A bolt of fear caused her to cry out, her heart pounding in her chest as she stared at the tall, menacing figure just visible in the doorway leading to the en suite. ‘How did you get in here?’ she demanded, her disbelief turning to a mixture of fury and embarrassment when she realised he had watched her struggle to pull the dresser across the door. ‘You must have lost your way—your room’s across the hall,’ she added sweetly, striving for the brand of sarcasm he used with such deadly effect. ‘And do you know where I can find a spare light bulb?’
Instead of replying, he strolled across the room and flicked on the bedside lamp so that the room was bathed in a gentle glow, his cold smile sending a frisson of apprehension along her spine as he held up the bulb he had removed from the ceiling light fitting. His silence unnerved her yet she could not drag her gaze from him. Tall, dark and devastatingly sexy, he unnerved her, she acknowledged wryly. Her tiredness seemed to have vanished and she felt strangely energised, every nerve ending tingling with a sense of expectation that refused to be quashed.
‘I’m sure you have your reasons for snooping about in the dark, but I’m tired and not in the mood for playing games,’ she told him shortly, and his jaw tightened.
‘I’m not the one playing games and it’s you who’s in the wrong room. As my wife, you have certain duties to perform,’ he reminded coolly, and the sheer arrogance of his statement fuelled her temper.
‘I’m taking early retirement but I’m sure you’ll have no problem filling the vacancy in your bedroom. As for performing, I did that this afternoon. You don’t really think I enjoyed myself, do you?’ she queried tightly, praying he wasn’t remembering her eager capitulation in his arms.
‘Non, chérie, I would never have guessed from your energetic response between the sheets that you hated every minute of making love with me,’ he drawled, and her face flamed.
‘Well, I did and I’m not planning an encore.’ With the dresser wedged across the door and Luc barring her way to the bathroom she seemed to have reached stalemate and she gave an exasperated sigh. ‘I would really appreciate being left in peace,’ she said huskily. ‘It’s been a hell of a day.’
How did she manage to look so achingly fragile? Luc wondered savagely. Her air of vulnerability never ceased to affect him. Her eyes had darkened to the colour of midnight and appeared far too large for her pale, heart-shaped face. Her hair fell almost to her waist and he fought the urge to wind his fingers into the chestnut strands and pull her in. She was his woman, his wife, damn it, and he wanted her with a hunger that bordered on the obsessive, but she had tried to barricade herself out of his reach.
Was she afraid of him? The thought made him pause fractionally, but every instinct told him it was not fear that made her shrink from him. He knew her too well, recognised the fierce sexual tension that gripped her so that her pupils dilated and she was forced to moisten her lips with the tip of her tongue. She wanted him as badly as he wanted her, but convincing her of that fact was going to take more patience than he currently possessed.
‘I am your husband, the man you agreed to love, honour and obey, if I remember the wording of the old service that you decided on. For ever, chérie. Until death us do part. Isn’t that the promise we once made?’
‘We also promised to stand by one another in sickness and in health, but you broke that one the minute you learned I was pregnant,’ she said shortly, dragging her gaze from his hardboned, handsome face.
‘When I failed to give you enough attention?’ he murmurmed silkily. ‘Rest assured I won’t make the same mistake again, ma petite. There will be no separate rooms, nothing to fuel gossip among the staff. Simone has already spent half the day transferring your belongings between rooms.’
At that Emily flung open the wardrobe, her temper heating to boiling point when she found it empty.
‘You are my wife and you will share my bed,’ he stated, and the implacable determination in his gaze was the last straw.
‘Lucky me,’ she quipped, striving for sarcasm to hide her trepidation as he shoved the dresser away from the door and headed in her direction. ‘Did you ask Robyn why she kept quiet about my visit to the penthouse?’ she demanded, unable to hide the hint of desperation in her voice as he suddenly pounced and scooped her into his arms, ignoring the blows she aimed at his chest with insulting indifference.
