What to Read After FSOG: The Gemstone Collection (WTRAFSOG)

by CJ Roberts

  Before I can ask him where he got the coin from, he takes his cell from his other pocket and says something to somebody in French. He then turns to me. “Let’s go back on the terrace, Pearl, and watch the sunset.”

  After we spend a good twenty minutes watching the sky turn from hues of deep oranges and shades of purple to spotting the first star (which happens to be Venus), we go back down to the round dining room. I do not see or hear a person anywhere. It is as if invisible fairies have swept about and organized everything: the table is set for two with a white damask tablecloth, crystal glasses and silver candlestick holders. There are just the candles lighting the room – those on the table and others in sconces on the walls.

  The mood is romantic; a warm, golden glow flickers about the room. Etta James is singing At Last softly in the background – mirroring my frame of mind exactly – that’s how I feel right now…at last. At last I have met someone I feel so strongly for. At last I feel passion again.

  I look about the room. “Where did those magic hands come from? The noiseless ones that laid the table?”

  “You’ll soon see. You sit and I’ll bring you a little amuse bouche.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Literal translation: something to titillate your taste buds. A bite-sized hors d’oeuvre.”

  I sit in a daze studying the room, letting my eyes stray to landscapes of lakes and trees. I can hear low mumblings in the kitchen. He has help but obviously likes to keep that low-key. Soon, he comes in carrying two small glass dishes and sets one before me.

  “This is a little Carpaccio de Dorade – sea bream – with Gelée de Poivrons – peppers. Sorbet Poivron et Piment d’Espelette. Special peppers from the French Pays Basque region right next to the Spanish border.”

  He pours me a glass of chilled white wine and I notice three glasses in front of me – this is sure to be quite a culinary experience to be paired with different wines.

  He sits down and we begin. I pop the little roulade into my mouth and feel it melt. The chilled creaminess melds beautifully with the delicate flavor of lightly spiced fish. Sublime.

  “So do you ever get tired of traveling so much?”

  “You know, Pearl, even if I had the budget of a student, I think I’d be getting away whenever I could, maybe backpacking about the globe. You learn so much by visiting other parts of the world, immersing yourself in other cultures – the music, the language and customs. And it makes me grateful for what I have in life when I return home. I work hard but still, I’m not unaware of my luck. Every time I come home I think, look, look at everything I have.”

  “And where do you consider your home is? Here or Paris?”

  “Good question. More and more I feel rooted to New York but I suppose there’ll always be a place in my heart for Paris. Rex is there, of course. When he gets here, I’ll find it harder to leave.”

  “When’s he coming?” I ask with too much eagerness in my voice. Selfishly speaking, I want that dog to arrive ASAP.

  “Soon. I have some more business meetings overseas and when a few more deals are tied up, I’ll go and pick him up by private jet.” He is not smiling when he says this.

  “Really?”

  “It was your suggestion, Pearl, and what a good one it was, too.”

  “I never said−”

  “You sowed the seed in my mind – asked me the other day if I flew about by private jet. Why should poor Rex be subjected to a travel crate in the hold of a commercial plane – the air conditioning blasted up too high, or worse, none at all?”

  A young girl in a shift dress appears from nowhere. She looks no more than eighteen. The smile on my face drops with consternation because she’s extremely pretty with long dark hair, a neat little figure and rosebud lips. She silently clears away our plates. He takes her by the wrist. A sexy little maid he sleeps with on the side? My heart races with envy and suspicion.

  “Elodie, meet Pearl. Pearl, this is Elodie, my niece from Paris – Sophie’s daughter. She’s working for me this summer. Learning a few tricks of the trade.”

  “How do you do?” I say, wanting to shake her hand but she’s holding the plates.

  She smiles awkwardly. “Bonsoir,” and slips away, faster than a stream of water – back to the kitchen.

  “She’s very shy. She comes with me to the office every day – she’s quite a wiz at programming but she’s a loner, she keeps to herself. Her English is appalling so I’m trying to get her to go out and about more to meet people. She refuses. I thought I’d make use of her this evening so she’s been working as my sous chef and helper.”

