Designing Emma (Volume 4)

by Clarissa Carlyle

  “We don’t have to share,” Daniel protested. “You can pig out on that cake all by yourself.”

  “You’re not even tempted to have a bite?”

  Daniel was more than tempted. In fact, he was tempted by a lot of things that he knew would be bad for him. The more champagne he drank, the quieter the voice of reason within his mind became.

  “Maybe just a bite.”

  “Please,” Emma scoffed. “Once you have a bite of that heavenly cake, you’ll want the whole thing! But it’s tough luck, we’re sharing!”

  THE CAKE WAS EVERY bit as delicious as it had looked. Emma wiped some stray fondant from her lips as she contentedly finished her final forkful. Daniel stretched out, feeling sleepy and full. A second bottle of champagne had been ordered, and that was now gone. All that was left to do was pay the bill and leave.

  “I’ve had a nice night,” Daniel admitted as they walked back to the hotel. The night was dark, yet the streetlights of the city basked it in an ethereal glow. Couples walked by them, hand in hand, absorbed in one another and oblivious to the rest of the world.

  “Me too.” Emma smiled as she kept in step with him. They walked slowly, their visions slightly blurred from the champagne.

  Over dinner they had talked and laughed, and just like on the plane, they had reverted back to their former selves. The people they had been before their relationship became tainted. Emma wished she could preserve those feelings and keep them like that forever.

  “I forgot how much you like to eat,” Daniel teased.

  “Hey.” Emma playfully punched his arm. “When in Rome and all that.”

  “We’re in Paris.”

  “Yes, but the food here is renowned. You’ve got to eat it and enjoy it, or what’s the point?”

  “It’s also the city of romance,” Daniel pointed out. “So what are you going to do about that?”

  He glanced at Emma, and there was a heat in his eyes that made her tremble with desire. He wanted her, she could see it. It was the look he’d give her before he ravaged her on his Egyptian cotton sheets or in the back of his expensive car. It was a look that without fail could make her entire body turn to jelly.

  Then he looked away, and Emma wondered if she’d actually imagined the look. She was, after all, pretty drunk.

  They arrived back at the hotel and took the elevator to their floor. Emma lost her footing twice as they headed towards their neighboring rooms.

  “You’ve definitely had too much champagne,” Daniel hiccupped.

  “Look who’s talking.” Emma pointed an accusatory finger at him, which struggled to remain on its target.

  They were outside Daniel’s room. Door number 34. A few feet away was door number 32. Emma’s room.

  “Why did you ask me what I was going to do about this being the city of romance?” Emma asked coyly, the alcohol making her bolder than she’d ever usually be.

  “Why do you think?” Daniel asked, and that heated look returned to his eyes. Before Emma could answer, he pushed her up against his hotel door and kissed her hard on the mouth. She instantly folded into the kiss, opening her lips and letting his tongue hungrily collide with hers.

  As they kissed, his hands explored her familiar curves. He cupped her buttocks and drew her into him. Emma moaned with delight.

  “Oh God,” she exclaimed as they parted, and Daniel, still holding her to him, began to kiss her neck.

  “We can’t do this,” she said breathlessly, before adding, “not here.”

  Daniel understood what she meant. He rummaged in his trouser pocket for his room key, growing more frustrated with each passing second. He found the key card and shoved it into the door. A green light flashed, and Emma pushed down on the door handle, letting them both in.

  As Daniel kicked the door shut behind him, he took her in his arms once more, and they were kissing again, more intensely than before. Emma ran her hands through his hair, loving how it felt to mess it up between her fingers.

  “You’re so hot,” Daniel breathed into her ear.

  “I want you,” Emma gasped helplessly. “I want you now.”

