The Night That Started It All (10 page)

He turned to her, and her lungs seized. Beneath his heavy brows his dark eyes shimmered with a molten, lascivious intent.

He said softly, ‘Would you care to take off your hat?’

She tingled all over. Her heart was thundering. Her feet started to move, and as he strode swiftly across to her she practically flung herself at his hard body. She threw her arms around his neck and met his fierce, thirsty impassioned kisses with reckless disregard for any moral or overruling principle.

Her hat landed on the sofa, and while she tore at his shirt and unbuckled his belt to open his trousers he dropped her suit on the rug, unclipped her bra and stripped her bare.

The lithe beauty of his lean, muscular body, never seen, only felt, was as thrilling as her most fevered imaginings.

She gasped as his powerful erection rose in proud and gorgeous majesty. But her questing hands barely had time to stroke, squeeze and relish the prime virile beauty before he fell upon her nakedness like a hungry beast.

He kissed her breasts, licked her engorged nipples, blazed a trail of greedy kisses down to her navel and below.

Then he dropped to his knees. Embracing her thighs, he ravaged her curls with his mouth, then pushed her to the sofa. She trembled with sheer excitement. Parting her thighs, he paused a moment to feast his eyes, then, while she whimpered for blissful joy, bent his dark head between her legs and licked the tickly velvet. Tingles of erotic pleasure radiated through her in dark liquid waves.

When he took her clit between his gorgeous lips and sucked—heaven on earth—her panting moans turned to sobs of pure ecstasy.

With an actual blossoming orgasm, she cried out in disbelief
when he drew away, leaving her hanging on an edge. ‘Don’t stop
now
. Please, please, keep …’

But, ignoring her complaints, he stood up to draw a small package from his jacket pocket. Swiftly he sheathed himself, then, taking her hands, pulled her off the sofa and into his arms. In the stumbling rush to the bedroom, she hooked her arms around his neck, her legs around his hips.

There was a thrilling urgency to his haste. Devouring her mouth with what could only be called passionate savagery, he plunged inside her even before she hit the mattress.

Once on it, she gave herself up to the heavenly friction. And he was a master. He filled her so full her body exploded with light with his every sinuous movement. Rocking her into an urgent pulsing rhythm, he ignited rivers of magic in her flesh. Fireworks infused her every capillary.

And just like the first time, the fierce and hungry fervour in his eyes and the athletic synchronicity of their bodies rocketed her passion to an explosive and fantastic climax.

Long after her wild, appreciative cries subsided, she floated, eyes closed for seconds, minutes, maybe even hours on a cloud of blissful contemplation.

Vindicated. Vindicated as a woman.

When her heartbeat was back to near normal Luc lay on his back, lashes half the way down to reveal only slits of eyes, like a slumberous lion after a killing.

She smiled. ‘That was fantastic.’

‘Likewise,’ he said gravely. ‘You are
formidable
. So passionate.’

‘Thanks.’ She blushed. Her heart glowed at the recognition. Positively beamed through her chest wall. ‘And you know, it felt
amazing
. It’s rare for me to ever feel so—hot. It was truly liberating. It must have been the reaction to all the stress.’

‘I’m so happy the stress worked for you,’ he said smoothly, his eyes glinting.

She guessed Frenchwomen, being so mysterious and sophisticated, didn’t confess their feelings after sex.

‘Well, there was that other time too, of course. My first actual …’ She screeched to a halt in the bare nick of time.

His lifted an eyebrow. ‘Your first …?’

‘Boathouse. I recall feeling pretty well piping hot there.’

Heavens, time to shut the heck up. She’d brushed pretty close to giving away her fatal flaw. Knowing she was back in the orgasmic hot zone though, so to speak, was fantastically motivating. After her rocky start this morning, she could hardly believe she’d achieved this marvellous and formidable feeling of heavenly freedom and pleasantness.

After a moment he said, ‘But you must have known many other occasions when you felt so piping hot, having been engaged?’

‘Oh, sure. Of course, of course.’ She gave her hand an airy wave. ‘Although …’ She hesitated, and added with a self-conscious flutter, ‘Well … The conditions can’t always be perfect, can they?’

‘They can’t?’

‘Well, I don’t know how a man feels, but I guess a woman needs to feel—admired.’

