Эбби Грин – Summer Sins: Bedded, or Wedded? / Willingly Bedded, Forcibly Wedded / The Mediterranean Billionaire's Blackmail Bargain (страница 21)

But what had just happened had gone beyond that.

Why? How?

He asked the questions, but his rational mind could find no answer. No reason. He was in unknown territory, that was all he knew. A place he had not been before. He tried to put it into words. As his mind searched, as he stared up into the darkness, he could feel the soft warmth of her body curled against him.

The reality of her presence in his arms, his bed, swept over him. What did anything matter compared with that? It was all that was important—all he would allow himself.

He shifted his limbs to ease them a moment. As he did, the weight of her soft, warm body shifted, too, bearing down on him more. He heard her murmur in her sleep, her dream. She lay so peacefully in his arms. So naturally.

She felt good to hold. Good to lie with.

Good to fall asleep beside.

He felt his focus dissolve, the drowsiness of post-coital satiation wash up over him. His eyes started to feel heavy and close, his breathing slowed. Instinctively for one second his arms tightened around her, checking she was still there. He let his body relax, his mind, too.

He slept in her embrace, embracing her.

It felt very good.

CHAPTER NINE

SUNLIGHT, AND THE smell of fresh, fragrant coffee stirred the senses of Lissa’s sleeping mind, luring her to wakefulness. As she surfaced from slumber she wondered why she felt so wonderful—and then she remembered. Her eyes flew open.

She was alone in the bed, but Xavier was sitting on the edge, clad only in a short white bathrobe that accentuated the fabulous golden tan of his skin and exposed—she gave a silent gulp—the smooth muscled surface of his chest and forearms. Her eyes flew to his and clung.

He leaned forward and kissed her softly on the mouth.

‘Bonjour, cherie.’ He smiled.

She felt her heart melt into a puddle inside her. Her eyes lit.

‘Xavier.’

A huge, joyous smile broke across her face.

It had been true, not a dream. A wonderful, blissful truth that made her breathless with delight. Xavier had swept down on her and scooped her up and borne her away to Paris, the most romantic of cities, to make her his. Her smile deepened and her eyes drank in the beautiful planed face of the man looking down at her, amusement and bemusement glittering in his eyes in equal measures.

Long, silky lashes swept down over his eyes.

‘Would you like coffee?’ he asked.

The aromatic, heady fragrance tickled at her nose again. ‘Oh— Please,’ she answered.

She started to sit up and then remembered, with a little thrill, that she wasn’t wearing a stitch. Sudden confusion and embarrassment swept over her, and she clutched the rumpled duvet to her breasts as she sat herself up. Xavier leaned around her and propped up the pillow. The silk of his hair brushed against her jaw as he did so, and her heart melted again. As he straightened and she leaned back against the head of the bed, she pushed back her own tumbled hair with fingers that trembled suddenly.

‘Black or white?’

His hand hovered over a jug of hot milk that stood on the coffee tray on the bedside table.

‘Oh— White, please—thank you.’

Her voice sounded breathless, even to her, and suddenly she was too shy to look him in the eye. She took the grande tasse and raised it to her lips for a tiny sip of hot, pale coffee, glad he had busied himself pouring his own cup and then settling back, one leg crooked under him on the wide bed, to drink it. As he did so she stole a look at him, feeling that thrill go through her again.

Her face opened into a huge, joyous smile of delight and wonder.

‘Did it really happen?’

The words came from her before she could stop them. Dark eyes lifted and looked into hers.

‘I thought it might all have been a dream,’ she said haltingly, her eyes meeting his, only to drown in their depths. ‘It was just so wonderful!’

A smile played at the corner of his sculpted mouth, and again there was that mixed look of amusement and bemusement in his dark eyes.

‘It was my pleasure,’ he murmured. his French accent making her insides quiver.

‘Mine, too,’ she blurted. ‘Heaps and heaps—’ She cut off dead, and, biting her lip, made a face. ‘I’m sorry, I’m being— What’s the French term? Jejeune? Is that it? Or—’ she made another face ‘—maybe just naïf. Anyway.’ She swallowed, ‘Um, er— Well.’ Hastily she drank some more coffee, dropping her head so that her tumbled hair covered her embarrassment at behaving like an idiot.

