Divas

by Rebecca Chance

  Not that Lola needed to see them. The Sikorsky helicopter sitting in the centre of the concrete was indication enough.

  As soon as the pilot saw Niels come through the arch of hedge he started up the engine, the blades spinning in a whir of noise. Niels crossed to the open door, climbed in and held out a hand to Lola, helping to swing her up. They took the two back seats, strapping themselves in, donning big padded ear protectors, as the co-pilot checked that they were settled and told the pilot they were clear for takeoff. A few seconds later, they were lifting off the ground in a constant blur and hum of noise, Lola craning her head sideways to watch as the beautiful Palladian lines of Villa Aurora were gradually obscured by the surrounding fir trees. The Sikorsky dipped down, back over the Villa Serbelloni, to cross the lake once again.

  This was the helicopter she had seen coming in when she was outside the Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni, she realised. This was how Niels had arrived at Villa Aurora. Oh God, poor Niels just got here himself. He’d probably visited Bellagio for a few days’ rest, swimming in the pool, sunbathing, fishing on the lake; and here he was, dragged out again because she’d turned up on his doorstep like a bedraggled waif, begging for his help.

  Still, he’d just load her onto the Van der Veer jet at Malpensa and then he could jump right back into his helicopter again, return to Villa Aurora, and keep going where he’d left off before she interrupted his peace and quiet . . .

  But that didn’t seem to be at all what Niels had in mind. At the foot of the steps leading up to the jet, she turned, holding out her hand to shake his goodbye. She didn’t feel remotely comfortable enough with him to kiss him on the cheek, as she normally would have done. She was scared that if she got that physically close to him, she wouldn’t be able to control her attraction to him.

  ‘Thank you so much, ’ she said in heartfelt tones. ‘You’ve saved my life, you really have.’

  ‘You’re a bit premature, Princess, ’ he drawled.

  The sun was behind her now, and she could see the fine white lines around his eyes as he narrowed them against its glare.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said nervously.

  ‘I’m coming with you to New York. To make sure everything goes OK, ’ he said nonchalantly. ‘I’ll probably take the jet on to Houston afterwards. I’ve got meetings planned there for next week – I can get my office to move them forwards.’

  ‘You’re coming to New York too?’ Lola heard her voice go up a whole register, suddenly higher and squeakier than her dignity would like.

  ‘What, don’t want my company?’ Niels said, raising his eyebrows. ‘Too bad. I’m not spending a fortune in fuel to take this plane across the Atlantic without seeing some business benefit from it.’

  He glanced at his watch.

  ‘Come on, Princess, we have a tight flight slot to make. It took all the pull I had to get us cleared for takeoff now. Get your bottom up those steps before we miss it, eh?’

  Behind him, a Vogue model dressed in a stewardess’s uniform designed by Giorgio Armani tapped him on the shoulder, smiling. She was tall and blonde and the way she was looking at Niels made Lola’s fingers curl into claws.

  ‘Mr van der Veer? I hear we’re boarding, ’ she said flirtatiously.

  ‘Hi, Lesley, ’ Niels said, returning her smile so appreciatively that Lola’s nails sank into her palms. ‘We are, you’re not. How do you feel about an all-expenses-paid stay in Milan for a few days?’

  Lesley’s big green eyes widened.

  ‘I feel very good about that, Mr van der Veer, ’ she said enthusiastically. ‘Nice of you to ask.’

  ‘I was hoping you’d say that. Talk to Nazario in the office, he’ll organise everything. And Lesley?’ He held out his hand. ‘That’s not quite all I need from you . . .’

  Lola wasn’t going to stay and watch Niels flirt with his stewardess. She climbed the stairs to the jet, sighing with happiness as she took in the familiar, luxurious surroundings, the enormous pale beige leather seats, the pristine white carpet, the door to the large (by airplane standards) bathroom at the back of the plane.

  She put down her Vuitton bag, stretched to the ceiling, cricking out her back, and sat down in one of the ridiculously comfortable leather seats, buckling herself in.

