Shattered: A Billionaire Romance Series (Contemporary Romance Novels)

by Love, Michelle

  ‘Are you coming in, St Jacques, or are you happy to get your rocks off with a statue?’ Hippolyte and Django roared with laughed and Emile smiled, feeling a little embarrassed. He nodded to the doorman, who inclined his head graciously and directed them to the cloakroom. Hippolyte and Django removed their hats but not their coats. ‘You will need it to begin with,’ Django said with the air of someone who had frequented this place before. Emile made a silent note to ask him that but then they were walking into the main club and Emile gave a gasp.

  Inside, the light was an ethereal blue, the walls sparkled like diamonds and the entire place looked like some sort of winter wonderland. The tables were of white marble, the chairs covered in furs, vast chandeliers of tiny diamonds sparkled overhead. Emile was entranced by the atmosphere – even though it should look like a grotto for Santa Claus, there something more….Emile struggled to find the word. Sensual? Dangerous?

  Beautiful, otherworldly, slow-eyed youths moved around serving drinks and catering to the guests, all of whom looked as stunned and as entranced as Emile. At the far end of the room, a small stage stood, a plinth covered in white fur upon it. It was in darkness but as Emile and his friends took their table and the wait staff brought them vodka shots served in glasses made from ice, a spotlight began to shine on the plinth and a nymph, swathed in white came to arrange the fur pelts on it. There were a few catcalls from the audience and the nymph smiled, a beam of pure love. She curtsied to them and disappeared and the lights dimmer again. A low rumble of disappointment went through the crowd and Hippolyte chuckled. ‘Impatient lot tonight.’

  Emile looked at his friends. ‘You’ve been here before then?’

  Hippolyte and Django glanced at each other then Django nodded. ‘We have. A few times over the years. The club only opens for two weeks in winter, hence the name Le Cabaret d’Hiver. Tonight is the first night – Christmas Day always falls directly in the middle of those two weeks then everyone vanishes until the next year and the club is shut up.’

  Hippolyte looked at Emile. ‘What’s really strange is that those decorations you were admiring at the entrance? They disappear too – overnight. Solid stone. No-one knows how they do it but if you come down to the Boulevard after they’ve moved, you would never know they’d been there.’

  Emile was both enraptured and alarmed. ‘They just….go?’

  ‘They just leave.’

  Emile shook his head, laughing. ‘In that case…how could we miss this opportunity?’

  Django laughed and clapped him on the back. ‘Quite, dear fellow. Ce sera incroyable.’

  Hippolyte said nothing but raised his glass to his friends. Emile turned around in his chair and now he began to notice other details.

  Some of the nymphs were sitting with the clients, their hands moving over the clients’ bodies with a feather light touch and the men themselves looked as if they were experiencing the most intense orgasm of their lives, quite openly and without shame. Emile saw huge glass bowls of what he had assumed was ice cubes but upon closer inspection he saw that, no, they were bowls of dildos, ball-gags and handcuffs, all crafted from ice. He watched in shocked and aroused amazement as one of the men began to fuck one of the nymphs with a large ice cock, the nymph writhing and moaning as he plunged it deep inside her.

  Emile felt his own cock respond to the sight, twitching and thickening inside his pants. He caught Hippolyte watching him with an amused look. ‘Glad you came?’

  Emile shrugged and tried to look nonchalant but in the next instant, the club was plunged into darkness and a spotlight, a hazy blue light, appeared, trained on the stage. Music, a strange discordant violin song began to play. Slowly, sliding onto the stage, a group of nymphs danced, their movements slow and sensual, forming a group around the plinth. They rose and seethed like an ocean swell above it, stretching their lithe tiny frames into impossible shapes until falling again to the floor. In the centre of them, a woman, her curvy body the color of midnight oil began to sway in time with the music. Her skin was blue-black, her bare breasts full and firm, her hips wrapped with strings of diamonds and pearls. Her face, the expression focused on her dance, was the most exquisite thing Emile had ever seen. Full plum-colored lips, dark, endlessly dark eyes rimmed with the thickest black lashes, her hair, platinum white, cut short in pin curls around her face.