Fingers gently touched the side of her head.

‘Look at me,’ Xavier said.

She made herself do so. He leaned forward and kissed her on her forehead. And suddenly it was all right, just fine, and not embarrassing at all, and she gave a wide smile again. Happiness filled her like a warm balloon, and she felt that familiar feeling of starting to float up from the ground.

She met his eyes, and now it was all right—more than all right. It was fine and lovely and—right. That was the word for it. Not that she wanted to think about words just at the moment—or about anything, really. She just wanted to go on feeling as if she was lighter than air, and happy and floating. Sunlight filled the room—bright sunlight from drawn-back curtains—sending golden dust motes shimmering through the air.

‘Everything is good, cherie,’ he told her softly, ‘because you are here with me.’ He lowered his mouth to brush hers lightly, lingeringly. Then he drew back, nodding towards the coffee she still held.

‘Drink up,’ said Xavier, that half smile at his mouth again. It made his mouth even more beautiful, thought Lissa dreamily.

Obediently, she took another mouthful of coffee, the fragrance and taste of it carrying with it all that was France—pavement cafés and sunlit balconies. She watched Xavier drink from his own cup, and everything about the gesture registered as if in ultra-focus—the way his hand was splayed under the saucer, holding the weight of the cup, the elegant turn of his wrist as he lifted the cup, the fall of his hair as he lowered his head slightly to drink. Dreamily, she took another draught.

Then, ‘Ça suffit.’ It was decisively spoken, and then Xavier was setting down his cup, and removing hers from her grasp. For a moment, just a moment, Lissa’s eyes widened in alarm and anxiety. Was he going to send her packing now? Politely, of course, and charmingly, but packing all the same. Put her on a plane back to London, and get on with his own life.

But as he straightened and turned back to her she realised, with a dissolving stomach, that sending her packing was the last thing on his mind. That decisiveness had not been about getting on with his busy day, but about—

His kiss was long and slow and warm, and dissolved not only her stomach but every cell in her body. She gave herself to it, to the soft, sensuous delight of it. Her hands slid of their own volition across the smooth wall of his half-bared chest, her body sliding down into the bed. His mouth caressed hers, and she gave herself, wholly and entirely, to the soft, sensuous delight that was Xavier Lauran making the most beautiful love in the world to her.

They stayed one day in Paris.

‘I must clear my desk, hélas,’ he told her ruefully. ‘But tomorrow morning we can leave.’

‘Where are we going?’ she asked, wide-eyed.

‘You’ll see,’ he answered, a half smile playing on his face.

He knew exactly where he was going to spend this time with her. The season was a little early, but it was better than the heat of summer, and there would be no crowds to get in their way. It was a place he never took his amours to, but Lissa was different. Different how, exactly, he still did not ask—or answer. He only knew that the kind of affaire he was used to would not work with her. Lissa was not someone to leave in his apartment while he kept up his daily routine of business meetings and high-pressure work, spending only evenings with her in restaurants, or at the theatre or the opera, or social engagements, as had been his custom with Madeline and her predecessors over the years. No, he wanted Lissa to himself twenty-four-seven—safe by his side, in his bed. He had thought her forever forbidden to him—and now that fate had given her to him after all he would not neglect her.

So it was well worth breaking his neck all day, driving his PA and directors as if the devil were chasing them, in his attempt to clear his desk of all essential tasks. Some were impossible to complete, and those he could not postpone he undertook to do remotely. A couple of hours a day on the laptop, in communication with his office, would be the maximum he would commit to.

Besides, he argued to himself, when had he last taken a holiday? He gave an ironic grimace—the French took more holidays than most other nationalities, and his staff, like all sensible people, made the most of them, but he, running the whole company, seldom took time off.

Well, now he would. Now, with the woman he had thought never to have beside him, he would for once play hooky.

Even as he formed the thought, another plucked at his mind.

What about Armand? Should he not contact him? Find out how it was that he and Lissa had parted?