  And then her eyes widened as she finally realised something that should have been obvious to her already.

  Niels had just told the stewardess she wouldn’t be needed onboard this flight. Surely that meant he wanted to be alone with Lola?

  Oh God. She felt an instant, automatic rush of heat between her legs. Alone with Niels, miles up in the air. Was it really a good idea?

  Yes! God yes! answered the lower part of her body immediately. I mean, he’s insanely hot, and what else are we going to do for the next eight hours?

  Lola consulted an organ rather higher up her body. But even her brain wasn’t much help.

  After all, it pointed out, you must have had some idea that this must happen when you tracked Niels down in Como. I mean, you generally don’t seem able to be alone with each other without something of the sort happening, do you? Admit it – you’ve been fantasising about seeing Niels again, haven’t you?

  Niels came up the steps into the plane and, without looking at Lola, ducked into the cockpit to say something to the pilots.

  ‘We’re cleared for takeoff, ’ he said gruffly as he emerged, taking a seat next to hers across the aisle, and buckling himself in. ‘Not too much turbulence expected. Might be a couple of bumps as we go over the Alps.’

  Lola nodded. Shyly, slyly, she looked sideways at him as the plane began to move, at his long legs in faded old denim, sprawled out in front of him. At his profile, as craggy and intimidating as the Alps themselves. And at his big hands, with their strong, inelegant fingers, as they picked up a Financial Times, burying his face now behind a sheet of pink newspaper. Golden hairs on the back of his hands, running up his forearms.

  Oh God, she was looking at his arms. At his wide powerful wrists, at the cords of muscle in his forearms, at the veins running round the muscle . . .

  That did it. She was going to have sex with him in the next eight hours, whether he liked it or not.

  Chapter 35

  Niels, however, seemed to have suddenly turned into a Trappist monk. The only responses he made to Lola’s attempts at conversation were in grunts, as if he had taken a vow of silence. He practically covered his face with the Financial Times as if he had also taken a vow never to look at a woman again. It was entirely baffling to Lola: why had he insisted on accompanying her, why had he sent away the stewardess, if he hadn’t meant to try something?

  Maybe he was in a mood. Or tired. Men weren’t always desperate to jump your bones, after all; maybe he had a headache. She should rest for a couple of hours, try to sleep; perhaps he’d feel more friendly in a while.

  But her brain was racing, and not just her brain. Sitting so close to Niels, so close she could smell his cologne, was much too distracting for her to be able to close her eyes and relax.

  ‘You can unbuckle your seat belts now, guys, ’ the pilot said over the intercom. ‘I’ll holler if we’ve got anything bumpy coming up, but right now we’re cruising nice and comfortably. Should be pretty smooth all the way over.’

  Lola unbuckled hers and turned to Niels.

  ‘I’m going to take a shower, ’ she informed him.

  ‘Go ahead, ’ he grunted without looking at her, still buried in the newspaper.

  She walked to the back of the plane, sitting down and taking off her boots with huge relief: with only two-inch heels, made of softest suede by Ferragamo, they were as comfortable as boots could possibly be, but they had been her only footwear for three days straight now, and her feet were getting pretty sore. Behind the curtain that separated the bathroom and the galley area from the main part of the cabin, she stripped off all her clothes and dived into the shower. It was fully stocked with Chopard body products, and a few minutes later, slathered with
Chopard body lotion, she wrapped her hair in a small towel, herself in a larger one, slid her small feet into a pair of slippers that were much too big for her, and emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of perfumed steam that must, surely, be very attractive to the man sitting in the main cabin. And he must be aware, too, that she was quite naked under the towel . . .

  ‘Would you like a glass of champagne?’ she asked, padding back down the aisle.

  Niels looked up, briefly, and nodded a grudging acceptance. He had moved onto the Economist now, she noticed.

  ‘There are robes on the back of the door, ’ he mumbled gruffly.

