by Lynne Graham
For the sake of our children? Concentrate on our marriage? Those were the only two phrases which Star absorbed from that speech. All the rest of what he said might as well have been directed at a brick wall. A heady mix of anguished pain and humiliation engulfed her like a drowning tidal wave. So that was what he was after now! Total possession of Venus and Mars, with her as a useful adjunct on the home front. Violent hurt shuddered through Star. All of a sudden Luc didn’t want a divorce any more. But she herself had played no part in his change of heart! What she had wanted and prayed for through eighteen endless months he was ready to give after spending only half an hour with their children! That was an unbelievable cruelty.
‘Are you cold?’ Luc demanded anxiously. ‘Why are you shaking?’
‘You insensitive toad!’ Star hurled rawly, her head flying up, aquamarine eyes blazing with outraged pain as she jerked free of him and stalked towards the door. ‘How dare you ask that of me after all you’ve put me through? You know, you may be the cat’s whiskers of a brain at the bank, but I don’t think you know diddly-squat about anything else in life!’
Luc reached the door first and slammed it fast, while he attempted to identify what he had said wrong. He had worked out that speech while he was playing with the twins, satisfied that it covered every potential rock on which he might run aground. He could have told her he thought she was like a butterfly, lighting on whichever male was within closest reach at any given time. He could have told her that her great love for Rory would enjoy as much longevity as her love for himself evidently had. And that when it came to loyalty in love she was horrendously unstable, and that for as long as he was her husband, he wouldn’t be trusting her out of his sight. But he had carefully avoided voicing a single superior or deflating opinion, and he really couldn’t understand why she was all wild-eyed and going over the edge screaming at him.
‘Calm down,’ Luc instructed steadily.
‘Get away from that door or I’ll throw something at you!’
Star threatened.
‘If wilful destruction gives you a juvenile thrill, go ahead,’ Luc invited.
That provocative response sent such a flame of fury hurtling through Star she shuddered again. ‘You’re worse than a revolving door—’
‘A revolving…door?’ Stunning dark eyes rested on her with galling cool. ‘Come on, don’t leave me in suspense, mon ange. In what way do I remind you of a revolving door?’
‘One minute you’re there, the next you’re not and then you’re back again…you keep changing your mind and my head’s spinning!’ Star cried in shaking condemnation. ‘I don’t think you know what you want, but the minute I start wanting you back, you push me away again—’
‘Control yourself,’ Luc commanded.
‘Control myself?’ Star echoed, a whole octave higher. ‘Gosh, that’s a good one! Control yourself, but don’t do it in bed. Do you think I want to end up a buttoned-down control freak like you are? I don’t think you even know what goes on inside your own stupid head. I think around me you’re totally controlled by your over-active male hormones! And you don’t like that, do you? That gives me a certain power, doesn’t it? And that annoys the hell out of you, Luc Sarrazin!’
She saw the sheer rage in his eyes and it went to her head like pure alcohol, because at last she had hit home and, if not hurt, had outraged him, which was probably as close as she could get to getting a rise out of Luc. In an abrupt movement, he stepped away from the door.
Assuming he was backing off, shocked rigid by the kind of verbal attack he had never dreamt of receiving from her corner, and feeling incredibly triumphant, Star sashayed out through the door. She paused then, and sent him a shimmering glance of naked incitement over one slight shoulder. ‘And it didn’t take me to be tall, blonde and sophisticated either, did it? That gets you most of all, doesn’t it?’
‘If you want to hear what I really think, keep on talking,’ Luc ground out.
Star moved out into the hall and turned back again. ‘I bet you could have swallowed me as a wife if I’d—’
‘Shut up?’ Luc slotted in rawly.
‘No, if I’d been legitimate, rich and real snobby, you’d have thought I was really special!’
‘Would your mother still have been part of the deal?’
‘You pig…how dare you insult my mother?’ she launched at him in a tempest of renewed fury.