  Elodie brings in two more plates and exits as quickly as she entered.

  “This is my version of one of Paris’s great chefs, Guy Savoy’s signature dishes. It’s Artichoke and Black Truffle Velouté. You are meant to dunk the brioche into it. Usually the soup is served hot but as it’s summer, I thought it would be good chilled. I baked the brioche – everything here is made by me from scratch.”

  The soup is rich, silky and earthy, and the accompanying toasted brioche flaky, with a smear of black truffle butter on top. I dip it into the creamy soup, garnished with fresh black truffle and shaved Parmesan. It’s mouth-watering. “This is delicious,” I gush.

  “Thank you.”

  The whole evening has a surreal quality to it. It feels formal and now I know his sister’s daughter is milling about the apartment, I feel uneasy and self-conscious. I expected Alexandre to have a sleek, modern home full of leather and chrome and Italian furniture, but I see he lives in a wacky sort of museum. He drives classic cars, one of which looks like the Bat Mobile, and he plans to travel, not by private jet himself for business, no, but to accommodate his dog. Are all French men like him?

  We have two more dishes, both served to us by the bashful Elodie. Razor Clams from Galicia, garnished with Seaweed Butter and Ginger, and then, for a second course, Roasted Pigeon with Tomato Chutney and Tiny New Potatoes. That was what I smelled wafting from the oven earlier. All this Alexandre has concocted himself. It rivals the best restaurants I have ever been to.

  Last comes home-made vanilla ice-cream (made with real Cornish cream from England, no less) topped with his own Rose Jelly made by him.

  “I collected the rose petals from my garden,” he says, his eyes bright.

  “In Paris?”

  “Didn’t I tell you? I have a place in Provence?”

  My stomach churns. I went to Provence when I was a child and remember fields of lavender, vineyards and clear blue skies, but not much else, except a yearning to return one day to a place that captured a young girl’s heart.

  “You have a house there, too?” I ask him.

  “Yes. I believe in putting my money in bricks and mortar in preference to the stock market. If things go wrong, at least I’ll have a roof over my head – that’s how I see it. You must think me very greedy owning all these properties.”

  “Not greedy, just lucky.”

  “I told you I was lucky. The house in Provence was a ruin when I bought it. It’s an old stone farmhouse, a mas. It’s very rustic and I never go in winter so it doesn’t even have central heating. I have a few vineyards and some lavender fields.”

  Every word that comes out of Alexandre’s mouth makes me want to weep. With joy. With fear. Fear that he won’t want to be with me anymore – that all this could be over. That I’ll never be invited to Provence. My dream is to run through lavender fields, taste the sun on my skin, be loved forever and ever by this man’s side; this man who has seduced me with his quirky sense of humor, with sex, and now his home-made food, and hints of what could be in the future. I find myself speechless. Lavender fields. Vineyards. A man who makes his own Rose Jelly? Really? Am I in a dream? A fantasy in some romance novel? I pinch myself because I seriously wonder if I am. Surely this is all a figment of my overactive imagination?

  To make matters worse, he adds, “If you play your cards right, I’ll take you there.”

 
That has done it. My cards? What are my cards? My hand is shaky, at best. If I only knew the secret ingredient to capture Alexandre forever, I’d bottle it and sprinkle it on his food when he wasn’t looking.

  I laugh uneasily. “I went to Provence once when I was about five. With my parents before they split. It was magical. I remember the scent of lavender.”

  “I have something to show you,” he says, taking me by the hand, “that might invoke those sweet memories.”

  He leads me to a large bathroom tiled with white mosaic. At one end is an Art Deco bathtub, and at the other a shower, also covered in mosaic. There is a floor to ceiling Italian-looking gilt mirror – antique, of course. On a table are two bottles filled with clear liquid. He pops off the top of one and presses it to my nose. The sweet odor hits the back of my throat as I breathe the delectable scent into my lungs and fill them as wide as they will go. I’m in a trance of memory, of desire. Now I think about it, is that what has hooked me? That is what his skin smells of…. Lavender!!

