Mistresses: In His Bed: The Billionaire's Trophy / Strictly Temporary / Whose Bed Is It Anyway?

Emmie didn’t know what to think. ‘She even knew that I was leaving the island—’

‘Anyone in the house could have given her that information as I made the arrangements for your departure with my staff before I left the night before.’ Bastian frowned down at her and slowly shook his handsome head. ‘Obviously Lilah would have wanted you to think that I had been with her and she knew that I was spending the night at Theron’s. I can’t believe you fell for it.’

Mortified by that assessment, Emmie said nothing. The doorbell buzzed and Bastian yanked the door open. The suitcase she had taken to her friend’s house was carted over the threshold. ‘Is this all that you have?’ Bastian asked in surprise.

‘No, I left some stuff boxed up at my mother’s,’ Emmie admitted wryly.

‘I’ll sort that out for you as well,’ Bastian declared, carrying the case into the bedroom and then striding back to the front door with an air of relief. ‘I’ll phone you tomorrow…check that you’re all right.’

And that fast he was gone and Emmie was left blinking at the space he had occupied and guiltily suppressing a strong sense of disappointment. Her bringing up the subject of Lilah and falsely accusing him had evidently stifled any desire on his part to make their relationship more intimate, she registered ruefully. Had he truly spent that night at his grandfather’s house?

‘There are two heartbeats,’ the obstetrician informed Emmie. ‘You’re carrying twins.’

‘Twins?’ Emmie listened transfixed to the galloping pace of her babies’ heartbeats. She was only eight weeks into her pregnancy and was amazed at how much could already be seen on a scan.

‘I think this is why you’ve been feeling so sick. Severe nausea is more common with a twin pregnancy,’ the older man informed her.

Emmie rested her head back down and wondered how Bastian would react to the news. The prospect of two babies unnerved her, raised as she had been on horror stories of how hard her mother had found it to cope with twins. Her heart sank as a rather more practical concern struck her: how many years would it be before she could hope to earn enough to afford childcare for two children? And if she couldn’t earn enough, how would she ever get her independence back? Was she destined to live off Bastian’s largesse for years to come?

For the present, Bastian was keeping her and Emmie wasn’t comfortable with that arrangement, no matter how often he pointed out that the baby that was putting her out of commission with nausea was as much his responsibility as hers. During the past two weeks while Emmie struggled to cope with the almost constant sickness, which even medication had failed to banish, Bastian had become a surprisingly regular visitor. He would call in to check up on her on his way home, sometimes he would order in food for them both and stay a while and on two occasions he had sent the limo to pick her up and bring her back to his penthouse to enjoy a meal cooked by his housekeeper. The new relationship they had forged had limits though, Emmie acknowledged tautly. Bastian would ask her how her visit to the obstetrician he had engaged had gone but he wouldn’t accompany her or make his questions too personal. In the same way he had made no further attempt to renew the intimacy they had so briefly enjoyed.

Spending time with Bastian on a platonic basis, however, was torture for Emmie and she was thoroughly ashamed of that truth. It was as though, having been programmed to react to him once, her body could not learn how to block the signals of attraction. She had to consciously will herself not to stare at him, not to lean closer, indeed not to touch him in any way. It disconcerted her that even feeling unwell couldn’t stifle the strong sexual feelings Bastian still awakened in her.

Before she could lose her nerve she texted her news to Bastian, reasoning that that was less emotional than telling him face to face.

‘Had scan. We’re having twins,’ ran her text.

And the text was sent before she could think better of using that royal ‘we’ as if they were a couple, rather than two very different people attempting to find common ground as potential parents on the strength of an accidental pregnancy.

Twins? An unholy grin of satisfaction illuminated Bastian’s lean dark features in the midst of the meeting he was chairing. He totally forgot what he had been saying while texting back a one-word response. Emmie was having two babies and he thought that was terrific news. He had been a lonely only child for more years than he cared to count but his child would have company and a sibling to play with. He left the meeting to instruct Marie to send Emmie flowers. He saw the flash of surprise in his PA’s face when she heard the name and realised where Emmie was living and frowned, wishing he could bring the relationship out of the closet. Unfortunately, Emmie didn’t want people gossiping about them and preferred to stay in the background of his life while totally ignoring the reality that a child could not be hidden indefinitely.

