by Penny Jordan
‘You want me to throw our guests out?’ He sounded incredulous.
‘Your guests,’ Lizzy corrected.
‘Watch it, cara,’ he warned quietly. ‘You don’t want to talk yourself into yet another tight corner with me—especially with so many witnesses.’
‘All I’m saying is that we might as well stay—’
He moved so smoothly she didn’t sense it coming. One second he was smoothing the jacket across her shoulders, the next his long fingers crushing the slender bones, and with a controlled strength he pulled her tight up against his chest and the rest of her argument was being thoroughly crushed by the kind of kiss that locked the breath in her throat.
She was only dimly aware of the murmuring ripple that spread around the hallway as the first tense quiver to hit her in days made its fierce stroke down Lizzy’s front. Pleasure flared out from its edges, sending her hands up to press hard against his chest in an attempt to push him away. But he was going nowhere and neither was the kiss, the heated force of it sending her body into a straining arch against him. The so carefully draped jacket slithered from her shoulders to land on the ground by her feet and his arms folded her even closer—someone murmured something mocking, someone else uttered a dry laugh.
Luc eased the pressure on her mouth by slow degrees and with tender stroking caresses. ‘The show must go on, cara,’ he murmured softly.
Too shaken up by the whole public reminder, Lizzy just swallowed tensely and nodded. Then the slow-rolling swell of applause took off around the gathering as Luc was stepping back.
Stooping down to recover her fallen jacket, he tossed it casually over his shoulder as he straightened again, then turned to offer their audience a wry mocking bow. Laughter joined in with the clapping. Lizzy kept her eyes lowered and hated the wild blush that burned her cheeks.
It wasn’t until he’d captured her hand and led her outside and she saw the helicopter standing on the lawn again that she remembered her father.
She turned quickly to Luc. ‘I can’t leave here without seeing my father.’
He tensed beside her. ‘He has already left here to catch his flight back to Gatwick,’ he informed her coolly.
For a whole minute Lizzy couldn’t breathe. The sense of rejection was so total she just stared blindly at Luc as the colour slowly drained from her face.
With a soft curse, he drew her across the lawn and bundled her into the helicopter. A few minutes later and they were rising up above the temporary wall of white canvas and swinging round to face the lake where a whole armada of different sailing crafts clustered a short way out from the jetty, with their army of little media people scrambling, no doubt to get a picture of them leaving.
Beside her Luc made a tense, restless movement with his body. ‘Ignore them,’ he rasped. ‘They will soon get tired of playing this game and move on to the next sensation.’
Oddly enough she didn’t care any more how many silly photographs they managed to snatch.
‘He left without saying goodbye to me,’ she whispered.
That was what mattered.
‘He has a business to rescue.’ He didn’t even try to pretend he did not know who she meant. ‘You must accept that Hadley’s has to take priority with him right now.’
Oh, yes. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘for that very thin excuse.’
After that they finished the journey to the accompanying sizzle of his frowning impatience and her numbed silence. Lizzy stared out of the window as they skimmed over the top of the glistening blue lake. An hour later they were crossing the tarmac at Linate Airport to a private jet wearing the De Santis logo on its shiny white fuselage.
The interior was a luxurious statement to corporate living. Luc saw her seated, said something to a hovering steward, then strode off to check with his pilot.
Two minutes later he was back, and the engines were running. He took the chair next to Lizzy and clipped home his seat belt, instructing her to do the same thing.
They took off into pure blue skies and she still hadn’t got a clue as to where they were going. In truth she just didn’t care. Today had been the worst day of her life and right now she felt like a traffic accident, one of the walking wounded that functioned by sheer instinct and nothing else.
‘I sent him away while you were changing,’ Luc rasped out suddenly, bringing her face around to stare at him.
He was lounging in the seat beside her, the absolute epitome of casual nonchalance, but Lizzy saw the tension around his mouth.
‘Why?’ she breathed.
His golden eyes flickered over her. ‘He upset you.’
