by Penny Jordan
‘No more, Darci!’ he protested, as he moved back slightly, gently dislodging her hand and then removing it completely. ‘Not like this,’ he explained tenderly at her look of disappointment. ‘I want to be inside you,’ he urged. ‘I want—Just let me love you for now,’ he insisted, and once again he moved between her legs to press his manhood against her before his mouth moved to claim her breast.
His hand increased the pressure on her other nipple now, squeezing, sending quivers of sensation downwards, burning her, wetting her as she moved rhythmically against him, her head going back, her neck arching, as the fire engulfed and claimed her, sending spasm after spasm of relentless pleasure through and over her as she exploded against his thrusting flesh.
Luc’s hand moved down between them as he continued to lave her breast, and his fingers unerringly found the hardened nub of her arousal through the damp satin of her underwear, rubbing, pressing, increasing in intensity as he gave her the orgasm he had so cruelly denied her on Tuesday afternoon. The pleasure seemed never-ending, and Darci felt as if she were shattering into a million pieces.
Her head dropped forward onto Luc’s shoulder, her fingers clinging tightly to him as those waves of release finally began to subside, her breath coming in short, breathy gasps as she fought to regain control of her senses. For a while they just held one another, then Luc pulled away to rearrange their clothing before taking her back in his arms.
‘Luc, chéri, I do not think that this is quite the right time or place for—amour,’ murmured a huskily amused voice that Darci instantly recognised as belonging to Chantelle Gambrelli.
Darci buried her face even deeper against Luc’s shoulder to shield her embarrassment, mortified colour burning her cheeks as she realised the two of them had actually been making love on the terrace of one of the public rooms of the Gambrelli Hotel!
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘DARCI, we can’t leave yet!’ Luc implored her, as he caught up with her in the reception area of the hotel to grasp her arm and turn her to face him.
Her eyes blazed deeply green. ‘You can’t,’ she accepted. ‘But I certainly can!’
Luc returned her gaze frustratedly. ‘My mother didn’t see anything—’
‘She didn’t need to see anything,’ Darci came back emotionally. ‘It had to be pretty obvious even to the most casual observer—which your mother most certainly isn’t!—exactly what we were doing.’
When Chantelle Gambrelli had interrupted the two of them, Darci’s reaction had been to turn and run through and from the room where the party was being held. She had been made all the more desperate because, having come back to reality with the suddenness of being dunked in a cold shower, she had been completely unnerved by the realisation of the intensity of her own hunger.
Her life had been so structured up to this point—with her goals and ambitions not quite set in stone, but close enough. She had wanted to be a doctor, the very best doctor she could be, and personal relationships of any kind had necessarily been put on hold until she had achieved that goal.
The fact that none of that had seemed important while Luc was kissing and caressing her, that she had forgotten everything but him and the feel of his mouth and hands on her body, everything but touching him as intimately, shook her to the core.
She loved Luc. She had already known that before she’d agreed to come away with him this weekend, but until a few minutes ago she hadn’t realised the depth of that love, how it nullified, made less of everything that made up the fabric of her life.
The love she had for Luc was mind-consuming, as well as emotion-consuming; he possessed and captured her to the exclusion of all and everything else.
But Luc had no intention of returning that depth of emotion. He had made it clear that he totally denied love in his life.
Oh, Darci had no doubt that after this evening Luc might consider offering her an affair. But just the thought of becoming one of those needy, clinging women who only lived for the intermittent visits of her lover made Darci feel cold inside.
Loving Luc as she did, she didn’t think she could ever settle for so little of him….
Luc looked down at Darci as the emotions flickered across her expressive face far too quickly for him to read, let alone analyse. ‘Darci, talk to me!’ he urged as he held her gently in front of him.
She shook her head, her gaze no longer meeting his. ‘Just now was a mistake. An embarrassing mistake,’ she recalled with a quiver. ‘And I really can’t face your mother again after—after that.’ She sighed wearily. ‘Could you please make my excuses to the rest of your family?’
It was only ten-thirty—far too early, in all politeness, for Luc to absent himself from his own mother’s birthday party. And, after the intimacy of the scene his mother had witnessed a few minutes ago, only one construction could be put on both Darci and himself disappearing now!
He didn’t want his family to think those things of Darci, of all women….
She already looked what she was: a woman who had just reached the peak of sexual arousal. Her eyes were still slightly misty from her release, her mouth kiss-swollen, her dress slightly crumpled from where he had pushed it out of the way with impatient hands, so that he might touch and caress her naked breasts.
None of which would have been missed minutes ago by his over-interested family as Darci had made her hasty exit, closely followed by a darkly scowling Luc!
He released her to nod abruptly, knowing the reception area of the hotel wasn’t the place for this discussion. ‘I will tell my family that you have a headache and have retired to bed.’
Darci looked up at him with shadowed eyes. ‘Do you think that what your mother witnessed just now will convince her to back off with her matchmaking?’
He shrugged broad shoulders, his face an expressionless mask. ‘Let’s just say that your presence tonight has—served its purpose.’