He drew his brows in a frown. ‘But Rémy admired you,
d’accord
? He asked you to marry him.’

‘Not marry, exactly. Just—to get engaged. Marriage was to be in the distant future. He wanted to establish D’Avion in Australia properly first.’

He laughed softly.
‘Tiens.’

‘I think what he really meant was he wanted to romance every woman in Sydney first.’ She laughed sadly, though it was a rueful sadness now, not the broken-hearted one it had once been. Rueful, she supposed, for her part in everything that had gone wrong. Sad, because Rémy, having hurt so many people, would now never even have the chance to redeem himself.

Luc leaned over and kissed her. ‘He was a fool. He didn’t know what he had.’

‘You’re not wrong.’ She smiled.

He took her in his arms and kissed her again, more deeply this time. Quite emotionally in fact. It was really very stirring and beautiful. And the graze of his chest hair against her breasts was so erotic, she felt as if she was in the most perfect location on the planet.

When the kiss ended they drew apart, then laughed a little embarrassedly at their intensity. ‘Who’d have thought we’d have ended up here?’ she said, grinning.

‘Not me. When I saw you this morning I thought I was hallucinating.’

‘
I
thought I was going to faint.’

‘I have that effect,’ he said modestly, laughing when she gave him a playful punch. He stacked the pillows up behind his head. ‘But I can’t understand why you agreed to be engaged to
him
? What was it about him?’

‘Dunno. I was a fool. Naive, I s’pose. He seemed—charming. Exciting. Romantic.’

‘
Romantic
?’ His face expressed Gallic disbelief.

She hardly wanted to admit she was a Georgette-Heyer-style Regency heroine with deep-held fantasies about marrying a sexy earl. Not that Rémy was in any way an earl, though he’d
claimed
to have one in his family.

‘Well, he
was
my first Frenchman. All my girlfriends thought he was really, really hot. I felt so lucky … I was sort of swept along, I guess. For a while.’ She compressed her lips. ‘I s’pose in fairness he was too. And Em was so thrilled. I
think
she was relieved he’d finally decided to settle down.’ She grimaced. ‘The irony of that. He was about as settled down as Casanova. I’ve sure learnt my lesson. Settling down is highly overrated.’

‘Be careful who you settle down
with
next time.’

She squeezed his pleasingly hard bicep. ‘Haven’t you been listening,
monsieur
? There won’t
be
a next time.’

‘How can you say so? There’ll be some good solid guy searching the world for you even now.’

She felt a sharp pang. He wasn’t thinking of himself in that regard, then. She said rather tartly, ‘Tsk, tsk. Poor him. He can wash his own socks and cook his own dinners. From now on I intend to be a woman of affairs, living for the good times.’

Luc appraised her face. She was smiling, but there were shadows in her eyes. As on that night in Paddington, that impulse seized him. That desire to drive away those shadows and wipe the darkness from her life.

He’d have laughed at himself if it hadn’t been for a flash of his return to his hotel that night. Blindly negotiating the city streets, scored with longing and regret. Guilt. One of the most rugged journeys of his life.

At the time he’d burned to snatch her out of harm’s way. But, of course, the cold light of morning had reminded him of his reasons to board the plane, Rémy’s theft from the company being foremost.

He frowned. ‘Was it—so bad?’

She glanced quickly at him. ‘Not at first. But—gradually. As the gloss wore off. I think you’ve guessed …’ She dropped her eyes. ‘He wasn’t always—very nice.’

‘He was—violent?’

There was a tiny tremor at the corner of her mouth, and he felt something inside him tighten.

‘Not with his fists, no, except that one time at the end when he was desperate to find his passport. He was just cruel—in little careless ways. Things he said. About me, about Neil. Sometimes he’d touch me, pull my hair in a joke, though always a little bit too hard. Not like a person who loved you.’

Luc lay frowning, his pulse beating hard with the increase in his blood pressure. His fists had bunched involuntarily. It was a good thing Rémy was where he was now, or he’d have
felt this fierce need to go after him and teach him something about civility and decency. Not that more violence would ever be the answer.

He glanced at her downcast face. ‘I had heard—Rémy’s papa wasn’t very kind. There were rumours in the family …’

‘I know. Emilie mentioned it once. But I never expected—
that.’

‘Of course not.’

