Fractured Crystal: Sapphires and Submission (29 page)

He insisted she try it on immediately
—
but this time his insistence was not an imperious command, rather the enthusiasm and eagerness of a lover to see the object of his desire transformed.

Kris let him gently take the necklace, place it around her neck as she leaned forward, lifting her hair with her hand. He kissed her softly on the nape, then fixed together the clasp. The stones and their setting were cool rather than cold against her skin, and they hung between her breasts, magnificent and shining.

He helped her stand, her body shaking as he guided her to the mirror. She looked at herself. Perspiration still speckled her torso, and her shoulders and neck was marbled with a heat rash that had prickled her skin as her orgasm built up. Her hair was ragged and tousled, and her unmade face appeared unworthy of the craftsmanship that descended to her cleavage.

And yet, when she looked across from herself to Daniel, she saw the intense desire, the softness in his eyes as he placed his hands on her shoulders. She raised one of her own hands to his, enjoying its warmth as she grasped and squeezed it.

She was his, and he was hers.

When the plane landed in Lisbon International Airport, Kris was glad to see bright blue skies overhead. In London, the autumn weather was turning to rain but further south the weather was still more like a late summer.

Daniel was still somewhat cross that the airline did not provide a proper
first
class service, even for a two and a half hour flight. He had wished to travel by private jet, but in this instance Kris had insisted that business class was fine as she was still not completely sure of the ostentation associated with Daniel Stone’s lifestyle. She sometimes wondered whether her reaction was, in part, something superstitious
—
a refusal to give herself up completely to that lifestyle in case it disappeared entirely. As such, she
preferred
to keep at least a small part of herself fixed to the ground, even if the rest of her was beginning to fly so high with Daniel.

Such concerns were very distant today, however, as she landed in Lisbon. Even had she been there alone she would have been filled with intense excitement. It had been too long since she had been in the city, and despite the various promises that a visit to the Chiado operations were imminent there had been a number of interruptions and obstacles that had placed themselves in the intervening period.

Daniel had wished to travel immediately to an apartment that he owned in Cascais, approximately half an hour’s drive from the outskirts of the city on the Atlantic coast, but Kris had virtually pleaded with him to stay for at least a few nights in the centre of Lisbon itself.

“But it’s so dirty and chaotic,” he said. “Typical damn sardine nation: no discipline, not like all those efficient herring eaters up in the north.”

“And that’s why I like it,” she told him. “We sardine eaters have to escape your dour impositions from time to time. And it’s not dirty. It’s romantic.”

He had thus relented, and in any case she suspected that his opposition had been largely tokenistic. Although there may have been part of him that wanted to rest a few days from work by the sea (although she was already starting to realise that merely being away from his central offices did not mean a break from labour for the founder of Stone Enterprises), he was perfectly willing to spend some time in the capital itself. It may not have been London, but it was still cultured enough for him as well as her.

When they entered the main part of the airport, a smartly dressed chauffeur was waiting for them who immediately came to collect their bags. The driver, Filipe, was one of Daniel’s regular employees in the country, and Kris understood entirely why he trusted himself to so few expert hands when it came to being transported from place to place
—
and why he never drove at all. Thinking of this, she gave his hand a squeeze as they sat in the back of the air-conditioned limousine and made their way to the broad, tree-lined avenue just north of the old city that stretched from Baixa across to Alfama.

Merely thinking of that name made her feel a little strange now, and for the first time Kris wished she had picked another word, wondering whether her favourite city would thus become forever tainted by a failure in her life.

Dismissing such thoughts, however, she gazed up in absolute pleasure at the high block of the five-star hotel that they were to stay in for the next two nights. Being here itself was something of a novel sensation for her. Her father had brought her to Lisbon several times in the past, though they had always stayed with distant relatives across the river Tagus, and when she had visited the city herself after leaving home her accommodation had always been rather flea-bitten hostels and cheap hotels. Luxury in the city was something very new.

While Daniel checked them in, a small army took their luggage up to the penthouse: the amount of clothing and accoutrements looked rather excessive, but Daniel had suggested that, after some time in Cascais, she might prefer to stay in Portugal for a little while longer when he returned to London.

Their suite in the hotel added to the overwhelming experience of luxury, and Kris thought she was going to die from bliss. When Daniel had dismissed the attendants, she had run from room to room, trying every small object and appreciating every moment of design before rushing back to her lover and, holding his handsome, scarred face in her hands, kissing him deeply.

“Thank you,” she said, breathlessly. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Indeed, so excited was she, that she insisted that they make love there and then, with her pressed against the window, looking down over the streets of mult
i
-coloured roofs towards the hills overlooking the old city, the trees in the castle of Sao Jorge luxuriant against the stone walls. Bending down, he raised her skirt and held onto her buttocks as he entered her, her palms and cheeks of her face flat against the cold surface of the glass, her breasts rising and falling as they made love so far above the inhabitants of Lisbon far below.

When she had showered and changed, she came through to find Daniel looking through one of her sketch books. It was a new one, but the first few leaves contained some of the mythical self-portraits she had begun to make of herself. She realised that she had not shown him any of this work
—
most of which still remained in her old flat in London (which, to his annoyance, she insisted on keeping on). She had not particularly thought of this, and it struck her as a little odd that she still maintained a degree of reserve with Daniel
—
but so it was.

“Do you plan to do any drawing while we’re here?” he asked her, looking at her when she emerged from the walk-in closet dressed in a light pair of flowing pantaloons and a cream-coloured shirt that hung easily from her bosom.