He upset her? ‘He’s my father,’ she snapped out. ‘He’s allowed to upset me!’
‘I am your husband,’ he countered. ‘I am allowed to remove all upset from your life.’
Lizzy threw him a look of burning dislike. ‘You upset me. Does that mean you’re going to remove yourself from my presence?’
‘Not while we are flying at ten thousand feet.’ He grinned—then stopped grinning and sighed instead. ‘Stop spitting hatred at me, Elizabeth, and explain to me why your father believes he can treat you the way that he did today.’
So she told him about her mother in a cool, flat, dignified voice, unaware that he watched every fleeting expression that passed across her face because she refused to look at him as she talked.
‘So you see,’ she concluded, ‘he sees his worst fears for me materialising in our wedding today.’
The steward arrived then with coffee and sandwiches, bringing a halt to the conversation while he transferred everything from a tray to the low table in front of them. Luc waved the steward away when he went to pour out the coffee and leant forward to do it himself.
‘Do you look like your mother?’ he asked curiously.
Lizzy nodded. ‘I’m like this constant reminder to him of what she did.’
He handed her a cup of warm dark coffee. ‘And where is she now?’
‘She—died, two years ago.’ Her voice had turned so husky she took a sip at the coffee to cover it up—then frowned at the bitter sweet taste. ‘You’ve put sugar in this.’
‘You don’t take sugar?’
‘No,’ she said—then, curiously, ‘Do you?’
Sitting back in his seat, he took a sip from his own cup. ‘We don’t know very much about each other, do we?’
No, Lizzy thought bleakly, we don’t. ‘Well, do you take sugar in your coffee or don’t you?’ she demanded.
‘Strong, black and sweet,’ he answered, then turned his head to look at her, his golden eyes darker than usual and reflecting an expression she could not quite read.
But she felt it make its old strike at her solar plexus and frowned as to why it had. They couldn’t be discussing a safer subject unless they switched to the weather.
‘It seems to me, cara,’ he then said ruefully, ‘that your family is as dysfunctional as mine, which makes us more in tune than you would like to think.’
Opening her mouth to argue with him, she closed it again, because she realised he was probably right. ‘I still don’t like sugar in my coffee,’ she said firmly, and put her cup on the table.
He just laughed, and rang for the steward to bring another cup.
For some unknown reason her mood lightened. She even ate a couple of sandwiches and felt herself begin to relax.
‘Where are we going?’ she finally decided to ask him.
‘Well, that took its time,’ Luc mocked, getting up to stride down the cabin. ‘The Caribbean,’ he enlightened as he opened up what turned out to be a drinks cabinet and selected a bottle from the row. ‘I have a place there, hidden away on a paradise island with only pelicans for company—want one?’
He turned to show her what looked like brandy. Lizzy shook her head.
‘Scared you will get tipsy again?’
‘Scared I’ll fall asleep.’
‘Fortunately for you—’ he came back with two glasses and sat down again ‘—falling a
sleep on board this plane is not a problem because we have a bed to sleep in through that door you can see at the other end of the cabin.’
Expression as bland as he could make it, he waited for her nervous glance towards the door set into the bulkhead, then silently offered her a glass.
It was either take it or endure another round of sarcastic comments from him, Lizzy knew that.
‘With a nine-hour flight ahead of us, with or without the brandy, you are going to discover a need for that bed.’
‘With or without you?’ It was out before she could stop it.
His golden eyes lit up. ‘Was that an invitation?’
‘No, it was not!’ she denied.
‘Then take the brandy,’ he said. ‘You are safe with me—for now.’
It was the for now that made her feel edgy, but it was the lazy challenge in his tone that made her take the brandy from him and defiantly toss it to the back of her throat.
‘Not a good idea, cara,’ he said as he watched her fall into a fit of gasps as the brandy burnt like fire all the way down to her stomach.
He was right and it wasn’t. The brandy went straight to her head. She lasted a full long hard-fought-for hour before she succumbed to the need to lie down and close her dizzy eyes.
