Guilty Pleasures

‘I’m not interested. Winterfold is my home.’

He trotted alongside her, his bare arm brushing alongside her and tickling her with its light down.

‘Think about it. I could be useful to you. Word is you’re trying to revamp the company and I know every celebrity worth knowing over here and in the States. I can get Milford bags on the arm of every A-lister worth their salt. I can get them on the red carpet of the Grammies, the Oscars, MTV awards. You can’t buy that kind of endorsement, that sort of visibility for the company. You help me, I’ll help you.’

Rob Holland! Who was he? How did he know so much about her? He was creepy. And cocky.

‘Who said I wanted that sort of pop culture endorsement, Mr Holland?’

‘Don’t be so pig-headed,’ he said.

She began to quicken her pace.

‘Hey, well forgive me for asking!’ he shouted after her, throwing his arms into the air. Emma started pulling away from him, her ankle suddenly feeling much better. He slowed to a trot and cupped his hands around his mouth to shout after her.

‘Well, call me if you change your mind.’

She didn’t bother to look back.

13

In the luxurious bedroom of Alliance’s Knightsbridge company flat, which was ostensibly kept for visiting senior management, Cassandra was doing her own brand of corporate entertaining. Kneeling between Oscar Braun’s pale thighs she focused all her attention on his considerable cock. As her long fingers closed around the base of his shaft she slowly, expertly, moved her mouth from his velvety tip down its entire rock-hard length, feeling it pulse between her ripe lips. Hearing Oscar groan, she looked up over his gently undulating stomach. He was lying flat out on the bed, his face strained with concentration, close to the edge.

Time to get this over with, thought Cassandra, unfastening the white bra from the Forden lingerie collection she had worn specifically: Oscar was chief executive of the brand, and it was only right that he did a little market research every now and then. She tipped her toned body towards his face, dipping one erect nipple into his greedy mouth.

‘Do you like it?’ she whispered, guiding his throbbing cock into her, knowing she was taking him to the brink.

‘If there’s one thing you can do, Cassandra, it’s fuck,’ he panted in perfect English.

She rotated her hips, moving him deeper inside her, arching her back, her arms behind her, fingernails trailing up the inside of his thigh. Finally, he bucked into her, crying out in German, before collapsing back onto the sheets, barking out an amazed laugh.

Cassandra reclined on the buckwheat pillow, her firm breasts pointing towards the ceiling, and poured herself a glass of water from the bottle on the bedside table.

She had swapped business cards with Oscar at the Paris Rive party and had enjoyed playing phone-tag with the dark-eyed Austrian until he was next in London. But the breakfast meeting arranged at the Berkeley Hotel had not turned out exactly as Cassandra has hoped. Whenever Cassandra mentioned the thorny issue of Forden pulling their advertising budget, Oscar simply changed the subject.

By the time she had finished her pot of white jasmine tea, she had decided on a different tack and had started to brush her stockinged foot against his leg under the table. Three hours on from that breakfast, she had no complaints about Oscar’s performance in bed; she’d genuinely almost come. For Cassandra, that was satisfaction. Slightly recovered, Oscar crawled up the bed to lie next to her.

‘I shouldn’t have expended so much energy,’ she said, lighting a cigarette, ‘I’ve got a busy day ahead of me. Getting Forden clothes into Rive.’

Oscar simply smiled and stroked her cheek.

‘Incidentally,’ she said turning to face him, ‘Jason Tostvig said there might be a problem with Forden advertising in the second half of the year.’

Oscar paused slightly before answering.

‘It’s true we are cutting down on our advertising budget for that period,’ he said distractedly. ‘You’ll have to speak to our marketing director to discuss it any further.’

‘Really? I was under the impression that all orders came from you.’

He stepped out of bed, naked except for his chunky gold Rolex and started putting on his boxer shorts which had been jettisoned onto the chair.

‘Honestly, Cassandra, if this little interlude has all been about advertising, then I think I’ve been right about moving the brand from Rive,’ he said with cruel amusement. ‘The editor is the embodiment of the magazine. I think it’s starting to look a little cheap, don’t you?’

‘Cheap?’ hissed Cassandra. ‘Do you know how many pieces of editorial Forden have had in the last twelve months in Rive? Do you know how much that is worth in commercial terms?’

Turning around, he gave her a cool gaze. ‘Darling, I really don’t count those little mentions in the retail pages, or a tit-bit in the fashion news to keep us happy. How many times have you featured our skirts, jackets or pants in the main fashion stories?’

Well, perhaps if your stuff wasn’t so hideous, thought Cassandra, maybe there might be a few more. It was true that Forden had barely featured in the magazine for years, but the bottom line in magazines was profit, over 70 per cent of which came from advertising. And Cassandra simply could not afford to lose a quarter of a million pounds worth of Forden’s money, even if their clothes were laughably frumpy.