  Daniel didn’t need a second invitation. He shoved up her black dress that she’d so carefully dressed in earlier that evening. He pushed it up to her waist and removed the white panties she was wearing and dropped them to the floor. Then he unbuckled his designer belt and let down his pants. Emma omitted a breath of expectation when she saw him erect and ready for her. Through her drunken haze, she briefly wondered how much time had passed since they’d last slept together. Her thoughts were cut short when Daniel picked her up and pressed her against the hotel wall. She connected with it with a soft thud and wrapped her legs around his waist, holding him tightly to her.

  As Daniel entered her, Emma felt herself reach a state of euphoria. She cried out in delight, not caring how loud she was or who could hear. Daniel was a sensational lover, and she’d missed his touch.

  “Oh, Emma.” He leaned close to her as he continued to slide in and out of her. She felt so amazingly good he knew he’d climax soon. Even though he wanted to prolong the encounter, he knew he couldn’t.

  “I missed you,” Emma whispered in his ear. Then she nibbled his earlobe and began to kiss his neck.

  “Argh,” Daniel groaned with pleasure. He’d always loved having his neck kissed. “Ems, you’re going to make me cum.”

  Emma tightened her legs around him, forcing him deeper inside her. Daniel gasped and climaxed. For a moment they remained up against the wall.

  “That was...” Emma couldn’t find the right word. Unexpected. Amazing. Incredible. None of them seemed right.

  Daniel eventually let her go and stepped away, heading for the bathroom. He didn’t kiss her as they parted or even glance back at her.

  Confused, Emma pulled her panties back on and lowered her dress. She glanced around his hotel room. It was exactly like her own, but everything was the opposite way around, like the bed was on the left-hand side rather than the right. She heard the shower turn on and Daniel get in. She glanced at his bed and considered climbing into it but decided against it. She needed to make sense of what had just happened. Quietly she stole away to room 32; then the champagne caught up with her, and she promptly passed out on her own bed.

  EMMA ROLLED ONTO HER back and squinted up at the ceiling. The taste of champagne still lingered at the back of her throat, refusing to subside. But there was another taste there too. As she stared at the light fixture, she tried to recall events from the night before.

  She remembered going out, drinking champagne. The delicious chocolate cake! But the memory of that now served only to make her feel nauseous. Her head throbbed, and her tongue felt as though it had grown fur overnight. Raising a hand to her temple, Emma groaned. Then she realized what that other taste in her mouth was. Daniel.

  Suddenly she was drowned in a wave of memories. His tongue in her mouth, kissing up against the wall, things progressing as the heat of the moment intensified.

  “Oh God!” Emma suddenly sat straight up, which made her feel dizzy. She’d slept with Daniel. Anxiously she glanced across her bed, which was empty. Clearly, they’d not spent the entire night together.

  Emma’s hangover made her entire body feel putrid, so she hopped in the shower to try to wash some of it off, along with her shame. As much as she still cared for Daniel, she knew that they shouldn’t have slept together. Sex only complicates things, and they still had so much to work out.

  As she scrubbed furiously at her hair, Emma tried to make sense of what had happened but couldn’t. The main issue she had was that she didn’t know how Daniel felt about everything. If he was happy about them sleeping together, then great, they could go back to being a couple and put all the messiness behind them, but Emma knew it wouldn’t be that simple. Nothing with Daniel ever was.

  HER HAIR WAS STILL damp, tied back in a loose plait as she headed down to breakfast to meet Daniel. Emma wasn’t sure if it was her hangover or her nerve
s that kept making her want to be sick.

  The dining hall was relatively empty, as the hour was quite late and breakfast was only due to be served for another thirty minutes. Emma scanned the room and quickly located Daniel. Dressed in a white T-shirt and cream cargo pants, he was sipping an espresso and attempting to read the morning paper even though it was in French. Taking a deep breath, Emma went over to join him.

  “Morning,” she said as brightly as she could.

  “Morning,” Daniel replied politely, not even glancing up from the paper.

  “How are you? I feel pretty crappy this morning. I guess we drank too much.” Emma was talking quickly, pushing the words out with an uneasy urgency. Daniel always made her so nervous.

  “Yeah, we drank a lot.” He still didn’t look at her.