Luc offered to help her down the cabin. She refused with a stiff dignity that cost her plenty to make it all the way into the small bedroom without stumbling over her own feet.
A few minutes later, wearing only her bra and panties, she was curling up beneath a soft duvet covered in the smoothest linen, and dropping into a muzzy sleep with what felt like the world playing drumbeats on her head.
For hours she slept, she didn’t know how many, before she came drifting upwards into semi-darkness with the muted sound of the plane’s engines to remind her where she was.
Her head had cleared and she felt so much better than she’d felt when she’d come in here. She was hungry too, but the idea of getting up out of the comfortable bed and getting dressed to go out there and face Luc had her turning over in the bed with the intention of staying right where she—
Shock froze the air in her body when she saw him. He was lying on his front right beside her with his dark head resting on the pillow next to her pillow and his wide naked shoulders glowing bronze in the soft light coming from the lamp on his side of the bed.
From being completely relaxed to the point of a wonderful bonelessness, she was already in the process of tensing up when she realised he was asleep and she let the tension seep away again on an inner swirl of tingling relief.
The black satin crescents of his eyelashes were resting peacefully against his high cheekbones and his mouth was the most relaxed she had seen it, its sensual shape all the more beautiful in repose, and his hair was ruffled, revealing a hint of a glossy black wave she hadn’t ever noticed before.
Held by a curiosity she knew she should not be giving in to, Lizzy let her eyes roam over his arms, thrown up against the pillow, the width of his shoulders and long bronzed back exposed because the duvet had slipped down so low.
Her fingers scrambled at her own part of the duvet, inching it carefully over her shoulder because his nakedness reminded her about her own near nakedness.
Was he naked—as in completely naked? The intimacy of the situation struck like a feather being drawn across the surface of her skin. Her nostrils flared and she picked up the warm scent of him, clean yet so irresistibly male it sent the moist tip of her tongue sliding on a slow circuit of her warm lips for a reason she refused to examine.
And the skin covering the muscles she could see shaping his body wore a sheen that made her think of suntan oil, though she knew the effect was due to his own natural oils conditioning his skin while he slept.
Her husband, she thought, trying the title out to see how it felt, and still found the concept as alien to her as having the two of them lying here together in this bed.
‘Grey,’ a deep, dark, slumberously warm voice murmured.
Lizzy started, her eyes leaping up to his face. He was awake. She tensed, her fingers gripping the duvet. She would have dived right out of the bed if she weren’t aware that she was wearing the sheerest leaf green bra ever fashioned and matching panties that made a mockery of the name.
‘Sexy soft smoky grey—no, don’t move away,’ he said when she went to do just that, and with a lithe shift of his body he rolled onto his side and propped his head on the heel of his hand so he could look down into her wary face and the scented fire flow of her hair where it spread across the pillow.
‘Bellissima,’ he chanted softly. ‘La signora bella De Santis.’
‘No,’ she denied. ‘Will you stop calling me beautiful?’
‘Strange creature.’ He smiled, reaching over to stroke the stray curl from her brow. ‘You have the most exquisite face I have ever seen on any woman and the most fascinating determination to deny it. I would love to know why that is.’
‘I won’t respond to your kind of flattery—’ the curl flopped back again and Lizzy swiped at it frowningly ‘—just because you…’
Her voice trailed away, teeth pressing into her bottom lip when she realised what she had been about to say next.
Moving that bit closer to her so she felt the tingling sting of his chest hair prickle the skin on her arm, he prompted, ‘Because I—what?’
‘Because w-we’re married and—here,’ she finished—then shook out an unsteady gasp when one of his legs arrived across both of hers. ‘W-what do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded.
‘Getting comfortable with my wife.’
