The French Aristocrat's Baby (6 page)

He was built like an athlete. The taut muscles of his broad chest and sleek long limbs rippled. Lit by pale light from his bedroom windows, they gleamed like liquid gold beneath his smooth skin.

‘I’m all yours,’ he said thickly.

Her hands slid over the smooth glory of his pectorals until they reached the crisp dark curls of his chest hair. Tracing the narrow band of it down until it widened across his belly, her fingers hesitated, and then reached for his proud manhood. At the brush of her fingers he let out a long moan of pleasure. With that encouragement, Gwen couldn’t resist going further.
Encircling him, she felt skin as delicate as an eyelid slide beneath her touch.

‘Slowly,
chérie!
You go too fast!’ His laughter was soft and low in the dusky light. Pulling her up into his embrace, he kissed her again, long and hard as he freed her from the restriction of her bra. As it fell away he moved his attention from her mouth to her breasts. Rolling her onto her back, he teased one nipple with the tip of his tongue while rolling the other between the pads of his thumb and forefinger. Gwen was seized by a fever of excitement. It tossed her around on the bed until she was nearly senseless. When his hand slipped down to explore the curve of her bottom, she arched her back, thrusting against his touch. In response his fingers slipped beneath the flimsy fabric of her panties, pulling them away in his eagerness to explore the warm secrets of her femininity. She shuddered with pleasure as his fingertips found her little bud and teased it into life. Her breath came in staccato sobs, the foreign language of sensual delight. She writhed beneath his touch, the sheer cascades of pleasure almost too much to bear.

‘Watching you is the most erotic thing I have ever seen,’ he whispered, gathering her up in his arms and covering her with his body. As he slid between her thighs Gwen sobbed with a purely sexual need that could no longer be denied.

Etienne looked down at the beautiful creature lying beneath him on his bed. This was a moment to be savoured. He had never in his life experienced desire like this. Gwen had brought him to such a peak, his entire being sang with it. Gazing at her fragile beauty,
he saw his red-hot desire reflected in her eyes. As he plunged into her warm welcoming body she cried out, clutching at him as he filled her with one ravishing, potent thrust.

‘Did I hurt you?’ He gasped, looking down at her.

‘No—I’m all right,’ Gwen exclaimed. The pain was already a memory as her body moulded to his in growing excitement. She felt as though she were born to be one with him, and it was unbelievably good. ‘Please…don’t stop…’ she implored.

Etienne’s gaze cleared. Her voice and smile were urging him on, and yet her body had resisted.

‘Are you a virgin?’

‘I was,’ she murmured, struggling to open her eyes in the face of another rising tide of passion.

‘Why didn’t you tell me,
mon amour
?’

Gwen tried to think, but his body was too much of a distraction. ‘I thought it would stop you wanting me,’ she said eventually.

He shook his head. ‘I should have been the judge of that,
ma chérie
.’ Then he placed a single reverent kiss on her lips.

When he moved his hips again she felt the whole hot, hard insistence of him willing her to respond. She reacted to his proud dominance instantly, an unquenchable fire running all over her body. She cried out, not in pain, but for release from a desperate search for satisfaction. At last he slid his hands into the small of her back and pulled her tight against his body, catapulting her to orgasm. She flew among the stars as time stood still. Her body gripped him in spasms of exquisite
pleasure, drawing him on to the point of no return. With a guttural cry he shuddered to a climax and she was there, her body one with his.

Gwen relaxed into his embrace with a sigh of absolute contentment. She had never felt so close to any other human being in her entire life. Etienne had coaxed her body to heights she had never imagined. A delicious lassitude washed over her, until a dark cloud crept over her horizon. She would have liked nothing better than to talk with him now, but found she couldn’t. His rejection when they had kissed in the office dragged her back to earth like a lead weight. If she tried to build on this heaven by breaking the comfortable silence that lay between them now, he might be struck by second thoughts this time, too. What if he came to his senses and dumped her?

‘I must go,’ she mumbled, determined to jump before he could push her. Quicker than summer lightning Etienne’s arm snaked out. His hand closed around her arm, preventing her escape.

‘Stay,’ he murmured in an echo of his command to her earlier that night.

