Fragile Crystal: Rubies and Rivalries (The Crystal Fragments Trilogy) (3 page)

Edward Avelar, Karen Stone. This house was not a museum without Daniel around, it was a mausoleum, a tomb to dead memories. The thought made Kris shudder. All she needed to do now was to summon up the ghost of her mother—a more tenuous presence in Kris’s mind than her father, having herself died when Kris was very young—and she would sink into a complete funk.

This was no good, she told herself. Although it was autumn, the day was still warm and bright. Placing the unfinished lemonade on a glass table, she climbed the stairs to the room where her clothes were stored. She would sleep with Daniel whenever she stayed at the villa, of course, but the sense of a small haven for her own belongings was always important to her.

When there, she rummaged through drawers and found what she was looking for. Stripping out of the skirt and blouse that she had been wearing, she also took off her underwear and stared at herself for a moment in the mirror. Unbidden, a comment came back to her that someone had once told her with regard to Daniel: he usually prefers them taller and skinnier. She shook her head at the thought. There was no place for such a lack of confidence here—he may have preferred others to be different, but she knew why he loved her.

In any case, she had her own special beauty. Small like so many of her father’s kin, her body was sleek enough with curves to her hips and breasts neither too large nor too small, voluptuous enough for her lover and smooth enough for her own pleasures. In addition, since she had moved to Lisbon her skin had taken on a delicious golden brown hue. She was enough for him, and that was what mattered.

With the bikini on, she descended the stairs barefoot and went outside to the pool. It was amusing to her that, half a year before, she would have been more concerned about what the house staff would have thought of her, but now that did not concern her in the slightest.

Dipping one foot into the water, she felt its warmth extending silkily up her toes and, as she began to climb in, feathering her calves and then thighs with its seductive touch. Good. The heating was on, else it would have been just a touch too cold for such a day although even now the weather would have made a good summer’s day in England. This simple display of ostentatious wealth, or squander, was one of many that sometimes made her feel a little awkward around Daniel, but she was determined simply to enjoy it today.

The water embraced her, its fingers rising to her neck and shoulders, spreading out her dark hair as she lay backwards and cast off from the side of the pool, the sun shining high above her in the blue sky and all around her the warm pool. Her arms rose and fell in supple back strokes, and her slender legs kicked, toes breaking through the surface as she swam to the other side.

She did not know how long she had been there, had lost all track of time, when she heard footsteps on the patio beside the pool and looked up. She could not make out his features at first—a tall shadow in the beads of the sunlight that shone from behind him—but she knew that giant of a man.

“Daniel!” she cried out, standing on the bottom of the pool and lifting her hands to her hair, sluicing the water from her dark locks. Her face was dry, but liquid poured from her neck and shoulders, down the sodden panels of her bikini top and between her breasts. Looking at her, Daniel, dressed in light trousers and a shirt, smiled. She loved his smile: for her it was warm and open, whereas what everyone else saw was a guarded secret. His face, more handsome to her than anyone else’s, was actually finely lined with scars, two particularly prominent on his brow and cheek. He gazed at her with his hazel eyes, the pupil of one visibly larger than the other even halfway across the pool. Without his scars and strange eyes, he would have had conventional magazine-style looks, not exactly bland and anonymous but not far off: with them, he was hers.

“I can see you’re enjoying yourself,” he said, dipping his fingers into the pool. “Good, it’s warm.”

“It’s lovely,” she told him. “Why don’t you come in and try?”

For a moment he simply watched her, admiring her as she came closer and closer to him. Then suddenly he stood and began to undo the buttons on his shirt. “I might just do that,” he said.

“Oh!” Her mock cry of surprise did not disguise her delight, and barely suppressed a leer as he pulled off his shirt to reveal his broad shoulders, the arms and chest finely muscled. Daniel Stone was a tall man and, as she had found very quickly, one who was determined to keep himself in shape. It was less a factor of his vanity as a mark of his self-control. The weakling had been pushed around when a young lad: as a man, no-one would ever push him around again.

