by Sarah Morgan
‘And how’s that been working for you?’
‘Well, pardon me,’ she said, reeling around, ‘but we’re all not big, capable genius designers who can fix everything with the snap of our fingers!’
Nash stared down at her. ‘What did you call me?’
‘You heard—and I think your ego’s big enough for me not to repeat it.’
He wanted to kiss her. Frame her lovely frustrated face and kiss her until she was his again.
‘Do you want me to fix this for you?’
She frowned.
‘Do you?’ he repeated.
‘You really don’t know me at all, do you? You haven’t even bothered to scratch the surface.’
Nash made a low sound of frustration. Didn’t she understand he was going out on a limb for her here? He never pried too deeply into his lovers’ lives. To do so invited intimacy, and he didn’t do that. He did sex.
‘How is it, Nash, that I know so much about you and you seem to know so little about me?’
‘Sweetheart, only you know what you’ve read in the media—and most of that’s crap.’
She narrowed her eyes at him like a cat, spun around and headed for the bedroom—then seemed to change her mind and bowled right back to him. ‘Here’s what I know. You’re amazing. You’re hardworking and driven and you have this shell that you need because you’re in the public eye. But when you’re with your friends you’re different. You don’t push your opinions or need other people to agree with you. You’re just certain in a way I’ll never be. I admire all those things about you.’
She was breathing hard, her eyes bright with repressed feeling. Nash tried not to engage but there she was, in his face.
‘But all you admire about me is my world-class ass—and don’t even think about smiling, because as far as I’m concerned you can kiss it, Mr Racing Car Driver. I’m not waiting around for you to wake up to yourself.’
She really should have stopped after amazing, thought Nash as he stepped up to her, meshed his hand through her hair and brought his mouth down possessively on hers.
As if he’d lit a match next to an open petrol tank Lorelei ignited, surging against him, aggressive as he’d never felt her before. Even the first time she’d kissed him, when she’d taken the initiative, there had been a feminine reticence in her as if she needed to keep her protective barriers in place.
There were no barriers up now. The feel of her mouth moving desperately against his own made him crazy. Kissing her, hauling her with him, he staggered to the nearest flat surface—which happened to be one of the guest bedrooms. Nash would have laughed if he could at how eager he was—like a damn teenager, reefing down his trousers, with Lorelei making desperate noises as she cleaved to him, making it more difficult to actually shed any layers of clothing.
He slid his hands up her thighs, pooling her long silken skirt, and remembered as his hand touched bare skin that she’d gone commando.
Thank God.
She whimpered and drew him to her, clamping her thighs around his lean hips. Her eyes were wide and what he saw there wasn’t simply desire, it was anxiety.
‘Lorelei?’ He was so close to the edge, and yet she was looking at him as if she wasn’t quite sure what was going on.
‘Nash, I’m scared.’ The words were almost wrenched from her. Her fingers were digging into his shoulders as if she was dangling off a cliff face, her bright troubled eyes fixed on his.
‘Don’t be.’ He suddenly didn’t feel all that secure himself, and that was a new experience. The words he found for her came from a deeper place inside him. ‘I’ve got you.’
As if that were enough for her she lifted her mouth to his, shaking, a little wild, and her body came alive beneath his own in a way it never had before, coaxing him to take her. He only just remembered the condom. Deep inside her, he held on to his control by receding increments as she seemed unable or unwilling to let go. He felt her resistance not as a challenge but as a desperate uncertainty on her part. Her words came back at him. You’re just certain in a way I’ll never be.
He pressed his forehead to hers. ‘Look at you,’ he said, grazing her cheek, her mouth, her throat with his lips, moving slowly now. ‘So strong, so wild. Do you remember when you threw that shoe at the traffic inspector?’
Lorelei gave a little start under him.
He brushed against her clitoris and she bucked. He did it again.
‘Both shoes. I knew it then.’
‘What—what did you know?’
‘I’d never keep up.’ He shifted his hips.
She made a sound—part murmur of approval, part moan.
‘You stuck your finger in his face and read him the Riot Act.’ He cupped her bottom. ‘I thought you were going to get us arrested.’
She quaked against him. ‘Sorry... I’m sorry.’
‘No, no, don’t be sorry,’ he urged, moving harder inside her. ‘Never be sorry. Do you remember when I took you back to the villa?’ He angled his thrusts to reach higher. ‘This—is what—I wanted—to do. Right there. In the Veyron.’
‘Why?’ she cried. ‘Why didn’t you?’
But she was already there.
‘Stick shift,’ he groaned as Lorelei’s inner muscles clamped around him. He was grabbed and thrown down again and again, until his body convulsed uncontrollably against her and she clutched at him, riding out her own pleasure. It seemed as much his as hers, making sounds he only half recognised.
As he subsided heavily on top of her the chemical high kicked in and for several minutes he just held her, his chest pumping. He was conscious only of her trembling, responsive body cleaved to his—until he became aware something else was at play here. This wasn’t just the euphoria of great sex. He could feel the connection with her still and didn’t want to break it. He really didn’t want to move, but he knew there was a risk if he didn’t pull out of her, dispose of the condom.
