by Penny Jordan
Deep inside herself she could feel her own responsive melting heat, and then Luc’s hand was pushing aside the top of her gown, his fingers splaying against her near naked breast. Carrie shuddered, already imagining the sensation of his tongue against her nipple, and then his mouth, its soft, rough suck, whilst he—
A burst of laughter and music as other guests opened the salon doors brought Carrie back to reality with a sharply slicing stab.
Luc had released her mouth and was also releasing her, she recognised.
‘Luc! I’ve been looking everywhere for you!’ Another guest called out from across the deck.
Carrie’s hands shook as she adjusted the front of her dress. Refusing to even look at Luc, she turned away from him to stare out into the darkness of the sea.
Her whole body felt cold and heavy. The knowledge of what she had done nauseated her. If she could have done so she would have walked past Luc and kept on walking until she was safely over S’Antander’s border. But she had Harry to think of. Luc would not hesitate to ruin her brother if she did not do as he wished. She knew that!
To Carrie’s relief the evening had finally come to an end. Her cheekbones ached from smiling, the backs of her eyes felt hot and dry, and she hated Luc more than she had thought it would ever be possible for one human being to hate another!
Having followed her back into the yacht’s main salon, he had kept her closely pinioned to his side for the rest of the evening—wearing her, she had decided contemptuously, like a public declaration of intent.
Carrie had not been surprised when, after three failed attempts to detach him from her, Gina had made a very theatrical departure, entwined around a hunky young man who, Carrie had heard another guest whispering, was an up-and-coming young actor.
‘There is such a thing as over-egging the bread, Luc,’ Carrie had warned him pithily at one point.
‘Meaning?’ he had challenged her immediately.
‘Meaning that it seems rather pointless to keep me physically shackled to your side, as though we are joined at the hip, when most of the other guests here have either already seen you tonight with Gina, looking anything but a newly betrothed man, or know perfectly well that you and Gina are lovers. Probably both!’
‘My relationship with Gina—’ Luc had stopped sharply, with a frown.
‘Is no business of mine?’ Carrie had finished sleekly for him. ‘No, I am delighted to say that it isn’t, since you don’t mean anything to me any more,’ she had continued.
It had given her a real sense of triumph and confidence to be able to say such a thing to him—especially after what had happened up on deck!
Now they were inside the car she deliberately sat as far away from Luc as she could, keeping her face turned towards the window as she gazed silently through it.
As the car climbed up the zigzagging road that led to the castle she could see the twinkling lights of the harbour below them.
‘If you want the driver to make a detour to Gina’s villa, don’t feel inhibited because of me,’ she taunted Luc, withdrawing her gaze from the view and turning to look at him. ‘Or is that not the done thing?’ she mocked him. ‘No doubt you prefer to slip out of the castle unnoticed and—’
‘I have already told you—the relationship between myself and Gina—’
‘Is none of my business. I know,’ Carrie agreed coolly.
She really was beginning to feel quite proud of herself. She wasn’t a masochist—far from it—so she wasn’t trying to inflict pain on herself by talking about Luc’s lover; no, what she was doing was simply reminding herself, reinforcing to herself, what kind of man Luc actually was so that she could totally demolish that odd and disturbing feeling she had experienced in his arms!
A timely reminder to herself now was a very judicious move for self-protection, she assured herself, and if Luc did not like what she was saying—which he quite plainly did not, to judge from the angry glitter she could see in his eyes and the hard look to his mouth—then that was just too bad!
As they drove in under the gatehouse of what had been the original fortified castle, the two sentries on duty saluted.
The limousine purred to a halt, not outside the huge imposing main entrance to the castle but instead at the more discreet double doors that led to Luc’s private apartments.
Luc accompanied her in grim silence to the doors, which were opened as though by magic at their approach by two white-gloved footmen.
The waiting major-domo bowed them in, and although none of them was wearing their uniforms the effect was still one of immense formality.
The private apartments of S’Antander’s ruler had been created at the same time as the Hapsburg family had run riot through their many European palaces with baroque rococo interiors, and was very much of that era.
Luc had once ruefully commented to Carrie that he sometimes longed to look up at a ceiling that wasn’t plastered, frescoed and gilded to within an inch of its life—to one that was simply instead a smooth white ceiling.
Carrie remembered how shocked she had been at the time, that Luc should make such a statement about such obviously historic and beautiful surroundings, but now she could see how he might long for the simplicity and starkness of a modern minimalist interior—rather in the way that simple bread and cheese is longed for after a surfeit of rich food.
If one was really in love with and loved by a man like Luc, the almost constant physical presence of other people, never mind their constant attendance, would be an unwanted intrusion on one’s longed for intimacy, Carrie suspected. But so far as she was concerned right now she was only too glad of the fact that other people were around.
In another time, another world, she might have dreamed longingly of Luc drawing her gently into the shadows afforded by the long corridors and flights of stairs in order to kiss her passionately, too hungry for her to wait until they were in the secluded privacy of a shared room, but of course now that was the last thing she wanted to happen!
‘I’ll leave you here,’ Luc announced tersely as they reached the point where the stairs branched out in two different directions.