  Seraphine.

  The name came into Emile’s mind as he watched her undulate and perform and then she began to sing. A deep purr, her voice built from almost a whisper until the entire room could hear her. She sang in a language that Emile could not identify – neither French nor English for sure – and her song curled its way into his brain, sending shivers through every synapse. His entire body responded to hers. His heart thumped so heavily in his chest that it pounded in his ears, to him a drum beat that accompanied every sway of her hips, as lush and fleshy as they peaked out from her skirt of pearls. She ran her hands up the inside of her thighs and his cock stiffened almost painfully, pressing hard against the heavy cotton.

  Emile watched enrapt as she completed her song to enthusiastic applause. Then she stood at the microphone and smiled – and Emile was lost. Her eyes roamed over the crowd and then settled on him. Her smile grew softer, more intimate and she held out her hand to him.

  Emile forgot everything else in the world; the club, his friends, his shattered heart, and went to her. Her cold hand closed around his and he shivered, every cell in his body reacting as if an electric shock had passed through him.

  Seraphine led him off stage into a labyrinth of corridors of ice to a room. Emile stumbled along after her, not knowing – or even caring – where this goddess took him as long as her hand stayed in his, his skin was touching hers.

  The room that she led him to was also constructed from ice but to his surprise, as Seraphine removed his coat, his jacket and then his shirt. She moved the palms of her hands over his skin, his hard chest, his stomach until she reached his fly, then looking up at him from under her lashes; she removed his rock-hard cock from his pants and sunk to her knees.

  The moment her warm mouth covered him, Emile knew he was in trouble. Her gentle movements, the way her tongue flicked and teased his cock. Oh God, Emile thought, all rational thought leaving him. He touched her hair, feeling how soft it was, then her skin. Velvet, he thought, midnight velvet.

  Seraphine looked up as he thought that and smiled. He noticed her dark eyes weren’t black of brown but the most intense navy blue and that her pupil was ringed with silver. They burned into his as she sucked him to completion and he came into her mouth in great spurts, shuddering and groaning. He had little time to recover. Seraphine led him to the bed – a vast ice block covered with so many furs, that it was surprisingly soft when he lay down.

  He stroked her delicious curves and bent his head to take one of her nipples into his mouth. Her breasts were firm, pointing up into hard peaks and now he saw they were both pierced with tiny rings of diamond. The stone was hard against his tongue but he didn’t care. She tasted of fresh air and water as he trailed his lips down to her belly. He noticed with surprise that her skirt of pearls was not an item of clothing but simply grew out of her skin to weave around her lower half and cover her sex. He looked down at her. Who was she? What was she?

  Seraphina smiled up at him, a slightly snaggle-toothed smile that nevertheless made his entire body react.

  ‘Come inside me,’ she said and the sound of her voice made his cock, which had not gone limp in the slightest, become even more engorged. At her command, he parted the strands of pearls and found her sex, glistening with her arousal. Emile sighed at the sight of it, so scarlet and plump and ready for him. His cock traced along her slit and then plunged deep inside her.

  Oh the feeling, the sweet, sweet velvet of her cunt as her muscles tightened around his penis, drawing him in deeper and deeper. Emile could not help screaming her name as they fucked, slowly at first then harder, their bodies undulating and moving in rhythm. Emile stared
down at this glorious woman as he thrust harder, watched the way her breasts, her belly moved. God, she was divine.

  Her fingernails dug painfully into his back but he didn’t care. He wanted her to hurt him, to possess him entirely. He neared completion and she smiled up at him.

  ‘Come on my skin, Emile, my love, I want your love on my belly.’

  Emile pulled out and came with a shout of victory, spilled his seed across her dark skin and even his own mortal semen looked like it had a million diamonds, sparkling like a galaxy of ice particles in it. Seraphine massaged it into her skin, moaning softly, rubbing her hands from her softly rounded belly down between her legs. Emile watched her touch herself, feeling utterly drunk on her.

