by Anne Stuart
Headlights speared through the rain, illuminating her as she huddled in the doorway. The Porsche pulled up in front of her, and she stood unmoving as he rolled down the window. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, sounding not the least bit sorry. “I told you you should have brought an umbrella.”
“Fuck you,” she muttered, finally reaching her limit as she snatched up her discarded shoes and stepped out into the driving rain once more. She climbed into the passenger seat, and proceeded to shake her soaking hair in her best impression of a wet dog.
He didn’t complain, which would have been half the fun. “Sorry,” he said again. “Where are the books?”
“Lost them.”
“You’re a mess,” he said, eyeing her critically. “That outfit is ruined.”
The thin silk shirt was plastered to her chest, to the bra that was slightly too small for her, and she plucked it away from her skin. Sylvia had always loved that shirt—it would serve her right for getting Chloe into this mess in the first place.
“You’re cold,” he said.
Chloe thought of several responses, most of them along the lines of “duh,” but she resisted the temptation. “Yes, I’m cold,” she said, shivering as she reached for the seat belt. Her hands were shaking too much to fasten it, and eventually she gave up, sitting back in the leather seat and hoping she’d ruin that as well.
Bastien hadn’t put the car into gear—he was looking at her. Or at least she assumed he was. The interior of the car was very dark in the driving rain, and he hadn’t switched on a light. “Do you want to go to a hotel and get out of those wet clothes?” He might have been asking if she wanted an ice-cream cone, so casual was his voice.
“I think not,” she said in a caustic voice. “Just turn on the heat and I’ll be fine.”
He put the car in gear and started along the road at the same suicidal speed he’d driven before, but this time in the dark and the pouring rain, and she wasn’t wearing her seat belt. The Porsche might be a glorious car but its heating system left something to be desired, and a half hour later she was still cold, fumbling with the lap belt because if Bastien was going to overturn them in his Le Mans haste then she wanted a fighting chance at surviving.
It was pitch-black by now, not just from the rain but from the hour, and Chloe tried to huddle into her seat, hoping he’d forgotten about her presence, faintly annoyed that he had, when he suddenly pulled the car over, the tires skidding on the wet pavement until it came to a stop by a row of hedges.
It was too narrow a road to park on, but they hadn’t passed another car the entire time. Which actually added to her sense of insecurity, when she thought about it. She was alone on a dark road with a man she didn’t know, and she didn’t trust him.
This time he flicked on the dashboard light, and the shadows it cast in the tiny space were harsh and unforgiving. Bastien no longer looked so smooth and charming. He looked dangerous.
“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.
“Trying to fasten my seat belt.” Unfortunately her voice shook slightly with the cold. “You drive too fast.”
“Idiote,” he muttered under his breath, and reached for something behind the seat. His body brushed against hers as he did so, and she held her breath until he sat back again. He had a white shirt in his hand, and before she could figure out what he had in mind he’d caught her chin in one strong hand and began drying her face with the soft cloth.
“You look like a raccoon,” he said in a dispassionate voice. “Your makeup is all over your face.”
“Great,” she muttered. She reached for the shirt. “I can manage.”
He pulled it out of her reach. “Sit still,” he said, dabbing around her eyes with surprising care. The shirt smelled like him. Like the elusive scent he wore, like the cigarettes he shouldn’t be smoking, like the indefinable smell of his skin. And how would she already know what his skin smelled like?
He dropped the shirt in her lap but didn’t release her face. “There,” he said. “Much better. Now you simply look mysterious and smudged. They will think we spent the afternoon in bed. Which is probably what we should have been doing, if you weren’t so American.”
She tried to jerk her face away, but he was holding her with more force than she’d realized. “We didn’t.”
“Such a shame. Are you disappointed? We could take a little detour on our way back—Hakim won’t be expecting us until he sees us.”
“No, thank you,” she said, as polite as she’d been bred to be.
