Читать книгу The Mills & Boon Stars Collection - Мишель Смарт, Cathy Williams - Страница 37
ОглавлениеTHEY LEFT THE airport in a rough terrain vehicle, with Bastien at the wheel and his security team following in another car.
The glorious Provençal light was beginning to fade, softening hard edges with shadow. They drove through rugged hills with deep gorges and fertile valleys. The hilltops were scattered with picturesque fortified villages with narrow meandering streets and sleepy shuttered houses. As the landscape grew increasingly spectacular the land became lusher. Ancient vineyards cloaked the sloping hills with ranks of bright green vines, while orchards of peaches, pears, nectarines and cherries flourished on stone terraces.
‘Did you inherit the chateau from your family?’ Lilah finally asked, unable to stifle her curiosity because Bastien had not offered a shred of further information.
‘I’m not from a rich family,’ Bastien told her drily. ‘My mother was a waitress born in an Athens back street. My father is a small-time property developer who is, admittedly, married to a very wealthy woman. Regrettably, he was never married to my mother.’
‘Oh...’ Lilah responded after an awkward pause. ‘When you mentioned your father giving your mother the sea horse pendant, and you thinking that you and your parents were the perfect family, you gave me a very different impression of your background.’
‘What I meant was that back then I was still young enough to be ignorant of exactly what their relationship entailed.’
‘And what did it entail?’
‘My father, Anatole, is married to another woman. My mother was his mistress. She once admitted to me that she deliberately chose to become pregnant with me because she believed my father would divorce his wife for her if she gave him a child,’ Bastien volunteered in the driest of tones. ‘Unhappily for her, her scheme failed—because my father’s wife had already conceived my half-brother, Leo, who is only a few months older than I am. My mother was extremely bitter about that development.’
‘And she told you that?’ Lilah pressed in consternation.
His beautifully shaped mouth quirked. ‘Athene wasn’t the maternal type, and she never did overcome her resentment at having the responsibility and expense of a child she no longer had any use for.’
Lilah compressed her full lips, the skin around her mouth bloodless from the force of will it took for her to remain silent in the face of what he was telling her. She was shocked, but she didn’t want to admit it, sensing that Bastien would ridicule her revulsion at his mother’s callous candour. But no child should know he was unwanted, she thought painfully. No child should have to live with the demeaning knowledge that he had only been conceived to be used as a piece of emotional blackmail in his mother’s battle to win a wedding ring from his father.
‘No comment? I felt sure you would have several moralising remarks to make.’
‘Then you were wrong. I know that all children don’t grow up in a picturebook-perfect world,’ Lilah breathed tautly. ‘Otherwise my father would have loved my mother and stayed faithful to her...’
‘He wasn’t?’ Bastien shot her a disconcerted look from frowning dark eyes. ‘You’re very close to your father. I naturally assumed...’
‘My parents weren’t happily married. There were always other women in my father’s life, and constant upsetting scenes in my home. He didn’t love my mother. They’d been together since they were teenagers, though, and everyone expected him to marry her—so eventually he did,’ she proffered ruefully. ‘It was a long time before I understood that succumbing to that social pressure had made him feel trapped in their marriage. He’s a different man with my stepmother.’
‘Did your father’s infidelity contribute to your judgemental view of me as a “shameless man whore”?’ Bastien shot at her, throwing her completely off balance.
Lilah flushed to the roots of her hair at having her own insult flung back at her two years after the event and when she’d least expected it. ‘Of course not... However, you are a womaniser, Bastien.’
‘But not a man whore. I have never been unfaithful to a lover,’ Bastien asserted levelly. ‘I have never taken indiscriminate sexual partners either. While my values may not be the same as yours, I do have standards.’
Mortification had claimed Lilah and it was eating her alive. She closed her hands together tightly on her lap. ‘I lost my temper that night. I shouldn’t have made such personal and disparaging comments to someone I barely knew,’ she conceded, hoping that her admission would close the subject.
