by Nalini Singh
This time, he meant to charm absolutely, to adore without reservation. With her secrets hidden behind midnight eyes and that deep core of sensuality, Charlotte appealed to the carefully controlled savage inside of him. And that part of him wanted everything from her when they took the final steps of this intimate dance. Passion and heat, lust and surrender, trust and desire.
Such trust in bed was the most precious of gifts. Even more so when the woman giving it didn’t do so lightly. If Charlotte chose to share her body with him, it would mean far more than a moment’s fleeting pleasure, far more than anything he’d ever before experienced.
That night when he met Charlotte by the car, he satisfied himself with a kiss on her cheek and then opened the door. Dressed in a long denim skirt with ruffles of white lace at the bottom, and a silky white blouse that looked as soft as moonlight, she took his breath away.
As they drove out of the estate, he glanced at the shimmering beauty of her. “You look like an exotic temptation.”
Her laugh was intimate in the darkness inside the car. “Have you kidnapped me?”
He turned carefully onto the road, mindful of the treasure he carried this night. “Oui, of course. I’m taking you to my secret hideout where I shall ravish you.” The words were playful, but the images in his mind went far beyond mere play.
“Where are you taking me?” There was a smile in her question.
“That’s a surprise.”
“You’ve got me turned around already.” She looked out at the narrow side road he’d pulled into.
“Good.” He wanted to kiss that curious little nose.
“Are you sure you know where you’re going?”
“I’m very sure.” But, was he?
In the past, carrying on a discreet affair had never been a problem. He’d chosen his partners for the same reason they’d sought him out—neither side wanted the demands of commitment. When it was time to let go, they did so with grace and a smile. Several of his old lovers counted him as a close friend.
With Charlotte, the rules were different—he was different. He wanted to cage her in his arms and keep her for himself, to enjoy and adore whenever he wished. His feelings for her already bordered on dangerous possessiveness.
His mind sensed the threat—for the first time in his life, a woman might just seduce him to addiction. It was something he’d fought against for a lifetime, schooled by his childhood to expect nothing from women but their fleeting company.
Never loyalty. Never forever.
And yet, he couldn’t walk away from this dance.
“Alexandre.” Charlotte’s voice whispered over his body like a sweet caress.
His arousal was swift and almost painful. “Oui, ma petite?”
“You just went so quiet,” she said, gentle in her question. “Is everything all right?”
Her care touched a part of him that nothing had touched for a long time, somehow managing to soothe the raging beast of passion into something more controllable. “Everything is as it should be.”
She made a sound of frustration. “You’re very good at answering questions without giving anything away.”
He admired her spirit. “Perhaps you’re not asking the right questions.” He’d never given a woman that entrée, that chance to find the right question to ask.
“Will you answer me if I ask the right one?”
“It depends on my mood,” he teased. “If you’ve seduced me into submission, then I shall be at your mercy. I suggest you question me in bed.”
“Alexandre!”
He chuckled at her scandalized response, the painful knot inside him unraveling in the light of her presence. At the same time, a startling thought shimmered into being. Could this tiny woman help him find a way out of the darkness of his past? A past shaped by deception and shame—he loved his maman, but the lessons he’d learned at her knee were not something he’d wish on any child.
They’d scarred him and he was intelligent enough to know that he was the man he was because of those invisible wounds. A man who cherished women but never enough to place his faith in them, never enough to chance his heart. Even as a child, he’d been comfortable relying only on himself, but this aloneness was of the soul.
Until Charlotte, no woman had ever come close to breaching that wall of scar tissue. But what right did he have to taint her with the dishonor of his past? She was as dew-fresh as a morning flower—what good would it do to sully her dreams of love and loyalty?
Seeing a landmark up ahead, he took a deep breath and forced the unexpected tumble of questions aside. Tonight was for her. And, he realized with surprise, for him. That savage primitive in him was intrigued by the idea of romance under the moonlight with this lovely woman. “Look ahead, my innocent little Charlotte.”