  ‘They’re too big for me, ’ she said, favouring him with her best smile. ‘I trip over the hem and go flying.’

  But he wasn’t even looking at her; he’d buried his head in the magazine again. Furious, she went over to the fridge and pulled it open, retrieving a bottle of Krug and two chilled glasses. What could she possibly do to get his attention?

  Well, I could hand him his glass of champagne, smiling at him, and let my towel fall open over my leg while I’m doing it—

  But Niels’s Trappist monk impression even survived the sight of Lola’s bare thigh peeping temptingly through the borders of the white towel. His eyes slid away from her immediately, taking the champagne flute with a grunt of thanks and setting it down on the table next to him.

  Sighing, Lola set hers down too and looked around for an ice bucket. There was probably one in the galley, but she didn’t feel like going to hunt for it, not with Niels busy pretending that she didn’t even exist. She padded back to the fridge, put the bottle in the door, and slammed it shut petulantly.

  Then she let out a yelp of surprise. In her annoyance with Niels, she hadn’t been watching what she was doing. The closing door of the small fridge had caught the edge of the towel that was wrapped round her, trapping it, and as the door slammed shut, it had dragged the towel right off her.

  She was naked. Apart from the slippers.

  Lola clamped a hand over her mouth in an automatic gesture of shock as Niels, alerted by her yelp, lifted his head from his magazine and, finally, looked straight at her. Before that moment, she had been visited with the urge to laugh; it was pretty funny – she must look like a complete idiot . . .

  But the way Niels was staring at her, his grey eyes silvery and hot, instantly dried up any instinct she might have had to giggle.

  With one hand, he reached down and unsnapped his seat-belt buckle, a loud metal click that had never seemed remotely erotic before to Lola, and from now on would always be associated for her with sex. Niels was on his feet in a second, striding towards her, and instinctively, almost scared of what she had started, her hands flew to cover her breasts. It was too much to be naked in front of him when he was fully clothed, too much of a power imbalance. And she realised suddenly that she had never seen him naked. Her mouth watered at the thought of it.

  Niels was upon her now, and there was nowhere to go. His hands were in her hair, dragging off the damp towel she had wrapped around her head, tangling in her wet hair, pulling her head back roughly, tilting it up to his: his mouth came down on hers, hard and demanding, and she moaned as his tongue slid past her lips, filling her mouth, hardly letting her breathe.

  His body was forcing itself against her, the rough denim of his jeans, the buttons of his swollen fly, hurting her soft bare skin, and she pressed against him even more, wanting to feel every inch of him, even if it hurt her. One of his hands left her hair and shoved between their bodies, his fingers diving into her, making her come up on tiptoe, finding her so wet already that he groaned against her mouth, biting at her lips as he fingered her. His palm rubbed against her mound, his fingers curled around her, and she screamed into his mouth as she started to come, so ready for him that it made her blush with embarrassment and pleasure as she clung round his neck with both her arms. She was lifting herself up for him, his other hand twined in her hair, pulling it, as she came hard against his hand, came again and again till she was begging him to stop, that it was too much, she couldn’t take any more for now.

  The next thing she knew, still in a haze of such pleasure that her legs were buckling and wouldn’t bear her weight any longer, was him spinning her round and bending her over the back of an armchair, his hand still in her hair as the other one unpopped his fly buttons and pushed down his jeans and his boxers over his distended cock. The next second he slammed into her with such force that she cried out; the hand that was twined in her hair pulled her up painfully, the other one came round and clamped over her mouth.

  He pounded her against the chair, the leather sticky now with her own sweat, his cock slamming into her, her back bent upwards, tugged by the rope of her own hair that he was using to pull her, position her, exactly where he wanted. She screamed again, and he just pulled her hair harder.

  ‘Don’t make a sound—’ he groaned in her ear, sliding in and out of her so hard and fast she saw stars.

