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

by M. J. Lawless

  Kris frowned at this. “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Not we, you Senhora. New York. Senhor Stone is still there.”

  This was a shock to Kris, but she still went and collected her things. If she could endure several hours on a train to see Maria Gosselin, then she would endure ten times the time and distance, a hundred times, to find out what had happened to Daniel.

  As they drove to the airport, Jorge was friendly enough but much quieter than normal. He asked her how her leg was feeling now, to which she admitted that she had the occasional twinge but that it was back to normal. She in turn asked how Daniel was, but Jorge replied that he had not spoken to him. The message, along with tickets booked for a flight within the next two hours, had come via an email to Anna.

  When she had checked in and was led to her seat in first class, Kris was a bundle of nerves. Obviously Daniel had not been able to return from the last trip, but why send for her like this? What if he did not want her to be in New York, but was just ostentatiously demonstrating his power over her so that she would feel it more keenly when he dismissed her? Not that any of this mattered. She would have taken the most dismal train to New York had it run under the sea, and even if it had taken weeks to cross. She had to see him—it was him she wanted.

  The flight seemed to take an eternity. She was tired but couldn’t sleep properly, though once or twice she dozed fitfully. She picked at the food placed in front of her, half watched the movies that prattled on the screen in her luxurious seat. None of it mattered. She wanted to be there, to see him.

  When she landed at JFK and passed through customs, her heart leaped up to see Daniel standing in the concourse, waiting for her. She would have recognised him anywhere. He was dressed in a thick overcoat and dark trousers, gloves covering his hands. His face looked pale and tired, his nose pink from the cold outside she presumed, and his scars more evident on his face. He looked much older than when she had last seen him, but when he saw her a soft smile spread across his face, sad but pleased to see her. In his eyes, his strange, asymmetrical eyes, she could see him searching her features, looking for a sign, a token.

  She gave it to him immediately. Dropping her bag, she ran across to him and threw her arms around him, squeezing him as close to her as she could. He placed his hands on her shoulders, returning her embrace, but when he finally released her she stood back and stared at him, then lifted her hand and slapped him—hard across the face.

  His head rolled with the blow and he looked away for a moment, staring into the middle distance. When he returned his gaze to hers, there was a look of amusement in his eyes.

  “I guess I deserved that,” he said.

  “Yes, you did. Why didn’t you reply? Tell me how things were going? I was worried sick about you.”

  “I’ve never been a man who can say sorry easily, but I am. Very sorry. I don’t think you realise how much.”

  She shook her head and then reached up again. He flinched slightly, which made her laugh, but this time she grasped hold of the side of his head so that she could kiss him, her tongue sliding into his mouth, her breath sucking the air from his lungs. His hands came to her waist and lifted her up so that she was balanced on her toes against him.

  “Don’t ever do that again,” she told him.

  “I won’t. It’s been difficult.”

  “I know. That’s not an excuse, but I do realise that something’s going on. You have to trust me, Daniel. You have to share.”

  He nodded and, once he had retrieved her bag, he led her out into the freezing night air. The temperature hit Kris immediately, and she thought she was going to die.

  “Shit,” she groaned. “I’ve been made soft by all those Mediterranean countries. I’m going to die here!”

  Snow lay on the pavements, and a limousine was waiting not far from the door. When he saw them coming, the driver got out of the seat, his breath forming clouds before his face, and came to grab hold of Kris’s bag.

  “This is nothing,” Daniel told her. “Within a month the snow will be three foot deep. Isn’t that right, Frank?”

  “Certainly is, Mister Stone,” the driver replied, holding the door open and shivering slightly as he stood waiting for the two of them to climb in. “Nothing like a New York winter to freeze off your balls.”

  “Frank’s a little crude,” Daniel told her as he sat next to her, “but he’s the one I trust most to take me from place to place.” Kris smiled at this and placed her hand on his when he removed his glove. Even in a few moments she noticed that her knuckles and fingers had started to turn blue, but at least the limousine was warm. “I can see I’m going to have to get a suitable wardrobe,” she said somewhat forlornly.