“Stop it, you…oh. It looks like a—meadow. How did you find this?” Her eyes roved over the rolling patch of spring green grass silvered by the moonlight.
“I’m a sorcerer, chérie. I know many things.”
Charlotte couldn’t believe the beauty outside the window. Dotted with spring flowers that nodded sleepily in the night, the area appeared enchanted. Several large trees curved around the grassy field, and in the distance she could see fairy mist rising, lending a soft intimacy to the night. It was like something out of a dream. Her dream. As soon as the car stopped, she unclipped her belt, intent on getting out.
“Wait, let me care for you.”
Startled, she watched him get out and walk over to open the door. Delighted at the unexpected chivalry, she stepped out. “Nobody does that anymore.”
Closing her door, he took one of her hands in his. “You deserve it, Charlotte.”
She loved the way he said her name, as if it were something exotic when it was so very ordinary. “I always wanted a Lakota Sioux name,” she said, surprising herself with the confidence. “My mother’s name was Mary Little Dove—isn’t that the most beautiful name you ever heard?”
He tipped his head to the side. “Is that your heritage? The Sioux?”
“My mother was Oglala Lakota Sioux.” Walker had told her that when she’d asked him why they looked so different from the other Ashtons. He’d already been pulling away from her by then, distancing himself from the tragedy of their past, but had loved her enough to try and soothe her confusion.
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about them.”
Her smile was weak. “Neither do I. I was raised with my cousins. I suppose nobody thought it was important to teach me about my mother’s people.”
“But you miss not knowing half of yourself.”
There was a depth of knowledge in his answer that made her heart flood with tenderness. Then and there, her resolve to breach his reserve and discover what haunted him, firmed into a vow.
She knew instinctively that he was a man used to looking after his women. He’d already given her so much—made her feel precious and wanted. Well, she decided, this woman was going to return the favor. But, she let it go for now, aware it would take time. “Yes.”
He curved his arms around her waist, as if to shelter her from the night. “Perhaps you should seek out your heritage?”
Trusting the wrong man could lead to shattering pain, but she was tired of the aloneness of her search. And there was a seductive core of honor about Alexandre that made her want to place her faith in him. “I’ve heard that they’re very protective of themselves, that it’s hard to gain their trust. What if…what if they don’t want to talk to me?”
Alexandre frowned. “How can they deny you when you are one of them?
“But that’s just it. I don’t belong with the Sioux, just like I don’t belong on the estate. I’m an in-between person, someone who fits nowhere.” She stopped, dismayed at the depth of hurt she’d betrayed. “I’m sorry…”
“Never be sorry for trusting me.” Alexandre cupped her face with one hand and brushed her lips with his undeniably male mouth. It was a gesture of tenderness and it shook her. “Per
haps instead of feeling as if you don’t belong in either world, you should think instead that you’re lucky to have two worlds?”
Touched, she returned the simple but powerful caress. “I’ll think about it. But not tonight. Tonight is for us.”
His dark eyes gleamed but he acquiesced to her request. “Let me retrieve the picnic basket and blanket.”
As they walked across the field to the moon-shadow of a large tree, Alexandre pondered over Charlotte’s revelation. She and her flowers were so much a part of the Ashton Estate, he’d never considered that she might not feel as if she fit in. And yet, once he thought about it, he could see how she was different. Unique.
It wasn’t only her looks, though they were stunning enough to send him reeling. That long, waterfall of blue-black hair, those dark eyes, that honey-toned skin—they all marked her as different among the patrician Ashtons. But, even more, it was her personality, the way she was, that made her different.
She preferred flowers to people, a bicycle to a flashy car and had an innocence that was completely at odds with the world she’d grown up in. There was something about Charlotte that was pure and untouched, a beauty of the heart that tugged at him more and more with every moment he spent with her.