  Emma ordered a croissant and black coffee, uncertain if she’d be able to eat the pastry but knowing she needed the dose of caffeine. She watched Daniel pretend to be entranced by the newspaper, which she knew was a complete lie since his French was worse than her own was, and she’d struggle to read even the headline.

  “Daniel, can we talk?” she asked gently, lowering her voice.

  Daniel remained focused on the paper as Emma’s breakfast arrived.

  “Look, about last night—”

  “There’s nothing to say,” Daniel interrupted her bluntly. “We were both very drunk, end of story.”

  “What? So that’s it?” Emma asked, appalled. “Just fuck me and forget about me?”

  “Don’t make a scene,” Daniel urged through gritted teeth.

  Holding back tears, Emma walked away from her untouched breakfast. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t deal with Daniel’s indifference, not now.

  THE REMAINDER OF THE trip in Paris was a series of awkward encounters where Daniel refused to make eye contact with Emma or even speak with her unless it was absolutely necessary and solely about business. She spent her evenings alone, eating room service. All her dreams about a romantic break with Daniel had been shattered. He avoided her as though she had the plague.

  Emma tried emailing, texting, even phoning him to try to discuss what had happened, but all of her efforts were ignored. Daniel had completely shut down on her, and she couldn’t understand why. The sex had been good, amazing even. It meant something, she knew it did. It couldn’t just be some drunken mistake; there was too much history between them for that to be the case. She wished she could talk to someone about it, but she knew better than to confide in Damion. He wouldn’t understand.

  “IS THAT EVERYTHING?” Daniel glanced at Emma’s luggage. It was the first thing he’d said to her all morning.

  “Yes, that’s it.” Emma couldn’t keep up the façade of being bright and chipper around him. Her words were empty and hollow now. She felt exhausted from caring about him so much. It was draining her.

  “And the sketches?”

  “They’re complete, and I’ve sent them back to Damion already to start production.”

  “That’s impressive.”

  “Well, I had a lot of free time to work on them while I was here.” Emma struggled to keep the bitterness from her voice. Daniel seemed oblivious to her feelings and instead casually strolled out of the hotel lobby and hailed a cab.

  Emma watched him, as she always did. He moved with such easy confidence as though he didn’t have a care in the world. Clearly, he wasn’t going through some internal turmoil about what had happened between them as she was.

  He helped her load her luggage in the cab, and then they set off for the airport. The city of Paris grew smaller in the rearview mirror. Emma turned and looked back, silently bidding the city a fond farewell. There was so much she’d wanted to see and do while she was there. She’d had plans to visit the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral, but instead she’d attended multiple meetings and worked on her sketches. Despite her first night there, it had genuinely been a work trip, not a vacation.

  Oddly, after their drunken night together, no one else made the mistake of thinking Emma and Daniel were a couple. It was as if the dynamic between them had changed and everyone could see it.

  “Did you enjoy Paris?” the cab driver asked as he swerved the car throughout the motorway. Emma continued to be alarmed with how reckless the drivers were in France.

  When Daniel failed to respond, Emma quickly chipped in, “It was very beautiful. We had a lovely time here.”

  “She is the city of love.” The driver smiled to himself. “I am lucky to live here.”

  ON THE FLIGHT HOME, Emma didn’t opt for the window seat. Instead, she sat down in her allocated place by the aisle. She didn’t want the awkwardness of having to climb over Daniel each time she needed to visit the restroom.

  Daniel sat down beside her, his body stiff. Emma didn’t speak to him; she just sighed softly, aware of just how long the flight was going to be without anyone to talk to. She casually glanced over the movies shown during the inflight entertainment. She could watch a chick flick or two, and try to forget about the mess that was her own romantic life.

  When the airhostess offered glasses of champagne, Emma quickly accepted one and downed it, aware that the trip home would be considerably more fun if she was just a little bit tipsy.