  “That smells out of this world,” I say.

  “I bring vats of it back. If I ever feel down or stressed I breathe in the lavender oil and all my troubles melt away in seconds.” He starts to run the bath pouring the liquid in. “It makes your skin really soft, too, and has great healing properties, gets the circulation going.” He gives me a mischievous smile.

  Circulation. I think of the blood pumping through his veins, of his rock-hard erections. It causes a pool of nerves to gather deep in my solar plexus.

  “So that was the smell I couldn’t quite fathom,” I reply, remembering reading somewhere that lavender oil is an aphrodisiac.

  “They say people are attracted to each other mainly by scent-based chemistry. Now you know my secret,” he tells me with a grin.

  “It’s true. I’ve read that some researchers think scent could be the astrophysical secret in the sexual universe, the key factor that explains who we end up with.”

  “So if I didn’t happen to have a few drops of this lavender up my proverbial sleeve, perhaps you would have ignored me when we met in the coffee shop,” he jokes.

  “Maybe – who knows?” I tease. “But more likely, it was those subtle olfactory messages operating below the level of conscious awareness emanating from your pheromones, or whatever they’re called.”

  I know this is true. The faint fragrance of Alexandre’s sweat when we made love sent me into a frenzy. He smells delicious, never mind the lavender. I’d marry that smell.

  We strip naked and lower our bodies into the water. Alexandre takes off my pearl choker – perhaps it would melt, after all. The bath is big and he positions himself at one end and I, in between his legs, my back pressed up against his chest.

  “What about Elodie?” I ask suddenly, feeling as if she could burst in on us any moment, even though the size of his apartment means we can’t hear her at all.

  “Don’t worry, she’s going on a date tonight. Someone from work is taking her to a club. I made her say yes. She’s in New York City, for God’s sake, she has to learn to be more social.”

  “I didn’t know your sister had a daughter.”

  “Elodie’s her step-daughter. Same thing.”

  Feeling more at ease now, I relax back into his arms. He kisses my hair. “You smell great,” he remarks.

  “It’s the lavender.”

  “No, it’s you.”

  He starts to massage my shoulders and I feel myself unwind and my body slacken. “That feels wonderful.”

  “You have such beautiful shoulders.”

  “It’s all the swimming I do.”

  “Some women’s shoulders slope – not yours. But they’re not broad, either, they’re elegant, poised, you have a great posture. And your waist – so pretty, so hourglass.”

  His hands slip around my hips, massaging the oil into my skin. He kisses the nape of my neck and a quiver shimmies along my spine. All of a sudden, I hear some pages flicker and his voice, deep and melodic, begins to read to me in French. I don’t understand, but it’s beautiful. No man has ever read poetry to me before, let alone in French.

  “Who’s the poet?” I ask when he pauses for breath.

  “Baudelaire.” He continues reading and I close my eyes, listening to the pleasing rhythm, the cadence of the lines, but just as he is saying:

  Avec ses vêtements ondoyants et nacrés,

  Même quand elle marche on croirait qu’elle danse –

  my backside slips beneath me and I go sliding under the water, my head knocking the book into the bath, splashing lavender-scented water all over the floor. When I come up – my hair soaked, water up my nose, I see the sinking poetry book and I gasp. It’s an old leather edition. What have I done?

  But Alexandre bursts out laughing, takes the sodden book and puts it aside. “What am I doing? I’m being absurd – reading you poetry when I have poetry right here in my arms, poetry in your lips, in between your thighs.”

  He guides my body around so I am facing him. He runs his finger across my Cupid’s bow, holds my chin in one hand and then kisses me, first by letting the tip of his tongue part my lips, pushing it into my ready mouth, longing for him, waiting. I’ve been controlling myself all evening and now I let myself go, responding with heat and aching desire. I can hear myself moan which makes him react with increased ardor. He’s kissing me hard now, his tongue probing deep – he’s growling like an animal, forcing me closer to him by cupping his hands under my ass and grabbing me tight, holding me up with the strength of his muscular arms. He’s licking me all over, my chin is in his mouth – he’s moving down to my throat, my shoulders, and in a circular motion around my breasts, grazing just the edge of his teeth gently against each nipple until they harden. He catches one in his mouth, sucking lightly. It’s as if a golden thread links them directly to my groin – I can feel that deep tingle inside me. His rigid erection is above the water, pressing up against my stomach. My Venus is wetting up, even though I am already in a bath I can feel myself oozing with excitement. His fingers are exploring in between my thighs and his index finger slips its way inside me.