  ‘Seraphine…my love…’

  He bent his head to hers and they kissed for the first time, their breath mingling, their tongues wrapping arounds the other, tasting each other. They made love again slowly, sweetly. Finally as Emile felt exhausted and spent, Seraphine pulled his head down to her chest and stroked his head. He fell asleep breathing in her scent of ice and water and moonlight, knowing that if he did not wake in the morning, he would gladly welcome death.

  Emile did wake the next morning – back in his own bed in his small one-bedroom apartment in the 6th Arrondissement. He turned over onto his back and shivered. The French windows to his balcony were open, the white drapes billowing in, a freezing wind chilling the entire room. Emile stumbled out of bed but instead of closing the windows, he stepped out onto the balcony. Snow was falling as a silent blanket over the city, a white-out so thick that Paris disappeared under it. Emile stood on the balcony letting the soft flakes fall onto him, soaking his nightgown. Every time the snow touched his skin, he was back there in the club, with Seraphine, making fiery love in a room of ice.

  The snow had muffled the sounds from the street and from his fifth floor balcony, Emile stretched his mouth wide and shouted her name over the rooftops of his beloved city.

  He spent the day at home, reading, bathing and in the evening he dressed carefully, his valet helping him into a dark green velvet blazer which brought out the color of his blue eyes and the salt-and-pepper of his dark hair.

  At half past eight he walked down to the lobby to find Django waiting for him. Emile smiled at his friend in surprise. ‘I didn’t know we were meeting tonight.’

  Django was pale and shaking. He shoved a newspaper at Emile. ‘Take a look.’

  Emile took the paper from him and opened it out. His whole body turned to ice.

  Assassiner Brutal au Cabaret de d’Hiver! Belle danseuse morts!

  Brutal Murder at the Cabaret of Winter! Beautiful Dancer Slain! ‘Ah, non, non…’ he moaned, dropping the paper. The photograph on the front page was of Seraphine, her intense blue eyes staring into the camera with an unreadable expression. Emile stared down at it, hot tears in his eyes. He looked up at Django. ‘I cannot believe it…what happened?’

  Django was staring at him. ‘Emile…my friend, Seraphine was indeed murdered but the newspapers tells us she was killed before we went to the club.’

  ‘Impossible! How could it be? We were at the club only last night. Something must have happened in the early hours of this morning…why are you staring at me like that? ‘

  His friend had paled so much that his skin was tinged with blue. ‘Emile…we were at the club a week ago. Surely you know this?’

  Emile stared at his friend. A week? He had been asleep for a week? No, it could not be! ‘There must be some mistake,’ he stammered but even as he spoke, he suddenly knew it to be the truth. Seraphine was dead and he had lost a week. He prayed those two things weren’t connected.

  He spent the next few days before Christmas working, trying to erase the memory of Seraphine…or the dream of Seraphine, he was no longer sure. No, it cannot be a falsehood, he thought, how would I have known about her unless I did lie with her on that bed of ice? He could not fathom how he had slept for a week, nor how such a vital woman could have been taken so brutally. Who would want to destroy such beauty?

  After three unsatisfying days working at the hotel, he sent the workers home for the holidays, promising them they would be rewarded for their hard work and to enjoy the time with their families. He was glad of the solitude as he walked around the empty hotel, admiring the work, the new Art Deco designs that he had designed. When it was finished, this hotel would rival the Ritz in his plushness, its fine dining and exquisite luxury, but now, he just enjoyed the solitude of it. He came to the reception with its startling décor of mirrors on three sides of the room, all in the Art Deco style. He stared at his reflection in the mirror in front of him. He had seemed to grow taller, more erect, his hair thicker and fuller, his face more refined and handsome. He smiled and his reflection became almost radiant.

  Then suddenly he started violently. Out of the corner of his eye, an old man shifted into view…at least, what he assumed was an old man. Emile whirled around to find…no-one. His own reflection, now with startled eyes, stared back at him. He relaxed and another movement caught his eye. He stopped, realizing the reflection was his own. He slid his eyes to the corner, trying to study the reflection. He could not make out his own features, nor could he reconcile the stooped figure as the same as the one he could see directly in front of him.