As befitted a merely betrothed young woman she was in a suite at the opposite end of the private apartments to Luc.
Disconcertingly, as though he had looked into her head and read her mind, Luc added curtly, ‘Obviously once we are married we shall be sharing the master suite which was originally my grandparents’ and then my parents’.’
Sharing? Carrie’s whole body clenched and her heart somersaulted fiercely.
Again, as though he had guessed her thoughts, he continued, ‘Under the circumstances we shall, of course, be occupying separate bedrooms.’ He gave a small shrug. ‘Since S’Antander is already behind the times in many ways, the fact that we are in separate rooms will not appear unusual or worthy of comment. Naturally,’ he added sternly, ‘only you and I will be aware that once we are alone the communicating doors between the two rooms will not be allowed to stand open but will be firmly closed.’
With that he turned on his heel and started to walk away from her, leaving her to stare after his retreating back whilst she battled with a very complex mix of emotions.
His statement about their sleeping arrangements, which should have made her feel relieved, had in fact given rise to other, deeper and very worrying feelings.
If she was honest she was suffering from a sharp pang of rejection so strong that it was overwhelming everything else she should have been feeling.
Even though physically she was tired, her mind would not allow her to go to sleep, so she changed out of her full-length dress into a much more relaxed outfit, and all the while re-ran what had happened, frantically seeking different ways she might have dealt with events which would have allowed her to walk free instead of becoming trapped in such an unwanted and potentially very dangerous situation.
And it was a dangerous situation, Carrie admitted unhappily. Emotionally, mentally and with every instinct of self-p
reservation and intelligence she possessed she knew she had every right to loathe and detest Luc. But physically her body was refusing to fall into line. Her body, to put it in its simplest form, was still very, very aware of Luc as a man; sexually she was still responsive to him, she admitted grimly.
If it had been just a matter of putting up with a marriage of convenience to him for a few months to protect and save her brother she could have gritted her teeth and got on with it, she was sure, but the potential complications of her unwanted physical response to Luc changed everything.
She would have to talk to Luc, she decided in panic. She would have to tell him that she had changed her mind! If necessary she’d beg him not to do anything to harm Harry!
Although it was almost midnight she knew that Luc favoured late nights and even early-morning hours in which to catch up with his paperwork, working in a room off his bedroom which he had had turned into a private office.
Impelled by a sense of urgency she couldn’t ignore, Carrie opened her bedroom door and hurried down the corridor.
Outside Luc’s door she hesitated only briefly, and then, taking a deep breath, she knocked on the door.
CHAPTER SIX
CARRIE began to frown when there was no response to her knock. Perhaps…She tensed as the door suddenly opened and she saw Luc glaring down at her. His hair was still damp from the shower he had obviously been taking when she had knocked on the door, to judge from the small rivulet of water she could see running from the hollow of his throat down over the slick, fine hair covering his chest before disappearing into the deep vee of the white towelling robe he had pulled on.
‘Carrie!’
To cover what she was feeling, Carrie returned sharply, ‘Who did you think it was? Gina?’ giving a small outraged gasp as a lean hand shot out to manacle her wrist and virtually drag her into the room.
‘There’s something I want to say to you Luc,’ Carrie began as he pushed the door closed, trapping them both in the privacy of his bedroom.
He smelled of soap and clean male flesh and…To her shame Carrie realised that she was actually closing her eyes—all the better to savour the pheromone-drenched warm air that surrounded him.
‘What now?’ he demanded sardonically. ‘Couldn’t it have waited until morning?’
‘No, it could not,’ Carrie retorted, welcoming the rescuing anger his attitude was arousing inside her.
There was a small and decidedly hostile silence whilst he looked at her.
‘I don’t know why on earth you insist on forcing me to marry you, Luc, when you’ve got a ready-made and far more suitable potential bride who just can’t wait to get her hands on you in the shape of your lover—Gina!’
Carrie felt herself begin to tremble inwardly as she heard the feverish intensity in her own voice.
Luc’s eyes had narrowed and his whole attention was concentrated on her There was an ominous look in them which made Carrie realise she had gone too far, but recklessly she refused to heed it.
‘She wants you, Luc,’ she told him. ‘And I don’t. And—’
‘Look, Carrie I can see you’re spoiling for an argument, but let me warn you right now I’m not in the best of moods myself. If you continue to goad me the way you’re doing right now—well, I just hope that you’re prepared to meet the consequences,’ Luc interrupted her sharply.
‘If by “the consequences” you mean that you’ll pull every trick you can to stop me winning it—’ Carrie began furiously,
‘No.’ Luc silenced her. ‘The consequence I was referring to is the physical fall-out we seem to generate between us every time you push me to the limit. And right now you are perilously close to that limit. There is something about you, Carrie, that drives me to the point when I am so incensed, so insane with fury, that—Oh, forget it,’ he told her curtly, releasing her wrist and stepping back from her.
‘Forget it?’ As she rubbed her wrist Carrie glared at him. ‘Oh, that’s typical of you, isn’t it? You insult me and then you tell me to forget it. We aren’t all quite as good at conveniently forgetting things as you, Luc…’
‘What the hell is that supposed to mean,’ he demanded harshly.