‘Is that an apology?’
Lilah breathed in so deep that her narrow chest swelled.
‘I mean,’ Bastien mused, and his deep, dark, Greek-accented drawl was as rich as molasses, ‘I did only ask you to dine with me and spend the night. I didn’t assault you or abuse you.’
Lilah lost her battle with her temper and flung her hands up in a violent demonstration of exasperation. ‘All right...all right... I’m sorry with bells on! Are you satisfied now?’
Bastien stole an amused glance at the glittering brightness of her eyes above her pink cheeks. ‘What would a virgin know about a man whore’s lifestyle anyway?’ he derided.
Staring rigidly out through the windscreen as the vehicle turned between tall stone pillars to drive down a lane lined on both sides with very tall stately trees, Lilah rolled her eyes. ‘Maybe I read a lot of raunchy books...’
Amused against his will, Bastien bit out a rough-edged laugh. She was in the wrong and she knew it—but she still wouldn’t back down the way other women did with him. He enjoyed her stubborn streak and the challenge of making her toe the line.
Lights came on as Bastien parked and killed the engine. ‘Welcome to the Chateau Sainte-Monique.’
Wall lamps in the form of iron lanterns illuminated the old building, accentuating the warm honey-coloured stone of the façade and the very Provençal violet-blue shutters at the many windows. Gravel interspersed with formal beds of flowers and trees ornamented the frontage.
Lilah climbed out of the car and accompanied Bastien to the entrance. ‘So, when did you buy this place?’
‘About three years ago. The owner was an elderly countess, whom I met during the course of a land development deal. The first time I saw the chateau I made her an offer, but it was months before she finally agreed to sell. The renovation took another year. I come here when I want to relax and when I can work from home. I stayed here all last month,’ Bastien admitted smoothly.
A middle-aged man in a crisply ironed white shirt and bow tie opened the door and greeted them with a smile.
‘Stefan and his wife, Marie, take care of everything here,’ Bastien informed Lilah after making an introduction, and a lean hand resting at the base of her spine guided her indoors.
The interior was breathtaking. The hall had a chequerboard black-and-white marble floor and surprisingly modern furniture. A huge stone staircase curved up from the ground floor.
Their luggage was being brought in behind them, and Bastien was heading for the stairs, when Stefan opened a door and a familiar little bark of eagerness froze Lilah in place. Stefan grinned as a brown, silky little bundle of flying flapping ears and wriggling body flew at Lilah with a noisy burst of excited barking.
‘Yes...yes, I missed you too,’ Lilah admitted, crouching down to scoop up the miniature dachshund. She separated him from one of the beloved squeaky toys he liked to carry around in his mouth and attempted to calm him before she put him down again.
As the dog snatched up the toy again and hurtled across to Bastien, Lilah warned him. ‘Just ignore Skippy. He’ll get the message and leave you in peace...that’s what Vickie always did with him. She prefers cats.’
Skippy nudged the toe of Bastien’s shoe with his nose, his beady little eyes pleading. Bastien sidestepped the animal to stride on up the stairs, and Lilah watched in dismay as Skippy hurtled in his wake. Stefan moved forward to intercept the little dog, seemingly aware that his employer was not animal-friendly.
Lilah followed Bastien upstairs into a spectacular atmospheric bedroom furnished with a mixture of antique and contemporary pieces. Oyster-coloured silk festooned the windows and tumbled down in opulent swathes from the wrought-iron crown holder above the big bed.
‘This is an amazing place,’ Lilah whispered, impressed beyond words by the splendour of her surroundings.
‘The maids will unpack for you. I’ll see you downstairs for dinner in an hour,’ Bastien imparted as a man brought in her luggage and two young women in uniform arrived to move the cases into the dressing room visible through an open door.
Lilah hovered uncertainly.
