‘Where did you get it from?’ he pressed, his amusement refusing to abate.
Much like her embarrassment.
‘My great-aunt sent it to me when I bought my first home. She thought I might get...cold.’
‘She didn’t think that, as a doctor, you could probably afford a place that had its own heating?’ He arched an eyebrow.
It was a battle just to unstick her tongue from the roof of her mouth. It felt as though she’d just swallowed a spoonful of peanut butter.
‘She remembered her first home. She had coal fires but no central heating. She’s quite old, ninety-six. But still going strong. Anyway, I guess you weren’t too far off the mark with your first observation about it looking as though it was something I’d got from my ninety-year-old grandmother’s wardrobe.’
She was babbling. It was as much a giveaway as anything.
‘Is that so?’ True to form, Louis was tracing his fingertips across the material over her collarbone and she couldn’t help but shiver. The corners of his mouth turned up ever so slightly. ‘It’s in remarkably pristine condition. One might almost believe you’d never worn it before.’
‘Well, I have,’ she lied, shame rippling through her at just how easily he seemed to see through her.
‘When?’ The challenge was stamped on every quirk of his too-perfect face.
Alex gritted her teeth.
‘Lots of times.’
‘Is that so? Because it looks almost as if you wore it just for me,’ he continued softly, taking another step closer so that the breath caught in her throat, her body completely forgetting how to breathe. ‘Tell me, Alex, who were you trying to remind to keep their distance? Me? Or you?’
She couldn’t answer. She didn’t dare. Whatever she said, she’d surely give herself away. His eyes bored into hers and for the longest time she couldn’t drag her gaze away, couldn’t deflect him. His fingers still traced a pattern on her skin, making her whole body tighten. She craved him in a way she’d never known possible.
‘Does it matter who I wore it for?’ she managed. ‘The fact is that I’m trying to make a point.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Louis muttered gruffly, his hand moving quickly to cradle the back of her head as he tugged her to him. ‘You realise you wouldn’t have to make a point if you weren’t fighting your instinct, of course?’
It was a rhetorical question, which was good since she couldn’t seem to make her voice work. Her blood thundered through her and, so help her, she angled her head in tacit invitation.
‘I thought it would...put you off.’
‘I hate to tell you,’ he continued in a voice that sounded anything other than displeased, ‘but it isn’t working. If anything, my imagination is filling in the blanks with remarkable enthusiasm.’
‘Is that supposed to be a compliment?’ Her voice shook. Something still pressed in on her mind but she couldn’t locate it, couldn’t remember what was so urgent other than Louis, right here, right now.
‘More a statement of fact.’
The low purr was reminiscent of the promising hum of a highly powered supercar moments before it roared into action and burned everything else into nothing in its wake. She shivered in anticipation. Turned inside out by Louis, even though he hadn’t done anything. Yet.
But she wanted him to. Oh, how she wanted him.
He dragged his thumb across her lower lip and heat bloomed in her anew.
‘Kiss me.’
Deadly soft, but nonetheless an unequivocal demand.
She could have done so many things—refused him, decried him, walked away from him. Instead, she did the worst thing possible. She obeyed him.
Tipping her head back, she arched against him, rising just slightly onto her toes, and closed the gap between them, a thousand fireworks exploding in her head, her chest, and lower, as she finally pressed her lips to his.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS NOTHING Louis had ever known before.
The moment her hot, slick mouth fitted to his, an urgent need clawed within him. Even more raw and desperate than it had been back out there, in front of the restaurant.
Because this time there was no audience. This time they couldn’t pretend it was all about the game. This time there was nothing to stop them.
He deepened the kiss and the fact that Alex was lost, barely able to keep her grip on him in an effort to keep herself upright, only intensified the moment. From the delicious drugging draw of her fingernails over his muscled shoulder blades to the feel of her hair slipping through his hands like the finest silk.
His tongue slid deliciously over hers and she let out a sound that made everything tighten, coil in his lower abdomen. He cradled her cheek as though she was as precious as the irreplaceable, valuable sculptures dotted around his penthouse. And she cast every one of them into the shade.
It was bliss to kiss her. He paid homage to her lips, the corners of her mouth and then her jawline, blazing a trail of hot kisses down the neck and exulting in the way her whole body quivered in response.
When she moved against him again, moulding herself to his chest and pressing her breasts against him, he wanted her with a ferocity he hadn’t known before. Up against the panelled wall, in his bed, anywhere. Everywhere.
Every way.
He wanted to feel her without the barrier of the stupid winceyette nightgown, but he could use it to his advantage. He could make her wish she’d never brought the damned thing. Spanning her ribcage with his hands, he moved his palms to circle her and flicked his thumbs over nipples straining even beneath the heavy material. She swayed instinctively against him again, a muted cry slipping from her mouth—and a curse—and triumph stabbed through him.
‘Regretting your choice of night attire yet?’ he murmured against her throat, feeling her pulse fluttering wildly beneath his lips.
‘Shut up and take it off,’ she moaned hoarsely, and he smirked all the wider.
