‘Well, we’ll talk when you get back.’ He paused awkwardly. ‘We’ll sort something out.’
‘Thanks,’ she spat under her breath as she watched him leave the rose garden. ‘Thanks for nothing at all.’
In the master bedroom, Karin unzipped her sheer red Valentino gown and let it shimmer to the ground until she was standing there in just her La Perla bra and thong and her four-inch, crystal-encrusted heels. Adam slipped off his dinner jacket, threw it over a chair and walked over to her, smiling as he undid the buttons of his white shirt.
‘A successful evening I’d say, Miss Cavendish,’ he said, taking her hand and leading her to the bed. Karin lay back on the cool linen and shut her eyes, feeling Adam kiss her ankles and then work up her long, bronzed legs with feathery brushes of his lips.
‘Mmmm,’ she murmured contentedly. ‘That’s good. You did seem a little distracted this evening, though. Is everything alright?’
Adam took off his shirt while Karin sat up and unbuttoned his trousers. He shrugged. ‘No, everything’s fine. More than fine, in fact.’
He pulled Karin towards him to kiss him and she lowered her lips down over his firm stomach, her fingers peeling down his cotton boxers until her face brushed his hardening cock. She pushed him on his back and kneeled to straddle him. Lowering her head so her long hair brushed over his thighs she took the tip of him into her mouth and moved her tongue in delicate circles, lower and lower until the lips were moving up and down the whole of his cock, fast, slow, hard, soft. She knew how to pleasure a man while being totally in control; she’d made it her life’s work. He was groaning and grabbing her head to push himself deeper and deeper into her mouth. She lowered her mouth so far down him that the tip of his cock hit the back of her throat and his springy pubic hair brushed her lips. Then, suddenly, she pulled away, uncoiling her body back up to look at him.
‘Fuck, Karin what are you doing? I was almost done.’
Still straddling him, her high heels pushed down on the bed, she put her hands on her hips, knowing she looked like a wanton Amazon towering above him.
‘I know why you were distracted tonight,’ she smiled.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I heard your conversation with Jonathan Parsons earlier. In the bedroom,’ she said. ‘I was on the terrace.’
She got off the bed purposefully and picked up a white Frette gown and slipped it on.
Adam lay there for a second, naked, his cock still rigid, before a look of exposed vulnerability clouded his expression and he pulled the sheet over him.
There was a padded gilt Louis XV chair in the corner of the room and Karin sank into it, crossing her legs so that the robe opened and flashed a long expanse of thigh.
‘I’m not sure what you heard, Karin, but it was business,’ he said tersely. ‘My business. Business you don’t know anything about.’
She stared at him, knowing she had to play it carefully. This was her roll of the dice. She could win big, or her whole house of cards could come tumbling down.
‘Adam, I know enough about business to know that what you were talking about is illegal.’
‘Honey, please. Stay out of this.’
‘I’m going to be your wife, Adam,’ she cooed. ‘I think I deserve to know if my husband might be looking at a jail sentence this time next year.’
‘Quit it, Karin.’
‘No, I won’t quit it. I am here to support you. We’re a team. I want to know your business. I’m big enough to handle the truth.’ She smiled a smug little smile.
Adam took a sip of water from a crystal tumbler by the bedside table and looked at her for a long moment.
‘Obviously you discuss this with no one.’
‘Obviously.’
Adam smiled. There was a hint of arrogance about it that Karin didn’t like. ‘So, come back to bed,’ he said, patting the bed beside him. ‘I was enjoying myself.’
‘I just want it to be worth my while,’ said Karin, fixing him with her gaze.
‘And by that you mean …?’
‘If I am going to support you, I don’t want to feel vulnerable.’
‘Why the fuck would you feel vulnerable?’