Читать книгу The Mills & Boon Stars Collection - Мишель Смарт, Cathy Williams - Страница 39
ОглавлениеARMS FLAILING AND eyes wild, Bastien reared up and closed a hand round her throat, dragging her down to the bed on top of him as he struggled to focus on her.
‘Bastien...it’s Lilah!’ she gasped, in stricken dismay at the effect of her intervention. ‘You were stuck in a bad dream. I was trying to wake you up.’
‘Delilah...’ Bastien framed dazedly, shifting his tousled dark head in confusion, his eyes glittering dark as night in the faint light emanating from her room. He blinked. ‘What are you doing in here?’
‘You were having a really bad nightmare,’ she repeated as she levered herself away from him and settled on the empty side of the bed. The dampness of perspiration sheened his lean dark features and he was still trembling almost imperceptibly. ‘What on earth has got you that worked up?’
‘I put my hand round your neck... Did I hurt you?’ Bastien demanded, switching on the bedside light and tipping up her chin to examine the faint red fingermarks marring her slender white throat. ‘Diavelos, Delilah... I’m sorry. I could have seriously injured you. You should never have come near me when I was like that. I’m very restless. That’s why I always sleep alone.’
‘I’m fine... I’m fine... I was worried about you,’ she admitted.
‘Why the hell would you be worried about a guy who doesn’t treat you with respect or consideration?’ Bastien prompted grimly.
‘I was really concerned about you,’ Lilah countered, ignoring that question because she could not have answered it even to her own satisfaction. ‘What on earth were you dreaming about?’
His lean dark features were shuttered. ‘Believe me, you don’t want to know.’
In an abrupt movement that took her by surprise, he pulled her backwards into his arms. Little tremors were still running through his big powerful frame.
Lilah released her breath in a bemused hiss. ‘Try to relax,’ she urged him, aware of the shattering tension still holding his muscles taut in his big body.
‘Don’t try to mother me, glikia mou,’ Bastien growled warningly, resting back against the pillows and breathing in slow and deep before exhaling again. ‘That’s not what I want from you.’
‘Well, you’re not getting anything else,’ Lilah warned him bluntly.
At that tart response unholy amusement quivered through Bastien’s lean, powerful frame and he laughed out loud.
‘So, what was the dream about?’ she prompted again.
In the low light, Bastien rolled his eyes and laced his fingers round her abdomen as she relaxed back against him. ‘I was getting beaten up... It’s something that happened when I was a child.’
Taken by surprise, Lilah twisted round in the circle of his arms and lifted her head to look directly at him. ‘When you were a child?’
‘I walked in on my mother, in bed with her drug-dealing boyfriend. She didn’t intervene. She was terrified that I would accidentally let it drop to Anatole that she had other men because Anatole paid all our bills.’
Lilah frowned down at him in disbelief. ‘For goodness’ sake—what age were you?’
He shrugged a broad shoulder. ‘Five...six years old? I really don’t remember. But I almost died because Athene didn’t take me to hospital until the next day—and then not until she had coached me to say that I’d fallen down the stairs.’
‘Damaged’—that was how Marielle Durand had labelled Bastien. And for the first time Lilah truly saw that in him, recognising the angry defensive pain in his eyes. His mother had neither wanted nor loved him, and by the sound of it had been a cruel and selfish parent.
Lilah recognised his discomfiture under her continuing scrutiny and she looked away, twisting round to give him back his privacy. Her eyes were smarting with tears, though.
As a teenager she had felt so sorry for herself when her father had been bringing a string of different women home for the night and she’d had to occasionally share the breakfast table with strangers. In retrospect, though, she was realising that she could have suffered much worse experiences, and that no matter how much her father’s sex-life had embarrassed her he had always looked after her and loved her.
Bastien had not been so lucky.
‘I don’t know why I told you that,’ Bastien breathed in a harsh undertone.
‘Because I’m very persistent when I want to know something,’ Lilah declared, with deliberate lightness of tone. ‘And because you’re shaken up.’
‘I don’t get shaken up,’ Bastien asserted predictably.
‘Of course not,’ Lilah traded, tongue in cheek.
Without warning Bastien sprang off the bed, carting her with him.