He didn’t move. Didn’t release her chin, and his dark, almost black eyes looked into hers, an almost speculative expression in the blank depths. She could see nothing in his eyes, and yet her breath suddenly caught, and she knew what was going to happen.
“This is a mistake,” he said quietly.
And before she could ask what, he kissed her, his long fingers holding her face still as he covered her mouth with his.
They didn’t call it French kissing for nothing, Chloe thought in her last coherent moment. He was an absolute master at it, starting with just a featherlight brush against her lips, followed by his tongue, just touching them gently. She knew she should push him away, but she opened her mouth anyway, knowing she was being beyond foolish.
But what harm would a kiss do? Especially from someone as gifted as Bastien. There wasn’t much more they could accomplish in the tiny cockpit of the Porsche, and once they were back in the château she could keep out of his way if she made an effort. So there was no reason she couldn’t just sink back against the leather seat and let him kiss her, slowly, using his teeth now, a tiny, erotic tug on her lower lip that somehow made her utter a quiet moan.
He lifted his head, his eyes glittering down in the darkness. “You like that, Chloe? You could always kiss me back.”
“I—I th-thought we agreed this isn’t a w-wise idea,” she stammered. She decided to blame it on the cold, when in actuality she was beginning to burn inside.
“No, it isn’t,” he agreed, pressing his lips against the curve of her jaw. “But wise ideas are so boring.”
He kissed her harder this time, no longer just a sweet seduction. He was making demands now, demands she wanted to meet.
His hand was on her thigh, moving up under the ruined silk skirt, and his touch was like flame, licking at her. She put her hands down to stop him, but she couldn’t move him. All she could do was press him against her thighs, which was hardly an improvement.
He pulled away again, catching his breath, as she caught hers, and she tried to rein in her fast-departing sanity. “Why are you doing this?” she demanded in a whisper.
“Stupid question. Because I want to. Because I want you. And all you have to do is say ‘no.’ But you’re not going to. Because you want this just as much as I do, no matter what you tell yourself. You want to taste my mouth. You want my hands on you. Don’t you?”
She wanted to deny it, to tell him how delusional he was, how conceited, mistaken, arrogant, wrongheaded…
“Kiss me back, Chloe,” he whispered. And she did.
She liked kissing. Loved kissing, in fact. But with Bastien it was bordering on orgasmic, and he didn’t have to move his hand any higher under her skirt to bring her almost to the point of exploding. All he needed was his mouth—moving, touching, tasting—hers—deeper, harder—and she could feel a dark shiver run from her throat to her womb. She reached out her hands to touch him.
The car came out of nowhere, headlights spearing into the windscreen, horn honking, tires sliding on the narrow road. It narrowly avoided hitting the parked Porsche, and then it drove off. But Chloe had jumped back, from him, from temptation, moving as far away from him as possible.
She wished the light wasn’t on, that she didn’t have to see him. But then, if they were in the dark maybe they wouldn’t have stopped. He was looking at her with a calm, speculative expression, seemingly unmoved by the last few minutes. “If you move any farther you’ll be hanging out the
window,” he said.
“Maybe that would be a good idea.”
His smile was faint. “Not in this rain. Sit back and relax. I told you I wouldn’t touch you if you didn’t want me to. All you have to do is say so.”
“I don’t want you to touch me.” It was an out-and-out total lie. Or at least it was a lie of the flesh. Her body wanted him. Longed for him. Her brain still realized how bad he was for her, but it was fighting a hard battle against her melting body.
“If you say so, petite,” he said easily. “Fasten your seat belt.”
If she’d been clumsy from the cold it was nothing compared to how shaken she was now. He watched her fumble, making no effort to help her, as if he wanted to find out just how much he’d managed to disturb her. Finally he reached out and did it for her, his long fingers brushing against her stomach, so that she jumped nervously.