Her fingers let go of the duvet so she could use them to push him back again, but it came as a tingling shock to her racing senses to feel the solid heat of his muscled body and the crisp warmth of his chest hair prickle against her palms. The whole situation was a tingling shock, she decided, snared by the living warmth of his leg weighing heavy on hers and the expression in his eyes as he continued to look down at her, tender and soft and still sleepy enough to make those shadowing eyelashes diffuse the hunter-like gleam from the gold.
She could even feel the steady beat of his heart where he pressed against her arm. He leant down and kissed her, not passionately or anything, just light and gently, yet she still jerked her head back, feeling besieged by his heat and his strength and his close proximity.
‘Stop panicking,’ he chided softly. ‘I am not here to hurt you.’
‘But I don’t—’
‘And it is customary that you kiss the man you wake up with.’
He was expecting her to kiss him? No way, she thought, and gave him her response with a shake of her head.
‘You mean you expect me to do the kissing? Not very fair of you, cara, but—okay,’ he said, and his mouth found hers again, only this time he traced the outline of her lips with his tongue, then gently probed between until she gave in and parted them for him. She let him taste her with a sensual slowness, her breath trapped in her chest. By the time he pulled away again her heart was thumping heavily and her lips trembled in protest at the loss of his.
‘Not a bad way to start the new day,’ he murmured.
‘It—it’s still dark out there,’ Lizzy managed to whisper.
‘But past midnight,’ he said, drawing back a little to rest his head on the heel of his hand again. ‘You were asleep for hours. You missed our first dinner together as man and wife and left me alone to contemplate the folly in urging my temperate bride to knock back brandy like a fully-fledged alcoholic.’
Lizzy flushed. ‘Being unused to drinking brandy does not make me temperate.’
‘Intemperate, then?’
Meaning she’d behaved like a hot-headed fool? He was probably right, she accepted reluctantly.
‘Well, I’m hungry now,’ she said with what she congratulated herself as sounding near normal with her heart still thumping against her ribs. ‘S-so if you would just move your leg away I’ll get up and…’
Her voice fade
d into nothing at the slow shake of his head. ‘Relax,’ he encouraged. ‘I am not going to seal our wedding vows here in this very unromantic place, but I do want some more of what we have been sharing…a lot more,’ he husked as he lowered his head again, and this time there was nothing slow or gentle about it.
His mouth claimed her mouth with deep, sweet, sensual male hunger, and he pressed her back into the pillows with the weight of his body, driving the breath from her lungs. Heat poured into every skin cell, the taste and the scent of him and the ravishing passion making her lose her death grip on the duvet so her hands could clutch at him for dear life.
His husky assurance that he was not going to turn this into something she wasn’t ready for gave her the excuse she needed to just let go of restraint and she began kissing him back with an eager fervour, her body arching into the pressure of his. She barely noticed when he stripped the duvet away altogether; she just writhed with pleasure when she felt his hand stroke the length of her pale naked thigh.
Dragging his mouth from hers, he burned a dark golden look into her eyes. ‘You feel like silk,’ he breathed, the words deep and excitingly unsteady.
Then he made her groan when he reclaimed the kiss, his hand stroking upwards over the thin line of her panties to the flat of her stomach, the warmth of his skin against her oversensitised skin making her quiver and cling as he blazed a trail of burning possession over her taut, slender ribcage to the rounded thrust of her breasts.
Panic arrived in a self-conscious rush from her exposed thighs to her throat as he gently cupped his fingers around the firm, rounded fullness of her breast barely covered by the green flimsy mesh of her bra. She tried to push his hand away, but he caught hold of her wrist with his other hand, making the flurrying sound of her breath shiver from her body as he gently lifted her hand out of the way so he could sear a path of warm, moist kisses down the arching column of her throat and over the hectic pant of her other breast.
She cried out and went wild beneath him as the sensual lap of his tongue located her nipple, sending a clamouring shock of heat piercing sensation screaming through her head.
With a softly uttered tense expletive he came back to her mouth, his hand sliding beneath her to draw her up against him. The next thing she knew the clasp of her bra had sprung free and he was lying her back against the pillows again and the scrappy bit of mesh was being trailed away.