Too Damn Rich (26 page)

Thus, it was with this ulterior motive that
she stopped, turned back to Dina, and graciously said, "Perhaps we
can meet for lunch one of these days?"

Dina was so overcome that, for the first time
in her life, she was rendered absolutely speechless.

"Also," Becky continued smoothly, "I'd love
to invite you and your husband to my house in the country for a
weekend. That is, of course, if you're interested."

If we're interested? Dina wore the bleary
expression of a woman who was holding a winning lottery ticket but
was still finding it difficult to believe her eyes—or in this
particular case, her ears.

"I . . . we ... we'd love to come!" she
blurted as soon as she found her voice.

"Good! You shall be hearing from me."

And with that, Becky and her retinue moved
on.

Dina stood there, transfixed in ecstasy.
Then, elbowing her husband sharply in the ribs, she gloated: "Did
you hear that, Robert? Imagine! Us invited to Becky V's!"

Robert breathed an imperceptible sigh of
relief. His wife was so agog and sparkly eyed that—God willing—she
might forget his minor transgression on the dance floor.

He needn't have worried.

Bambi Parker was the last thing on Dina's
mind, for what could com

pare with one of the single most exclusive
social doors on earth opening to her?

Why, nothing under the sun!

Oh, yes. Little Dina Van Vliet, late of
Gouda, was in like Flynn—and higher than a junkie on speed!

Dante's Inferno was jammed. The orgiastic
pounding of techno-rock blasted the eardrums. Yellow and red
streamers, powered by fans set beneath grilles around the perimeter
of the dance floor, leapt and shimmered and licked the air like
devouring flames.

Karl-Heinz looked around him as strobes
freeze-framed the dancers like flashes of a stop-motion camera.
There were girls who looked like boys, boys who looked like girls,
curiously androgynous creatures who looked like neither, and some
who even looked like what they really were.

Zandra, for instance. In a place chock full
of fashion statements, she more than held her own and caught every
eye, blooming like that rarest and most fragile of orchids, but for
a single night.

Karl-Heinz could swear that his younger
cousin, whose vibrating physical presence he had never noticed
before, was more than a little enchanting. There was, in fact, no
way he could ignore her impact, or keep from feasting his eyes upon
her.

She didn't rave or vogue or indulge in
trendy, unstructured aerobics like everyone else on the dance
floor. On the contrary: she moved with a felicitously natural,
unstudied, and entirely fluid grace all her own, half the time with
her eyes shut, as if she were cloistered in some world only she
could see.

Forget it! he told himself. She's too young
for me. She must think I'm an old man.

As if to prove the point, he abruptly
stumbled, elbow colliding with another dancer's. He felt a
threatening grip on his arm, heard a post- adolescent challenge:
"Yo! You dissin' me, Pops?"

His head snapped sideways, resenting the
implication of infirmity, his awareness of the generation gap—of
all this youth!—heightened by the hardness of the kid's pimply
young face.

Karl-Heinz responded by staring him down.

As if threatened by superior powers, the
acned youth backed off. But Karl-Heinz felt no triumph.
Irrationally, he chafed at this crowd of grunge chameleons and
banjee kids with their multiple-piercings and boundless energy. For
the most part, they were years younger even than Zandra.

Yet somehow she seemed to belong, managing to
slip into a down town persona with the effortless ease with which
she'd change clothes, something he would forever be incapable of
doing.

For God's sake, he wondered, what in the hell
am I doing in this punked-out kindergarten? I don't belong here. I
should be uptown, foxtrotting with blue-rinsed heiresses in some
stodgy, socially acceptable establishment!

"Heinzie!" Zandra yelled to make herself
heard over the amplified techno-rock. Then she moved fluidly over
to him and grabbed his arm, rescuing him from his grim
self-absorption. "Let's cut a rug, cousin!"