‘Dress up...’ Bastien lowered his handsome dark head to murmur huskily in her ear. ‘Dress up for dinner so that I can enjoy undressing you later, glikia mou.’
Banners of self-conscious colour brightened Lilah’s porcelain-pale complexion as she turned her head to stare up at him. She collided with brilliant dark eyes that glittered like stars in the low light—stunning eyes, ringed by spiky lashes of velvet black. She was mesmerised. He curved long flexible fingers to the side of her face and brought his mouth crashing down on hers.
That kiss was a taste of heaven and a taste of hell in one package. It was heaven because she couldn’t get enough of that hot, hungry mouth on hers and hell because she hated the response she couldn’t suppress. He released her, staring down at her for a split second in silence, and then swung on his heel and walked out.
Lilah drifted into the marble bathroom, her fingers creeping up to brush her tingling swollen lips, shame and guilt rising like a dark, choking cloud inside her. It would be cruel if he made her like having sex with him, she thought wildly. Or would it? Surely that could only be foolish pride talking?
Her rational brain scolded her for the melodrama Bastien could somehow infuse into her very thoughts. Common sense told her that simply accepting that their intimacy was inevitable would make the experience much more manageable for her. After all, she wasn’t a masochist, was she?
Sex was supposed to be enjoyable, she reminded herself. But from listening to friends talk about their experiences she knew it often wasn’t that great. Once she had done the deed with Bastien she would probably wonder what all the fuss was about, she reflected wryly, because, after all, sex had to be the most ordinary pursuit in the world.
Stripping, she went for a shower, retrieved her cosmetics to do her face and finally returned to the bedroom wrapped in towels. In the dressing room she flicked through the formal wear now hung for her perusal. Dress up, Bastien had urged. Humour sparkling in her eyes, she pulled a ballgown from the rail and fanned it out on the bed. It was over the top and theatrical, rather like the chateau, and when she had modelled it she had noticed Bastien’s dark golden eyes blaze like banked-down fires.
* * *
Bastien stood in the hall, watching Delilah descend the stairs with the glossy grace and dignity of a queen. The dress was amazing—a glistening sheath in peach that hugged her slender body to just below the waist before it flared out into thousands of layers of net that swept the stone steps. Her black hair tumbled in a mane down her back, strands rippling round her triangular face to highlight her bright blue eyes. The tightening swelling at his groin was so instant he didn’t even question his reaction.
He stretched out a lean-fingered brown hand to greet Lilah as she reached the foot of the stairs, his arrogant dark head thrown back, smouldering dark golden eyes locking to the full pink pout of her lush mouth. He closed his fingers round hers.
‘In that dress you take my breath away,’ he told her.
Her mouth ran dry as she met his gaze and her small breasts swelled below the skin-tight bodice as she gulped in oxygen. She hadn’t expected that blunt compliment, didn’t know how to deal with it.
He walked her through an airy salon, with an ancient stone carved fireplace and sleek blue sofas, out on to a tiled terrace where a candlelit table awaited them.
‘I’m really hungry,’ Lilah confessed as a manservant moved forward to pull out a chair and lingered to whisk a napkin across her lap.
‘You should enjoy the meal. Stefan’s wife, Marie, is my cook, and she was a chef in a Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris before they came to work for me,’ Bastien remarked while the wine was poured.
‘You have a huge staff here...you live like a king,’ Lilah commented helplessly as soon as they were alone.
‘I do when I have the time to enjoy the chateau—which is rarely,’ Bastien qualified drily. ‘When I’m travelling on business I eat out or cook for myself.’
‘You can cook?’ Lilah said in surprise.
‘Of course I can. I’m not spoilt. I’ve never been spoilt. But I do appreciate the best things in life.’
‘Is your mother still alive?’ she asked abruptly as the first course was served.
Bastien studied her in silence, black brows drawing together in a frown. ‘You’re very curious about my life.’