‘I didn’t need to. I already know you were lying.’ His voice was so flat, so certain that her hands stilled and she stared into his face that was only inches from hers. ‘I checked back in my diary,’ he explained coolly. ‘At the time you say you took Jean-Claude to the flat, I was in South Africa, partly on business but also to spend Christmas with friends who understood my desperation that I still had no knowledge about the whereabouts of my child.’ His fingers tightened their grip and she winced as he kicked open his bedroom door and strode across to the huge, ornate bed. ‘My housekeeper had gone to Yorkshire to visit family and Robyn flew from our meetings in Durban to stay with her parents in the States. The penthouse was shut up for the whole of December,’ he told her hardily. ‘There’s a chance, I suppose, that you did go there, but why make up the rubbish about seeing Robyn? Why make her out to be a liar?’
‘Why would I invent the story at all?’ Emily defended herself as he threw her onto the bed with enough force that she bounced on the mattress. He shrugged, his indifference warning her that he was growing bored with the conversation.
‘Perhaps because if you insist on leaving me, you’ll have to fight a custody battle over Jean-Claude, and you think it would show you in a slightly better light if you said you had tried to contact me and allow me see my son?’
‘I did go to the flat and I did see Robyn,’ she yelled, dismay that he refused to believe her mingling with fear and a slow-building excitement as he began to unfasten his shirt. The room was illuminated by discreetly placed uplighters and dozens of thick church candles grouped on the fireplace, their flickering flames casting shadows on the walls. It was intensely romantic, a room designed for lovers, but there was nothing loving about the hardness of Luc’s expression and the gleam in his grey eyes warned of his determination to fulfil his rights.
‘I’m not a liar,’ she said thickly, despising the way her voice had softened, the way her eyes fixed of their own accord on his bare chest. In the candlelight his skin gleamed like bronze and she clenched her fingers into fists so that she could not give in to the temptation to run her hands through the covering of wiry black hairs that arrowed down from his chest and disappeared beneath the waistband of his trousers.
‘Do you want me to make love to you tonight, ma chérie?’ he murmured softly.
‘I’d rather have all my teeth extracted without an anaesthetic.’
‘Then you are a liar.’ It was his arrogance, the supreme self-confidence of his smile that set her teeth on edge. His hands moved to the zip of his trousers and she closed her eyes on a wave of despair as they hit the floor, closely followed by his underwear. Her breath snagged in her throat when he had to tug his silk boxers over the rigid hardness of his arousal.
Dear God, he was gorgeous she thought numbly. Earlier, in the shower, she had been so caught up with the exquisite sensations he had been arousing in her that she hadn’t had time to study him properly. Now he was standing before her, his stance almost indolent, unhurried, and she was able to appreciate the full throbbing power of his erection. She should escape now, before it was too late, but instead her body quivered, betraying the primitive need that pinned her to the bed with a force she was unable to fight. It was only when he reached out a hand and threaded it through her hair that her instinct for self-preservation kicked in and she tried to scrabble off the bed, only to be lifted and deposited back on the mattress as if she were a rag doll.
‘You had what you wanted this afternoon,’ she muttered, although speech was difficult with her face pressed against his chest. Already she could feel herself weakening, molten heat flooding through her as the scent
of him, a subtle blend of his exotic aftershave and male pheromones, assailed her senses.
‘I want more.’ His lips feathered along the line of her jaw and moved up to hover at the corner of her mouth, tantalisingly close so that it was all she could do not to close the gap and feel the full force of his kiss.
‘But why me?’ The words escaped as a wail of despair. ‘You don’t even like me and you certainly don’t trust me,’ she whispered on a note of pain. ‘Isn’t Robyn enough for you?’ He had vehemently denied a relationship with his PA but all her old doubts had resurfaced with the knowledge that he believed Robyn’s word over hers.
He ignored her, but his mouth settled on hers in an evocative caress that stunned her with its gentleness. She had braced herself for his fierce assault, had assembled her defences, but the sweetness of his kiss, the way he parted her lips with delicate precision so that his tongue could initiate an unhurried exploration, shattered her tenuous control over her emotions. This was Luc, the love of her life and the only man she had ever wanted. How could she deny him, how could she deny herself when her entire being was focused on assuaging this desperate, primal need for her mate?