“Yes, I think so,” she said. “We’ll see how it goes, eh?”

He closed the pad, realising that this was to be the most he would get from this particular conversation, and instead observed: “You probably know the city better than me. I tend to pass through it, so you can be my guide for the next couple of days.”

“Oh,” she replied, “I’m not much more than a tourist. Dad used to know the place far better, but I’ve never really spent long enough here to know it inside out. We are close to Baixa, though, so I’d really like to go and spend some time on the terraces up there tonight, just taking in the atmosphere of the place. And anyway, I thought tomorrow we should go and visit Chiado Shipping. It is why we’re here, after all.”

He looked at her incredulously. “What? You’re serious? I thought that was just a pretence to get here.”

She shook her head. “Yes, I am serious. I told Guilherme that we would be with him tomorrow, just after eleven. No need to rush things after all, but he will be expecting us. Don’t mistake me for some bimbo, Daniel. I’ve kind of become caught up in this particular deal
—
even if had nothing to do with you anymore, I’d want to see it through to the end for myself.”

Standing, Daniel crossed to her and embraced her so that her chin was resting on his chest as she looked up at his
asymmetrical
eyes. He was smiling, very tenderly. “The last thing I think of you as is a bimbo,” he told her quietly.

During the evening as the sun slowly set across the estuary of the Tagus, they did not venture far but merely took a funicular tram to the top of Baixa, Kris leading Daniel by the hand to a small restaurant that she had found in the guide book. He had wanted to eat in the hotel, being sure that five star French cuisine would guarantee him the service he was used to, but she refused to travel to the land of her ancestors and endure an anodyne experience. As such, she cajoled and even forced him to sit among the hoi polloi who were enjoying the early autumn evening, still so much warmer than in England.

As they sat on the terrace, Kris ordered wine and a coffee for Daniel, enjoying the opportunity to practice her rusty Portuguese as they gazed down towards the grid of the city that had been rebuilt near the sea following the earthquake in the eighteenth century. If she leaned out over the railing along the terrace’s edge (a precarious act that made Daniel more nervous than usual), she could just make out the huge statue of the Christo Rei across the river, while to the north of them was the lush growth of the botanical gardens and the wide, tree-lined avenue of the Avenida da Liberdade. The meal they ate was simple, as indeed was everything else about that experience that evening
—
but more than anything Kris felt that she had arrived at the still centre of her life, the sound of a Fado singer and his guitar gently floating across the night air.

The next day, after a leisurely breakfast in the hotel, Filipe took them to the offices of Frete Chiado which lay near to the Ponte XXV de Abril and below the area of the city from which the company took its name. Overhead, the red metal frame of the bridge extended across the river to the enormous statue of Christ, modelled on that in Rio de Janeiro, and large industrial buildings reared up before them.

Daniel had been uncertain that she would really want to go through with this meeting, assuming that, at the last moment, she would decide upon some other sightseeing activity (or shopping on the credit card he had made available to her). Kris, however, remained fixed on seeing through this part of the deal and so Daniel’s face assumed a determined, business-like expression as they drove to the shipping company, fixing instead on the work that lay ahead.

Guilherme Escada greeted them as soon as they arrived, the driver Filipe having phoned ahead to advise them they were on the way. When he saw Kris, he greeted her warmly, embracing her as she spoke to him in slightly halting Portuguese, but she could see that he was slightly nervous when she introduced Daniel to him. After all, a great deal of Stone Enterprise equity was tied up in his venture, and she realised that Daniel’s purpose for suggesting this trip could be more than simple indulgence of her tastes and ancestry.

Indeed, as Guilherme proudly showed them around the part of the port used by Chiado, her lover asked a series of searching questions about the company’s operations that revealed this was, after all, more than simply a holiday for him. Kris did not mind: if anything, it was a small source of pride to her that she had encouraged him to take an interest in this one cog in his empire. Although some of the Portuguese director’s responses were a little cautious, she knew he had little to worry about: she had spent enough time checking through the company’s books to know that everything was in order.

“Impressive,” he told her when Filipe finally drove them away. “I wouldn’t have thought to take much interest in the particular details of Chiado, but I’m glad I did. Thank you,” he told her simply, with a kiss.

She wanted to visit the castle
—
to view, as it were, the city from both heights
—
and so Filipe drove them along the main road that led alongside the river before turning through the narrow, winding streets of Alfama. Once they had arrived at the yellowing, stone walls of the Castello de Sao Jorge, Daniel bid the driver meet them in another couple of hours and they joined the queues of tourists waiting to enter the monument.

Inside, he appreciated the mixture of shade and sunlight created by the dapping effect of the overhead cypress trees. Leading him by the hand once more, Kris took him to the parapet that overlooked the city, pointing down to the red bridge where they had been barely an hour before. Daniel smiled, but also looked a little tense as she stood next to the low wall.

“What’s up?” she asked. “Don’t like heights?”

“Not really,” he admitted, apologetically.

“I’m surprised. I mean, your head is a good half foot higher off the ground than most people’s.”

“Which is perhaps why I’m so keen not to let it rise too much further. Come on,” he said, drawing away without waiting for her assent, “let’s get something to eat.”

“I was really surprised you wanted to go through with the meeting today,” he told her as they ate a few sardines and salad beside one of the old, stone buildings, converted into a restaurant. Beside them, peacocks slowly walked between the tables, one or two perching in the boughs of a particularly large cypress above them.