Bastian, however, didn’t want to stage an argument with Emmie and lay down the law. How could he when she was getting so thin he would do almost anything to persuade her to eat a decent meal? Her doctor had given her medication but it had yet to provide a cure. Before his very eyes the constant sickness was wearing her health down, stripping away her delicate curves, giving her face a pinched look. Concealing his concern, respecting the boundaries set by someone else went against the grain with Bastian, but he continually told himself that it would all be worth it for the end result.

After all, all his life he had dreaded the idea of getting married, fearing that he would somehow repeat his father’s mistakes. He had deemed Lilah a safe choice, only realising what a nightmare she could be after they had parted. Conversely, Bastian choosing to stay single and childless would devastate his grandfather, who was obsessed with the continuation of the family tree. But, quite unexpectedly, Emmie was giving Bastian the best of both worlds: a child without the risk and the restrictions of marriage. Theron would be shocked that Bastian’s children were illegitimate but Bastian was convinced that however he felt the old man would not ignore his great-grandchildren’s arrival into the world.

‘Fantastic…’ ran Bastian’s text and it came back too fast in response to Emmie’s announcement to be a polite fiction.

CHAPTER EIGHT

EMMIE SMILED WITH pleasure at Bastian’s very positive reaction and on impulse texted him back again inviting him to join her for dinner. She wasn’t a versatile cook but she could manage a decent steak. She was even more pleased when Bastian’s flowers arrived. Having set the table in the alcove off the lounge, she changed into the dress she had worn the night before Nessa’s wedding. Although it was a much tighter fit over her enlarged breasts, the rest of her was as slender as ever and the zip went up easily.

Bastian was punctual and she hurried to answer the door. His brilliant dark-lashed eyes roamed over her leggy figure in the fuchsia-pink dress and she blushed furiously, embarrassed that she had gone to so much trouble to make the most of her appearance.

‘Are we celebrating?’ Bastian enquired, studying her with hungry intensity. ‘I love that dress.’

‘You seemed pleased about the twins,’ Emmie pointed out awkwardly, feeling painfully self-conscious with his full attention trained to her. Her nipples prickled and lengthened, the sensitive tips scraping against the lace cup of the bra cupping the full mounds. A clenching sensation low in her pelvis made her press her thighs together and squirm with shame. Without even trying Bastian lit her up like a bonfire inside, she acknowledged in fierce mortification.

Something primal flamed and smouldered in the depth of Bastian’s dark deep-set eyes and without warning he reached for her, pulling her into the hard, unyielding heat of his lean, powerful body. His mouth plunged down in hot, urgent demand on hers. Excitement exploded through Emmie and she couldn’t breathe for the wild clamour of her thundering heart and the heightened effect on her senses.

‘Tell me yes…’ Bastian growled into her hair as she snatched in a quivering breath, struggling not to shudder in reaction as he ran lean fingers up a slender thigh below the hem of her dress, roving tantalisingly close to the source of the intimate ache making her so tense. ‘Yes, you want this as much as I do.’

The solid ridge of his arousal was potent and compelling against her stomach, and that he could hunger for her that much made desire leap inside her while moisture gathered in readiness at the heart of her. Weak as a newborn as that wild surge of yearning engulfed her, her fingers biting into his shoulders, she leant into him. ‘Yes…’ she whispered, no longer able to suppress her natural inclinations, frantic to feel him moving inside her again, awakening her to a level of sensation she had never known possible. ‘Yes…’

And Bastian required no further invitation. He lifted her up into his arms and carried her through to the bedroom, sinking down on the mattress with her across his lap as he unzipped her dress. ‘I feel like I’ve waited for ever for you, glyka mou.’

Emmie lifted her fingers to rest them gently against his stubborn, wilful and utterly beautiful mouth, trembling as he parted his lips and sucked on her fingertips. ‘You’re not used to waiting, I’m not used to giving.’