She felt her own legs trembling as he removed his shoes and trousers, his thighs thick and solid, and then his briefs came down. Oh God! She had missed him. He was still swaying from side to side a little, heavy and long, but the fact that he was stiffening also made the movements less fluid, more cumbersome.

As he lowered himself into the pool, the muscles of his buttocks tightening and releasing as one leg and then another moved, she felt that the dampness between her own thighs had less to do with the water now than with her own internal ocean. When he turned to walk towards her, the water at this end barely came up to his waist and, as he moved forward, miniature waves and swells travelling before him, so his cock bobbed and swayed on the surface.

The moment his hand came up to touch her arm she was trembling all over. Standing like this, he towered over her, the water reaching up to her midriff. For a second, all her senses were focussed on his hand, the warmth of his fingers as he gripped her gently. Then they reached outwards, sight and sound and smell, away from just his touch and towards the rest of him.

“Did you miss me?” he asked quietly.

“More than you can possible imagine.”

With this, he bent down, his lips touching hers and a shock passing between them for a split instant before the flesh made contact. Now to the other four senses was added taste, his mouth sweet and slightly salty as her tongue slid into him, the two hot creatures of their mouths seeking each other out, hungry and avid.

She lifted her fingers to his cheek, feeling the ridge of bone in his jaw and beneath the eye, her tips even more sensitive to every minute scar along the way. Pulling him towards her as his own hands slid around her waist, lifting her up slightly from the water and making her gasp with his power, she let her hands run through his hair. She had no other thoughts now. She was open to him.

When her hand fell beneath the water’s surface, grasped him, small fingers circling his width, she did groan then. He was so huge. Sometimes at first she had thought he would split her—indeed, in their maddest passions, she had wanted to be split, to be broken. Now she simply wished to be filled, to be made whole.

His own fingers were pushing beneath her bikini, squeezing nipples and pinching her breasts lightly, making her gasp again both at his attentions and simply the feeling of him in her hands. She didn’t care about anything or anyone now, and as he bent his head to kiss her and bite her gently on her soft flesh, she dug her nails into his back, holding him there as with the other hand she chafed him, made him harder.

As he led her to the side of the pool, she eagerly followed. He lifted her up slightly against the edge so that her buttocks were pushed up, her thighs out of the water and her breasts hanging down towards the marble tiled patio.

The fabric of her bottoms was slippery, resisted his fumblings at first, but then he hooked strong fingers beneath their sides and pulled them down. He kissed her between her thighs and buttocks first, exploring her, tasting her, savouring her after her time apart. Then he came behind her and, as she felt the smooth, large head of him press against her sex, her breath came in short, excited bursts.

“Yes!” she hissed between her teeth. “Yessss!”

When he penetrated her, the world went black as her eyes screwed shut. This stretching, this entering the holy of holies, this was what she wanted, desired so much—more than anything else right now. She could feel his body strong and powerful against her, his one hand on hers as she struggled with wet fingers to grasp the tiles beneath her. Slowly, with determined strokes, he moved back and forth inside her.

When her orgasm, which had been rising slowly since the moment she had first seen him, finally exploded for a moment the world truly went dark.

Chapter Three

As Daniel lifted himself from the bed, Kris stretched out, her body a lazily aching animal, and stared towards him. He was sitting on the edge of the mattress, his muscled back criss-crossed with a new network of temporary scars and marks from her nails. The night had been one of pleasant interruptions—explosions of passion between fitful rest, and now the morning sun was starting to filter through the blinds of the window.

“What time is it?” she asked. As she moved, her breasts shifted across her chest and her belly rose and fell with her breath. Lying flat like this was good, she decided. Her skin looked soft and smooth—and flat. Daniel himself never seemed to mind, quite the opposite in fact, but when her small frame was next to his, so hard and well-defined she felt that her softness was too much of a vulnerability. Perhaps that was why he loved her, however, because she was indeed so open in her vulnerability.