‘What—?’
‘I need a shower,’ he ground out.
‘I’ll go back to—’
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Bastien contradicted, striding into the en-suite bathroom and straight into the spacious shower with her still in his arms.
‘Bastien...what on earth...?’ she exclaimed in angry disbelief as he elbowed a button and warm water cascaded down on her from all directions, instantly plastering the nightdress she wore to her body.
Bastien knew he was acting like a mad man, but he was on automatic pilot and he didn’t care—because his hunger for Delilah at that moment was overwhelming. He hauled her dripping body up against him and closed his mouth hungrily to the luscious soft pink enticement of hers, long fingers stroking her wet hair back from her face.
Lilah’s hands closed over his broad shoulders, clenching there to steady herself as the hot, demanding intensity of the kiss took her by storm. His tongue delved deep into the moist interior of her mouth, plundering a response from her.
She recognised the force of his need, suspecting that Bastien was not in control the way he usually was. Rather than dismaying her, that suspicion excited her beyond bearing—because Bastien was generally so controlled that he unnerved her. In fact, the unashamed passion he was unleashing now was much more to Lilah’s taste, and it went to her head even more strongly than the wine that afternoon.
Her hands skimmed down over his lean, strong torso. She could feel the hard urgency of his erection against her midriff, and before she could even let herself think about what she was about to do she had dropped to her knees. The warm water teemed down, somehow separating her from the world and from all the anxious self-judgement that kept her from experimenting. For the first time ever she felt free to do simply as she liked. As she liked and as she wanted. And she was proud of that inner spur of passion for the first time.
Slender fingers roved up over Bastien’s hair-roughened muscular thighs, and she was smiling at his sudden ferocious tension as she bent her head—all woman, all feminine power.
Bastien groaned, threw his head back against the tiles and arched his hips to facilitate her, making no attempt to hide his pleasure as she worked magic with her mouth and her tongue and her agile fingers.
His potent reaction gave Lilah a high. For once she was in charge, and what she lacked in experience she more than made up for with creativity and enthusiasm.
Allowing himself to be out of control in any way was a dark and seductive novelty for Bastien. And when he could no longer withstand the hot, all-encompassing pleasure of her mouth, he bent down and hauled her up to him, bracing her against the tiles as he hitched up her nightdress and clamped her slim thighs to his waist. He plunged into the glorious tight wet heat of her body with a raw groan of masculine pleasure.
Still tender from her first experience the night before, Lilah felt every inch of Bastien’s smooth hard length as he surged inside her. Her arms wrapped round his neck for support, her head falling back as he withdrew and surged deep again. Excitement engulfed her in a heady rush, her heart slamming inside her chest, her breath hitching and breaking in her throat.
So sensitive was she that as Bastien increased the tempo and hammered into her the pleasure swelled to an almost painful intensity. The rising heat within her finally soothed the hollow ache of tormenting hunger, and she gasped and moaned in delight. Her hips writhed against the cold tiles as she reached a climax too powerful to restrain and it swept her over the edge, sending intoxicating explosions of blissful sensation rippling through her quivering length as she sagged in Bastien’s powerful hold.
By the time she had floated down from that dizzy peak of satisfaction Bastien was trailing off her sodden nightdress and wrapping her in a towel.
‘You didn’t say sorry...this wasn’t supposed to happen between us...’ Lilah mumbled in limp reminder as she reclaimed her wits.
‘I jumped to conclusions. I was wrong. It appears that one of my staff was responsible for the leak to the press,’ Bastien shared with taut reluctance as he grabbed up another towel to fold it round her dripping hair.
‘Told you so,’ Lilah remarked ungraciously.
‘I lost my temper with you. I don’t do that,’ Bastien growled half under his breath in explanation. ‘When anger is in control, mistakes are made.’
‘So you’re saying sorry?’ Lilah whispered, weak as a kitten as he laid her down on the soft firmness of his bed and pulled a sheet over her cooling skin.
Bastien didn’t answer. He didn’t do apologies, but he was quite happy for her to assume that he had apologised. He was intent on her, still worked up in an unsettling way he didn’t understand. She made him feel alive, crazily alive, and for some reason he hadn’t had enough of her yet. One taste of her had only made him hunger for more.