Luc strode forward and just swept her up off her feet into his arms. ‘Now where did you find an insult in such a simple question?’ he probed, angling a razor-edged smile of grim amusement down at her confused face as he strode for the stairs.
‘Put me down, Luc—’
‘So that I can chase you all round one of the largest chateaux in the Loire? You must really think I am stupid, mon ange.’
‘I think you’re very stupid thinking that a caveman display of brute male strength is likely to silence and subdue me back into doormat mould!’
Luc said nothing, but his jawline took on an even more aggressive slant as he carted her up the stairs and across the landing.
‘I hope you put your back out doing this!’ Star goaded, wanting him to react again.
‘In spite of a temper that would grace a fishwife, you don’t weigh any more than a doll.’ Shouldering open the door of his bedroom, Luc kicked it shut again behind them, crossed the room and tumbled her down on the bed in a heap. ‘But if you get me mad enough, I’m not so buttoned down that I can’t match you!’
Righting herself into a sitting position, Star slung back her head and directed a scornful glance at the tall dark male standing over her. ‘What did you bring me up here for? An argument where the staff are less likely to hear us?’
Backing off several steps, Luc wrenched off his tie and pitched his jacket down on the floor.
That very unexpected development grabbed Star’s entire attention. ‘If you think for one moment that I have any intention of letting you—’
‘Letting me?’ Luc queried with an insolent appraisal that was so blisteringly confident it made her teeth grit. ‘You’d let me have you in a thunderstorm, with lightning hitting the ground round us and a full orchestra playing beside us.’
‘Why, you—’
‘And you wouldn’t notice the storm or the music because you would be that lost in what I can make you feel,’ Luc derided, ripping off his shirt with such impatience that several buttons went skimming in all directions. ‘And you call my hormones over-active? Even before I married you, you were eating me alive with the strength of your desire for me.’
‘I never once approached you that way!’ Star raged back at him, her cheeks red as fire.
‘Approach me? What would you need to approach me for when your eyes did your craving for you? Then I thought you didn’t realise what you were doing; now I suspect you knew all along.’
‘I was a virgin!’ Star proclaimed with embarrassed but infuriated reproach.
‘There was nothing remotely virginal about the way you looked at me.’
‘How many virgins have you tripped over?’
‘One was quite enough,’ Luc assured her wrathfully.
‘It gave you a kick being lusted after, though, didn’t it?’ Star hissed like a spitting cat. ‘I mean, you certainly did not avoid me—as you should have done if you didn’t want to encourage me.’
‘Mais c’est insensé…that’s crazy! I assumed that the more you saw of me, the more you would appreciate that I was far too old for you and far too boring to be an object of such excessive adoration!’ Luc slashed back at her.
‘It was not excessive. I loved you! And you were only boring when you started rabbiting on about that stupid bank.’
A line of dark feverish colour rose over his taut cheekbones at that less than tactful confirmation.
He could actually look hurt, Star registered in absolute total shock as she saw the shaken flash in his beautiful dark eyes. ‘I mean, I didn’t understand what you were talking about, so it was
bound to be less than totally absorbing…and my mind used to drift away all the time, until I was just listening to the s-sound of your voice.’
The wobble in her own voice developed as he peeled off his trousers.
‘Only a fool marries an airhead, so I got what I deserved,’ Luc enunciated.
‘I’m not an airhead…’ But her mind was certainly drifting, Star acknowledged in deep shame. Not six feet from her stood the almost naked embodiment of every female fantasy come true, and her only fantasy—even with his clothes on. So with them off, barring an exceedingly cool pair of black silk boxer shorts, well, reasoning became a challenge. The twisting curl of heat low in her tummy made her go rigid with rejection.
‘An airhead who thinks of nothing but sex,’ Luc purred with awesome contempt. ‘Who, after a separation of over eighteen months, went to bed with me again within an hour of my appearance back in her life.’
‘Oh…oh!’ Star gasped, the very oxygen squeezed from her lungs at that inexcusable taunt.
‘OK, so I asked…but if you had any morals at all you would have said no to that proposition,’ Luc condemned as he came down on the side of the bed. ‘I was ashamed for you when I woke up the next morning.’