“Not unless you ask, Chloe,” he said in a soothing voice, flicking off the overhead light and putting the car into gear again. The heat had finally come on, at a time when Chloe was already feeling overheated despite her wet clothes, but she didn’t complain.
At least they hadn’t gone any further, though God knew what else she might have given into, if she’d had half a chance. She could still feel the imprint of his hand on her thigh, the long fingers against the soft skin, so unbearably close to the center of her. She needed to drive that from her mind, wipe the taste of his mouth from hers, bring a wall of ice between them, one that wouldn’t melt in the heat of her body.
“You’re very good at this, Monsieur Toussaint,” she said in an admirably cool voice after they’d driven for a few minutes. “I don’t know why you bother. I imagine it’s simply a matter of male pride or too much testosterone. It must be unbearable to think that a woman doesn’t want you.”
She could see his profile from the lights on the dashboard, but he was giving nothing away. “Are you wanting to convince me that you aren’t attracted to me? I know women, chérie, and I know when they’re interested and when they’re not. I don’t understand your hesitation, but I am always one to accept my dismissal gracefully. There are other women. There are always other women.”
This wasn’t going the way she had planned. But then, nothing with this strange man had gone the way she wanted it to.
“And I’m sure they’ll be a lot easier to seduce.” Her voice was scathing.
“Oh, I imagine I could seduce you fairly easily if I set my mind to it.”
For some reason she found that insulting. He couldn’t be bothered to make a real effort? Why? Was she that unattractive?
She didn’t show her reaction. “You can believe anything you want,” she said. “But next time you want to seduce someone you ought to pick a better place than the front seat of a Porsche. It’s hardly the right venue for sex.”
He smiled at her. “Let me assure you, Chloe, that I could have fucked you very well indeed in the front seat of this car. I’ve done it before.”
So why would such an insulting statement be erotic? She must be suffering hypothermia. “Just take me back to the château,” she said in a low voice, giving up. He was better at this than she was, and the truth was, she probably did want him as much as he thought she did. Probably more than he wanted her—she wasn’t even sure she believed him on that score. He was the type of man to go for an exotic butterfly like Monique Von Rutter or a ruthlessly chic Englishwoman like Madame Lambert. Gauche little American girls were hardly his type.
But whether he really wanted her or whether it was just an automatic response, as long as she kept her distance she would be fine. She’d seen it happen last night—it had taken him less than five minutes to disappear with Monique von Rutter. He’d find someone else to distract him once they got there.
He drove too fast, in complete silence the rest of the way. He pulled around to the back of the sprawling building, and she glanced at her expensive little watch, half expecting it to have stopped working.
It was only half past six, and a long night lay ahead of them. And all Chloe wanted to do was take a long, hot bath and crawl into bed.
Somehow she didn’t think that was going to happen. He stopped the car, leaned over and unfastened her seat belt. “I thought you’d prefer a different entrance. This is the door closest to your rooms, and you can take a shower and change before anyone sees you and asks questions.”
“What’s wrong with questions? I wasn’t anywhere I shouldn’t have been, I didn’t do anything I shouldn’t have done.” The moment the words were out of her mouth she regretted them. Kissing Bastien had been a very unwise move, and she would have done a lot worse if something hadn’t stopped them.
“Really?” he murmured. “In that case I can come up with you and finish what we started.”
She almost called his bluff. Fortunately she still had an ounce of sanity left. “No, thank you. I think we’ve already finished.”
“Do you indeed?” When he smiled that slow, annoying smile she wanted to hit him. He leaned toward her, and she was terrified he was going to kiss her again. But instead he simply opened the door for her. “I’ll see you at dinner.”
She grabbed the ruined shoes, the drenched leather purse and her dignity, and stepped out into the courtyard. The rain had changed to a fine mist, but the air was turning colder, and her clothes felt clammy. She looked back at the Porsche, but she couldn’t see Bastien in the dark interior. Just as well.
“Thanks for the ride,” she said, and slammed the door with a little too much force.