She was unaware that his hands had slid beneath her hair to unfasten the halter neck of her dress until he eased back a fraction and unpeeled the fabric from her breasts, leaving them exposed to his hungry gaze.
‘Exquisite,’ he breathed, his accent suddenly very pronounced, so innately sensual that she shivered and tiny goose-bumps prickled her skin. ‘I have never forgotten the scent of you, the feel of your skin like satin beneath my fingers. You are in here,’ he whispered, frustration at his own weakness evident in his tone as he held her hand against his heart, ‘and I can’t seem to evict you, however hard I try.’
He didn’t trust her, he refused to believe her story about going to the penthouse and he certainly did not love her, but right now Emily didn’t care. He overwhelmed her senses, trampled on her pride so that all that was left was desire, piercing her soul and making every nerve ending zing with expectation. She drew a sharp breath as his hands slid down to cup her breasts, his thumb pads brushing across her nipples until they hardened into throbbing peaks that begged for his total possession. Slowly he lowered his head and she murmured low in her throat when his lips closed around first one peak and then the other, drawing it fully into his mouth as he suckled her. Sensation seared her, so that she arched her back to offer him unfettered access to her breasts but already his hands were sliding lower, tugging her dress over her hips while she knelt on the bed.
She gasped as he stroked the sensitive flesh of her inner thighs but was beyond any idea of rejecting him when he hooked his fingers into the waistband of her underwear and drew the scrap of lace down to her knees. Only then did he push her gently so that she fell against the pillows and he swiftly stripped her completely before coming down beside her, his body warm and male and urgently aroused. She wanted to say something, to tell him once more that she hadn’t been lying about taking Jean-Claude to him, but her words were lost beneath the pressure of his mouth as he took her in a slow, sensual caress that drugged her senses and drove everything but the man and the moment from her mind.
When he dipped his hand between her thighs she parted them willingly, trembling as he stroked the sensitive nub he had revealed before he slid his fingers in deep to explore her intimately. She was ready for him, slick and wet, and she heard him groan low in his throat as her fingers strayed down over his hips to hesitantly touch the throbbing hardness of his arousal that pushed insistently against her belly. His hair-roughened thighs were abrasive against the softness of hers as he moved over her, his hands beneath her bottom lifting her so that she was angled to his satisfaction. He entered her, slowly, taking his time so that her muscles stretched to accommodate him. He filled her and she gasped as he began to move, sensation building on sensation, his rhythmic thrusts sending her higher every time he drove into her. Suddenly she was impatient, desperate to reach the pinnacle that she knew was ahead, and she wrapped her legs around him, urging him on, her pleasure mounting with the increasing speed of his movements.
Just when she thought she could take no more, her body splintered and she cried out as wave after pleasurable wave dragged her under, leaving her boneless and utterly spent. He was mere seconds after her and she heard him shout her name, his voice harsh as if it had been dragged from the depths of his soul, before he relaxed and she gloried in the weight of him pressing her into the mattress.
‘You see, that wasn’t so bad, was it, ma petite?’
On the edge of sleep, the unmistakable note of triumph in his voice commanded her attention and her eyes flew open, sick humiliation filling her. Of course he sounded triumphant when she had made it so easy for him. Once again her defences had crumbled at the first touch of his hands on her skin. It wasn’t bad, it was terrible, and she cringed away from the warmth of his body that even now had the power to arouse her.
‘Are you hoping for a mark out of ten for technical ability, or simply waiting for a round of applause?’ she demanded coolly as she sat up and dragged the huge silk-covered bolster into the centre of the bed. ‘It wasn’t that bad, but it wasn’t that good either, and if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not repeat the experience.’ With that she dived beneath the covers, hiding her hot face and praying that he wouldn’t touch her because she would surely crack.
‘Think very carefully, chérie, before you put a barricade between us,’ he warned softly, ‘because, I promise you, I won’t be the one to remove it.’