Lilah shrugged her lightly clad shoulder. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
Bastien set down his glass. ‘My mother died in a car accident when I was a child and I had to go and live with my father.’
Lilah toyed with the artfully presented courgette flowers topping the tiny onion tart on her plate. ‘And how was that?’
‘Hideous,’ Bastien admitted grimly. ‘Anatole’s wife, Cleta, hated me on sight. I was the living proof of her husband’s infidelity. As for my half-brother... Leo was an adored only child and suddenly I turned up. Naturally he resented me. But there were some advantages to my new home,’ he conceded, his dark eyes veiled with mystery, his beautiful mouth compressing.
‘Such as...?’ The sliver of onion tart Lilah had selected was melting in her mouth.
Bastien frowned at her continuing interest. ‘It was a fresh start for me in many ways. I was able to see Anatole regularly and I went to a much better school.’
‘Obviously you’re close to your father,’ Lilah commented, relieved to hear that hint of indulgent warmth in his dark drawl when he referred to his parent, because really it was brutally obvious to her that Bastien had been cursed by the most utterly miserable childhood.
‘Yes. I’m very fond of Anatole. He may have been a push-over for the wrong women, but as a father, when I needed him, he was the very best,’ Bastien stated with quiet pride.
Relief filled Lilah that there had been someone loving in Bastien’s life, and she wondered why the idea of nobody having cared for him as a child should disturb her so much. His answers to her questions, however, had given her a certain insight into what had made him so tough and unyielding.
‘But that’s enough about my life, glikia mou,’ Bastien continued, smooth as glass. ‘Tell me about Josh Burrowes.’
Thrown off balance in her turn, Lilah stiffened, her spine straightening. ‘There’s nothing to tell. We were on the same course at uni. He’s one of my friends.’
Bastien lounged back in his seat as their plates were cleared and the main course served. ‘But obviously Josh wants to be something more. You should’ve told him the truth.’
Lilah’s delicate bone structure tightened. ‘I gave my friends the same story you suggested I use with my family. I said you’d offered me a job.’
Bastien rested his shimmering dark gaze on the voluptuous promise of her pink lips as she savoured the tender lamb on her plate. ‘But you should have come clean for Josh’s benefit and told him that you are mine.’
Her small white teeth gritted as if she had trodden barefoot on a stone. ‘I am not yours, Bastien.’
‘You are,’ Bastien purred in immediate contradiction, his accented drawl vibrating through her slender taut frame. ‘I know it every time I look at you. No hunger this powerful is one-sided.’
Lilah concentrated on her meal, deeming silence the most diplomatic response. She was very, very attracted to him, she admitted inwardly, but no way did she owe him that amount of truth.
As she studied him a snaking curl of warmth stirred low in her pelvis and something tightened even deeper inside her, making her shift uneasily in her seat. The hard, masculine lines of his compellingly beautiful face and the suppressed ferocity of his stunningly intense eyes welded her attention to him.
The first time she had seen Bastien she had known that she had never seen a more beautiful male specimen, and in the two years that had since passed that fact remained the absolute truth. Bastien was gorgeous. She knew it and he had to know it too.
Perspiration beaded her short upper lip, and as a member of staff stepped up to the table to refresh their wine glasses she finally dragged her attention from Bastien and breathed in deep.
‘Stefan’s wife is a fantastic chef,’ she remarked, after savouring the first mouthful of a roasted pear dessert served with chocolate sauce and then pushing the plate away in defeat. ‘But I can’t find room for another bite...’
‘Coffee?’ Bastien prompted.
‘No, thanks...’ Lilah tensed as he rose fluidly out of his seat and strolled, jungle-cat-graceful, towards her.
‘I react like a teenager around you,’ Bastien murmured thickly. ‘I can’t wait one minute longer.’
Lilah pushed her hands down on the table-edge and levered herself upright, the layers of her dress spilling out round her in peach abundance. Time to pay the piper, she thought crazily.