Pulling her back against his body, Etienne buried his face in her soft, flower-scented hair. He smiled to himself as he drifted between waking and sleeping. This woman really was one of a kind. She was the first who had ever volunteered to leave his bed. He normally had trouble in evicting one-night stands. He was a proud man, and was mildly surprised to find he hadn’t taken Gwen’s escape bid as a snub. Instead he found it refreshing—especially
as she snuggled back into the curve of his body with an ease that felt totally natural.

A girl like Gwen Williams was exactly what he needed. His stepmother was always trying to marry him off. What would
her
reaction be if she heard about this? His mouth twitched in a smile. Gwen certainly wasn’t countess material, but that didn’t matter to Etienne. Although bitter experience had put him off marriage for life, he was an honourable man. And what red-blooded male could resist taking a mistress as gorgeous as Gwen? It was an opportunity made in heaven. This was the first time in years he had felt free to give his powerful libido its head. Gwen was sex appeal and innocence in one irresistible combination. She was the perfect antidote to his working life, his grasping stepmother and her hoard of needy relatives. Gwen was as willing and eager to please him as he was to indulge her.

The thing that most appealed to Etienne was that she hadn’t once asked about the size and number of his estates, or his bank balances. In his wide experience of women, that was a miracle in itself. Unlike the rest of his acquaintances, Gwen spoke to him as though he were an ordinary person and that, Etienne knew, was exactly what he needed. With her as his mistress, he knew he would never be bored again.

Gwen opened her eyes and squinted towards a patch of daylight beyond the window. It must be very early. Dawn was barely brushing the Eastern sky. There was a sweet fragrance in the air she couldn’t quite identify. And then she remembered…it was Etienne. She blushed. His arm
was still around her. Memories of the hours they had shared came flooding back. She listened to the slow, steady breathing of the man who had taken her body and soul time and again during the hours of darkness. A man who, despite his vast wealth and status, had encouraged her to throw off every one of her inhibitions. If that weren’t incredible enough, Gwen knew she would do it again and again, as long as it was with him.

And yet she couldn’t stay. He wouldn’t want her any more—and in any case, she had to get to work. It wasn’t only a thirsty car and an impatient electricity company that worried her. Bankruptcy was staring her in the face. Now she was the sole owner of Le Rossignol, she had to make it pay. Physical need for Etienne fought with her fear of financial ruin. She had left her home in the Welsh valleys so that any mistakes could be made well away from her pessimistic friends and family. Despite their warnings, she had been almost sure this venture would be a success. The only uncertainty had been her business partner, Carys. Now her feather-brained ‘friend’ was out of the picture, Gwen was doubly determined to make a go of things. But from now on, in those few moments when she wasn’t worrying about her fledgling business, she knew she would dream of Etienne.

His breathing was slow and steady. Trying to harden her heart, Gwen began inching herself across the cold expanse of bed, away from him. Her foot had barely been touched by the morning air when Etienne stirred and enveloped her in a firm embrace again.

‘Don’t tell me you’re thinking of getting up so early?’
he murmured. The kiss of his stubble rasped over her skin as he nestled against her shoulder.

‘It’s light enough for me to walk home and start trying to sort things out.’

‘Wait…I’ll ring for breakfast,’ he said, surfacing fully. ‘We have things to discuss.’

‘We do?’ Gwen asked nervously. Waves of panic uncovered a sense of shame that she had totally cast aside until that moment. She clutched a handful of the thin sheet and buried her face into it. What had she done? What madness had possessed her to surrender everything to a man she had met only a few hours before? Pulling her knees up to her chest, she contracted into a tiny ball of guilt. Mistaking her movement, Etienne released her from his grasp.

‘Of course—you’ll want to freshen up. There should be everything you need in my bathroom, but if you want anything else, use the bell to call one of my staff.’

‘No!’ Gwen couldn’t bear the thought of total strangers getting the idea she was nothing more than another notch on this man’s ego. ‘No—thank you. I’ll manage.’

He was reaching for his phone, but paused long enough to grab and kiss her before she could scuttle off to the bathroom.

In that instant Gwen knew why she had fallen into his arms so readily. Etienne Moreau was a force of nature, and one she never wanted to resist.

‘It’s a rare woman who offers to merely “manage” when she could have all my staff running around for her,’ he murmured into her hair.

