Читать книгу Demanding His Billion-Dollar Heir - Pippa Roscoe - Страница 11

MARIA FOLLOWED HIM through the dark halls of the hotel, still clutching the bottle of champagne she had snagged earlier in the evening, thankful that he had his wits about him when hers felt as if they’d fled. Because at first when he’d told her that she could have his suite, she’d been momentarily unsure. But when he had added that she’d have it to herself, alone, she’d been...disappointed.

Which was silly. Even she could recognise that. After all, she’d told him that she’d been in love with another man only hours ago. But Theo had never, ever, installed feelings that this man had conjured from her with his presence, his touch...his lips.

She knew she should be ashamed, but she couldn’t quite bring the feeling to mind. His impressively broad shoulders took up almost the entire width of the hallway she followed him down, gentle night lighting casting him in shadows. He was huge in comparison to her. Maria didn’t usually consider herself small at five foot four, but he must be well over a foot taller than her.

He drew up short at the last doorway at the end of the corridor. Turning to one side, he slid the slim black key card over the electronic plate beneath the handle, pushed the door open and gestured for her to enter.

She stepped past him, registering the oaky cologne that made her think of autumnal woods, earth and something else...something musky and enticing. Her thoughts on that, it took her a moment to recognise the sheer opulence of the room she had entered and she nearly gasped.

Yes, her family might have once been well versed in luxury, but her little flat-share in South London had adjusted her expectations. And this? Plush cream carpets met floor-to-ceiling windows looking out at the stunning night panorama of Lac Peridot, her gaze instantly drawn to where the two opposing mountains met low in the distance.

From the corner of her eye she could make out almost obscenely expensive furnishings and a doorway that presumably led to a bedroom and en suite bathroom, perhaps. But she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the view from the windows, just beyond which she could see a small wooden deck with a table and chairs.

She turned, expecting to find him right behind her, wanting to even, but instead, she was surprised to find him hovering at the threshold as if reluctant to enter.

‘I don’t even know your name,’ she said, her words a whisper that pitched somewhere between humour and surprise.

‘Do you need it?’ he asked with a small answering smile curving his lips.

‘I’d like to thank you properly.’

‘Matthieu.’

She repeated his name, the word rolling off her tongue, shaped by her accent, and read sudden and shocking desire in his eyes as she did so. She felt it. Bound to it, to him. Firing in her a confidence she didn’t know that she possessed.

‘Thank you, Matthieu.’

He shook his head, dismissing her thanks, and made to turn, but she wasn’t ready for him to go. Not yet.

‘I—’ she said, halting his departure, but also desperately searching for something to say, something to bring him into the suite, to her. ‘I told you a secret. Before you go, would you share one with me?’

He frowned then, as if remembering her earlier confession, as if choosing whether to give into her request, and something passed over his features, something hard won.

‘What? Like my favourite colour?’ he asked, stalking towards her silently on the plush carpet.

‘No,’ she said, casting her head to one side, taking the entire breadth of him in her gaze. ‘It’s blue,’ she asserted and then smiled when she caught the look of surprise. ‘Your suit is deep blue, your watch straps are blue leather.’ She shrugged her shoulder.

‘That simple?’

‘It usually is,’ she replied, using his words from earlier that evening. He liked that, she could tell and it warmed her strangely, somewhere beneath her breast bone.

He had reached her and, now that they were standing so close, she had to crane her neck back to look at him. He really was breathtaking, his piercing eyes, a colour similar to rich honey, bearing down into hers.

‘It’s my birthday,’ he said, his voice barely above a whisper, as if it really was a secret to be shared.

‘Truly?’ she asked as a wide smile pulled at her mouth.

‘I don’t...usually do celebrations,’ he said somewhat distastefully.

She wanted to tell him then that she understood. That she hated her birthday too. But it felt...too personal, too intrusive. His birthday was about him. Not her. She pulled up the bottle of champagne she still clutched, and offered it to him, wondering whether he would take a sip this time.

He gently took the neck of the bottle in his large hands, put it to his lips, making sure there was enough air angled in the throat of the bottle not to funnel the bubbles over him.

But not once did he take his eyes from hers. After he’d taken a mouthful, he passed the bottle back to her and she placed her lips where his had been. The knowledge of it fired her blood once again, bringing a blush to her cheeks and the low v between her breasts. She followed his actions as she took a sip, faintly happy that she didn’t end up with a face full of bubbles and look as naïve as she felt in that moment.