  “We’ll see to that, don’t you worry.”

  The hotel was the Plaza, an immense, twenty-storey building across from Central Park. Anywhere else it would have dominated the landscape, but here in Manhattan it was surrounded by skyscrapers that dwarfed its elegant grey-white features. The room where they were taken to was equally elegant, though not as extensive a suite as that in Monaco. Rather it consisted of a bedroom and a living-working area with a desk.

  Kris was a little surprised. “I always thought you had an apartment in Manhattan,” she told him.

  “I did, but I sold it.”

  “And yet you seem to spend more time in New York now than anywhere else.”

  Daniel paused and went to the mini bar. “Even I get it wrong sometimes. Would you like a drink?”

  Kris felt uncomfortable as he asked this, wondering if the incident in Monaco was just going to be the first. “Just a tomato juice,” she said. Her relief must have been evident when she saw him returning with a glass of water alongside her juice. He looked at the water wryly.

  “I cannot even begin to tell you how sorry I am.” His voice was quiet, sombre.

  “It’s okay,” she told him. “I forgive you. I shouldn’t—I should beat you black and blue. But... actually, that wasn’t the worst thing. Why didn’t you send me a message?”

  He smiled but did not look her in the eyes. “I was ashamed.”

  “Of me?”

  His head snapped up at this. His eyes were twisted and bitter for a moment, but she realised immediately that these were emotions directed at himself. “How can you even ask that?”

  “Well, you sometimes get it wrong, don’t you, and I wonder if you’ve got it wrong about me.”

  He placed his glass on the table and moved towards her with a speed that made her tremble, less with fear and more with desire. As his arms scooped her up and his mouth descended towards hers, she slid her hands around his back, one reaching up to his neck, pulling him closer to her, dragging him into her.

  She was off the floor and could barely breathe, his arms holding her so tightly, but she didn’t care. Instead, as her head became lighter and lighter, she moved her mouth from side to side, eating him as his tongue explored her, breathing him and sucking him inside. Her fingers came to the front of him, to his shirt, pulling at the buttons, sliding in against his warm flesh, nails digging into his skin.

  At last he released her, letting her fall gently to the floor, and she kissed his chest where she had just raked it.

  “We both made a mistake, didn’t we.” Her words were a statement rather than a question.

  He nodded his head. His guilt was clear, but that was not what she wanted to know at this moment. Indeed, for a second her mind flashed back to another hotel room, another person. She didn’t want her guilt either—she wanted it purged.

  “I’ve made a mistake too,” she told him, looking up. “I’m not one of your things, Daniel. I’m not a necklace, nor a brooch, nor a... ring. I’m me, but I’ve made mistakes. I think we’ve got everything upside down, what we want most. I’ve topped you a few times.”

  He frowned at this, his eyes moving from side to side as he looked at her.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, a few times.

  “I wanted freedo
m with you—from you, even. But... I know what it was that bound us together.” She wanted that again, and she wanted the guilt purged from her, to be cleansed by him.

  She led him by the hand into the bedroom. She had been dressed in jeans and a sweater, and she removed them, standing in front of him naked, her breasts firm on her rib cage, her hips swelling out slightly, her thighs still young and tender. He went to undress himself, but she came forward and placed a hand on his as it rested on his buttons. “Not yet,” she whispered, kissing his fingers. “I’ve been bad, sir. I need to be punished.”

  “What have you done that’s wrong?” he asked. His face looked pained, as though he believed that she was tormenting him with some subtle psychological ruse, fucking his mind. Kris’s memory, however, was full of another room, drunk and disgusted. She wanted it fucked away.

  Moving her hand to his mouth, she placed a finger on his lips, silencing him, then kissed him. Walking away, looking over her shoulder as she did so, her long hair over her shoulders, rich and shining, she gave him a look of such innocence and lust combined that she could see immediately the effect it was having on him, his trousers expanding even as he watched her move.