  THEY WERE FLYING OVER the Atlantic Ocean when Daniel nudged Emma. She’d fallen asleep thanks to a cocktail of champagne and wine mixed in with a lackluster chick flick, which she’d found boring. She’d fallen asleep, and a whole hour had passed as she sat there with her head lolled back in the headrest, snoring loudly.

  Blinking, Emma turned to look at Daniel, surprised at why he had woken her.

  “You were snoring,” he explained apologetically.

  “Oh.” Emma blushed.

  “And we also need to talk.”

  “Oh?” Emma straightened in her seat.

  “I know I’ve been a bit... absent lately,” Daniel admitted. Emma noticed that he’d barely touched his dinner, which remained on a neat tray in front of him. As bad as plane food could be, she’d have thought that he’d have eaten something.

  “You don’t need to explain.” Emma turned away from him. She didn’t want to hear about how he felt he’d made a mistake in sleeping with her and felt guilty.

  “Yes, I do,” Daniel insisted. “That night when we were together. It was amazing.”

  Emma turned and looked at him in shock. Amazing, he’d said that, right? She hadn’t dreamt that.

  “I mean, the sex with us was always electric,” he went on. “But I can’t get over all that has happened between us. When I’m with you I think about how you were willing to marry someone else, how you didn’t value what we had.”

  “Daniel.” Emma suddenly felt weary. She felt like she was perpetually stuck in the exact same argument and there was no way out. “I agreed to marry Nick to save my father, you know that.”

  “I’m just... I’m not ready for us to be together or have a relationship.”

  “Fine.” Emma folded her arms and looked away from him. “Message received.”

  “But”—Daniel cleared his throat awkwardly—“I want us to keep seeing each other.”

  Turning her head, Emma squinted in confusion. What was he getting at?

  “Hear me out!” He held up his hands; he’d been anticipating such a response from Emma. “I mean, the sex is amazing. We both enjoy it. But we can’t be in a relationship together. We hurt each other too much. I accept that I’ve hurt you as much as you’ve hurt me. So I suggest we do something more casual instead, something more low-key.”

  “Low-key how?”

  “I’m not looking for a relationship, Ems. That didn’t work out so great for us last time.”

  Emma heard what Daniel was saying even if she wasn’t truly taking it in. Admittedly, their relationship hadn’t worked out the first time around, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t still hope for them yet. What could start out as a casual relationship could naturally progress into a more serious one. At least that
was how she rationalized it all when she responded to him.

  “So what do you say?” Daniel pressed her for a response. “Because I was kind of thinking you could come to my place when we land. We keep things casual, but no staying over.”

  “I’m not a racquetball!”

  “Ems, I’m not saying you are.”

  He said Ems so tenderly that Emma wondered if it’d be possible to commence their relationship at a slower, more casual pace. She nodded slowly, as though coming to an understanding.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s give it a go. Slow and steady wins the race, right?”

  “Really?” Daniel sounded elated, his eyes wide and hopeful.

  “Really.” Emma nodded. “Like you said, we just hurt each other in our relationship, but if we take it slow, there will be damage limitation.”

  “I knew you’d understand,” Daniel gushed. “You always were so open-minded.”

  Emma smiled thinly and looked down at her empty champagne glass, knowing she was in desperate need of a refill. She wasn’t sure how she was going to handle her feelings for Daniel. She still loved him, she knew that. But would a slow relationship be enough for her?

  Daniel reached out and put a hand just above her knee. It wasn’t a fond gesture; it was a sexually infused one. Emma felt her entire leg start to tingle.

  BREATHING HEAVILY, Emma rolled away from Daniel. Her bare back lay against his plush rug on which they had just had sex. She looked up at the ceiling of his apartment and wiped some of the perspiration from her brow.

  It had been one week since they returned from Paris, and since then they’d had sex together seven times, eight if you included their most recent tryst. Each time it was away from the prying eyes of Damion and Nick, who remained in the dark about recent events. Usually they met at Daniel’s apartment, as her own home was still under renovations, and she hadn’t yet had time to find her own place to move in to.