Karl-Heinz was hesitant at first, but
ultimately Zandra could not be ignored. He heard the urging in her
voice and saw the gleeful smile in her eyes. She was irresistible,
and despite his concerns about not fitting in, he found himself
being led farther onto the crushing dance floor. With Zandra's
coaxing, he finally overcame his inhibitions and gave himself up to
the music, swinging, swaying, stamping, and jerking orgiastically,
as if in pagan worship, all in time with his seductive cousin.
Together they writhed to the bludgeoning beat, watching each other
in the painfully flashing strobes and synchronizing their movements
to the concussive noise. Together they laughed at their blatantly
sexual movements, first Zandra's, then his, one trying to outdo the
other, dancing with the indefatigable youths packed sardinelike
around them.

Finally, they'd both had enough and
collapsed, hot and sweaty, onto each other.

"It is getting late," Karl-Heinz mouthed.

"Yes." She nodded vigorously.

Karl-Heinz reached out and took her arm, and
they cleaved their way through the sea of dancers to the coat
check.

Outside, the rain was blasting down with
renewed fury, and flotsam rode the swift currents, bypassing
overflowing storm drains. But they were oblivious to it, laughing
as they dashed arm and arm to the waiting Bentley.

Sitting side by side on the drive uptown,
Zandra recalled how charming Karl-Heinz had been all evening, and
began to see him in a new, beguiling light. He no longer seemed
just an older, far-removed cousin ... but something more, something
much more indeed.

The bedchamber was dark.

Hallowed silence here, high above the city
where time itself seemed suspended and of no consequence. Through
the vertical blinds of the curving bay window, the indigo night was
suffused with shimmering, rain- blurred lights from the millions of
windows glittering in the darkness.

Bending forward, Hannes deposited her gently
on the bed, on sheets soft and white and inviting as flesh itself;
pale shadows thrown by the blinds rippled snakelike across both of
them.

Kenzie let her arms slip from around his neck
and stared up at him, her eyes wide and luminous.

Did he seem to tower above her because she
was prone and he was standing? Or had she already forgotten how
incredibly tall he was? And what about the chiseled masculine
beauty of his face, the marblelike lucency of his skin, the shimmer
of his whitish-blond hair?

As her eyes adjusted to the dim nocturnal
glow emitted by the city that never sleeps, she was struck by how
his lashes were the exact same whitish blond. And those eyes, those
eyes! How easy it was to lose herself in the bottomless depths of
those great shining pale pools!

Feeling the mattress shift as he lay down
beside her, she turned her head and looked at him. He was
half-propped on an elbow, staring so intently as though to commit
her every feature to memory.

She found herself paralyzed with longing,
hypnotized by his intensity. Everything about him added up to just
the right kind of chemistry.

"Ah, Kenzie," he murmured, reaching out and
caressing the soft creamy taut skin of her face with feathery
fingertips. "Beautiful, beautiful Kenzie ..."

Deliberately, teasingly, Hannes traced first
the ridge of one cheekbone, then the other; slowly felt the
curvature of her forehead, the pert sweep of her nose. So
ethereally did his fingers drift, so languid and controlled was his
touch, that a warbled sigh, composed of equal parts anguish and
delight, involuntarily escaped her. Already, she could feel the
torrent of moistness welling up between her thighs.

When his fingertips grazed her lips, the
agony of protracted foreplay grew unbearable. Greedily she opened
her mouth, closed her lips around his fingertips, and sucked them
in.

Swearing softly, he pulled his hand free,
seized her by the wrists in an iron grip, and forced her arms
apart, splaying them across the bed as though in crucifixion.

Her pupils dilated wildly and she lifted her
head. Fighting to free herself, she writhed, arched her spine, and
jackknifed—all to no avail. She was no match for his strength.
Beneath his dress shirt, his arms were corded sinews.

"Relax, Kenzie," he soothed. "There is no
need to fear me. None at all ... "

Something about his voice did it. Abruptly
the fight left her and her body went slack. She let her head drop
back on the pillow.

"There," he said. "That's better ..."

Instead of fear, she was suddenly filled with
a peculiar kind of excitement. "Oh, God!" she whispered. "Undress
me, Hans!" Her eyes were rapt. "If I can't have you inside me, I'm
going to go crazy!"

"Patience, Kenzie," he said softly. Releasing
her wrists, he took her face in his hands and locked eyes with her.
"You are very beautiful and passionate. Yes, very much so," he
nodded, stroking the hollows of her cheeks with the soft pads of
his thumbs. "But there is still one thing you must learn."