  She was melting, dissolving away. He was fucking her so hard she was melting into the chair, her arms flung out along its back for balance, his T-shirt sticking to her spine as his hips pounded against hers. She could feel the big muscles of his thighs, the hair on them scratching against her, the hair at the base of his cock, and the sensations were so exquisite that she closed her eyes to savour them more, to feel everything she possibly could. For a moment, she thought she would overload on pleasure, that she would faint, as his cock drove up inside her so high that, despite his instructions, she couldn’t help moaning again.

  Niels’s hand left her mouth. Biting her own lip, she wondered what he would do next, and in a second, she knew: he smacked her on the bottom with a crack of his palm against her skin, soft with body lotion, damp with both their sweat, and she bit her lip harder not to cry out. Even when he did it again, she didn’t make a sound, agonising though it was not to cry out with sheer pleasure at how much she enjoyed it.

  She couldn’t believe the depths of perversity they were finding in each other, how perfectly they were matched; somehow everything Niels did to her was what she had been craving without even realising it. It was incredibly risky; it relied on an absolute understanding, an absolute parity between them, and dimly, with no experience of this kind of sex at all, she thought that it must be incredibly unusual, too, that they could communicate so well physically without a word being exchanged.

  And then she realised that she could feel Niels’s breath, hot on her nape. He was licking at the join of her neck and shoulder, kissing it, the hand in her hair pulling her head up, keeping her hair off the nape of her neck; and then his teeth sank into her, just where he had kissed, a sharp, exquisite pain as he bit her gently, enough to make her feel it up and down her body, to buck against him as he drove into her, arching her back, showing him how excited he was making her.

  His mouth left her neck, his hand her hair. Her neck was no longer being pulled up, and her head flopped down gratefully to rest on the soft leather of the armchair. But it was only for a second. Then Niels’s hands closed around her hips, pulling her even tighter against him, away from the armchair.

  ‘On the floor, ’ he said, and she crumpled her legs underneath her as he sank to his knees too, somehow managing it without ever coming out of her, and then she was lying on the carpet, her head cradled in her hands, moaning into her arms as Niels, still holding her hips, drove himself into her so hard that her body slammed into the thick pile of the carpet with every thrust.

  He was close now, she could feel it from the way his cock was swelling, hear his breath hissing between his teeth as he gasped in anticipation. And she cried out in disappointment when she felt him pull out, arch and then spurt a stream of hot sticky come into the small of her back. He was right to pull out, of course he was. But God, she’d wanted to feel him coming inside her. There would have been a triumph in that, a sense that fucking her had made him lose all control.

  One day, she thought, her eyes closing, her body still
throbbing with pleasure. One day I’ll make him come inside me.

  Niels was reaching for something over her – one of the towels. He chucked it on her back and collapsed on top of her, no strength left in him, flattening her to the carpet.

  It was wonderful. She lay there, spreadeagled under his heavy weight, not wanting him ever to get up, the sweat on their bodies cooling slowly. His head was close to hers, and eventually he turned it, and with a rush of happiness she felt his lips on her hair. Kissing her. A smile flooded her entire body. Somehow, she knew not to say anything, to let this moment just be, and she drifted off into a half-sleep, so perfectly happy that, despite having a big muscular man lying mostly on top of her, she felt as light as if she were floating on a cloud.

  Eventually, Niels stirred, and she floated back to consciousness again slowly, feeling his weight lift off her, his hands wiping up her back with the towel, then reaching down to help her up. She stumbled as she found her feet, her legs still unsteady, and saw him smile the smug masculine smile of a man who has just had such good sex with a woman that she’s as weak as a kitten afterwards.

  ‘I’m sorry, ’ he said, looking embarrassed.

  ‘What?’ Lola couldn’t believe he was apologising for having had sex with her.

  ‘You just showered . . . and now I’ve got you all, um, messy again . . .’ he mumbled.

  Giggling, she went down the aisle to the bathroom.

  ‘You’d better hope there’s enough water to wash me off, ’ she called over her shoulder.