Bastien didn’t immediately touch her. Instead he lowered his dark head and circled her mouth almost teasingly with his own, touching delicate nerve-endings that screamed with awareness to send pulses of heat shooting down through her. Her head swam a little...her knees wobbled.
With a guttural sound low in his throat, Bastien swept her up in his arms.
‘I was so angry with you last night when I heard about you kissing Josh,’ he told her unexpectedly as he carried her up the stone staircase, contriving that feat as easily as if she weighed no more than a child. ‘Don’t let another man touch you in any way while you’re with me.’
Her senses still drowning from that extraordinarily intoxicating kiss, Lilah looked up at him with dazed blue eyes and blinked. ‘Not much risk of that.’
‘Why not? You’re a beauty. I saw it... Josh saw it,’ he grated in harsh reminder.
‘But you see things in me that I don’t,’ she muttered uncomfortably, thinking of the conventionally beautiful fashion models he generally took to his bed.
In comparison, she was an aberration. Each and every one of her predecessors that she had seen had been tall, blonde and classically lovely, with Marielle the perfect example of that ideal. Lilah, however, was small and kind of skinny. She had certainly been way too skinny and small in the bust and hip department for any of the boys to look at while she was at school, at an age where having curves had seemed so very important.
‘I know that I want you,’ Bastien spelt out. ‘Everything else fades in the face of that.’
‘Everything?’ Lilah questioned in disbelief.
‘Everything...’ Bastien husked, breathing in the coconut scent of her shampoo, the faint aroma of the cosmetics she had applied, the fragrance that was uniquely and alluringly hers. And those eyes, he savoured, those sapphire-blue eyes that shone like jewels...
He settled her down on the bed in her room, and the hunger driving him spooked him more than just a little as he looked down at her. That hunger would fade as soon as he’d had her, he told himself cynically, and in all likelihood even the sex would be a disappointment. How could it be otherwise when she had no experience? She couldn’t possibly be a truly sensual woman, his rational mind assured him. No truly sensual woman could have stayed untouched as long as she had. She might light up when he looked at her, move in his arms as though she were a sensually aware woman, but it was unlikely that she would have much to offer.
He plucked off her shoes, resisting a decidedly warped urge to stroke those tiny feet of hers. Her virginity was unsettling him, Bastien decided, desperate to suppress the strange thoughts and reactions assailing him. But if she was telling him the truth—and he had to believe it was the truth—she would be more his than any other woman had ever been. And for some peculiar reason he liked that idea, he acknowledged in bewilderment. He really liked that idea.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Lilah whispered awkwardly as he ran down the zip on her dress.
‘Sex. What else?’
‘So I asked a stupid question...deal with it,’ Lilah cut back without skipping a beat.
Above her head, an unholy grin slashed Bastien’s firmly modelled mouth. He eased the dress off a slight white shoulder and rolled the sleeves down her slim arms, completely attuned to the rising tempo of her breathing.
‘I’m not going to harm you,’ Bastien breathed with husky assurance. ‘Not in any way.’
‘I’ve heard it can hurt,’ Lilah told him stubbornly.
‘You make the prospect of having sex with me sound like some form of medieval torture,’ Bastien growled.
‘I’m going to shut up now. Zipping my mouth,’ Lilah spelt out jerkily.
Bastien tugged off the dress and tossed it in a careless heap on the carpet.
‘I saw the price tag on that dress, Bastien. You can’t treat it like that...it’s indecent!’
Bastien flung back his handsome dark head and laughed out loud. ‘I thought you were zipping it? Keep quiet...you’re making me nervous.’
‘What have you got to be nervous about?’ Lilah demanded in wonderment.
She was finding it a huge challenge not to simply dive below the sheets. There she was, with her body on display, skinny as a rail, clad only in little pale pink lacy pieces of lingerie, and she was being forced to pose like some pantomime seductress on a silk-clad bed. Goosebumps rose on her exposed skin.