Her voice was soft and throaty. "And what is
that?"

He began to unwrap the capelike scarf from
around her throat. "That love is an art. And true art can never be
rushed."

The fires in his eyes seemed to reach out and
go right into hers. "Then teach me!" she said in a raspy whisper.
"Let me be your willing pupil!"

Arousal, raw and primitive, made further
words unnecessary. He lowered his head and covered her soft, full
lips with his, plundering their pliant sweetness.

Kenzie gasped. His mouth seemed to scorch,
and she thrilled to the intoxicating maleness of his scent, the
heady rapture of his touch. His tongue stroked her lips lightly,
then demanded entrance and explored deeper; darted about like fiery
quicksilver.

Clutching hold of his arms, she met his
tongue with her own, and they danced an oral duet to music only
they could hear.

She wanted it to go on forever.

"Don't stop!" she whispered, pressing herself
tightly against him when he came up for air. "Hans—"

"Sssh." He placed a finger across her lips.
"Do you know what it is I want, Kenzie?" His eyes seemed to glow in
the dark.

She stared up at him and slowly shook her
head. "What do you want, Hans?"

"You," he said simply, reaching down and
deftly loosening her rhinestone-studded bodice.

Each touch of his fingers sent electric
currents, like tingling shock waves, rushing up and down her spine.
Enthralled, she leaned forward on her elbows and watched as he
eased the damp, heavily encrusted silk down over her shoulders.

The sudden rush of cool air pebbled her flesh
and her breasts leapt free. They were full and strong, with erect
nipples jutting proudly forth like the stems of luscious
fruits.

He skimmed them with his fingertips and
lifted them admiringly, running his tongue across their silken
flesh. Then, when he captured her left nipple in his mouth, the
pleasure was almost too much for her to bear.

Shivering violently, she fell back and
clutched his head to her bosom as he sucked, fluttering his tongue
as delicately as hovering hummingbirds' wings. Suddenly she was
aware of myriad sensations: the cool eddies of air circulating
about the room, the heat emanating from both their bodies, the
thrumming of his tongue—even the tickling sensations from his hair,
which descended over his face like cornsilk and swept her flesh
with his every movement.

"Oh, Hans!" she breathed, pressing his head
even closer into her bosom. "Hans—"

He rolled the nipple between his teeth and
glanced up at her. She was flinging her head from side to side on
the pillow, her eyes wide and moist.

He suckled and nipped and she cried out, but
now her eyes were closed. Tears seeped from their corners. Her lips
were parted and she was breathing heavily, as though intent upon
emptying the room of its oxygen.

Letting go of her right teat, he teased it
with his fingers, tongued a moist trail to the left nipple, and bit
down on it, cruelly giving the right one a squeeze.

Her spine arched, her eyes snapped open, and
she screamed, her voice reverberating from the walls. She leaned
abruptly forward.

"Hans!"

He raised his head, the nipple still clenched
between his teeth.

She stared at him, her eyes luminous. "I
never want tonight to end!"

He laughed softly, the nipple slipping from
between his lips. "We have yet to begin and already you are
insatiable!"

Her eyes continued to gleam. "And is that so
bad?"

He held her gaze. "It could be ... for a
lesser man."

Her expression did not change. "But you're
not a lesser man," she said huskily.

He smiled. "No, I'm not."

And with that, he rolled her over and undid
the entire back of her gown, peeling aside the yellow silk like a
husk. He kissed the nape of her neck, then traced his tongue down
the bumpy ridge of her spine. He kissed her once on each buttock
and gently turned her around.

Completely naked now, she watched him shed
the restricting carapace of his clothes. Her eyes widened.
Perfection he was: the sculpted beauty of a Greek masterpiece in
the flesh. Imperial perfection marred only by the large deep scar
running diagonally down the right side of his chest. Then her eyes
fell, inexorably drawn to his manhood. A sound of disbelief rose
from her throat.

"My God!" she whispered, unable to believe
her eyes. "Take me!" Kenzie whispered hoarsely. "For the love of
God, Hans! What are you waiting for? Take me before I can no longer
stand it!"