The Yacht Party (Lara Stone)

‘I’d rather look at you,’ he said, leaning over to kiss her neck.

They crossed to the other side of the square. There were few tourists up here despite the busyness of the weekend.

They found a bench overlooking Port Fontvieille, Monaco’s second harbour, just pin-pricks of light in the dark.

‘How are we going to get back to your apartment?’ she asked between kisses. If she was being forward, she didn’t care.

‘We’re not. Not yet,’ he said.

She loved the taste of him, champagne, toothpaste and sweet tea.

‘Come here. Come closer,’ he said positioning himself so that she could straddle him.

He held her face as they kissed again. As she tipped her head back, he pushed down the fabric of her dress from her shoulders. Lara wasn’t wearing a bra. Her breasts sprang free and her nipples hardened as soon as they were exposed to the fresh air.

When Stefan rolled his hand over her nipple, she couldn’t wait a moment longer.

Rising up from his lap she unbuckled his trousers and rolled her dress up over her thighs.

As he guided himself into her, she moaned.

She didn’t care who was watching, a tourist, a local, the Monaco guard, she just wanted to feel her desire build. And it did. They rocked in time, and as he held her hips, she arched her back so he could pusher deeper into her.

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ she groaned, squeezing herself around him, shivering as she crescendoed into a tight pulse of delirious pleasure before she crashed over the edge, every nerve ending on fire as he withdrew from her.

She closed her eyes, and tried to catch her breath, sweat trickling between her breasts. When she opened her eyes again, she smiled at Stefan, blushing, not quite able to believe she had just done that.

There was a brief moment of tension between them.

‘Does that mean I’m in pole position,’ said Stefan and they both started to laugh.

‘I don’t know, let’s try and get back to one of our hotel rooms, and we can do that all over again to find out.’

Chapter 17

The train from Gatwick wasn’t exactly the Orient Express, but still, Lara liked to travel by rail. She loved the way it cut straight through the landscape giving an unparalleled insight into people’s real lives.

She’d flown in from Monaco via Nice and Lara supposed it was fitting that the last leg home should bring her closer to real life. From the air you saw cloud, from the road, you saw the façade, but trains let you see people’s washing, their discarded junk and their open curtains. An unguarded reality of barbeques, trampolines and toppled football nets: details of lives lived or imagined. From the train you saw how people really were, not what they wanted you to see. Lara rested her head against the window, her cheek pressing against the cool glass, as her mind circled back to Jonathon Meyer. What was true of the back yards of Surrey was true of the yachts of Monaco. Everyone had a public face and a real, slightly less palatable one. Everyone had secrets, things they’d rather you didn’t ever see. But had Jonathon’s secrets been enough to get him killed? Had he, like Jago Bain, said ‘no’ to his Inner Circle?

Lara was rattled from of her daydream by her phone buzzing on the table in front of her.

Number unknown.

She found herself smiling, a fluttering in her stomach. Stefan? She wondered, picking it up. And if it was, how should she play it? They had ended up back at her Roquebrune pension after their tryst on the Rock of Monaco. Lara still blushed when she thought about it. Their morning in bed together, and then meeting up with Eduardo at the De Paris to discuss their meeting with Jago Bain, trying to pretend they hadn’t been up most of the night having sex.

She tapped the green button.

‘Hi there.’

‘Lara Stone?’

Not Stefan. A female voice, American.

‘Yes,’ said Lara, immediately on alert. ‘Who is this?’

There was a second’s pause.

‘I’m a friend of Melissa’s. Melissa Gelman. She suggested I speak to you about Jonathon.’