Bastien slid a hand into his pocket and withdrew a jewel box. ‘This is for you.’
Lilah sat up and took the opportunity to hug her knees, covering up her all-too-bare body as best she could. ‘I don’t want gifts, Bastien.’
‘You will wear it to please me, koukla mou. The first time I saw you I wanted to see you in diamonds.’ Bastien flipped open the lid on an exquisite shimmering diamond pendant on a chain. He removed it from the box and clasped it round her slender neck.
Taken aback, Lilah didn’t move a muscle as he put the pendant on her, feeling the diamond settle cold and heavy against her chilled skin. Bastien stepped back from the bed to remove his jacket and unbutton his shirt, but the whole time his attention was fixed to her.
Lilah met dark golden eyes, tawny as a lion’s, and her skin blazed as though he had set her on fire, all sense of being cool in temperature and cold with nerves instantly evaporating. Beneath his bronzed skin he flexed washboard abs and well-developed pectoral muscles, which made her stare for a second or two. He was what a friend had once described as ‘built’—powerfully masculine in every way.
She glanced away as his long, tanned fingers reached for the waistband of his trousers, cursing her shyness, her awful self-consciousness with her own body, never mind his. He tossed some foil packets down by the bed, and the nape of her neck prickled.
He came down on the bed still in his boxers, and with the flick of a finger unfastened her wispy bra and pulled it away. She felt her nipples bead, tightening into pointed peaks, and then all of a sudden, or so it seemed to her in her heightened state of nerves, he was laying her down against the pillows and touching those agonisingly sensitive buds with his mouth and his fingers.
A little shudder racked her, and then another. Sensation was breaking through her defences as her breasts tingled and swelled, responding to his attention.
‘At least put out the light!’ she exclaimed.
‘You’re beautiful. I need to look at you.’
‘I don’t want you looking,’ she gritted between clenched teeth.
‘Close your eyes and pretend I’m not,’ Bastien suggested.
Sniping back at him became an impossibility while he was tracing a trail down her slender body with his mouth—kissing here, licking there, discovering the areas of her midriff that responded to his blatant teasing with wild enthusiasm and then slowly shifting down to more intimate areas. His fingers tugged at the waist of her knickers and she stopped breathing. She felt his breath on her...there...where it shouldn’t be. He found the most achingly sensitive place of all with his clever fingers, and her hips jerked and her breath hitched and she closed her eyes, blocking out the bedroom while becoming even more insanely aware of Bastien’s every move.
‘You’re really practised at this, aren’t you?’ Lilah commented gruffly.
‘We’re not about to pursue that subject.’
‘No... Oh!’ A strangled exclamation broke involuntarily from her lips as he stroked his tongue across the little nub of nerve-endings at the apex of her thighs.
With a strangled groan, Bastien came up over her again and crushed her parted lips under his, his tongue plunging only once, but deep, into the moist interior of her mouth, somehow igniting a ball of heat in her pelvis. Startled blue eyes flew wide and clashed with gold circled by lush black lashes.
‘Oh...’ Bastien said for her, with a wolfish grin that made her tummy flip in a somersault.
Feeling like a child who had foolishly stuck her hand in the fire, Lilah closed her eyes again circumspectly. He punished her by returning to his former activity, his fingertips grazing the inside of her slender thighs, where she had never been touched, and every single point of contact tingled and fired hot, like a burn. He used his mouth on her clitoris and it felt unbearably good, with sensation firing through her on all cylinders as the little tickles and prickles of uncontrollable pleasure mounted and she could no longer stay still. Her neck extended and her hips shifted and rose.
Bastien was touching her so gently. She had not imagined that he could be gentle in bed—had, in truth, been braced for passion, aggression and impatience. He slid a finger into her tight sheath and then another...tender, subtle, tormentingly pleasurable. Her blood was pounding in her veins, her heart was racing, and her whole body was damp with perspiration because everything she was feeling had swiftly become so shockingly intense.