  “So welcoming, Pearl.”

  I take his erection in my hands and massage him with the oily water. Ooh, he’s big. How did I forget that? It was only this morning and yet it’s as if I’m feeling him fresh for the first time again. I can’t get enough of him. He’s making soft little nips about my shoulders now and I shiver even though the water is still warm.

  “It’s too small in here, let’s move to the bedroom,” he suggests.

  Like a true gentleman, he lifts me up from the tub so I don’t slip, takes a warm towel from a heated rail above, and pats it about my body. We get out, and my legs still dripping, he scoops me up and carries me in his arms, the towel still wrapped about me. I can smell the lavender oil sweet on my skin and in my hair. When we get to the bedroom he throws me onto the bed, literally, I land on the soft mattress with a bounce. I open up my towel, my nipples still erect, my body shiny with droplets of oily water.

  “Spread your legs,” he demands.

  I do as he bids. He doesn’t have to speak, I can see his huge erection flex so I know how much he wants me and all I can think is how much I want to covet that organ – the centerpiece of his beautiful body.

  He’s standing there above me naked, running his eyes over me. “Look at you,” he says, “you’re beautiful. All I could think about all through dinner was fucking you. Making you come, making you cry out my name. What have you done to me, Pearl Robinson?”

  I smile, feeling triumphant inside but not wanting to gush.

  “Oh yes, I almost forgot – the gift I have for you. Wait there, don’t disappear on me now,” he jokes.

  He leaves the room and what he said gives me an idea. I’ll hide! I look about and wonder where. The room is huge, grand. It could be at the Ritz in Paris or anywhere opulent. There is even a mini-bar next to the bed. There are sweeping silk drapes pooling on the floors in front of enormous
windows. I could hide there. No – too obvious. Under the big brass bed? Too uncomfortable. I make a dash for his walk-in closet. So childish – but why not? I hide behind rows and rows of laundry-fresh shirts. Behind them are suits. Suits? I’ve never seen him wear one. I ease my naked body behind a row of jackets. My breathing is heavy and I hear him bluster into the room.

  “Pearl? Pearl? Where are you?”

  He walks out again, probably thinking I’ve gone to the bathroom, or something. This goes on. I almost come out but decide to stay put. His footsteps fade as he walks about the vast labyrinth of his home. I hear doors opening and closing and then he’s gone. Has he gone up to the roof terrace? This game is silly, I realize, and am about to come out, when he enters the room again. For some reason my heart is pounding, the way it does when you play Hide and Seek as a child. I hear the closet door open and light floods in. There are neat rows of shoes and trilby hats on shelves above. I see silk ties and color-coordinated sweaters and T-shirts.

  “I think a naughty little girl is playing games with me and she could be in here. I think there’s a naked creature in here who’s asking to be punished for her naughtiness.”

  I feel genuinely frightened now. What if he’s some crazy that wants to beat me up? His tone is serious. I push my way back further but the movement makes a shirt fall on the floor.

  “Caught you, you minx. I can smell you in here. I can smell lavender and little girl, and I think she needs a good beating.”

  I swallow a glug of air and see his hands come through the suits and land on my wrists. He pulls me out of the closet his face harsh – no smile.

  “I’m not kidding, Pearl, you’ve been disrespectful and I’m going to have to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget.” I notice his jeans are back on but he’s topless. He grabs a couple of silk ties from his closet. He lifts me up again and carries me like a child and dumps me on the bed. “Lie on your back.”

  “What are you going to do to me?”

  “You’ve been a bad girl.”

  “I was just kidding.”