  Slowly, she bent forward and placed one knee, then the next on the bed, her hands moving forward onto the cover and sliding down so that at last her head rested beside them, her back arched and her buttocks pushed upwards.

  He came behind her on the bed, one knee resting between her legs, her thighs parting slightly for him. Her sex was wet, eager, and she turned her head forward, resting her chin on the soft pillow, her fingers digging into it to ready herself.

  He knew what she wanted, and his hand moved softly over her buttocks, smoothing them with the warmth of his fingers. After a few moments of this, she felt him lift his hand and then, a second later, it came down hard on her skin, making her jump even though she was prepared for this. She emitted a small groan.

  He slapped her again, slightly harder this time, and the skin of her rump felt warm and hot. But it was still not enough. “Your belt...” she gasped. “Your belt, sir.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her on the back between her shoulder blades, his lips slightly wet against her skin. “Are you sure?” he whispered.

  She nodded and glanced back at him. His face was calm, his eyes watching her. Nodding her head, she returned her face to a forward position, gripping the pillow more tightly.

  She heard the sound now of leather unfurling from his trousers, and the next few seconds seemed to pass very slowly. She could hear her own breathing, hoarse and ragged as she pushed her mouth into the pillow. Time stood still for an eternity.

  When the leather made contact with her buttocks, she bucked and her sex flowered, lips unfurling and a droplet of her juices forming at the pearl-shaped entrance of her vulva. It hurt, but that made her desire it even more. “Again!” she gasped. “Harder. Harder, sir.”

  He struck her with his belt once more, and then again. She whimpered at this, biting the pillow, her fingernails claws against the feathers and cotton. Her rump was burning, but she shifted it around, pushing higher into his blows rather than cringing away. Her breasts, squashed beneath her, were as soft as the cover of the bed, but she could feel the sinews of her thighs tightening as cords in her legs.

  The sight of her there, defenceless before him, was too much for Daniel now, and he reached down to his trousers, unzipping the flies and drawing out his erection. Her head sideways on the pillow, Kris watched him, her blue eyes glistening, the cheeks of her face flushed with her own blood.

  “Oh God,” she moaned when she saw him. “So... big. So fucking...” She had seen it so many times before, but tonight, here, it seemed even more massive. Her memory was like a blank canvas, and every sensation was as a new brushstroke painted on her mind.

  He brought the smooth head of his cock to her sex and rubbed it against her. She struggled, however, falling forward even deeper into the pillow on her shoulders, seeking to push her hand up between her legs, snaking her arm beneath her breasts and up through her open thighs. In this uncomfortable posture, she could just about grab hold of him, stroking the thick girth of his member, just about closing her small fingers about it.

  With her other hand, she pushed her fingers into her mouth, making them wet with her spittle. Reaching behind now on the other side of her body, over her back and between her buttocks, she rubbed the saliva into her anus. Seeing what she was doing, Daniel gently released her fingers from around him and bent down, licking the dark hole, probing and penetrating her. Sometimes he dipped his head further down, tasting the hot, salty sweetness between her lips, rubbing his face into her and making himself wet.

  When she moved her hands next to her head, turning away from him once more, he brought the tip of his erection to her anus. He fingered her gently, extending her sphincter, then placed himself back into position and slowly pushed into her.

  She groaned as he penetrated her, her fingers clawing the pillow and her hips contracting, bucking up slightly as he pushed in. He went slowly, but with each of his hands holding her buttocks, pulling them apart so that he could see the tight ring of her muscle stretching around him, he was relentless.

  “Fuck me,” she groaned. “Fuck my ass! Oh God, oh God!”

  Her thighs began to tremble, her buttocks shuddering as another inch went in. Reaching beneath his cock, he could feel how wet she was, sliding his fingers along her lips towards her clitoris. Then he returned his hand, his fingers slick and sticky, to her backside, holding her open as he took her there on the bed.