Putting the basket by the tree, he spread the picnic blanket and then inclined his head. “Sit, ma belle. Tonight, your knight waits upon his lovely princess.”
Though she was illumed only by the moonlight, he saw the flush that heated her golden skin. “You say the most wonderful things.” Her eyes shimmered, large and dark.
That she trusted him enough to confess that made his rusty heart beat with newfound spirit. A twinge of guilt infiltrated the joy spreading through his blood, but he ignored it, certain that he’d done the right thing in reading her journal. How could it have been wrong, when it had brought him to this moment of pure happiness?
“What have you got in here?” Charlotte peeked into the basket, her hair falling over her breast.
“Delights to tempt and seduce you so I can have my wicked way,” he drawled, teasing her when all he wanted to do was lay her down and satisfy the savage in him. He had a feeling she could make even that dangerously possessive part of him purr in satisfaction.
Looking up, she made a face at him, startling him with the playful curve of her mouth. “You shouldn’t be let out to wreak havoc on the female of the species. You’re positively lethal.”
He was delighted that she saw him that way. “Where would you put me? In a cage?”
She shook her head, the dark silk of her hair shifting with the motion. Unable to resist, he moved closer and fingered the strands whispering over her shoulders, his eyes on her face.
“That would be a terrible waste.” Though she was blushing, there was a look in her eyes that told him she was going to tease him right back. “You should be kept in a bedroom…where you can satisfy a woman’s wickedest fantasies.”
Six
His temperature skyrocketed. Swearing softly under his breath, he cupped her cheek and kissed the sassiness right off her lips. It tasted far too good for his peace of mind. “You mustn’t say such things. I can’t be expected to romance you if my body is straining with the urge to bury itself in your sweet body.”
She gasped, her eyes huge and dark. “I say the boldest things around you. You’re a bad influence.”
He grinned. “I’d say I’m a very good influence.” Reaching out with his right hand, he pulled out a pre-chilled bottle of champagne from the picnic basket. “Not the perfect temperature, but it’ll do.”
Charlotte held out the two champagne flutes she’d plucked. After pouring, he accepted one flute bubbling silver-gold in the darkness, his fingers running along the back of her hand. She shivered.
“I love the way you want me, kitten.” His voice was low, dark, husky, that of a lover talking to his woman. He couldn’t change that, couldn’t make it playful and merely flirtatious, not when the woman was Charlotte.
“You said not to talk that way,” she accused, but her dark eyes held a look that told him if he did reach out and touch her intimately, she might just let him. They’d come a long way from that first kiss.
Sighing at the restraints he’d put on himself tonight, he raised his glass. “To my Charlotte. Utterly lovely. Utterly unique. And supremely luscious.”
Her responding smile was unknowingly sensuous. “To Alexandre, who should be locked up for the good of the female population.”
After a sip, he put aside his champagne and started pulling delicacy after delicacy from the basket. “Do you like caviar?”
She shook her head. “Awfully plebeian of me.”
“I don’t like it, either,” he confessed. “I fail to see why people pay ridiculous sums for tiny fish eggs.” Charlotte’s quick giggle was unexpected. He looked up into her amused eyes. “What?”
“You drive a car that many people would consider um…an ego on wheels and you can’t see the temptation to indulge in caviar?” Charlotte had no idea where her impertinence was coming from. She guessed it had something to do with the way he looked at her, like he’d just like to eat her alive, after savoring her with exquisite slowness. Never had she imagined that a man as powerfully masculine as Alexandre would find her that fascinating. The thought intoxicated her far more than the bubbles of champagne fizzing against her lips.
He scowled. “Don’t think I didn’t notice that hesitation. I can forgive the use of the word ego but anything else and I might’ve had to get nasty.”
“Oooh, I’m scared.” She wanted to kiss him. Not just because of desire, but because he’d given her this. This moment of moonlight and magic, a moment when she felt wild and beautiful and desirable, things that she’d only dreamed about being.