Perhaps unlucky Rémy had been poorly conditioned as a child, but … Luc burned to think of a man treating
any
woman this way. To enjoy hurting Shari … How could the guy have? Examining the fragile lines of her face, he guessed there was more she could have told. Far more.

Caution sounded a warning note in his brain. Perhaps it was better he didn’t know those things. His rational mind told him the more a man learned about a woman, the more he saw into her, the deeper he sank into the emotional quicksand. Already his responses to her were out of all proportion. Way out. Just one morning with her and he was dangerously close to relaxing his guard completely.

Had he forgotten where it could all end?

Shari felt a tension in the lengthening silence. Maybe she’d said too much. She could almost hear his brain analysing the evidence, weighing it all up.

‘Anyway, enough about my little case,’ she said lightly. ‘Everyone’s break-up is painful, is it not?
C’est la vie
, hey,
monsieur
?’ With a rueful smile she reached up and rubbed her knuckle over his cheek. ‘Haven’t we all loved and lost?’

His expression lightened almost at once. ‘You are right. My last lover preferred a famous movie star to me. Can you imagine?’ He made a comical face, and she joined him in a laugh.

As the room grew silent again she wondered if there was a certain brooding flavour to the atmosphere. ‘She must be insane,’ she murmured.

He grimaced, then his face lightened to a smile. ‘I thought of you every day, after we parted.’

‘About the bruise?’

He frowned. ‘Not that. About you. How beautiful you are. How—original.’ She hardly believed it. Even so, her mouse heart thrilled to its little rodent core. ‘Every hour … of every day.’

‘And I thought of
you
every day. I wanted to murder you. I wanted to make you
sorry
. I wanted to put my hands around your strong, beautiful neck and …’

A flame lit his dark eyes. ‘Come here.’ He reached for her. He whispered the words against her mouth. ‘I was sorry. I
am
sorry. Now I want you to forget
—everything
.’

This time his passion was darker, more fervent, more tender. A fierce and ardent light glowed in his eyes as he rocked her, filled her and pleasured her until she was blazing with light and higher than the moon.

And she did forget. She forgot everything in existence except the world of his arms, his passionate mouth, his beautiful, hard, thrusting body, the fierce heat in his eyes.

While Paris ticked over outside and the day drew on, their lips grew raw with kissing, their bodies sated. With exhaustion in view, Luc dragged up the sheet to cover them. Shari lay face to face with him, languorous eyes to eyes.

Gently, he pushed her hair from her face. ‘Two days is too short. You should stay longer.’

‘What for?’ She traced the outline of his mouth with her finger.

‘For this.’

Her heart skipped a heavy beat. What was this? This mad, uncontrollable need to hold him to her and never let him go. When had she ever known this intense mutual tenderness and passion? She wanted to run outside and shout it to the world. Luc Valentin wanted her. He was asking her to stay in Paris. In his apartment.

She said carefully, ‘I only have my hotel room for the three nights. They mightn’t be able to let me keep it longer.’ She held her breath.

‘Bien sûr
, stay here.’

‘
Here
?’ A pang of disappointment, so intense it was scary, cut through her. She dragged up an empty laugh while inwardly she cringed. ‘Oh, I don’t think so.’

Oh, how she’d misinterpreted.

‘I can’t tempt you? A week at the Ritz? You can do your sightseeing while I’m at work, then in the evenings … More sightseeing.’ He lifted his brows suggestively.

She concealed her gaze from him. ‘You can tempt me to some more of those scrambled eggs. I’m hungry enough to eat everything in this room.’ What a
fool
she must be. What a needy, susceptible fool. A few sweet words and she was ready to believe anything.

Imagine if she did stay the week. In no time she’d be dreaming of a future. Deluding herself, listening for clues of his intentions. Laying herself open to disappointment.

Hello, heartbreak, her old BFF.

She showered with him while waiting for the food, then, wrapped in a peach towelling bathrobe, shared the feast Luc had ordered.

‘I’ll have to put some clothes on soon,’ he said, sighing. ‘We’ll need more protection if I am to keep you happy. Mustn’t risk anything going wrong.’

She stared down at her scramble. A paralysing thought surfaced in her mind. Perhaps it had always been there, just below her consciousness. Since the boathouse. Since the PMT that hadn’t eventuated into anything. The nausea on the plane. No, there’d been more even before that.