  Kris’s eyes were screwed shut, her mouth open and her face bright red. She could see nothing now that her eyes were closed—not this room nor the other hotel that had haunted her memories in drunken flashbacks. This hurt, but the pain was good as he began to move deeper into her. It was a burning that seared away all her guilt and shame.

  “Fuck me!” she whispered again. “I’m yours. Fuck... Oh God!”

  She moved one hand between her legs, began to rub herself and slap her opening flower as he thrust into her, more firmly now. Her words had descended to grunts, and she struggled to keep her buttocks aloft as he used his weight to drive in deeper. As her orgasm started, she bit the pillow, strangling down her screams and slapping herself between the legs, punishing, fucking, cleansing.

  When he was on top of her, she was blind though her eyes were open. Lights were flashing all around her, and she could feel beads of sweat forming between her breasts, along her thighs and her belly, her forehead soaking. One of his arms was half around her neck, grappling her breasts and forced down beneath her cleavage, mauling her soft flesh. He was inside her fully now, his own breath rasping in her ear, and he began to move with slamming motions that made her want to scream as she bit the pillow hard, and then turned her head so that she could bite him.

  She forgot everything as he began to swell inside her. The burning was consuming her alive from her loins up. She howled at last, a primal scream, and he began to cry out as well, vibrations and ripples moving along his cock as his seed began to burst and burn. Nothing else mattered now, just this, two bodies bound together.

  Chapter Eighteen

  For a day they simply enjoyed each other, not moving from the bed. Daniel had cancelled all other meetings and they took each other in every way that they could, sometimes tender, sometimes hard. Food was delivered to their room, and the porters gave them sly stares as they unloaded plates of food and coffee onto the table. They barely stopped fucking long enough to be civil, but nothing else mattered in the slightest to them.

  On the second day, very reluctantly, Daniel went through to shower, telling her that while he could perhaps be forgiven one day two would be seen as a cardinal sin. She watched him rise from the bed to take a shower, his back criss-crossed with the blind map she had traced with her nails. Her own buttocks felt sore and bruised from their own beatings, love bites and marks across her breasts, neck and shoulders, and her loin
s felt used and abused. But as she lay back on the bed, the sodden sheets pushed down over her thighs, she felt happier than she had for a long time.

  For the first time in a day, Maria came into her mind but she dismissed the thought. What did the Gosselin woman know? Nothing. If she tried to come between the two of them, Kris would tear out her eyes. It did occur to her that it would be better for her to tell Daniel what had happened rather than Maria, but not now, not yet.

  Daniel himself looked weary but happy when he emerged from the shower, water dripping from his long, muscular limbs as he crossed to his clothes, rubbing a towel through his short, dark hair and along his back.

  “You’ve never been to New York, have you?” he asked. As he was drying himself, Kris wriggled along the bed, lying on her front so that her head was only a foot or so away from his thick, dangling cock and tight buttocks, a sight that was making her wet again between her legs. She reached out her hand to grasp for him, but he batted her away, laughing.

  “The park is beautiful at this time of year, with the snow. It’s pretty impressive at any time, but now, you’d like it there,” he told her, skipping back a step out of the way of her grappling fingers. “And you’ll love the Museum of Modern Art, I can promise you that... Are you paying attention to a word I’m saying?”

  Kris looked up at him grinning. “I’m enjoying all the tourist attractions I need right here,” she told him. “Do you think we can make it as big as the Empire State Building if I’m really dirty?”

  Daniel rolled his eyes in exasperation, trying not to look down at the streaks across her buttocks, the curving, sinewy line of her spine, her lips wet where she had just licked them and her eyes glittering and bright.

  “It’s moving!” she yelped. “I can see it. Come back to bed and fuck me!”

  Sighing, he sat down beside her. “I can’t, not now. Give me a few hours and I promise, I’ll come back and give you the hardest seeing to of your life before dinner—if I still have the strength for it.”