‘Soon. There’s no rush, we can take our time.’
Her eyes flew open. One minute heavy-lidded and dark, the next squinting at him and taking in his grin. A low gasp escaped her.
‘You’re enjoying this. Teasing me.’
‘Of course. Like I said, there’s no rush.’
‘You say it as though you’re perfectly in control,’ she muttered. ‘Only I know you’re not.’
Carefully, deliberately she moved her hips, rocking against him until she felt the unmistakeable ridge of his arousal. Solid, insistent, almost painfully hard. He hadn’t such an ache, such a desperate throb in a long time. Suddenly her hands moved to the twist of his towel, which still hung low on his hips, tugging the knot and releasing it before he could react. And then she was touching him, her fingers gliding up and down his length and sending him wild with desire.
Louis groaned. Things were moving fast. Too fast. This wasn’t the way he did things. He was never so...desperate. He had to slow it down, get back in control of this runaway train of need. He grasped her wrist, encircling it with his finger and thumb, and moved it from him. She protested even more when he moved her entire body from his, ignoring the way the loss of contact made him feel abruptly lost. Bereft.
Then he lifted the ugly, tent-like nightgown over her head in one easy movement, balled it up and tossed it across the room. And finally she was standing before him in nothing but the tiniest, sexiest scrap of lace he thought he’d ever seen.
‘Exquisite,’ he commented thickly, his hand sweeping over her shoulder, down over her chest, one perfect breast, and skimming over her abdomen before running a finger over the thin velvet band of her underwear. He traced patterns over her lower stomach and dipped low enough to brush against her hot, feminine heat, revelling in her gasp, then back up over her torso, leaving her aching for so much more.
‘It’s peacock-blue,’ she blurted out
abruptly. Rattled.
That she was so responsive to him, so brimming with need only made him all the harder. She poured through all his senses. A strange kind of insanity ran through his blood. He was consumed by her.
‘I wasn’t talking about the underwear,’ he managed gruffly, ‘so much as the woman wearing it.’
‘Oh.’
So demure, so modest, so unaware of her own sexuality. So his.
His lips curled upwards slightly. Such a possessive sensation should have alarmed him. It didn’t. Instead, he simply lowered his head and kissed her again, and she drank him in as if she thought this was her one and only chance.
It was like the most delectable adventure, kissing and nibbling and licking his way from her eager mouth, along that pretty jawline and down the long line of her elegant neck. He dawdled and dipped into the sensitive hollow that made her tremble so sublimely in his arms. When he rolled one glorious nipple in his fingers before bending his head to suck on it, his tongue swirling a pattern of its own, she called out as her fingers bit into his shoulders, her back curving as though she offered herself up to him all the more.
‘I can’t get enough of you,’ he mumbled as he moved to lavish the same attention on her other breast.
She choked something out, but it was almost incoherent to him, and he couldn’t bring himself to stop long enough to ask her to repeat it.
His hands glided over her body, acquainting himself with every contour, every feature. Imprinting them into his head. Maybe into his very soul.
Every now and then he allowed his fingers to dip lower, but never for long. And never where she wanted him most, if her soft moans and body rolls were anything to go by. But Louis suddenly found he had his own battle to win. He wanted to make this first time last, to make it perfect for her, but his own body—up until now always well within his expert command—was threatening to spin out of his control. Every time she arched her body into him, brushing against his sex in a silent plea, he had to fight the carnal urge to pick her up, throw her on the bed and bury himself inside her until she was crying out his name and neither of them knew where each of them ended and the other began.
Almost feverish with lust, Louis dipped his head again, his teeth grazing the hollow of her neck with just enough pressure to make her gasp. To make her hips rock against him in another silent plea.
‘Tell me you want me,’ he commanded, the faintly salty taste of her skin teasing the end of his tongue. But he forced himself to stop, to put a gossamer-fine layer of air between them.
She could barely answer.
‘What are you doing?’
She twisted to get back into his arms. He held her away.
‘Say the words,’ he rasped, pausing but not lifting his head.
He was reckless, and abraded, and pounding.
‘I want you,’ she managed to choke out. Then, as if she felt bolder, the assertion came again. More confident this time. ‘I want you.’
‘Where?’
A crimson stain spread over her lovely cheeks.
‘You know where.’
‘Tell me,’ he ordered.
He needed there to be no doubt, no ambiguity. He knew what she thought of his morals to date. He had to hear her say what she wanted. For her to know she’d said it.
Shakily, she took hold of his wrist; moved his hand to the heat at the top of her legs, her whisper so quiet he had to strain to hear it.
‘Here.’
‘Here?’ he enquired casually, as though it wasn’t killing him to restrain himself.
She bit her lip, a jerk of a nod.
‘There.’
‘Better.’ He didn’t even try to disguise the naked need in his voice.
But it didn’t matter. He had what he needed.
He nudged her over to sit on the edge of the bed. Dropping to his knees in front of her, his hand lifting one of her legs over his shoulder, Louis hooked the flimsy scrap of lace aside and pressed his mouth to the centre of her hot, honeyed need, drinking her in at last.