He framed her face with long dark fingers, rejoicing in the silky softness of her skin and the rosy purity of her features. He savoured her swollen pink mouth with his own, revelling in the taste of her and the thundering race of his heartbeat as the hunger raged through him again like a tempest.
Bastien kissed with the same wild potency with which he made love, Lilah reflected dizzily, and the pulse of heat was awakening in her pelvis again as his tongue tangled with hers and flicked the ultra-sensitive roof of her mouth in a teasing assault that made her push up against him. Desire shimmied through her like an electrical storm, lighting up every place he touched, from the peaks of her straining nipples to the infinitely delicate damp flesh between her thighs.
‘I still want you, glikia mou,’ Bastien grated, and his stunning dark golden eyes were bright with lingering wonder at that anomaly as he ran his mouth down hungrily over the sweet mounds of her small breasts, licking and tasting and nipping to make her slim body writhe frantically.
As he reached the heart of her arousal and dallied to torment her with every carnal caress he had ever learned she gasped his name over and over again, and he very much liked the sound of his own name on her lips.
Lilah had not believed he could make her want him again so soon, when her body was still heavy with fulfilment, but somehow he’d pushed her to the raw, biting edge of feverish need again, and the first plunge of his powerful male heat inside her felt gloriously necessary.
Her spine arched, wild torrents of joyous sensation cascading through her quivering body as he pushed back her thighs and rose over her, pounding into her tight depths with driving hunger. She thrashed under him, every nerve-ending electrified by the pagan rhythm of his hard thrusts and the inexorable climb towards another climax. When it came, she hit a peak and shattered like glass, shocked by the white-hot intensity of excitement exploding inside her.
She fell back against the pillows, utterly drained of energy, while Bastien groaned long and low and shuddered with pleasure.
Bastien drank in the scent of Delilah’s shampoo as he struggled to get his breath back. Her silky hair had the sweet fresh perfume of a summer meadow. Her arms were still wrapped around him and he lifted his tousled dark head to drop a brief but appreciative kiss on her brow.
‘You’re an unbeatable cure for a nightmare, glikia mou,’ he husked with wicked amusement, rolling free of her to head for the bathroom.
The minute he arrived there he realised too late what was missing. He had not used a condom—not that last time or the time before it in the shower.
It was a very dangerous oversight that chilled Bastien and made him want to punch something hard in angry self-loathing. The shower beat down on him while some of the worst memories of his life engulfed him and he shuddered, knowing what he must do, knowing that this time around he would not dare to walk away and simply hope for the best.
Delilah needed to know that, whatever happened, her future and that of any child she had would be totally secure.
A towel knotted round his lean brown hips, he strode back into the bedroom and proceeded to disconcert Lilah with what she deemed to be inappropriate questions.
‘Why on earth are you asking me such things?’ she demanded tautly, her colour high from embarrassment.
‘We’ve had sex twice without a condom,’ Bastien told her grimly. ‘I’m regularly tested and I’m clean, so there is no risk of an infection. I’m merely trying to calculate the odds of conception.’
Lilah’s whole body turned cold at the threat of an unplanned pregnancy. She hadn’t noticed the lack of contraception—had been as lost in passion as he must have been. That acknowledgement stung, because she knew how important it was to take precautions and protect herself from such consequences.
Ashamed that she could have been so reckless and immature as to overlook such necessities, she answered his questions about her menstrual cycle and watched his frown steadily darken.
‘Obviously you could conceive. You’re young, fertile...naturally there’s a good chance.’ His beautiful mouth compressed hard. ‘We’ll get married as soon as I can get it organised.’
‘Married?’ Lilah parrotted in a strangled shriek, sitting up in bed with a sudden jerk, her eyes awash with disbelief as she stared back at him.
His unfathomable dark eyes glittered. ‘You need to know that whatever happens I’m there for you, and a wedding ring is the only security a man can offer a woman in that situation.’
‘People don’t rush off and get married simply because of a contraceptive oversight,’ Lilah whispered shakily. ‘That would be crazy.’