‘I’ve been brought up to take care of myself,’ she
said, forcing herself to pull away from his embrace. She kept hold of the sheet as she did so, wrapping it around herself for the journey to the bathroom. Considering the number of times they had made love during the night, there was no point in trying to be modest in front of him, but Gwen needed to make the gesture. Head down, she bolted.

The en-suite was as well stocked as Etienne had said it would be. Gwen found every variety of shower gel from revitalising to relaxing, toothbrushes, a selection of toothpastes and a small but elegant collection of cosmetics. Everything was shrink-wrapped and sealed, as though Etienne’s room was in a hotel rather than a private house. The thought that a million other women could have passed this way did nothing for Gwen’s self-esteem. When she heard the distant clatter of staff arriving with a breakfast trolley, she hid inside the bathroom until everything went quiet again. She gave it a couple of minutes, and then emerged.

Etienne’s bedroom was deserted. Venturing into the lounge, she saw a pair of French doors standing open on the other side of the room. They were draped with curtains of the finest lace and, beyond them, Gwen saw a breakfast table set on a wide balcony. Enough food for two was laid out as a spectacular buffet, complete with starched linen napkins and solid silver cutlery. It was a display Gwen would have studied for ideas if her mind hadn’t been full of a more pressing problem—the tall, broad and totally unmistakeable figure pacing back and forth beside it. Etienne was oblivious of the stunning view over the hillside as he
spoke into a mobile phone. Even at this distance, he was magnificent. Gwen felt totally out of her depth. She wouldn’t have needed the hundreds of family portraits on show downstairs to know he was a born aristocrat. Poise and confidence were obvious in his every word and movement. Despite the intimacy of their night together, at first she could not bear to meet his keen ebony gaze. She concentrated on the only thing she was qualified to do. When he closed his call she took a deep breath and stepped out onto the balcony to join him.

‘What would you like for breakfast,
monsieur?’

As she took a plate from a heated trolley she heard the soft click of his leather-soled shoes on the ancient stones. Then his hand covered hers and he took the plate from her unresisting fingers.

‘What happened to “Etienne”? And you aren’t one of my staff.’ He raised one fine, dark eyebrow in subtle amusement. ‘Concentrate on serving yourself, Gwen. I have something very different in mind for you.’

Dragging his gaze away from her, he let it fall onto the breakfast display. As he did so he frowned, as though it was a chore diverting him from something much more pleasurable.

‘Try the crêpes. They’re the best you’ll ever taste.’ Lifting a warm croissant onto his own plate, he looked straight back at her.

Gwen took one of the almost transparent pancakes onto her plate. Breakfast with Etienne in his suite was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but the business part of her brain refused to let go. She felt it was her duty to find out what her customers enjoyed.

‘I’ll get my chefs to give you their recipe.’

For the first time that morning Gwen’s smile was as confident as her reply.

‘Thank you. That’s very kind, but I’m quite happy with the one I use already. Everyone has their favourites.’

Etienne looked at her carefully. Then he smiled. ‘Yes, and I’m no exception. I enjoyed last night, Gwen, as you may have noticed—several times.’ His afterthought was a wicked drawl.

Until that moment she had been stealing little glances at him. Now she gave a nervous chuckle and stared resolutely at the breakfast display. Pretending that the choice between berries and syrup was almost as important as his comment, she tried to look cool, calm and composed. It was impossible. Etienne was standing so tall and serene beneath his native sun. She could hardly believe she had spent the night with him.

‘In fact, I’d like to make this a more regular arrangement,’ he continued.

Gwen had been about to lift a spoonful of fresh fruit salad from a crystal dish. At his words she froze. A droplet of juice trickled down the bowl of the solid silver serving spoon, trembled at its lowest point for a second, and then dropped onto the snowy white tablecloth.

‘You want to
what
?’ she said faintly.

‘I have a lot of things on my mind, Gwen. I need distraction—something to take my mind off it all and restore my faith in human nature. Last night I found the perfect solution, in you. We would make a good team. I’m sure of it. With my support you would be released from all your obligations. There would be no need for
you to slave away in a kitchen. You would be free to enjoy life as it should be lived, with no worries.’