He lifted his watch, a Patek Philippe, and stared at it a little groggily. “Just after seven,” he told her, yawning as he did so. “Get some sleep.”

“Oh, it’s far too early,” she whispered, rolling over to where he sat and snaking one arm indolently around his waist, her hand encountering his own soft snake and teasing it with her fingertips.

He half turned and leaned over her, kissing her and letting his tongue slide into her willing mouth. When he pulled back, hovering a few inches above her, those strange, delightful eyes of his watching her, the merest shadow of growth evident on his strong chin, and the angles of his face criss-crossed by fainter but more permanent scars, she stared up at him, her own blue eyes glistening slightly in the morning light.

“Did you miss me?” It was her turn to ask.

“More than you can possibly imagine.” It was her reply on his lips, and she believed him as much as she hoped he had when she had given that answer.

“So come back to bed,” she said quietly. Her hand was fondling him between his legs, stroking him gently, enjoying the flexing sensation of his flesh in her hand. “He wants to.”

Daniel smiled at this. “I do believe he does. Damn thing has a life of its own. But... necessity calls.”

With that he gently took hold of her wrist and lifted her hand away from his errant loins. As he stood, she rolled onto her side, the sheet rucked up between her legs, the Egyptian cotton cool against her breasts and thighs as she pulled it closer to herself. She could smell the scents of their sex and she breathed it in deeply, savouring this ghostly presence, so warm and close against her. Her eyes were fixed on him, analysing, measuring, enjoying every inch of his body as he walked away from her towards the shower.

When the light came on, the harshness of the lamp caused her to squint slightly, but she could see flashes of his arms, shoulders, buttocks thighs as he moved around, turning on the shower, brushing his teeth. He had been the most passionate lover she had ever encountered, and the force of their lovemaking was even violent, but she enjoyed as much as any of that this simple nearness to his presence, the easygoing voyeurism of two bodies comfortable with each other.

She heard the change in the water, the different splashes it made as he moved beneath it, and with a grin on her face she slipped from the sheets, the soles of her feet bouncing as they encountered the cold boards of the bedroom floor. The mild shock of moving from the warm bed was enough to bring goosebumps across her arms, her breasts and abdomen, and she skipped and hopped into the bathroom.

“You can wait!” he cried out in a falsely stern voice as she slid next to him under the water, her body so slight and small next to his. “I need to get ready.”

“But look,” she told him as the water splashed over her long hair, a huge grin on her face. “He wants me here.”

When she made her own way down to breakfast, Daniel was seated at the table reading something on his iPad. Anna was bringing a cup of coffee to him and looked up expectantly as Kris entered the room.

“Would Miss like some coffee?” she asked.

“
Bom dia
,” Kris replied, speaking to her in Portuguese. There was no need to, and she knew that Daniel understood little more than a few words and phrases, but it made her feel special somehow to speak her father’s tongue in his house. It also, she knew, endeared her a little more to his staff. She could never tell why, but such tricks and games were important to her. “A little breakfast, please—but not too much. Something light.” She gestured to her belly.

Daniel smiled and lowered the tablet. “Telling her you’re pregnant?” he asked.

“Cheeky!” she replied, slapping him lightly across the shoulder. He was wearing a simple shirt and chino-style trousers. She had dressed in a light cotton dress that came to her knees but left her arms bare. Beneath it she was wearing nothing else, not so much because she expected another fuck but... you never knew when Daniel was around. In any case, she enjoyed the sense of freedom with him. She would have liked to have gone around the house naked (as she often did in her apartment in Alfama) but she suspected that the seriousness she had seen in his face after he woke up meant that, for the day at least, she would not have to distract him too much. She was a little annoyed at that fact—after a few days apart, she was greedy for him, wanted him entirely to herself, but she knew that the world placed a great deal of demands on Daniel Stone.

He grabbed hold of her arm and held it before she could pull away, dragging her instead closer to him so that he could bury his face into her belly and breathe in her scent. “I wouldn’t mind if there was someone else in there,” he said, his eyes glittering as he looked up at her.