She gave a tight smile. ‘Thank goodness we’re due to leave early tomorrow morning! I don’t think I could face any of your family again after tonight,’ she added, at Luc’s questioning look.
‘Don’t worry about that just now, Darci.’
‘Don’t worry about it?’ she echoed with a pained wince. ‘I’m never going to be able to forget it!’
‘I will explain everything to my family,’ Luc reassured her.
Explain what? Darci wondered. That she was just another woman, like all the other women he had ever been involved with? That she meant no more to him than any of them had?
What did it matter what explanation Luc gave his family about her? After tonight, Darci knew she wouldn’t see them—or Luc—ever again!
‘Go up to bed, Darci,’ Luc encouraged gently. ‘I will join you shortly.’
She frowned at how intimate that sounded. ‘I’ll leave some blankets and pillows in the sitting-room for you,’ she told him wearily.
Luc gave a teasing smile. ‘You still want me to sleep on the couch…?’
‘I do,’ she assured him firmly; she needed to be alone right now, completely alone, in order to sort out the jumbled messages in her brain.
Her body was telling her that she still wanted Luc, that it would be oh-so-easy to have this one night with him. But her head was telling her that once would never be enough, and that even if Luc were to offer her a little more than that—an affair until his interest in her waned—she would only be opening herself up to indescribable pain if she gave in to that temptation.
Luc’s smile faded at her adamant tone. He knew that he wasn’t mistaken in his belief that only minutes ago Darci had wanted him as fully as he had wanted her.
That fierce need, that complete lack of control, was something that had never happened to Luc before….
He drew in a ragged breath. ‘Darci, I think that you and I need to talk—’
‘I can’t imagine what about,’ she dismissed briskly. ‘Besides, I really do have a headache now,’ she informed him flatly.
‘I thought it was only
married ladies who developed headaches at bedtime?’ he replied.
‘That’s a generalisation I very much doubt is true of Robin or Angel,’ she came back tartly.
No, Luc was sure that it wasn’t. He had absolutely no doubts as to the compatibility of his brother and cousin with their wives. ‘Darci—’
‘You really should get back to the party now, Luc,’ Darci told him firmly.
Yes, he knew he should. But he also knew that he and Darci needed to talk. Had to talk. Tonight.
Darci had withdrawn from him in the last few minutes, had developed a wariness towards him that Luc simply couldn’t allow to continue.
Not now….
His mouth tightened determinedly. ‘I will join you in a few minutes,’ he stated evenly.
She nodded abruptly. ‘Try not to disturb me if I’m asleep, hmm?’
Luc’s eyes narrowed as he acknowledged that Darci had the ability to disturb him even when he was asleep!
He had thought of little and certainly no one else since he’d met her ten days ago, he realised now. He was able to feel the creamy warmth of her skin beneath his fingers, taste her silken flesh, even when they were apart.
‘You’re a junior doctor, Darci—you must be used to going without sleep,’ he came back purposefully.
Darci eyed him warily, not completely sure how she was going to deal with this situation. Luc certainly wasn’t going to believe, after her total loss of control on the terrace, that she didn’t want him!
She shook her head. ‘It’s because I’m a junior doctor that I need to get all the sleep I can when I have the opportunity.’
That warm brown gaze roamed slowly over her flushed face, lingering on her kiss-swollen lips before once again moving up to capture her startled green eyes with his. ‘Tonight isn’t going to be one of those opportunities,’ he assured her.
‘The two of us going to bed together wasn’t part of our bargain, Luc,’ Darci told him.
He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘Our original bargain, as you call it, is at an end.’
‘Just like that?’ Darci challenged indignantly. ‘Because you’ve decided that it is?’
Luc’s mouth quirked wryly as he easily guessed her intent. ‘Darci, I believe you are deliberately trying to provoke yet another argument between the two of us.’
‘I’m not trying to do anything—we are having an argument!’ she assured him heatedly. ‘You seem to be under the delusion that a few kisses on a hotel terrace while I was seduced by the romance of Paris by moonlight entitles you to share my bed tonight—’
‘It wasn’t Paris by moonlight that seduced you, Darci.’ Luc’s voice had hardened impatiently. ‘Any more than it was the moonlight that seduced me,’ he continued more gently. ‘Darci, no matter what I may have said to you previously, you must now realise that I have no intention of saying goodbye to you at the end of this weekend.’
‘You won’t have any choice in the matter,’ she cut in decisively. ‘I already have a very full life, Luc, and I certainly don’t have any room in it for a rich Sicilian playboy who might have decided he wants to hop in and out of my bed whenever he happens to be in London!’ She glared at him stubbornly.
Luc’s eyes narrowed to icy slits even as he acknowledged that Darci’s accusation might be true—was true!—of all his previous relationships.
‘It is exactly because you have these sort of prejudices where I’m concerned that the two of us need to talk,’ he placated huskily.
‘Before or after we’ve gone to bed together?’ Darci retorted.
‘That, my dear Darci, is entirely up to you,’ he drawled.
Really, the arrogance of the man—to believe that her capitulation earlier entitled him to think he could now instigate an affair with her!