When she didn’t reply his mouth hardened.
‘I wish to God you’d washed that damned perfume off your skin before you came in here.’
Carrie stared at him.
‘There’s nothing wrong with my perfume,’ she defended herself immediately. ‘It’s the same one I’ve always worn…’
‘Yes, I know that, damn you,’ Luc ground out.
‘And for your information,’ she continued, ‘quite a lot of people have complimented me on it and said how much it suits me.’
‘I’m sure they have—especially if by “other people” you mean other men! God, Carrie, you certainly know how to push all the wrong buttons where I’m concerned.’
‘Well, the feeling is certainly mutual,’ Carrie snapped back immediately.
‘It is?’
The look he gave her jolted against her nerve-endings like an electric charge, but she was too angry to heed its warning.
‘Because right now there is nothing, but nothing, I’d like more than to exorcise what you’ve driven me to, Carrie—in the only way it can be exorcised!’
She was still battling to understand his enigmatic and foreboding statement when he started to move towards her.
‘Luc!’ she protested in instinctive self-protection and denial, her stomach muscles cramping as she suddenly recognised the angry arousal surrounding him like a force field. The energy of his passion was engulfing her as well, she acknowledged weakly, and her own body started to respond to the hotly sexual messages his was giving off.
As he reached for her she told herself that she would protest, struggle, resist the insane pull of her own self-destructive longing, but instead the moment his arms tightened around her she could feel herself melting into him, shivering with sharp stabs of excited, aching need as her hands tugged feverishly at his robe so that she could move even closer to his naked body.
‘No, you haven’t changed,’ she heard him muttering thickly. ‘You still do things to me that no woman has any right to be able to do to a man. And there have been so many men for you, haven’t there, Carrie?’
Carrie could feel his anger, hear it in his voice, but her own desire was cushioning her from it, distancing her from it. Her fingers touched his bare skin and desire ran through her like sheet lightning.
‘Luc!’ His name was a paper-thin whisper, torn raggedly from her aching throat as she pressed her lips to the line of his shoulder, intoxicated by the warm, salty male taste of him, the manly feel of him. Eagerly she ran her fingertips along his skin, enjoying the sensation of the taut muscles clenching whilst she kissed her way up his throat and along his jaw. She relished the sexily slightly rough stubble against the smoothness of her mouth. With her fingertips she traced the shape of his lips, pressing them wantonly against them as she held his gaze.
Sensuously and slowly she caressed his lips, shuddering when he finally opened them, seizing on her wrist so that she could not move her hand and then sucking slowly and deliberately on her fingers.
How could such a simple action have such a powerful effect? Carrie could almost feel her womb contracting in the most urgently sexual way as her body registered its reaction to him.
Luc had released her fingers and was guiding her hand down his body. Carrie shuddered again violently as she felt the hard fullness of his arousal, and her fingers opened hungrily over his taut flesh, to enclose it with a fierce thrill of remembered passionate pleasure.
As a teenager she had been awed and half shocked to discover that she could not close her hand fully around him, but now that knowledge sent a message of intense female delight to her body rather than one of nervous hesitation.
Her own wantonness shocked Carrie, but her responsiveness to him was beyond her control—a freak of nature too wild and untameable to be set within normal known
boundaries.
That part of her that she had always resisted acknowledging or knowing was glorying openly in what was happening, revelling in Luc’s nudity and her own access to him; it was even urging her to tear off her own clothes so that she could be as physically close to him as it was possible to be—skin to skin, body on body, flesh within flesh…Or, better still, an inner voice urged her, incite Luc to remove them for her…Her body contracted violently with fierce pleasure, her mouth opening eagerly for the thrust of Luc’s tongue, and she bent his head to take it into her possession, melding them together with a kiss that was a maelstrom of dangerously dark emotions.
The intimacy they were sharing was their battleground, Carrie recognised, and on it they were both intent on destroying their shared past and one another. But, even knowing that, she could not bear to stop. She was being driven by an urgency, a compulsion that could not be stopped.
She felt Luc tugging at her clothes, impatiently jerking down the zip of her top and then pushing it aside to explore her naked torso.
His hand shaped the breasts she so eagerly and fiercely offered to him, their softness filling his hands as he held and moulded their full curves, the small circular movement of his thumbs against their taut crests driving her mad with longing, making her press herself even more urgently against him.
She was trembling helplessly from head to foot in her longing to feel the deep, slow suckle of his mouth against the swollen longing of her nipples, to feel the shockingly erotic graze of his teeth, to feel…
Carrie heard herself moan when Luc removed his hand from her breast to slide one arm behind her to support her before bending her back over it.
The heat she could see in his eyes as he gazed down at her naked breasts was enough to set tinder alight, she acknowledged giddily as he lifted her towards his mouth and started slowly caressing one pleadingly erect peak.
If pleasure could ever be described in terms of colour, then hers was shot through with every shade of the rainbow and then some, Carrie admitted helplessly, her whole body alive with sensation and need as it gave itself up to Luc’s sensual domination.