She gave up on the losing battle to resist and opened her mouth on a gasp of reaction. Indeed, she was all reaction now, as waves of response coursed through her in an unstoppable tide. Every tiny caress and exploration he executed engulfed her in another wash of sensation. A tight feeling nestled at the heart of her and she shifted impatiently up towards Bastien, fighting the hollow sense of tortured frustration he had awakened without even fully grasping what it was.
‘Bastien!’ she exclaimed.
Burnished golden eyes assailed hers. ‘Tell me you want me.’
‘You know I do!’ she flared, with a bitterness she couldn’t hide.
‘You always did, didn’t you?’ Bastien grated.
‘What do you want? A trophy?’ Lilah gasped.
‘You are my trophy,’ Bastien told her, his skilled fingertips moving with expert precision at her tender core and setting off a chain reaction inside her.
The mushroom of heat penned inside Lilah suddenly surged up, with a force that blindsided her and overflowed. Out of her control, her body bucked and twisted and convulsed as the paroxysms of a powerful climax rippled through her slender frame.
Bastien ripped open a foil packet with his strong white teeth. He didn’t want to hurt her, he didn’t want to harm her in any way, but now she was as wet and receptive as she would ever be. He dragged a pillow under her to tip her hips up more and settled between her spread thighs.
The pleasure Bastien had meted out was like a powerful drug that took time to wear off. Lilah was still in a daze when she felt the pressure of Bastien’s entry stretching her tender flesh. Apprehension made her stiffen, a heartbeat before the sharp sting of his full possession made her catch her breath on a huff of dismay. He withdrew, hooked her legs higher and thrust into her yielding body again. This time there was no pain—only the amazing sensation of his fullness inside her.
‘It’s not hurting,’ she told him in relief.
A sheen of perspiration dampened Bastien’s lean, handsome features—for such care, such temperate precision, had not come without cost. ‘Se thelo...you feel unbelievable, hara mou.’
He rolled his hips in a wicked snaking motion that sent extraordinary sensation flooding through Lilah’s pelvis, and her eyes went wide with surprise. As he began to move, the first jolt of excitement careened through her without warning, and then the heat and pressure at the heart of her began to build again. It was a little like hitching a ride on a comet, she thought dizzily, with new responses released and overwhelming her.
Hunger sank talon claws of need into her very bones. Her heart slammed against her ribcage. Her body thrummed and pulsed with rippling darts of pleasure that only stoked her rising hunger. And then the intensity climbed to an unbearable height and pushed her over into the intoxicating grip of wave after wave of sweet, drowning pleasure.
It was over...it was done, Lilah reflected in a daze, crazily conscious of the crash of Bastien’s heart against hers, the brush of his hair against her cheek, the dampness of his big, powerful body against hers, the sheer weight of him and the incredible intimacy of their position. Well, she had no complaints, she conceded thoughtfully. In fact, he had made the experience amazing.
In the process of rebooting, after the longest, hottest climax in his considerable experience, Bastien breathed again. He rolled off her and caught her back into his arms, pressing a kiss to her brow without even thinking about it...
And then the thinking kicked in hard. What the hell was he doing? What the hell was he playing at? He didn’t do touchy-feely—never had and never would. True, she had just given him a pleasure he was finding hard to match in his memory, and he already knew he wanted her again. But it was in the way an alcoholic knew he wanted a drink.
The comparison jarred, but it worked its magic, and Bastien pulled away from the strangely tempting pleasure of having her small, slender body lying against his. He sprang out of bed and headed for the bathroom.
‘I’m a restive sleeper and I prefer my own space,’ he told her carelessly. ‘I’ll be sleeping in the room next door.’
Lilah could feel herself freeze with regret and discomfiture. Yet such separation was what sex without caring was like, she scolded herself. It was a bodily thing—not a mental thing. Bastien didn’t feel any deep connection with her. He had satisfied his lust for the moment and that was that: he had leapt out of bed and straight into the shower. She could already hear it running.