‘I know exactly what I’m doing. My first child was aborted when I was only twenty-one,’ Bastien explained, shattering her with that flat statement of fact. ‘I refuse to risk a repeat of that experience.’
Lilah was poleaxed. ‘But...but I—’
‘So we’ll get married. And if it transpires that we have no reason to stay married we’ll get an equally quick divorce,’ Bastien assured her smoothly, as though such a fast turnaround from marriage to divorce would be the most natural development in the world.
‘But we can’t just get married on the off-chance that I might be pregnant,’ she muttered incredulously.
‘If you have conceived we’ll be married and you’ll be less tempted to consider a termination,’ Bastien pointed out with assurance. ‘We don’t need to publicise our marriage in the short term, or drag anyone else into our predicament. We’ll have a private wedding.’
Stunned, Lilah flopped down flat again, exhaustion rolling over her like a hefty blanket. It was all too much to take in. The shocking revelations of his past and the sheer impossibility of their future.
‘We’ll argue about it in the morning,’ she countered in a daze. ‘You’re thinking worst-case scenario.’
‘No, I’ve already lived the worst-case scenario,’ Bastien contradicted with an edge of derision. ‘And that was losing the child I wanted because the woman concerned decided that she didn’t.’
Lilah winced, recognising the edge of bitterness in his dark deep drawl. She wondered who that woman had been, while marvelling at how much Bastien was revealing about himself. He had a deep, sensitive side to his nature that astonished her. For the first time she wondered what it had felt like for him—a man who wanted a child with a woman when the woman did not feel the same. Her heart ached for him. Clearly he had grieved that loss, but he had also interpreted the termination as a personal rejection and a humiliation, which struck her as even more sad.
Without comment she watched him stride lithely back to his own room, utterly unconcerned by his nudity. But why would he be concerned? an inner voice asked. When you were that perfectly built and physically beautiful you had to be aware of the fact.
She stretched out in the big bed, wondering why she wished he had stayed...wondering why what he had told her had left her feeling bereft and unsettled.
Had he loved the woman who had chosen not to have his child? Why did it bother her that Bastien might once have cared deeply for another woman? Evidently back then Bastien had not been quite as emotionally detached and untouchable as he was now. He had cared...he had been hurt. Why did that touch something deep down inside her and wound her? It couldn’t be jealousy... It couldn’t possibly be jealousy.
She didn’t care about Bastien in the smallest way, Lilah assured herself agitatedly. Bastien Zikos was simply the man she’d slept with to fulfil her side of their agreement to be his mistress. That was all he wanted from her. And all she had ever wanted from him was that he reopen the factory and re-employ her father.
Honesty urged Lilah to admit that she was lying to herself. Two years earlier, when she had first met Bastien, she had very quickly begun developing deep feelings for him—but his sole reaction to her had been superficial and sexual. And nothing had changed since then, she reminded herself doggedly. Even if she was pregnant—even if she agreed to marry him—nothing would change between them. If she hadn’t got to Bastien on a more meaningful level when they first met it was extremely unlikely that anything more would develop the second time around.
But how dared he simply assume that if she had conceived she would automatically want to consider a termination? He had no right to make that assumption—no right to try and take control of that decision either.
Too tired to lie awake agonising about what might never happen, Lilah ultimately dropped off to sleep.
* * *
The next morning that entire conversation with Bastien about getting married seemed surreal to Lilah. She was still deep in her bemused thoughts when she went downstairs for breakfast.
Bastien watched Delilah cross the terrace, a lithe, slim figure in a turquoise playsuit that showcased her tiny waist and long slim legs. She looked very young, with her black curls rippling loose round her shoulders. He watched her sit down and settle anxious sapphire-blue eyes on him.
Clad in tailored cream chinos and a black T-shirt, Bastien was casually seated on the low wall bounding the terrace, with a cup of coffee in his hand. His bronzed sculpted features smooth shaven, his lean, powerful body fluidly relaxed, he exuded poise, sophistication and an absolute charisma which stole Lilah’s breath from her lungs.
A tiny muscle low in her pelvis clenched and her face coloured hotly as she became uncomfortably aware of the damp flesh between her thighs.