A relationship which, loving him as deeply as she did, Darci knew could never be the light-hearted affair for her that it would be to Luc….
‘I’m sorry, Luc, but I don’t do affairs,’ she told him, before turning sharply on her heel and walking away from him towards the lift.
Totally aware of Luc’s dark gaze on her back every step of the way!
He was still standing where Darci had left him when she turned, once inside the lift, and pressed the button to ascend. His expression was unreadable, his gaze enigmatic, and Darci only breathed again when the lift doors closed on him.
What was she going to do? she wondered desperately as the lift went up.
She loved Luc. Of that she had absolutely no doubt.
Just as there was no doubting, from what he had said just now, that Luc desired her enough to initiate an affair.
An affair that Darci had once believed she would accept, if it was ever offered, but now knew that she couldn’t.
Just as she also knew that she wouldn’t be able to resist Luc if he should make love to her again….
Something she was pretty sure was going to happen when he rejoined her in the suite.
Again she asked herself what she was going to do.
She could just take tonight and then tell him tomorrow that there would be no affair.
Except that one night with Luc would never be enough.
Even a week, a month, two months wouldn’t be enough!
Tonight she had realised that the love she felt for Luc was so overpowering, so deeply a part of her, that only a lifetime with him would assuage the need she had for him.
And, just as she didn’t ‘do’ affairs, Luc had made it obvious he didn’t ‘do’ lifetime commitment….
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
DARCI didn’t prepare for bed once she got back to the suite. Instead she changed into the denims she had worn to travel over in earlier today, and a fitted black T-shirt, before moving to sit curled up in the window seat in the sitting-room, wrapping her arms about her bent knees as she stared sightlessly out of the window and prepared to sit and wait for Luc to return from the party.
She had realised Luc was right as she’d flung the seductive black dress back into her suitcase—with an inward vow never to wear it again!—they did need to talk. And the sooner Luc accepted that she wouldn’t enter into an affair with him the better it would be for both of them.
Although, again, she knew Luc was going to be very hard to resist if he should attempt to seduce her into capitulating….
Darci had never realised, never guessed, that loving someone, loving Luc, could be so totally, so emotionally consuming, that she didn’t seem to be able to think of anything else but him.
It almost made her understand why Mellie had resorted to subterfuge in order to try and attract Grant’s attention!
Almost….
Because, no matter how much she might love him, Darci knew she would never be tempted to such deception in order to have Luc permanently in her life.
She stiffened tensely as she heard the key-card in the lock seconds before the door handle turned, her heart beating faster, the palms of her hands suddenly damp as she knew that, even though it was still only eleven o’clock, Luc was back.
He certainly hadn’t lingered downstairs for any longer than he absolutely had to, had he?
Luc saw Darci’s silhouette on the window seat as soon as his gaze had adjusted to the gloom of the unlit sitting-room. Her hair gleamed like fire against the bright moonlight behind her, and he was convinced by her wary stillness that the lack of light in the room was a deliberate move on her part.
That was okay with him; a blaze of bright lights wasn’t exactly conducive to what he had to say anyway.
And he should have known that Darci, once she had thought the situation over, no matter what she might have said to the contrary earlier, wouldn’t just go to bed and cower beneath the bedclothes, hoping Luc wouldn’t disturb her. After all, she was the type of woman who believed in facing a challenge head-on.
Except he was no longer the challenge—she was!
‘Darci,’ he greeted her quietly as he came across the room to join her. He was slightly disappointed that she
had changed out of the scandalous black dress—he could imagine nothing more erotic than slowly peeling it from her delectable body!—but at the same time knew it would probably have been too much of a distraction. He had every intention of the two of them talking before—well, before anything else.
She steadily returned his gaze. ‘Luc,’ she returned economically.
No help there, he acknowledged ruefully. But no doubt she was still unsettled—upset—about what had happened on the terrace earlier.
Upset wasn’t quite the word Luc would have used concerning his own feelings about making love to Darci earlier. Enlightened probably best described how he now felt….
Why didn’t Luc just get this conversation over with? Darci fretted inwardly, as he remained silent while he continued to look down at her with those enigmatic dark eyes. Why didn’t Luc just make the offer of an affair she was sure he was going to make, hear her refusal, and then let her escape to the privacy of the bedroom?
Where she could bury her head under the bedcovers so that he shouldn’t hear her crying her heart out!
Especially as, now that she was with Luc again, a part of her—a large part of her—wished, longed to accept the offer!
It was going to be the hardest thing she had ever done in her life, loving Luc as she did, to turn and walk away from him.
But perhaps this was her punishment for all the times she had held herself aloof, apart, from any idea of emotional involvement? For all the times she had walked away without a second glance when a man she had agreed to go out with once or twice showed more than a passing interest in her? In some cases it had been a most decided interest, but she had remained immune, leaving a string of broken hearts behind her, as Kerry had once put it.
But Darci hadn’t deliberately set out to hurt any of those men. She had simply had her sights set on her career to the exclusion of all else….
Whatever her intention, it was obvious that the fates decreed that when she finally did fall in love, it would be with someone who was as elusive, as unobtainable, as she had been herself the last ten years!