  ‘I’m going insane,’ he thought and turned away, lowering his eyes as he walked out of the hotel into the streets.

  The cars and trams on the road had mulched the white snow into a disgusting grey slush which soaked the clothes of anyone walking along, the wet snow splashing and dirtying the Parisians’ fine clothes and fashions.

  Emile found himself on the Boulevard de Clichy and he could not resist stopping outside the Cabaret d’Hiver. In the daylight, the stone doorway looked flat and dead; when he’d seen it for the first time, it had almost seemed alive.

  Not expecting an answer, he knocked on the door with his cane. To his surprise, it opened and he stepped inside – and into another world. He glanced behind him as the door closed and a thin layer of ice sealed the doorway immediately. He had been right, this was no ordinary place. He walked slowly through the ice corridors until he reached the small theatre. Nymphs moved gracefully around the room, preparing it for the evening’s entertainment. None of them gave him a second glance. He stepped up onto the stage and walked to the rear of the place, down more corridors until he reached the room where he and Seraphine had made such sweet love. He pushed the door open.

  She stood in the middle of the room as if she had been waiting for him. Emile gazed at her, his heart soaring. The newspaper had told him that she had been stabbed to death, almost gutted but he looked at her and there was not a mark on her beautiful body. He fell at her feet.

  ‘Oh my love! My beautiful Seraphine, I am so glad to find you here, alive, in good health.’

  Seraphine placed her fingers gently under his chin and lifted his head. ‘I am in good health, as you see, my love. And I have been waiting for you to return.’

  Emile sighed happily, getting to his feet and placing his palms on her face. ‘Why did the newspaper says you were dead?’

  Her smile was enigmatic. ‘Sometimes people see what they want to see. My ‘death’ was nothing more than a performance.’

  Emile felt uncomfortable. ‘Who would want to see such a thing?’

  ‘Le Cabaret d’Hiver caters for every fetish, my love.’

  Emile ran his hand down her blue/black skin. ‘That is one fetish I will never understand. Who would want to ruin something so beautiful?’

  She smiled. ‘Let us not talk any further about that, my Emile. Let us make love, that is after all why you are here, no?’

  Emile felt hot blood rush through his veins, his stomach tighten, and his cock thicken and lengthen. ‘My sweet Seraphine…’

  She lay down onto her bed and he disrobed quickly, fisting the root of his cock as he came to her. He trailed his lips down her body until she spread her legs wide for him and his tongue fou
nd her sex. He tasted her honey – cinnamon and spice – and his tongue lashed around the hard bud of her clit as she moaned and writhed beneath him. His cock trembled with anticipation, straining to be inside her and yet he prolonged his agony, his mouth greedy on her sex, her belly, and her breasts. The diamond nipple ring sliced into his tongue and as he kissed her breasts, he smeared a trail of dark red blood across her skin. Seraphine curled her legs around his body, her arms snaking around his neck and her mouth on his jugular vein, sucking and biting. Emile felt pleasure mixed with exquisite pain and as he drove his cock into her wet, warm cunt, deeper and deeper, he felt that if he died in that moment, he would not care, that he would gladly give his life for one more taste of her lips.

  ‘Le petite mort,’ she whispered as he came, his semen rushing out of him, his cries filling the room, ‘that is what the French call it, that moment when you give yourself over to whatever may happen. When the physical sensation takes you to another astral plane, to paradise. Le petite mort, the little death….Emile, what would you do for me in this moment?’

  Her voice, so low and sensual, like the purr of a kitten or the menacing growl of a bigger cat, made his eyes close, so sweet the sound and his body cleave to hers. ‘Anything, my love…anything…’

  ‘Would you bring me the still warm heart of someone you loved?’

  Emile found himself nodding. ‘Yes, yes, yes, anything…’

  Seraphine smiled at him. ‘To lie with me again, I must ask you to do that, my blood. A heart, still warm with life, with your love. Bring it with you tonight and we will celebrate and our lovemaking will climb new heights you have never dreamed of.’

  ‘Yes, yes, my love…’