Had she expected a warmer conclusion to their intimacy?
Well, if she had expected that she was an idiot. After all, wasn’t this exactly why she had lost her temper with Bastien two years back? He had only offered sex when she had wanted more, and that had hurt—hurt her pride, hurt her heart too. Wasn’t it time she was honest about that? She had started falling for Bastien Zikos the first moment she’d laid eyes on his fallen angel face and stunning eyes.
Of course she hadn’t known him in any way, so it had been infatuation rather than love, but his magnetic attraction had called to her on every level. And resisting it, recognising that he could only make her unhappy, had cut deep and filled her with disappointment. But it was the truth and it remained the truth, Lilah conceded ruefully. Bastien skated along happily on the shallow side of life, taking pleasure where he chose, discarding women whenever he got bored...and now she was one of those passing fancies—a sexual whim.
She shifted in the bed, and the ache between her thighs made her wince and grimace. Once she had said no to Bastien, and evidently that had put a price beyond rubies on her head because he wasn’t used to the word no and evidently couldn’t live with it.
Stop thinking these negative thoughts—stop it, she screamed inside her head, shifting on the pillow as if to clear it. It would be better to concentrate on the positive—think of the factory up and running again, her father back in his office and her little half-siblings secure because their parents were no longer worried sick about how to pay their bills. That was a good picture, she told herself soothingly.
And what about all Moore’s former employees? Her father had mentioned that he’d be calling a meeting on site today, to discuss the relocation of the factory and the planned reopening. That news would make a lot of people very happy.
Indeed, only a very sad, total loser would sit feeling sorry for herself when she was surrounded by so many positive reminders of what sacrificing her pride had achieved. And she wasn’t a loser, she told herself angrily, and she wasn’t going to make a big dramatic deal out of what couldn’t be changed. So she had had sex with Bastien—that was all it had been and she could live with that reality.
Sliding out of bed, she walked naked into the dressing room and extracted a robe, knotting the sash at her waist with impatient hands.
As she walked back towards the bathroom, Bastien emerged from it, lean bronzed hips swathed in a towel. Crystalline drops of water sprinkled his hair-roughened chest and his thick black hair curled back damply from his brow.
Seeing her out of bed, he frowned. ‘I thought you’d be sleeping.’
‘No. I need to shower.’ To wash his touch and the memory of it away, Lilah thought frantically, colliding with smouldering golden eyes framed by velvet dark lashes and feeling her heart skipping an entire beat. A shadow of faint black stubble accentuated his hard masculine jawline and his beautifully modelled sensual mouth.
As Delilah attempted to sidestep him, Bastien shot out a hand to enclose her wrist and force her to a halt again. ‘You were amazing, glikia mou,’ he husked.
Mortification drummed up hot below Lilah’s skin, but she lifted her tousled head high. ‘It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be,’ she admitted prosaically, tugging her wrist free to continue on past into the bathroom.
Taken aback, Bastien blinked. How to damn with faint praise, he reflected grimly, thrusting open the communicating door between the bedrooms to stride into his own. And how very typical of Delilah to sting him like a wasp.
Well, what else had Bastien expected from her? Lilah asked herself as she washed. Compliments?
She had told him the truth, even though she knew that she hadn’t been strictly fair. He could have been more selfish and less careful with her in bed. To give credit where it was due, he had made an effort not to hurt her. Unfortunately his consideration in that respect could not eradicate the ugly fact that Bastien Zikos had blackmailed her into his bed. Yes, she had made the choice to accept his unscrupulous deal, but he could not expect her to start treating him like a much-appreciated and personally chosen lover, could he?
Lilah fell into an exhausted sleep, but Bastien was awakened by a phone call at an ungodly early hour of the following morning and given the kind of news that wrecked both his day and his mood.