As if he’d read her mind, those dark chocolate eyes flared with heat. Without a word, he leaned over and kissed her like he had every right to touch her as he pleased. Her stomach went into freefall. Her toes curled. “Mmmm.” Tiny pleasure sounds escaped her.
Alexandre’s body tensed and his hand fisted in her thick hair. A little trace of disappointment tinged her joy at that indication of accelerating passion. No matter what he did, she’d enjoy Alexandre’s touch but tonight…tonight she wanted romance. Slow kisses and gentle strokes.
“You make me forget all my vows.” Then he said something steamy and dark in his native tongue. The unfamiliar word sounded mysterious and sensual, things she’d never considered herself.
Alexandre’s lips descended to hers again and she felt the embers in her body ignite into flame. Ready for thunder, she was delighted to discover that he was dedicated to going slow tonight. Very slow.
His lips coaxed, tempted, teased. His tongue stroked across her lower lip, but barely ventured into her welcoming mouth. When his teeth grazed her lips, his tongue was there to soothe the sensual hurt.
“Alexandre,” she murmured, reaching for him, her hand fisting in his shirt. He felt so good. So hard and hot and rawly masculine.
Below the sophisticated surface, Alexandre Dupree was very much a man. There wasn’t a line of his body that was soft or relaxed. His steely control was apparent in the tautness of the muscles of his waist where her other hand landed. “You don’t like this slow kissing,” she said, when he let her breathe.
A smile curved his sensual lips. “On the contrary, ma petite. Slowly driving you crazy intrigues me.” His thumb rubbed over her lower lip. Somehow, the touch tugged at something much lower in her. Much more intimate. “I could spend hours kissing you.”
As if to prove that, he closed the gap between their lips once more, his hand slipping from her hair to curve around her nape, his other hand cupping her cheek. She was becoming accustomed to both gestures, but they still made her come undone. The possessiveness of the one hold, compared with the tenderness of the other, completely destroyed her capacity for rational thought. How could he do that to her without even trying?
Thinking became too hard when he ran his hand a
long her jaw. Charlotte sighed into the exquisitely romantic kiss and gave herself up to Alexandre Dupree’s magic. Her surrender was rewarded over and over, his kisses designed to bring her the most extreme pleasure.
Alexandre used every bit of experience he had to kiss Charlotte as she deserved to be kissed. He hadn’t lied to her. He could spend hours simply kissing her, drowning in the pleasure that emanated from her, feeling more male than he’d ever before felt in his life. She was such a spirited woman, quiet yet full of strength that would last a lifetime, but her bones felt so fragile under his touch, her body so very small compared to his.
He would never trust any man but himself to handle her with the care she deserved.
The fleeting thought brought a growl to the back of his throat and for a second, the kiss veered from romantic to outright marauding, but he caught himself. Romance, he forced himself to think. His kitten needed romance and moonlight tonight, not heat and raw eroticism. That would come later.
Taking a nibbling bite from the lower lip that he knew had swelled from their kisses, he parted from her. The sight of passion-drenched eyes looking up at him through a veil of blue-black lashes almost broke him.
He bit back his groan and rubbed his thumb over her moist lips. “I want to dance with you in the moonlight. I want to feel you in my arms.”
“How did you know?” she whispered, those eyes completely unguarded, completely honest.
“That’s a secret,” he said, unwilling to spoil the moment by admitting that he’d read her journal. Rising, he held out his hand.
Without hesitation, her fingers slipped into his, slender and fine-boned, but very capable. She stood, a graceful woman with a body that had all the right curves and hollows to drive him insane. It was as if she’d been created for him alone, his most inescapable temptation, so alluring that he couldn’t find the strength to break the chains slowly binding him to her.
Slipping one arm around her slender waist, he tangled his other hand with hers. Her free hand came to rest on his shoulder. “We fit perfectly.” He wanted to purr in satisfaction, his mind awash with erotic images of how well they’d fit in a far more intimate sense.