And before he drove away, she thought she heard him laugh.
7
Bastien didn’t like to be wrong about things. He’d been observing human nature, sussing out people for longer than he could remember, and his instincts were usually infallible. And now he was beginning to have second thoughts about Chloe Underwood.
Logic dictated that she was a dangerous operative. It would be absurd to think that there was any other possibility. And she was either very, very good or very, very bad. He just couldn’t figure out which.
She came down late to dinner, no surprise, and he kept out of her way. She was acutely aware of him—anyone with half a brain would have noticed, and there was no one in the room who was mentally deficient. She sat quietly, ate little and looked everywhere but in his direction. Under different circumstances he might have found it amusing. But right then nothing was particularly funny.
She didn’t look quite as polished as when she’d first arrived. Her dark hair was curly from the rain, her makeup more minimal, her mouth red and slightly swollen. He hadn’t kissed her that hard, had he? Maybe he had, but she’d kissed him back with equal enthusiasm, until the fucking headlights had interrupted them.
He could have found out a great deal once he got inside her. He still could.
Monique von Rutter had honed in on Chloe with the instincts of a great white shark, just looking for a limb to tear off. Bastien watched in silence as she focused in on her, chatting with Chloe in the most charming of voices that would have fooled no one but a complete innocent. Chloe was looking at her warily, answering Monique’s provocative questions in monosyllables, and she didn’t touch her wine. Too bad—he’d been counting on alcohol making his task easier.
But then, he wasn’t the kind of man who looked for the easiest way out.
“I find French men utterly tedious, don’t you, Miss Underwood?” Monique was saying. “They’re more interested in their own performance than in a woman’s pleasure. And vain! Take Bastien, for example. Only a very shallow creature would dress that well.”
Chloe’s eyes darted in his direction, then focused back on her barely touched plate, and she didn’t answer. Not much fun for Monique, Bastien thought lazily, twirling his wineglass in one hand. Maybe he should help her out.
“But you’re missing the point, Baroness,” he drawled. “A man who is fixated on his sexual performance is devoted to pleasing his lover. If he were more interested in his own pleasure it would
be one thing, but if his pride insists that he be a great lover then that can only be to a woman’s benefit, is that not so?”
There was a faint stain of color on Chloe’s cheeks as she stared into her plate, a stain that everyone around the table noted.
But Monique was in full flower. “Unless, of course, the woman realizes she’s nothing more than a prop for her lover’s vanity. That her pleasure is simply a reflection of his prowess, not real desire on his part.”
Bastien shrugged. “What does it matter? As long as she is pleased.”
“And you are so good at pleasing women,” Monique cooed. And then added with a touch too much haste, “Or so I’ve been told.”
Bastien was no longer amused. Everyone at the table knew he’d been fucking her, including her voyeuristic husband. Including innocent Miss Chloe. They were all scheduled to leave in less than forty-eight hours, and as far as he could tell very little had been accomplished. They had gotten no closer to choosing a new leader, and Christos had yet to arrive. But then, he had probably sent Chloe on ahead to do the groundwork. The rest of them were fools not to realize how tenuous the situation was. And how unlikely their substitute translator was.
The cartel, whose success depended on strict secrecy, had the dangerous presence of an unknown in their midst, and Monique’s jealous little games weren’t helping matters. She needed someone else to focus on, to leave him and Chloe alone, but there was no one else available. Hakim preferred young boys, Madame Lambert was fastidious, Ricetti gay and Otomi a devoted family man. Which only left her husband, and Monique had grown tired of him long ago.
“We should work tonight,” Hakim broke in, and it was clear he was equally annoyed with Monique’s behavior. “We’re behind schedule and we can’t afford to wait for Mr. Christopolous any longer. We have too many things to decide in too short a time—the redivision of territories, our new leader and what kind of response we should make to Remarque’s assassination. These are things of monumental importance, and we can’t waste any more time.”