She didn’t know what she was doing...how to do what she wanted to. And she really wished that weren’t the case. Wished, suddenly, for experience to entice, to draw him to her. To know whether it was just her enthralled to this madness.

Matthieu could see it—what her body was asking for—and feared that she wasn’t even aware of it. And God help anyone when she became aware of her power. The beauty of this woman could fell armies.

‘You know my name,’ he stated.

She smiled and nodded her head slowly, understanding the implied question, and delighting in teasing him for it. And surprisingly, he liked it. That teasing sense of her with no emotional undercurrent or ulterior motive. He watched as the teasing morphed into something else...something more primal yet serious.

‘Maria. Maria Rohan de Luen.’ It was said with a slightly Spanish flare and he mentally rolled it around his mind, liking the way it bounced within him. Unconsciously he mouthed the words, drawing her attention to his lips. The way she looked at his mouth caused that infernal beast within him to roar with pride and need and all the things he knew he should lock down tight. He should not be here. Not tonight, when this woman was threatening his cast-iron defences against things he had not thought of for years.

A timely reminder and one he needed to heed. He nodded once, to himself at his decision made, and then again at Maria, silently bidding her adieu. Because if he didn’t leave here soon, he might not leave at all. And she was too pure, too innocent for that. Had never been kissed until this night.

He gave her an almost apologetic smile, the gesture unfamiliar on his lips, and turned to go. He had reached the door, his fingers around the handle before her words stopped him.

‘Before you go, can I ask one more thing?’

He turned his head, not a single clue as to what she might ask for. But whatever had run through his mind, it hadn’t been what she proceeded to say.

‘Would you show me your scars?’

White noise was all he could hear in his mind and below that, somewhere deeper, a furious roar, snarling and gnashing as if some great wound had been reopened. It must have shown on his face, because Maria took a step back for which he felt instantly regretful. He didn’t want her to be scared. But she would be if she saw them. They all were.

Instantly he was transported back to the first time he’d bared himself to a woman. At seventeen, he’d been naïve enough to think that Clara had cared for him. The swift fury that streaked through him at the memory of betrayal had him turning away from Maria.

But...

‘I’m sorry.’

‘For what?’

‘That you feel you have to hide them.’

And why couldn’t he show them to Maria? It wasn’t as if he would ever see her again after this night, not once he left this room. She’d found strength and pride in her own scars, but what would she find in his?

‘They’re not pretty,’ he warned.

‘I don’t care for pretty,’ she responded defiantly, not once taking her eyes from his. There was that strength again. The steel that he recognised encased in soft perfection.

Gritting his teeth, he turned and stalked back to her, lifting his shirt from his trousers as he did so. One by one he undid the shirt buttons and still she didn’t drop her gaze. The women he usually spent his time with either hungrily sought out the scars that had fuelled his reputation as a beast, or were barely interested in anything above his belt.

Having reached the last button, he took one last look at her before shrugging out of the white shirt and casting it aside, standing there before her unwavering gaze. Maria didn’t break the connection between their eyes, not immediately and he gave her credit for that. But finally he closed his eyes, unwilling and unable to see those beautiful features puckered with disgust.

He felt her close the distance between them, the heat from her body pressing against his skin. The undamaged skin, because his nerves had been dulled by the injured tissue and skin grafts that covered nearly half of his torso. He felt her circle him, could have sworn he felt the weight of her gaze sparking a thousand starbursts across his body, even the damaged parts. He sensed when she had come back to face him and braced himself as he opened his eyes. But where he had expected revulsion and horror, even the morbid fascination he occasionally experienced, instead he saw wonder and something like awe.

Maria was enthralled. Utterly and completely. I don’t like fire, that was what Matthieu had said. Yes, his torso had been badly disfigured from the scars that swept around his forearm and reached up to his neck, where she’d seen the silvery traces earlier in the evening. They covered almost half of his chest and, she had seen, wrapped around his flanks and up across his shoulder blades. The twists of tissue, strangely pale, nearly white against his tanned skin, and in some places shiny and criss-crossed from what she could only presume to be many, many skin grafts to help the full thickness burns she could see were from years ago.

The patterns she found on his chest were painfully beautiful to her and she couldn’t even imagine the kind of agony he must have experienced for these to heal, nor the time it must have taken. His skin had reformed over the powerful muscles of his arms, just as large as she’d imagined, and the scars rippled over the muscles in his abdomen, the powerful outline of a six pack that spoke to a brutal physical training regime. Because that was what screamed at her most as he stood there, shirtless, his lower limbs encased in low-slung blue superfine trousers. Strength and raw power. Power that was almost straining at some kind of self-imposed leash.