It was as he began to sit up that he became aware she was making soft, helpless sounds. Insidious recognition reached down into his gut and grabbed hold of something he hadn’t had to acknowledge in years.
The voice of his old man, telling him it was his fault, always his fault. To be a man and not a snivelling four-year-old boy.
He needed to hold her. That part of him that told him it was weakness that was at war with the man in him, who curved his hands around her slight, quaking shoulders, gathered her up in his arms and held her.
She turned her face into his shoulder and he experienced a surge of tenderness that threatened to further undo him. He was not accustomed to being gentle, but somehow he was, stroking the curls tumbling down the back of her neck, using his broad thumb to trace the curve of her ear, kissing her there because he needed to.
Except the face she lifted to his was not tear-streaked. Her amber eyes glowed; her cheeks were hot and flushed. She had never looked quite so beautiful, and she was smiling at him, softly laughing, her face haloed by all those silky fair curls.
‘Stick shift.’ She giggled as if she’d never heard anything funnier.
As he’d lost control he’d been listening not to Lorelei’s tears but to her helpless, happy laughter as she came and came, and like a bolt of lightning it hit him hard. With this woman, only with Lorelei, he felt like a conquering king.
* * *
Lorelei leaned across and gave Nash a lick of her ice cream.
She was sitting on the high sea wall and he was leaning against it between her legs, his back to her, his head just above her knees.
Beyond, fishermen were casting nets in the sea and local children ran splashing in the shoals, their happy voices punctuating the shriek of gulls, the occasional backfiring of a scooter, which seemed to be a popular method of transport, and the general hum of tourists and locals as the summer season ra
n out its course.
They had been exploring the tiny fishing village of Trou d’Eau Douce here on the east coast all morning, and lunch lay ahead, but Lorelei would have been perfectly content to stay exactly where they were. In the moment.
‘This tourist route must be boring for you,’ she said cheerfully, not sounding at all sorry.
‘Yeah, I’m bored out of my mind,’ Nash responded, giving her the benefit of a relaxed grin.
Lorelei didn’t think she’d ever seen him this relaxed. They were supposed to be on a yacht with his friends, but this morning Nash had cancelled.
‘Don’t you have meetings? You haven’t been going to them. Isn’t that the point of why we’re here?’ She had felt obliged to ask those questions, but her heart had been beating like hummingbird wings.
‘The point is spending time with you,’ he’d responded as if it were natural, and Lorelei had suddenly felt the world opening up around her into a thousand possibilities, all of them leading back to Nash.
He had forced secrets from her the other night, pushed past her fears and something important had cracked open in her, and instead of darkness only light had poured out.
He had made love to her all through the night until her body had felt like a map of Nash’s voyages, each one leaving her feeling weightless and oddly free.
It was as if being here with him these last few days had unlocked those shackles of family and the past she’d been dragging around for so long. The thought of going back to how she had been seemed impossible now.
She was falling in love with him, and there could be no coming back from that. And if love was a voyage they were sailing into uncharted waters this morning.
Last night he had taken her hands and shown her the secrets of his body, almost intimidating in its muscular perfection but, like hers, telling stories.
He was marked all over with nicks and cuts, old scars from his years on the track that weren’t always obvious until she touched him, ran her palms and fingertips over his back and hip, the long developed muscle of his quadriceps, and right there she had felt the groove in his flesh where he’d told her he’d had cartilage removed after a smash in Italy.
‘Got adventurous on a corner and ended up upside down,’ as he’d casually put it, ‘with some wreckage in my leg.’
Yet last night on the beach outside a restaurant, when she had tried to ask him about himself, what drove him, he’d diverted her by hitting her most touchy subject: Raymond. In bed he had diverted again, by leading her directly to his physical scars, deftly hiding what lay beneath.
She wondered if he was always like this with women—stripping them bare of their secrets but managing to keep his own wound up nice and tight.
But she found she didn’t want to think about other women, his past, because it didn’t matter to her. She wanted only to be in the moment, because she could trust that. Looking beyond, not knowing what was coming, instinctively frightened her.
‘My grandmaman never let me buy ice creams when I was a little girl,’ she confessed, licking the final scrap off the inner rim of the cone. ‘She said ice cream should be eaten in a bowl with a spoon at a table. Preferably without your elbows touching any surfaces.’
‘She sounds like an old dragon.’
‘Non, she was always very sweet, just set in her ways. She raised me, you know, from when I was thirteen and started boarding school. I always came home to her in the holidays. She made it her mission in life to improve me.’
‘What needed improving?’
‘My manners. I was a total barbarian—you have no idea.’
She crunched the cone between her teeth.
Nash grinned and she offered him his own bite.
‘Clearly still a barbarian.’ She laughed, covering her mouth. ‘I had to learn early how to behave myself in public. Grandmaman was quite well-known in our parts. She was photographed by Cecil Beaton in her day, you know. She was an amazing beauty.’
‘I see where it comes from,’ said Nash, those blue eyes scanning her face.
