘Oh, maybe it was when you warned me not to get worked up about having sex with you...I didn’t, by the way.’
A feverish veil of colour highlighted his spectacular cheekbones and his dark golden eyes blazed like the heart of a hot fire. ‘Maybe I was playing safe.’
‘Playing safe?’ Emmie queried, all at sea.
Hi
s beautiful wilful mouth hardened. ‘Ne...yes, you blow hot, you blow cold, and you run away. That’s twice you’ve done that to me now.’
Emmie took an angry step forward. ‘I do not blow hot and cold and I do not run away!’
‘You do,’ Bastian contradicted with maddening assurance. ‘I offended you the night before Nessa’s wedding and you went from hotter than hot to cold as charity and ran away from the attraction between us. You may be an adult but you suffer from the same emotional overreactions as a teenager!’
‘How dare you?’ Emmie snapped, fit to be tied at that slur being cast on her maturity.
‘I dare because I’m honest and I have always been honest with you,’ Bastian declared with impressive emphasis. ‘We had a disastrous misunderstanding the very first night we were together—I apologised—you refused to accept my apology. But at least I was willing to admit that I had made a mistake but was still attracted to you. We would never have been apart had you had the courage to be equally honest with me...’
‘It’s not about honesty, it’s about sensitivity, and you are the guy who told me that what we had was just sex!’ Emmie slammed back at him emotively.
‘At the end of the day, sex is only sex and I stand by that statement!’ Bastian growled back at her unapologetically. ‘But in every way that mattered I demonstrated that I cared about what happened to you and I cared about the welfare of those babies you carry.’
Emmie struggled to be fair while her deep sense of having been insulted still rankled. ‘Yes, you did,’ she allowed, tight-mouthed at having to concede that point.
‘I didn’t deserve that you walked out on me and didn’t tell me where you were going.’
‘I would have got in touch with you after the birth,’ Emmie protested.
‘I want to be a lot more involved than that,’ Bastian informed her with unconcealed hostility.