‘What do you see?’ he asked. Demanded almost.

And she said the words that had come to her mind. ‘Magnificence.’ Raw masculinity, but she couldn’t let herself say that last out loud. Because it spoke too much to her desire for him. It would have betrayed her.

She reached out a hand, but he caught it in the air between them. His large fingers wrapping easily, firmly but gently, around her slim wrist.

She threw her gaze to his, aware that her breath had hitched in her lungs. Aware that her skin was on fire as surely as his had once been. But hers was an invisible flame, one created by him and the need to feel his skin against the palm of her hand. Not from curiosity, but the desperation to make that connection. To feel that same incredible sensation she had experienced when they had kissed earlier. And then she realised to her shame how selfish that was. Just as he’d said earlier about passion. But it was more than that. She wanted to be with him, to soothe that ragged sense of...of...she couldn’t put a name to what she saw in his eyes.

She pressed past her hand, still clasped in his, and closed the distance between their bodies. He held himself still, but she could see what an effort that took and she was torn...torn between recognising the stress he put himself under and the need to offer consolation. Instinct won out and she pressed a gentle kiss to his chest, on his pectoral muscle that had the twist and turn of a scar that had shaped itself in such a way that made her think of a great white oak tree, gnarled but majestic.

She traced the trail her lips covered across his chest with her free hand, delighting in the hitch in his breathing as cruel as it was. Because she wanted him with her in this. As utterly devastated and destroyed by the attraction that flamed between them. Though she was innocent, she could recognise the desire in his eyes, recognise it because she felt it within herself.

Pressing another kiss in the centre of his chest, she felt oddly exposed, wanting his arms to wrap around her, hide her from the passion that was almost overwhelming her. He was so broad that she realised only lower around his waist would her arms meet were she to encircle him. But one hand was still captured by his, and the rapid rise and fall of Matthieu’s chest was the only outward sign that he was not made of stone.

No. This man would never have been made of stone...pure silver, she thought, only just tempered, still seething with heat from the furnace, still malleable, but just as dangerous. A quiver of desire racked her body and only then did Matthieu finally release her hand. She looked up into eyes that were boring down into hers.

‘Stop.’

‘Why?’

‘You don’t know what you’re doing. What you’re asking for,’ he stated, almost angrily.

‘I may be naïve—’

‘Maybe? You are an innocent, Maria. A true innocent.’

‘Does that mean I don’t know what I want?’

‘It means you don’t understand the implications of what you want.’

‘Would anyone?’ she asked.

‘This is something that you should do with someone capable of staying with you.’

No one ever stays, her mind voiced, batting away each and every one of his arguments. She knew, deep down, that this was what she wanted with her entire being. She had never been more sure of anything, half fearful that if he walked away now she would have lost something that she had only dreamed of in the darkest of nights and the deepest of sleeps.

‘I haven’t asked for anything more than this night.’

Matthieu had been wrong. She was a seductress. A temptress. Offering him something he could barely stand to walk away from. She was so beautiful, so pure...the light to his darkness and he would drag her down with him if he gave her what she wanted.

I haven’t asked for anything more than this night.

He had never allowed himself to take anything so pure. His chosen bedfellows were ones who understood. Who knew the game. Pleasure to be given and received and nothing more. Because he had learned long ago that anything more was a foolish dream. And he refused to be the one to teach Maria that lesson.

But he couldn’t help the thought that if he turned away now, if he left her alone, it might break something deep within him.

He shut that thought down as quickly as it had formed in a mental move practised over many years. What he was considering was madness. But then she pressed another kiss to his chest and everything in him was plunged into thick swathes of desire and need, and he felt the growl start at the back of his throat, desperate to stifle it before it escaped into the room.

‘Please?’ she asked between the infernal kisses she was drawing on his body, his skin, the places usually specifically avoided by others.

‘Don’t you see, Maria? You shouldn’t have to beg for this.’

‘I am not begging, I am asking. This is my choice. My request. Stay with me, just for this night. Please.’

And finally Matthieu lost the battle. The battle against being decent, walking away and leaving Maria untouched. Because he could stand it no longer. He wanted to touch her, feel her smooth skin, so pale against his it seemed almost to glow. He wanted to tease pleasure from her so much that it was almost a physical ache within him. Finally he was about to live down to his reputation as a beast in the truest sense, because he felt the last vestige of restraint burn to dust beneath her lips.