‘The next morning?’ Star forced a brittle laugh, so mad, so hurt she could happily have strangled the love of her life to death. ‘Doesn’t history repeat itself? Just like the only other night you ever spent with me. You’re so mad you succumbed to me you punish me for it!’
‘That is not true…’ Luc emphasised that statement by pulling her round to face him. His dark eyes were forthright as flames on her surprised face. ‘I got up the morning after our first night together and I looked down at you and you opened your eyes—’
‘Gosh, how daring of me! Was I supposed to be hiding under the sheet in shame after spending the night with my own husband?’
Luc released his breath in a sharp hiss. ‘I saw a teenager so besotted with me she couldn’t see or think straight. I was angry, and ashamed that I had had so little control that I had taken advantage of you—’
‘Don’t tell me you felt like that!’ Star wailed, aghast. ‘It was wonderful…it’s still a wonderful memory…and you didn’t take advantage of me in any way!’
Luc studied her with unconcealed frustration. ‘You don’t see, do you? That morning, I really badly needed to look at you and see a grown woman, but all I could remember was the vulnerable little girl I first met in Mexico…’ He hesitated, and frowned. ‘It didn’t strike me then that in some ways you’ll probably never grow up, at least not in the way less passionate personalities do.’
‘Oh, thanks a bundle.’ Star exclaimed. ‘Well, if you thought helping me to grow up was telling me to go off and experiment with boys my own age, I don’t think much of your advice.’
‘I said that in anger. Only you could have taken it so literally!’ Luc gritted.
‘How literally did you want me to take it?’ Star asked with a teasing sidewise glance.
‘You just never know when to quit, do you?’ Without warning, Luc tugged her fully into his arms and stood up. He held her fast and tumbled her back down onto the comfortable bed with him.
The heat of his big powerful body penetrated the fine silk of her dress. She quivered against him. She knew she wasn’t going to say no. She knew he knew she wasn’t going to say no either. Male amusement glimmered deep in his dark eyes and it made her want to slap him, but it didn’t make her want to push him away.
‘D’accord…OK, I gather I can assume that we’re staying married.’ Level dark eyes zeroed in on hers in enquiry.
Star tensed, lashes screening her gaze as she focused on a smooth brown shoulder instead. Stay married only for the sake of their children? Outside the bedroom he seemed to have as much grasp of her needs as the average block of solid wood. Or solid steel, she acknowledged, her weary mind running back over the enervating passage of events that had taken place during the past thirty-six hours. Her batteries required recharging. Yet Luc seemed able to take constant stress in his stride.
So damn him for making that statement which was really a direct question right now! Right now when there wasn’t an atom of her treacherous body lacking contact with the awesome promise of his. Right now when she was suffering from this shockingly lowering need to cling and stop thinking and fighting. If she said no, that wasn’t a sufficient reason to stay married, was he likely to chuck her out of bed?
Star rested her forehead down against Luc’s shoulder. ‘Talk about that later,’ she mumbled.
‘Why has your nightdress got a hood?’ Luc enquired.
‘It’s a dress, Luc.’
Smoothly rearranging her so that she sat astride him, Luc eased it over her head and tossed it aside. ‘Better off, than on, mon ange,’ he mocked, but his intent gaze shimmered over the bare curves of her pouting breasts with smouldering appreciation.
Her face reddened as her nipples pinched into straining tautness. Luc tensed and suddenly hauled her down to him. ‘I’m so glad you’re all argued out,’ he groaned, closing his mouth hungrily to a thrusting pink peak.
As he did so, a wave of such intense excitement clenched Star that she stopped breathing. She shut her eyes, moaning as he caught the other bud between thumb and forefinger and gently tugged on her achingly responsive flesh. Her whole body was electrified with need as he rolled her over onto her back, skimming off her briefs with sure hands.