And it was true, for she had too often played safe simply to protect herself from the risk of hurt and rejection, but something about Bastian destroyed her defences, blew her heart wide open, made her want to give instead. She met eyes ablaze with sexual hunger and marvelled that she had the power to make him feel that way. Another kiss and he was stripping off her dress, peeling away her bra to curve gentle caressing fingers to her swollen nipples, his every touch sending fire to her aching core.

Emmie twisted against Bastian, fingers clenching into his luxuriant hair to hold him close while she kissed him with all the passion she had repressed for so long. Quick to get the message that speed could be an advantage, Bastian kissed her fervently back while also hauling off his jacket, ditching his tie and embarking on his shirt buttons. She spread reverent fingers across his hard-muscled bronzed torso, appreciating the lithe strength and raw masculinity of his powerful body. He lifted her off him, disposed of his well-cut pants and stretched out beside her on the bed, but he lay still for barely a second before he sat up again to study her semi-naked length with burnished eyes of appreciation.

‘I want you so much it’s painful to hold back,’ Bastian groaned, a fingertip toying teasingly with the shallow indentation of her belly button, and then straying down over her mound to more responsive territory and skating over the taut, damp triangle of material stretched beneath.

Emmie’s back arched and her hips writhed as he touched her, fierce hunger pounding through her like a pagan drum beat that filled her ears and her thoughts so that she was aware of nothing beyond the wicked skill of his hands on her unbearably tender flesh. He whisked away the last barrier and, parting the delicate pink folds, he thrust a finger into her aching core. She gasped, twisted and turned, wanted him so much it physically pained her to withstand such teasing.

‘I want to watch you come this time,’ Bastian confided thickly, sliding down the bed to caress the engorged buds of her nipples with his mouth and his tongue while at the same time he drove her crazy with every plunge of his fingers.

Emmie couldn’t stay still. She was on fire for him, quivering with excitement and a level of need that came close to torment. ‘Bastian, please,’ she whimpered.

And he lifted her up and sank into her so hard and deep and fast that she cried out with excitement.

Bastian groaned with sensual satisfaction. ‘Hot…wet…tight, khriso mou, my every dream come true.’

Emmie was on a high of rapturous sensation. He rode her with abandon, pleasuring her with hard rapid strokes that stoked her excitement to feverish heights. She was out of control, her heart thundering as she flew high on his erotic rhythm, her body rising to meet his. At the apex of her climax she convulsed around him, shattering in the devouring waves of pleasure that consumed her.

‘On a scale of one to ten that was an eleven, khriso mou,’ Bastian breathed raggedly, releasing her from his weight only to snake an arm round her and hold her captive to his long lean length.

His comment jarred, slicing like a blade through the cosy cocoon of relaxation Emmie’s body was embracing, because she was too well aware that in bed she had nobody she could compare him to. It made her feel cheap to think he might be comparing her to past lovers and she stiffened defensively.

Her movement made Bastian look down at the arms he still had wrapped round her restless body. Faint colour accentuating his high cheekbones because he was uncomfortable with his own unfamiliar behaviour, he freed her abruptly, but not before he had dropped a kiss on her furrowed brow.

‘So where do we go from here?’ Emmie prompted.

Bastian hated questions like that and he thought it was typical that Emmie would put him on the spot and want immediate answers. ‘It’s just sex,’ he parried very drily. ‘Let’s not get too worked up about it.’

Face burning in receipt of that demeaning response, Emmie froze and gritted her teeth together.

Bastian knew he had said the wrong thing but he was too arrogant to take it back. he also didn’t know the answer to her question and was already mentally sidestepping all the many complications he imagined lay ahead of them. She was carrying his kids and that made her much more than a lover. He tensed, not in the mood to think about that reality and suddenly very keen to be distracted from such troublesome and confusing thoughts.

‘Let’s go out to eat,’ he suggested abruptly.

‘I was going to make a meal.’

Bastian didn’t want to share an intimate meal in the apartment because he foresaw more difficult questions hovering like storm clouds on his horizon. ‘I can’t stay long,’ he told her, sliding out of the bed with fluid grace. ‘I’m flying to Australia tomorrow and moving on into Asia to check our operations there. I’ll be away for a while.’