‘Excellent. Then I should get a good night’s sleep without the fear of your hands straying into my side of the bed. Goodnight,’ she added stiffly into the silence, and ground her teeth in impotent fury as he gave a low chuckle.
‘Bonne nuit, mon ange. Sleep well!’
Sunlight slanting across her face caused Emily to open her eyes and she frowned as she stared around at the unfamiliar surroundings. Not the whitewashed walls of the farmhouse but the opulent décor of the master bedroom at the Château Montiard, she noted, her memory returning with a vengeance. She turned her head sharply but the space on the other side of the bolster was empty. Her gaze travelled to the clock and shock saw her scramble from the bed and into the en suite. How on earth had she slept until ten o’clock, and why hadn’t anyone woken her? Her thoughts turned immediately to Jean-Claude and she prayed he was happy with Liz. Her first opportunity to impress Luc with her maternal skills had got off to a bad start.
She showered in record time, wincing as ill-used muscles made themselves known. Her cheeks flooded with colour at the memory of just how she had exercised them. What madness had turned her into a wanton creature in Luc’s arms last night? She had no one to blame but herself because he hadn’t forced her. His methods of persuasion had been a far more subtle incitement of her senses that had left her begging for his possession.
A scant glance through her wardrobe revealed she had nothing suitable to wear for her role as the lady of the château and an imp of devilment saw her slip into faded denim pedal pushers that clung to her hips like a second skin and a bubble-gum-pink T-shirt with the slogan LITTLE MISS NAUGHTY emblazoned across the front. Elegant it wasn’t, she conceded with a grin as she caught her hair into a ponytail and headed for the stairs, but her outfit was fun and funky and if Luc disapproved, too bad!
‘Where’s Jean-Claude?’ she asked hesitantly, her bravado slinking away beneath Luc’s cool stare as she crept into the dining room, to find no sign of her son or his nanny.
‘Liz has taken him for a walk in the garden. He was growing impatient,’ Luc added pointedly, and she blushed.
‘I can’t believe I overslept like that. Usually I’m awake at dawn.’
‘Aha.’ From his tone he patently believed she never woke up before lunchtime and her face tightened. She had spent the first six months of their son’s life waking up every four hours to feed him because he was such a demanding baby. It was only in th
e last few weeks that she had persuaded Jean-Claude to sleep through the night and her body clock was frantically trying to make up for lost time.
‘You’ve obviously never paced the floor at three in the morning trying to pacify a baby with colic,’ she snapped, and he surveyed her steadily over the top of his newspaper.
‘No, I was never given the chance.’
Hostilities had been resumed, she realised as she took her place at the table and smiled gratefully at Simone who placed a cup of steaming coffee in front of her.
‘There’s bread and croissants, or Sylvie will happily cook you something,’ Luc murmured, and she quickly shook her head, her stomach rebelling at the idea of food.
‘Coffee will be fine.’
‘You must eat,’ he argued, and then paused. ‘Although perhaps not too much or you might actually burst out of your clothes, and they leave little to the imagination as it is.’ His lips twitched as his gaze settled on the slogan across her chest and to her horror her breasts immediately swelled so that her nipples were prominently displayed beneath the thin cotton. ‘And my imagination is in overdrive,’ he commented dulcetly, to which there was no reply she could utter in polite company.
The silence stretched between them, so intense that the ticking of the clock seemed to reverberate around the room. ‘Um, is there a spare car that I could borrow?’ she asked at last, and he glanced at her speculatively.
‘I’m afraid not,’ he replied pleasantly, but she didn’t trust his smile. He reminded her of an alligator, slumberous and watchful in the seconds before it snapped its great jaws around its unsuspecting prey. ‘Where do you need to go? Everything you or Jean-Claude could possibly need is here at the château.’
‘I’d still like to go into the village, or visit the nearest town occasionally. If it makes you happy, I’ll leave Jean-Claude with his nanny,’ she snapped impatiently, ‘but you can’t honestly expect to hold me prisoner at the château indefinitely.’
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