‘I’ve been thinking, and I believe you’re worrying about something that’s unlikely to happen. It’s not always that easy to get pregnant,’ Lilah told Bastien quietly, keen to distract him from looking at her too closely because Bastien was far too astute at reading women. ‘It took my stepmother months to conceive.’
‘I’m not about to change my mind about marriage as a solution, Delilah,’ Bastien warned her, secretly amused and impressed that she lacked the avaricious streak that would have made many women grab at the chance to marry him. ‘While the arrangements are being made—there’s a lot of paperwork involved in getting married in France—we’ll continue here as normal. My lawyers are drawing up a pre-nup as we speak—’
Lilah poured her tea and groaned. ‘You’re really serious about this...’
‘It may not seem immediately obvious to you in our current relationship,’ Bastien remarked in a roughened undertone, watching her nibble at a croissant with unconscious sensuality and gritting his teeth as he hardened in response, ‘but if you do prove to be pregnant I have a lot to offer as a husband and a father...’
Who was she? Lilah immediately wanted to know. Who was the evil witch who had made Bastien feel worthless at the age of twenty-one when he had been little more than a boy?
‘I know that, Bastien,’ she said quietly. ‘Who was the woman who had the termination?’
Bastien grimaced. ‘This long after the event, there is no need for us to discuss that.’
Lilah tilted her chin. ‘If you want me to marry you in these circumstances I have a right to know the whole story.’
‘Her name is Marina Kouros. She’s the daughter of a wealthy businessman.’
‘Greek?’
‘Yes. She hung out with my half-brother, Leo. I knew she had a thing for him, but he saw her only as a friend.’
Lilah winced when he described that connection. ‘Complicated...’
‘Nothing I couldn’t handle at the time, I thought. I was very confident with women even at that age,’ Bastien admitted bleakly. ‘Too confident, as it turned out. Of course I was infatuated with Marina. We had a one-night stand but I wanted more. I didn’t see it at the time, but she was using me to try and make Leo sit up and take notice of her.’
‘You were brothers. It was wrong of her to come between you like that,’ Lilah opined.
‘To be fair, Marina didn’t intend to cause trouble, and Leo and I have never been close. I also know why she went for the termination behind my back,’ he admitted tautly. ‘I was illegitimate and penniless—hardly a winning package for a wealthy socialite. Unfortunately when Leo heard the rumours that I had got her pregnant she lied to save face with him and pretended that I had bullied her into the abortion clinic. He’s held that against me ever since.’
‘That’s so unfair,’ Lilah breathed angrily.
Bastien shrugged a broad shoulder. ‘Very little in my life has been fair,’ he derided softly. ‘That’s why I prefer to make my own luck and my own fortune. I don’t owe anyone anything and that’s how I like it, glikia mou.’
‘But I would prefer not to risk having an unnecessary marriage and divorce in my relationship history,’ Lilah told him quietly. ‘I think we should wait and see if we have anything to worry about first.’
His dark golden eyes hardened. ‘Not this time.’
‘Even if I have conceived I don’t think I’d choose a termination,’ Lilah added.
Bastien sprang upright and set down his coffee cup, an aggressive edge to his movements. ‘We’ll do this my way. We’ll get married.’
Lilah stood up. ‘It’s not the course of action I would choose, Bastien.’
‘I don’t care. This is an amendment to our original agreement,’ he declared without hesitation. ‘Deal with it.’
Lilah turned away from him, angry and stressed.
‘You’ll have a few days to think your position over,’ Bastien told her. ‘I have to make a trip to Asia, to check out some trouble at one of my manufacturing plants.’
Taken aback, Lilah turned. ‘How long will you be away?’
‘About a week.’
Lilah had a second cup of tea while Bastien talked on the phone in a foreign language. Deal with it, he had told her. An amendment to their original agreement? Was he threatening her? Would continuing refusal to marry him on her part be treated as a breach of that agreement? Did she dare push it?
What, after all, was she planning to do should Bastien’s fears prove correct and she found herself pregnant? Her skin turned clammy with anxiety. If she was pregnant she would want Bastien’s support every step of the way, she reflected ruefully. Maybe, just maybe, she was fighting the wrong battle...