Taken aback by this first reference to his imminent departure, Emmie sat up, feeling ridiculously lonely and lost. It’s just sex. His bronzed profile was hard and taut, his tension palpable to her. He didn’t want her attaching fancy labels to their lovemaking or attaching strings of commitment to him. She might be pregnant with his babies and he might still want to have rampant sex with her, but he was not prepared to offer her a more serious relationship. Had she really expected anything else? All over again she had tumbled into bed with Bastian without thinking about what she was doing, without worrying about how he thought of her or wondering about where it would lead.

Bastian’s silence, his patent eagerness to leave gave her an answer she really didn’t want. A hard lump filled her throat and she couldn’t swallow. She felt hurt, desperately hurt and rejected. Obviously she wanted more from Bastian than she was currently receiving. Equally obviously she had been in proud denial of what he could make her feel. Yet again she had ignored the clear limits of their association, for she dared not call it a relationship.

‘If you don’t feel like going out, I’ll order food in,’ Bastian volunteered, buttoning his shirt, grabbing up his jacket.

In that moment she hated him more than any man alive. ‘I’ve already eaten,’ she lied.

‘You know you need to be eating more when you’re being so sick,’ Bastian reminded her darkly.

Sensing his impatience, Emmie simply nodded agreement. ‘You order,’ she advised, snaking out of bed to snatch up her dressing gown and vanish into the bathroom.

She had never felt less hungry in her life, she acknowledged wretchedly. It’s just sex. Those three words had ripped her apart and forced her to re-examine the consequences of allowing Bastian to pay her bills and maintain a roof over her head. Did he see her as something less now? Had he ever had any respect for her? It’s just sex. Even worse, did he now think of her as his mistress? How did a very rich man regard a woman whom he was already keeping? Certainly not as an equal. Emmie knew she had a big nasty decision to make but she would have to handle that later when Bastian had gone. Right then the bravest thing she had ever done in her life was shelve all her messy emotions, walk back out of the bathroom, throw on the only jeans that still fitted her and join him in the lounge where he was already ensconced watching the business news.

Korean food was delivered. While he watched she nibbled, chased the food round her plate, drank a lot of water. ‘You need to eat more,’ Bastian told her again and he leant out of his chair to close a big hand round her thin forearm. ‘You’re getting ridiculously skinny.’

Hot colour splashed her cheeks and then receded again as she wondered if he found that thinness unattractive. Her bright blue eyes rested on his handsome features, lingering on the spiky black lashes shading his dark golden gaze, the strong blade of his nose, the hard cheekbones and the beautifully modelled mouth. She swallowed hard, taking a mental snapshot of him because she already knew it would be a long time, if ever, before she saw him again.

‘I’ll phone when I can,’ Bastian told her at the front door, looking down at her, wondering how she could look so beautiful and yet so painfully vulnerable at the same time, wishing he could take her abroad with him to give him something to look forward to at night other than an empty hotel suite. She needed looking after though, not foreign travel, he acknowledged grudgingly, and he had never looked after anyone before and didn’t quite know where or how to begin.

Tears trickled down Emmie’s face as she checked the train times online to plan her journey home to the Lake District. It would be madness to stay where she was when she and Bastian wanted such different things. She wanted more than sex from Bastian but she suspected that he still saw her as little more than the escort he had hired at such great expense to attend his sister’s wedding with him. How on earth had she contrived to fall in love with him? He might be great in bed but he had to be the most insensitive man alive! And yet Bastian’s constant phone calls and visits had still become ridiculously precious to Emmie in recent weeks. She blinked back the tears, ashamed of her weakness, her wanton desire to stay on in London and settle for whatever he was offering. Bastian was being as supportive as he knew how because it was his fault she was pregnant. Beyond that did he feel anything for her but basic sexual attraction? And how long would that last once she began to resemble a blimp? No, Emmie told herself angrily, she had to cut the connection and leave while she still had her pride. Sleeping with Bastian again had been a serious mistake but staying on in an apartment he owned would be an even worse mistake.

‘Emmie’s moved out…are you sure?’ Bastian growled down the phone at his PA. After months of unanswered calls and considerable concern on his part he had finally caved in and asked Marie to check Emmie’s apartment for him.