Lorelei shrugged off the compliment. ‘Looks fade. She would have preferred to be an artist herself, but she was a wonderful patron. She drew artists, writers, musicians to our house. Quite a circle. Her third husband, my grandpère, left her a fortune and she set up the Aviary Foundation, a gallery in town and a charity to raise money for various causes. When the accident put paid to any hopes I had of a riding career she gave me new purpose, put me on the board of the Aviary where I’ve been ever since.’
‘Your career, in effect?’
‘Ah, oui, sometimes it feels that way. Although I’ve tried to keep the charity separate from my everyday life. It’s not always easy.’
She paused, realising she’d gone wading into deeper waters. But she wanted to talk about this. She hadn’t forgotten what he’d accused her of last night, or what he’d said back in Monaco when he’d cancelled their date.
‘Despite what you think, Nash, I don’t date the men I deal with through the charity. I don’t blur those lines.’
‘Yeah...about that, Lorelei...’
He looked gratifyingly uncomfortable and it pleased a hurt little part of her.
‘About that, Nash...?’ she prompted.
‘I was out of line. I apologise.’
‘Do you?’ Suddenly their easy camaraderie seemed forced. Her insecurities backed up in her throat.
She so wanted this man’s understanding and approval, and it left her wide open to being hurt. All of a sudden she wasn’t sure she could do that. But nor was she sure she had a choice any more.
Last night everything had changed for her.
‘I was trying to work out how you lived your life. I was—’ He broke off, as if he knew the more he said the deeper he’d be digging himself a hole.
Lorelei made a gesture of cessation. ‘Perhaps we should just leave it at the apology.’
But his eyes flashed up and darkened on hers. ‘I was jealous,’ he said flatly.
Her heartbeat sped up. ‘Ah, oui?’
‘Thinking about you with another man kills me.’
He said it as if it was being ripped out of him without anaesthetic, but he looked her in the eye and Lorelei found she was swaying a little with the impact of his words.
She lowered her lashes.
‘Nothing to say, Lorelei?’
‘Why, Nash, don’t think about it, then.’ She lifted her gaze and gave him a little smile.
‘Not exactly what I was looking for,’ he responded, but his eyes were warm.
Feeling a little breathless, she reached out and ran her fingers through his hair. ‘That is nice to hear, Nash. Some not very nice things were intimated about me in the papers around the time of Raymond’s trial. I think the journalists were just looking for dirt.’
‘It sells papers,’ said Nash grimly.
Oui, he would know. She was talking to a man who had spent more than a decade dodging the paparazzi.
‘I hope I never have to go through that again. Five weeks in Paris for the trial, and every morning I opened the paper there would be another story.’ Lorelei shuddered delicately.
Nash was frowning. She wondered what he was thinking. Had he read any of those stories? She didn’t want to ask. She didn’t want to think about it any more. But she did want to clear the air.
‘All of these men I was supposed to be involved with—I was on Yurovsky’s yacht last summer with at least fifteen other women, one of them his girlfriend at the time, and as for Damiano, I’ve known him since I was a teenager. It’s never been romantic.’
‘You don’t need to explain your past to me,’ he said roughly, but she could see the satisfaction curling like smoke in his eyes.
He was jealous?
‘Au contraire, Nash, I’ve told yo
u a great deal about my past and you’ve told me so little. I think you have a habit of privacy.’
‘You want to hear about other women?’
Lorelei made a dismissive gesture. ‘Eh, bien, you will not be serious about this! Why don’t you keep your important secrets, then?’
He leaned in and pushed her rogue curl behind her ear.
‘What do you want to know, Lorelei?’
She brightened. ‘We could start with something I asked you about last night—about your scars. You said you show them every time you race. What did you mean?’
The amusement dropped away from his expression and he rocked back on his heels.
‘I know it’s probably very complicated,’ she persevered, ‘but I’d like to know why you do what you do...’
‘Complicated?’ he said with a humourless smile. ‘No, sweetheart, it’s incredibly simple. It’s in the blood. My old man, John Blue, worked in pit crews around the world and dragged us with him.’
‘Ah, an international childhood.’
‘Yeah, you could say that.’
He was quiet for a moment, but Lorelei waited. She sensed she’d just glimpsed the tip of an almighty iceberg.
‘Mum walked out when I was barely more than a baby. Couldn’t take the lifestyle, couldn’t take the old man. Can’t blame her.’
He turned away from her, shoving his hands into his pockets, bunching his shoulders.
‘She left us boys with Dad,’ he said, looking away down the beach as if scanning for something. ‘He was a drunk and a bully and he made our lives a living hell. Until one day when Jack—my older brother—was big enough to climb behind the wheel of a car and he started us both rally driving. Jack was good, but I was better.’
She didn’t quite understand. ‘You raced for your papa?’
‘No, I raced in spite of my old man.’ His voice was taut and stripped of emotion. ‘He had world-class dreams and I was going to fulfil them for him. The minute I signed with Ferrari I cut contact with him.’
Lorelei suppressed a shiver. He hadn’t shown this side to her. She imagined it was this single mindedness that had made him so very good at what he did and a very wealthy man.