Marriage Made in Blackmail

by Michelle Smart

  What had there been to fear about this?

  This was pleasure. Erotic, greedy and needy, not something to be frightened of but something to be embraced.

  He placed her on the bed, her bottom on the edge, her arms still wrapped around him, Luis between her parted thighs.

  He was the one to break the kiss.

  She moaned her complaint and tried to resist as he put a hand on her shoulder and gently pressed her back.

  Her complaints died when she saw the darkness pulsating in his eyes as he lightly circled her breasts with his fingers, sending brand-new sensation over skin she hadn’t known could be so sensitive. When he put his lips there too...

  She closed her eyes to this new, intoxicating pleasure as he kissed each breast, flickering her nipples with his tongue.

  So intense were the sensations that she was only dimly aware of his hands working on the buttons of her skirt and tugging it down her hips with her bikini bottoms, only fully aware that she had helped shed them by kicking them off when he brought his mouth back to her lips for another of his darkly passionate kisses.

  When he put a hand to the womanly heart of her, an electric pulse charged through her, strong enough to lift her back into an involuntary arch. She drank his kisses while fresh, new pleasure assaulted her. His fingers gently but assuredly stroked and manipulated her, making her senses spin and rocket to an undiscovered dimension, and she cried a protest when his hand moved away from his heavenly doings and traced up and over her belly and covered her aching breasts.

  Time slipped away and lost all meaning, thoughts dissipating to just one concrete thing: Luis.

  This, here, now, was everything she had dreamed, everything she had...

  Her eyes flew open.

  Luis must have removed the rest of his clothing for suddenly she was conscious of a velvety thickness pressing against the apex of her thigh.

  She gazed into the dark hazel eyes gazing so sensually into hers but with a question contained in them.

  This is the point of no return, they said. If you want this to stop then now is the time.

  Chloe would rather take a knife to the heart than stop. She had never wanted anything more than she did at this moment.

  She placed her hand on his tightly locked jaw. It softened under her touch before he turned his face to kiss her palm.

  Then she moved her arms round his back as he kissed her mouth again and put his hand between their conjoined bodies to take hold of himself and position himself at the most secret, hidden heart of her.

  A hard, heavy pressure pushed against her but it was a pressure she welcomed; craved, his kisses no longer enough to satisfy the intense heat overwhelming every part of her.

  Slowly he inched inside her with a careful tenderness to his movements that drove out what little fear still lived inside her. His lips brushed over her face and his hands stroked her hair, as he filled her bit by bit until he was fully inside her and their groins were locked together.

  The newness of the sensation stunned her. She could feel him, inside her, over her, on her, two bodies fused together as one.

  And then he kissed her again and began to move...and that was when she discovered the true meaning of pleasure.

  Her legs wrapped around his waist, Chloe closed her eyes and let Luis guide her.

  Luis.

  Even with her eyes shut she could see him so clearly. The scent of his skin, a new muskiness to it, the smoothness of his skin, the bristles of the hairs of his chest brushing against her breasts...

  He was her everything. Her pain, her pleasure, her desire, her hate, all blended together so there was only him.

  Low in her most hidden part an intensity built, every slow thrust raising it higher and yet somehow deeper, everything inside her concentrating into one mass that finally reached a peak and exploded within her. Ripples pulsated and surged through her body with a strength that had her crying out. Pressing her cheek tightly to Luis’s, she rode the waves of pleasure, the only thought echoing through her head that she didn’t want this feeling to ever, ever leave her.

  * * *

  There was a wonderfully languid weight in Chloe’s limbs she’d never experienced before, a mellow buzzing sensation in her veins. Luis’s face was buried in her neck, his breath hot on her skin, fingers laced through hers.

  Time seemed to have come to a stop.

  She sighed when he raised himself up to stare down at her. She couldn’t read the expression in his eyes but what she saw made her stomach melt and her heart clench.

  His kiss was light but lingering before he climbed off the bed.

  ‘Are you going?’ she asked before she could stop herself.

  A shutter came down in his eyes but his stare remained on hers. ‘Do you want me to go?’

  She hesitated before answering. She should want him to go. What they had just shared hadn’t been planned—Dieu, had it not been planned—but the culmination of something that had fired into being months ago and been left to simmer. To tell him to leave would be an admission of regret and a denial of her own complicity.

  She did not regret it. How could she? It had been the most intensely wonderful experience of her life.

  And she would not be complicit in any more deceit.

  There had been enough deceit between them to fill his yacht.

  She swallowed. ‘No.’

  He inclined his head, a gleam returning in his eyes. ‘Good. Because I’m not going anywhere apart from the bathroom to dispose of the condom.’

  That made her blink.

  When had he put that on?

  She watched him stroll to the bathroom, unable to believe she hadn’t noticed Luis slipping a condom on.

  Wriggling under the bed sheets, she cuddled into the pillow, dazed that passion had engulfed her so acutely that it had swept her away to a place where she had lost all sense.