He scrutinised her with satisfied eyes. She opened her own, collided with that appraisal and snatched in a sob, just desperate for him to touch her again, and suddenly the amount of power he had over her weak physical self mortified her. ‘Don’t look at me like that—’
‘I always get a high out of your response to me. Can’t help it,’ Luc muttered hoarsely, still scanning her slender naked curves with devouring attention. ‘On your last stay here, I spent the entire time wondering, burning, fantasising…’
‘About me?’ Her sultry smile was as natural to her as breathing.
‘And trying to work out what it was about you that got to me.’ Luc ran a caressing hand down over her sensitive breasts, smiling slumbrously as her back arched.
‘Oh…?’ Her voice emerged strangled.
‘You’re very small, but you’re in perfect proportion. Your eyes are a wonderful colour, and your mouth…when I look at your gorgeous mouth, I just get…’ Luc framed the words thickly, sinking lower with every driven word as if the more he said, the more unbearable it became to resist that part of her.
She got the message when he kissed her with all the hunger she craved, but for a split second her brain got its act together and a solitary thought emerged. Luc was talking to her, Luc was finally talking to her, but it mightn’t be a good idea to mention it because he probably didn’t realise what he was doing. And then the primal thrust of his tongue inside her tender mouth just drove her wild. Her mind emptied as she held him to her, fingers laced in his hair, heart pounding in concert with his, the thrumming pulse-beat of desire running like a tightening hot wire through her slender length.
‘You excite me beyond belief,’ Luc muttered raggedly, pulling back from her to remove his boxer shorts.
Star blinked. My goodness, he was still talking. She gazed at him with slightly worried eyes and decided that it had to be stress that was making him talk so much. He came back to her, all rippling muscles and magnificence, and all-pervasive weakness radiated through her lower limbs. She reached up without even the guidance of thought and ran her palms down over the curling dark hair that hazed his pectorals, loving the heat and the roughness of him, the glorious differences that made him so male and made her feel so incredibly feminine.
He shuddered and crushed her eagerly parted lips under his, sensually exploring and tasting her until tiny little quaking tremors were rippling through her.
‘You’re so quiet,’ Luc breathed, sounding almost disappointed, which she could not credit.
If he wanted intellectual stimu
lation, he was going the wrong way about it. ‘I…I can’t think when you’re this close to me, Luc…I can only feel.’
And what Star was feeling was shivering, desperate impatience, her skin hot and tight, the terrible ache he could arouse with such ease sending taunting little throbs of frustration along every single nerve-ending.
‘A man should take time making love to his wife.’ Luc sent her a winging smile of pure devilment.
The combination of that smile flashing across his lean, dark, devastating face and that teasing reference to her as his wife shook her. He pulled her to him like a guy who had all the time in the world and who planned to enjoy making her wait. Her fingers bit fiercely into his shoulder, and he laughed in a way she had never heard him laugh with her before, and then he sealed her mouth again with his and the hunger took her in an explosive surge again.
He touched her in every place but the one place craving his touch. She discovered she had erogenous zones all over her. He let his sensual mouth nip at the extended line of her throat and she was convinced she would burst into flame. He licked her fingers and her very bones seemed to liquefy. He smoothed his palms with aching slowness along the outside of her slender thighs and she burned in absolute torment. And when he started shaping her squirming hips, she clawed him down to her in a tempestuous movement.
‘If you don’t…’ she moaned.
And then he did, and nothing from that point on could have wrenched her from the grip of such torturous excitement. Not thunder, not lightning, not even a full orchestra. Sounds escaped her that she didn’t recognise as her own, and she twisted and she writhed until at last he came over her.
And Luc was trembling too then, dampness sheening his golden skin, the hands that spread her beneath him taut and impatient, dark eyes burnished with raw desire. He entered her in a hungry surging thrust. She cried out loud, out of control, loving it, loving him with such fevered intensity that the pleasure seemed more than she could bear. And as he drove her deeper into that pleasure with long, hard strokes, she felt the great gathering ultimate surge taking her in its hold and just let go, gasping, shuddering, sobbing out his name at the height of ecstasy.