This time he was unable to stifle the growl that rose in the back of his throat, as he wrapped his arms around her, drawing her to him and feasting on her lips as he’d wanted to from that very first moment.

This was no practised, gentle first kiss, this was desire, desperation even, as he plunged the depths of her mouth with his tongue, drawing little mewls of pleasure from her. Her hands, now free, swept into his hair, pulling him further down towards her. Not enough, he thought, it was nowhere near enough.

He lifted her up, so that her legs wrapped around his waist, and her lips met his, until finally he nudged her head aside and found the delicate, smooth arc of her neck and pressed open-mouthed kisses against her skin, lathing it with his tongue. Maria’s head fell back, exposing the pale column of her neck and the v of her perfect breasts, accentuated by the silver necklace dipping between them.

He marvelled at how light she was. He could have held her there for an eternity. But her body shifted restlessly in his arms, wanting more, demanding it. She might have not known the words, but her body knew the moves, instinct driving them closer together in their need.

He carried her through to the bedroom, not once breaking the contact between his lips and her skin. As he placed her on the edge of the bed, he cursed. Her pupils so large her eyes were almost completely black, she was drunk on desire.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Never more so,’ she said with a faint smile, faint only because the rest of her features were a mask of pure need and want.

‘I need you to understand that you can stop this at any time. Any time.’

‘You want me to give you a safe word?’

He barked a laugh at the mock coquettishness in her tone. ‘No, I don’t want a bloody safe word.’ The sudden and surprising humour delighting him and, from the look in her eyes, Maria too. As if somehow she’d known they needed a moment, a brief respite from the all-consuming passion that had driven them this far. ‘What do you know of safe words?’ he queried.

‘I may be innocent, but I’m not naïve.’

He dragged in a lungful of air, looking at her in the half light of the moon, cast through the large windows fronting the entire side of the room. Her white lace dress hanging low on her shoulders, exposing collarbones so enticing, he couldn’t resist.

He leaned forward, Maria shifting her legs apart to give him room, and placed kisses there, his lips meeting the hard bone covered in soft skin and sucking gently. He pulled back only to place his forehead against hers.

‘I want you to know that you can say “no”, at any point. I want you to be able to say it.’

‘I don’t want you to stop, Matthieu. I want you to kiss me. To touch me, to—’

He couldn’t take any more of her desires, he was battling enough of his own, so he stifled her words with a kiss. Her lips opened for him, offering him entry and damnation at the same time.

He gently pulled at the thin lace of the dress, exposing the smooth pale planes of her chest, the silver necklace she wore a guide line as he leaned her back against the soft bed and kissed his way towards her breasts. The rosy tips stark against the gleaming white skin. He took one in his mouth, his tongue sweeping over the stiff peak, drawing a moan of pleasure from her body and bringing her closer, pressing into his mouth instinctively.

In one hand he fisted the lacy material of her dress, drawing the material tight against her leg. She was glorious in her pleasure and he reached for her thigh, bringing it up on the bed, and feeling the length of her calf, the smoothness of her thigh, more. He wanted more.

Releasing his hold on the delicate lace he’d bunched around her waist, he pressed kisses against the plane of her skin where her hip dipped naturally, leading him to the flat stretch of her stomach, as he gently pressed her thigh to the side with one hand and drew her white panties down with the other to expose the dark curls between her legs.

He cradled her backside in one hand, gently pulling her body towards his, as he slipped the silky material down her thighs and away from her ankles. He ignored the slight tremor of his hands, the almost painful arousal pressing against the seam of his trousers, as he spread her before him and bent forward to taste, to delight in the secret heart of her. The taste of her sweet wet heat was almost too much for him to bear, but he would. He wanted to give her every pleasure she could experience.

Maria was shaking. Never before had she felt anything like this. Pleasure so acute and so extreme, she trembled, a thin sheen of sweat breaking out across the back of her neck. Her hips bucked against the exquisite torture his tongue was wringing from her body and she bit her hand to prevent the cry of sheer pleasure that wanted to escape from her lips. The other fisted the sheets of the bed, anchoring herself to something, anything, before her body threatened to drift away on a tide of pleasure so powerful she feared she might never return.

Rolling waves covered her body, as if desperately trying to reach the shore, but not quite, not yet. Again and again they bit at the edge of her body, threatening to drag her under. Then Matthieu threaded a finger deep within her, the pressure inside her coiling tight, her body unconsciously trying to hold him within her.

Her pleas became unintelligible demands, her breathing both desperate and stifled at the same time, her body on the brink of something she couldn’t quite define, waves ebbing and flowing faster and faster until...