  When Luis came back into the room in all his naked glory her heart skipped up into her mouth.

  Her imagination of his naked form had not done him justice. He truly was a titan of a man, broad, muscular, bronzed, unashamed in his masculinity.

  A smile curved on his lips as he strolled towards her and lifted the bed sheets to climb on top of her.

  Elbows either side of her face, Luis gazed down at the face that had been like a spectre in his mind for so long, drinking in the expression in the baby-blue eyes, the flawless porcelain skin, the voluptuous lips that kissed like the softest pillow.

  He dipped his head and kissed her softly. ‘Do you regret making love?’

  She arched a perfectly shaped brow. Her mouth had quirked with amusement but there was something in her eyes that negated it; a vulnerability. ‘Is that what you call it?’

  He shuffled down to kiss her neck. Dios, barely minutes since they’d made love and he was hard again. ‘What do you prefer to call it?’

  ‘Sex?’ From the breathless way she suggested the word he sensed her own arousal sparking back to life.

  ‘I thought the French were a romantic people?’

  ‘We are with people we feel more than hate for.’

  ‘You feel more than hate for me.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  He nipped her shoulder. ‘Yes, you do. And what we shared was more than sex.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t. And stop telling me what I...’ he’d encircled one of her nipples with his tongue ‘...feel.’

  ‘Ah, I forget you have had tons of lovers.’

  ‘I might have exaggerated a little.’ Now there was a sensual hitch in her voice.

  ‘When are you going to admit you were a virgin?’

  ‘Never.’

  He moved his attention to her other breast, enraptured with its texture, its taste, its weight, the sheer feminine beauty of it... ‘You didn’t answer my question.’
r />   Her hands found his head, her fingers digging through his hair. ‘Which question was that? There have been so many.’

  He rested his chin on her nipple to look in her eyes. ‘Do you regret us making love...having sex?’

  The returning stare shone at him. ‘I should regret it.’

  ‘But you don’t?’

  ‘No.’ She wound a lock of his hair in her fingers. ‘I don’t regret it. It doesn’t change how I feel about you or anything else. I still think you’re the devil.’

  Trailing his tongue up her breast and to her neck, he pressed his mouth back to hers. ‘Maybe one day you will discover I am not the devil you think I am,’ he said before kissing her deeply.

  No more words were spoken between them. Not verbally.

  * * *

  The gecko was back.

  Chloe had woken early, much earlier than she usually liked to wake, and had come to an instant alertness.

  That had been a man lying with his head on the pillow next to hers, an arm slung across her midriff. She had moved his arm carefully and sat up to stare at Luis’s still-sleeping face.

  There had been something surprisingly innocent in his sleeping form, his features smoother except for the now thick stubble around his jawline.

  Resisting the urge to press a kiss to the stubbly cheek, she had torn her gaze from him and got out of bed, pausing only to put her thin robe on. Then she had made herself a coffee and slipped through the sliding door and onto the veranda, which was where her two-inch friend had found her.

  Of course, it could be a different gecko. Luis’s island was full of them. She was sure their parents could differentiate but they all looked the same to her, all except for this one.

  This one was cute. It had perched itself on top of the seat next to hers and was staring at her with what she liked to think was interest.

  ‘What do you want, little one?’ she asked softly. ‘Food? Drink? I would share but I don’t think coffee is good for a little thing like you. Are there any bugs you can eat for your breakfast?’

  As ridiculous as she knew it was to talk to a reptile, there was a comfort to it. Focusing on the cold-blooded creature stopped her thinking too hard about the warm-blooded creature she’d left sleeping.

  This was the first time she’d left the villa’s walls since Luis had barged her door open the morning before.

  He’d had food brought to them at varying points with jugs of cocktails of varying strengths. She couldn’t remember any of it, not what they’d eaten or drunk. The only image with any solidity to it was making love...having sex...with Luis.

  The desire that had simmered between them for so long had finally been unleashed and she was in no hurry to tie it back up, not when the things he did to her felt so utterly wonderful.

  Luis had taught her things her imagination had never conjured, taught her pleasure that was about so much more than the mechanics of sex.

  What had surprised her the most was how fun it had all been. There had been passion—lots of passion—but there had been laughter too. Dirty jokes. A shared bath that had ended with far more water on the floor than in the tub.

  She was French, she’d reminded herself many times that day. Taking a lover meant nothing. That her lover was her...fiancé—was that what she was supposed to call the blackmailing, kidnapping devil?—was irrelevant.

  But she didn’t feel like a kidnap victim. In truth, she’d never felt like his victim. His pawn, yes, that was an apt description but victim, no.

  She had known when she’d offered to help her brother that there would be a price to pay in putting herself up against Luis.

  A shiver ran up her spine. She shook it off.

  Better to have lost her virginity with a man who made her stomach melt with one skim of his finger on her skin than with...

  But that was the problem. There never had been anyone else. When she and Luis were done with she still could not envisage herself with anyone else.