* * *
Alex heard herself cry out. A low, husky sound, and then nothing. She couldn’t. She could barely even catch her breath.
Every single nerve in her body reacted as he licked into her core where she’d felt heavy, so heavy; yearning for him with a need that was almost crippling.
He muttered in French, but Alex didn’t need to understand the words to know it was fierce, thick with desire. For the first time she felt desirable and wanton. Just as provocative, as sexual as the women he usually dated. Except that she wasn’t, and she wasn’t sure if there was something she should be doing for him. If there was something important she was forgetting.
‘Louis...’ She lifted herself slightly onto one elbow and tried to shift away from him for a moment.
Louis lifted his head a fraction until his smouldering gaze met hers.
‘Relax,’ he murmured, his breath the most sensual whisper against the softest heights of her thigh, making her all the more molten inside. ‘I want to taste you. Claim you.’
He slid his hand under one leg, lifting it slightly as he shouldered his way under it, granting himself better access, and he lowered his head again, the way his eyes still locked with hers only making it all the more erotic. And then he licked into her again and it was like an explosion of fireworks across Alex’s eyes.
Louis toyed with her, kissed her, sucked on her, his dexterous fingers and devious mouth working in harmony to render her completely incapable of any action. Any thought. Blood roared in her ears and she could feel his hair through the fingers she couldn’t recall lacing against his head. She gave herself up to sensations she had never felt in her life before. Surely never would again.
She could feel fire inside her growing as he stoked it. Higher and higher. His long fingers slipped in and out of her even as her hips bucked involuntarily against his sinful mouth. Wild need coursed through her, dizzying, searing, clearing her mind of that last, insistent thought. He was moving faster now, making her clasp at the luxurious bedsheets in a hopeless attempt to gain traction, her gasps and pants fast and shallow.
And then he twisted his wrist and Alex stiffened and shuddered and then simply fractured. She splintered into a thousand perfect shards. She cried out his name again and again. Still he didn’t stop. Kissing her, holding her, playing with her, until she finally, finally stilled.
For several perfect moments Alex could almost imagine it was the start of something new. Then, abruptly, the outside doors to the suite banged, the sound of the vacuum invading her ears, and as Louis’s grip loosened for a single instant, Alex rolled back on the bed, exhaling in dismay. But not for what she’d let Louis do, instead simply for the fact that they’d been interrupted.
That was what she’d forgotten.
‘Your cleaning lady,’ she breathed heavily. ‘That’s what woke me up this morning. That’s why I’m here.’
His low curse reverberated between them and he crossed the room in two long strides. They were lucky the woman was still in the sitting area on the other side of the bedroom doors.
‘Wait here,’ he barked out. ‘She can’t see you like this.’
‘That was what I thought...’ Alex blurted after him.
But he was already gone, leaving her alone in the middle of his bedroom. And the shivers that accompanied her were nothing whatsoever to do with the temperature.
What had she been thinking? Losing herself with Louis to the extent that she’d even forgotten someone could walk in on them at any moment. That wasn’t who she was. It wasn’t who she’d ever been.
But it was who playboy Louis was.
It was one thing to agree to this charade of a relationship, the engagement to come and ultimately the marriage. To pretend she could be bought as a wife. It was quite another to actually act as though she was some booty
call mistress.
The worst thing about it was that a part of her didn’t want to listen. A part of her wanted to wait for Louis to come back through those doors and pick back up with her exactly where he’d left off.
Hot shame flooded through her.
Scampering off the bed, she searched the room for the nightgown that he’d balled up and tossed. It wasn’t hard to spot, lying on the floor on the other side of the bed like some huge, cheap rug.
Mocking her.
She hurried over and snatched it up, tussling with the long, ruffled sleeves, which had been pulled inside out in the moment, pretending she didn’t see the buttons that he’d torn off in his haste.
Righting it, she tugged it back over her head, telling herself she was glad it was as frumpy and unflattering as it was, and moved to the doors to listen.
She could hear the tone of the conversation, as one-way as it was, even if the words themselves were too muffled to get the detail. Still, she could tell that Louis was brief, firm, yet nonetheless polite; was forced to admit that it was a world away from the arrogant, entitled man who the press loved to hate.
Then he was closing the door as he stepped back into the room. Just the two of them, again. Him in his towel, her in her nightgown, just as they’d been at the start of this thing. Still, this time he kept his distance, staying across the floor from her.
She didn’t know whether to feel relieved or hurt. She only knew that the air felt thick around them. Oppressive. And she didn’t know what that meant.
‘She’s leaving,’ Louis stated flatly, but somehow she didn’t get the impression that he just meant the bedroom corridor.
Alex shook her head. Why did everything feel so muggy?
‘Who’s leaving?’
Louis offered a clipped nod.
‘Janelle, my cleaning lady. For the day. Just give her a few minutes.’
‘You can’t be expecting to just pick up where you left off,’ she accused, guilt lending her voice a harsher quality.
A Bride to Redeem Him Page 10