The orgasm he had wrung from her body plunged her deep beneath the surface of the water, the pounding waves now all she could hear as her body shook and shuddered, soothed only when she felt Matthieu’s arms come around her, cocoon her in his embrace, keeping her safe and anchored to him while her soul soared towards the night sky.

As if on a string tied to him, her mind returned to the man surrounding her, caging her as if trying to keep out the night, the dark...the morning perhaps. Her arms reached around his trim waist, feeling along the powerful muscles bracketing his hips, and meeting the soft midnight-coloured material of his trousers. They were still clothed, she both marvelled and regretted. She wanted to feel him, all of him, against her skin, without barriers. Her hands sought out the fastening of his trousers and he shifted as if realising her intention.

Matthieu leaned back, almost regretting the loss of contact. For the first time ever he had found something like peace in her pleasure, in offering something of himself to another. But one look at the determined jut of her jaw, the challenge in her eyes daring him to ask her if she might want to stop, ironically only fuelled his need for her, as yet unquenched and unsatisfied.

Slowly he reached for the button of his trousers, gliding the zip down and loosening the stranglehold the material had on his crotch. His erection jutted free as he swept his trousers and underwear over his hips, down his legs, and kicked them away.

He watched and waited as she took in the sight of him, the unconscious way her tongue curved over her bottom lip and the teeth that plunged into the soft, wet pink flesh. He groaned again at the effect she had on him and his heart almost stopped as she reached for the hem of her white lace dress and pulled it up, over her thighs and hips, over her chest and head, casting it to some distant part of the room. She was glorious, her legs bent at the knee, sitting up, only her hands fisting the sheets of the bed giving expression to the barely leashed desire he felt meeting his own.

He reached into his wallet and retrieved the packet, tearing the foil with his teeth, not once taking his eyes from her. He watched her eyes grow wide with fascination as he rolled the condom over his length, her gaze glancing between his face and his erection, and if he’d had any doubts as to her certainty, the way she parted her legs, making room for him as he came down between them, burned them from his mind.

He leaned to support his weight on one elbow, the fingers of his free hand dipping and tripping over the skin from the centre of her collarbone, following the silver lines of her necklace down the irresistible v between her breasts, and over the gentle swell of her abdomen. Maria’s body gently shivered in the wake of his fingers and he couldn’t help but press his lips to the centre of her chest. Her hands swept to either side of his face, fingers splaying in his hair and nails gently scraping against his scalp. He leant into her touch, kissing her wrist, and finally turned back to her watchful gaze.

A slight nod was all he needed from her as he gently pressed into her, forcing himself to go slowly despite how everything roared within him for instant completion. The damp wet heat of her surrounding him was so incredible it rendered him mindless, but not heedless, as he felt her stiffen beneath him, bringing an instant halt to his movements.

The hitch in her breath, the slight frown to her brows, through which he held his breath. If she wanted him to stop he’d do it. It might kill him, but he’d do it. But she didn’t. She looked into his eyes, as if understanding the battle that waged within him, a small smile pulling at the curve of her lips. ‘Please?’

‘Please what, Maria? Because—’

‘Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.’

Her hand swept around his neck and pulled him to her, into her kiss, into her more deeply and into an insatiable madness he didn’t know he’d survive. Slowly he began to move, his hips gently driving into her depths, feeling her completely encase him, and he wondered somewhere if this was what he’d been missing his entire life. Her.

Maria’s breaths became faster, her moans, full of pleasure and need, filled the air between them. Her hips raised against his, holding him within her, deeper and longer... The rhythm she was setting, she was dictating, one that only fired his blood and his arousal to a point where he didn’t know whose heartbeat he could feel in his chest.

He reached beneath her and drew her closer to him, his chest pressed against hers, inhaling the sweet scent of her at the edge of her neck, the soft curls of her long hair tickling the skin on his chest. Soon thought became ephemeral, words intangible, and all he knew was her and the exquisite feeling of losing himself within her depths. Need and arousal became his oxygen and he inhaled it like a drowning man, intoxicated by her, lost to her.

As he felt her tighten around him, heard the way her breath hitched at its highest point, he knew they were both on the edge, on the brink, and one final thrust of his hips saw them cut their ties to the night and melt away.

Through the night hours, between sleep and waking, they reached for each other, finding pleasure, seeking more, and as the sun’s early morning rays tripped into the room Maria spread her arm out behind her feeling only the cool silky sheets beneath her palm. Matthieu had done what he’d promised. Given her one night and then...left.