‘Well, the wardrobe and the drawers are empty but she’s left her teddy collection behind in a box on the bed,’ Marie told him, working tactfully at keeping the amusement out of her voice. ‘Oh, wait a minute, there’s an envelope here with your name on it. Looks like she’s left you a note.’

Bastian wanted to know very badly what was in the note but he refused to ask his PA to open it and read it to him over the phone. Some things were private. On the other side of the world he stared blankly at the wall of his hotel suite: Emmie had walked out on him. Rage momentarily electrified him. Diavelos, she was expecting his kids, she had no right to stage a disappearance when he had been doing everything possible to make her feel happy and secure! Well, possibly not everything, conscience bade him admit, discomfiture infiltrating his angry sense of betrayal.

In the following months since Emmie had travelled to visit her sister Kat, everything had turned out very differently from what Emmie had initially expected, she reflected wryly, while conceding that different didn’t necessarily mean bad.

Firstly, her plan to help her sister run her guesthouse had died the very first day when Kat admitted that business was very poor and she was actually on the brink of bankruptcy. Luckily, a very wealthy Russian had come out of the woodwork to save the day for her sister. Mikhail Kusnirovich had invited Kat to stay on his mega yacht and act as hostess to his guests. While Kat was away Emmie stayed on in the farmhouse to keep her youngest sister, Topsy, company during the school holidays. A few weeks later, Kat admitted that she and Mikhail had fallen in love and that she was moving into his Georgian country mansion, Dane-gold Hall, to live with him as his partner. Within months Mikhail and Kat were married.

Denied her elder sister’s company aside of occasional weekends spent in the lap of luxury at Danegold, Emmie had been thrown very much on her own resources. She had taken a temporary job as a shop assistant in a local supermarket but was currently engaged in looking into the possibility of opening a gift shop/café in a property available for rent in the village. Her new brother-in-law, Mikhail, had blithely offered her unlimited funds with which to start up her own business.

‘I don’t care what it costs me. Kat’s worried sick about you. If she sees that you’re making a new start in life on a decent income, she’ll stop worrying about you being a single parent,’ Mikhail had told Emmie cheerfully, not even trying to hide the reality that his main motivation was to make her sister happy.

As the months passed and her pregnancy advanced, Emmie had suffered less from nausea, and holding down a job and working regular hours had become a good deal easier. Yet when her twin, Saffy, had announced that she was remarrying her first husband, Zahir, Emmie had used her health as an excuse not to attend the wedding and she was still ashamed of that. Her sister was now the wife of the King of Maraban and a future queen. And as Saffy had always enjoyed a good deal of natural dignity and assurance, Emmie believed her sibling would be a stunning success as a royal. Unfortunately, Emmie’s own deep unhappiness had persuaded her that she would be a sad spectre at the feast if she attended her twin’s wedding and that she would only cast an unwelcome pall of gloom over her sister’s big day. When all was said and done, after all, her sisters already pitied her for being pregnant and alone, and Emmie had been equally quick to notice that even Kat was shy of expressing her love and affection for Mikhail in her sister’s inhibiting presence. No, the unmarried pregnant sister had been wiser staying at home when she had the excuse.

To avoid such negative thoughts, Emmie had spent every spare moment researching local craftspeople to supply merchandise for the gift shop while also checking out the strict requirements for running a café. That project had kept Emmie extremely busy. Although she had little time to mope she often lay awake late into the night picturing a lean, darkly handsome face and aching unbearably as though she had lost a limb. In spite of the fact that she had found it impossible to envisage a feasible future with Bastian, walking away from him had still hurt like hell. But it would have been crazy, she reasoned, to hang around on the outskirts of Bastian’s life, sleeping with him in the forlorn hope that he would eventually want to take their relationship to another level or assume a regular paternal role once the twins were born. She needed to get over him and she needed to do it fast, she told herself impatiently. And in her opinion seeing too much of Saffy’s and Kat’s deliriously happy marriages to the men they loved was unlikely to help her to recover from her own unrequited love any more quickly. Indeed her sisters’ success and contentment on that front only made Emmie feel like a total failure in the love stakes.