  She couldn’t reconcile her insatiable hunger for him. It was wrong on so many levels that soon she would be joining him in the special level built just for him in Dante’s Inferno.

  The patio door slid open and Luis stepped out onto the veranda, cup of coffee in hand, charcoal boxers slung low over his hips...and nothing else.

  Chloe gaped, struck anew at his rugged, masculine beauty.

  With the early morning sun beaming down on him he looked like a statue of a Greek god brought to life and filled with bronzed colour, albeit a Greek god with hair sticking up all over the place and eyes puffy from sleep.

  For some reason, seeing him like this made her want to cry.

  The smile he bestowed her with made her heart double flip on itself.

  ‘You know that talking to yourself is the first sign of madness?’ he said casually.

  It took a beat for her to get what he was talking about.

  She grinned, although it was an effort to make her lips and cheeks comply. ‘I’ve been talking to Greta.’

  ‘Greta?’

  ‘Greta the Gecko.’ She nodded to the chair Greta was perched on.

  Luis took a step towards it and Greta fled.

  ‘You’ve scared her away,’ Chloe chided.

  ‘I have that effect on women,’ he teased, taking Greta’s vacated seat.

  He certainly did, she acknowledged with a painful twist of her heart.

  Luis was a man any right-thinking woman would run a mile from.

  She had run, as fast as she could.

  And then she had drawn him back.

  It suddenly struck her that the method she had chosen to get him out of the way for the gala had put her directly in his firing line when there must have been numerous other methods that wouldn’t have pointed the finger at her as perpetrator.

  But she had wanted him to know her part in it. She had imagined his face when he’d worked it all out and taken bitter satisfaction from it while her heart had splintered.

  And why had she chosen to make out she was a damsel in distress? Because she had known he was a man who would never let a woman be alone and in potential danger when he could help her.

  He’d carried her out of the tree, hadn’t he, when he had been only fifteen...?

  Luis’s fundamental nature was, not exactly good, but selfless. He’d put his own life on the line to help a small child.

  Had Benjamin got it all wrong as Luis insisted?

  Before she could follow her train of thought any further, Luis put his cup on the table and opened his other hand to reveal a rectangular foil package.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  LUIS WATCHED CHLOE’S REACTION, being careful to keep his own lurching emotions in check.

  Her cheeks were stained red. ‘Have you been going through my things?’ she croaked.

  ‘No, bonita. I saw them on the dining table with the rest of the contents of your bag. They caught my eye. You’re on the pill?’

  He thought of the trio of condoms he’d had in his wallet, which they’d used up in relatively short order, and the other ways of making love they had embraced that hadn’t required actual penetration since.

  She stared back at him, the same thoughts obviously going through her mind too because darker colour flooded her cheeks.

  Although incredibly willing, there had been a shyness about her over all the new things they had done, a shyness not quite disguised with laughter and quips. He’d found it utterly beguiling, just as he found most things about her.

  When they had run out of condoms and he hadn’t wanted to break the headiness of the spell they had created together to return to his villa for more, she hadn’t breathed a word that she was already protected.

  He hadn’t wanted to break the spell until their limbs were so heavy and sated that the only bodily command they could obey was the one demanding
sleep. In the back of his mind had been the certainty that the moment he walked out of this villa, what they were sharing would be over.

  The chemistry between them had in no way been a precursor to what they would be like together.

  Spending the day in bed making love...it had made him forget why he had her there, her conspiracy against him and the consequences he and his brother were living through. It had been passionate and, strangely, fun, a heady combination he had never experienced before.

  ‘I had a bad outbreak of acne when I was nineteen so my doctor put me on the pill to help,’ she blurted out, cutting through the increasingly tense silence that had formed between them. ‘I stayed on it because I found it helped with the monthly pain.’

  Luis dragged a hand through his hair and muttered a curse under his breath, suddenly feeling like a heel.

  It had been a reflex action. He’d seen the packet, recognised it, and scooped it up to examine it. It hadn’t been a conscious decision to confront her over it. What was there to confront? It was sensible for her not to trust him or any other man to keep her safe.

  Luis knew his reputation with women wasn’t the greatest. There was some truth in his playboy reputation, he had to admit, but it wasn’t the whole truth. He’d never hopped from one bed to the next like some of the Lotharios he knew, but didn’t see the point in pretending to pine for a relationship that had run its course...although, to call these interludes relationships was pushing it a little.

  Marriage or anything remotely long-term had never been on the cards for him. None of the women had wanted to be in a relationship with him, Luis, the man, just with Luis Casillas, child of the murdered Clara Casillas and her killer husband Yuri Abramova, generous host of great parties and generous giver of gifts.

  The point was, he told himself firmly, he always used condoms. Always. He didn’t care if his lover was on the pill and had an IUD fitted, he used condoms, end of discussion.

  It must be sleep deprivation that made it feel like a stab in the guts that Chloe didn’t trust him to keep her safe.

  Their relationship was nothing to do with trust. The sex, great as it was, gave it an added piquancy but that was all.