One Night with His Wife (11 page)

No longer did she crave that rare smile, that devastating little glimmer of gold in his eyes when he was amused, the sense of achievement she had once enjoyed when he laughed. No, she didn’t, she absolutely didn’t, she told herself with ferocious urgency. Which was just as well, she reminded herself. Luc might not have been exactly delighted to believe that the twins had been fathered by some other man, but he was likely to be even less happy when she told him the truth. It was going to be a very long and miserable summer, and tomorrow, when she informed Luc that he was a father, promised to be the very worst day of her life…

Star emerged from the bathroom and stopped dead, heart hammering so hard against her breastbone she felt faint, like someone in the grip of a severe anxiety attack. And no wonder! Luc had evidently made use of some other bathroom. Black hair still damp and gleaming, he was in the act of shedding a short silk robe. From across the room, Star watched the collar dipping, the light fabric drifting down to expose what had to be the most beautiful male back in the world. Smooth brown skin stretched taut over well-honed muscles. She shut her eyes tight in shame, denying herself
any more of a view. Averting her head, she scuttled over to the bed to haul the spread from it.

‘Goodnight,’ she said in a tight little voice.

Luc climbed into bed, tossed back the duvet and threw himself back against the pillows. Star was wearing an oversize T-shirt with a large yellow duck motif back and front. It wasn’t remotely seductive. But his body seemed to think otherwise and reacted with unquenchable enthusiasm. Star bent down to arrange the spread on the sofa, revealing slender legs to the top of her thighs, the cotton jersey of the T-shirt stretching with provocative fidelity over the shapely curve of her bottom…

His breath escaped in a soft hiss of reaction, the ache of frustration becoming so powerful he clenched his long fingers. The anger still pent-up inside him began to smoulder again. She was playing the tease deliberately. Star was no longer the adoring little virgin he had, with commendable adult restraint, contrived
not
to touch for the first six weeks of their marriage.

‘A little schoolgirl…’ Gabrielle had composed her perfect face into a pained grimace. ‘Men who prey on schoolgirls are
sick
, aren’t they? But Star does ask for it. Those big soppy puppy eyes of hers follow you about like you’re a god or something. How can you stand it?’

Surprisingly easily.

Snatched from that unwelcome recollection by the enervating sight of Star raising her arms high to comb her fingers through her wet hair, Luc went rigid. The T-shirt pulled taut over small breasts as firm and round as apples. Not free to him
ever
again, Star had said. Smugly. The rage he had been keeping a lid on for two and a half days surged higher still. She was on the market and he would buy. Why not? He would get her skinny, shameless little hide out of his system. Long before the summer was over, he would be sated. No woman had ever held him beyond a couple of months…and one in a duck T-shirt had less hope than most.

Star could feel the silence buzzing around her like an electric storm. Goosebumps came out on her arms as she got into the makeshift bed, wishing Luc would switch out the lights. Then she could lie in the dark, hating herself without an audience. The dulled ache low in her stomach and the painful tightness of her sensitive breasts were a source of utter misery to her. She didn’t trust herself to look back near him again, lest the craving get stoked to a level that he might notice. He noticed most things, did Luc. He missed nothing. He read her like a book when she could least afford to be read.

‘D’accord
…OK, now that you’ve given me the benefit of seeing what’s on offer from every conceivable angle, I want the T-shirt off. And forget the sofa. I want you in this bed for the rest of the night,’ Luc spelt out with crystal-clear clarity.

Totally disbelieving the evidence of her own ears, Star very slowly picked her head up and attempted to focus on Luc across the depth of the room. ‘S-sorry?’ she stammered helplessly.

Luc hauled himself off the pillows with one powerful hand. ‘Don’t you dare play games with me,’ he warned in low-pitched but forceful continuance. ‘I’m not in the mood for what you fondly imagine figures as verbal foreplay!’

Star sat up with a jerk, clutching the bedspread to herself. The pool of light round the vast bed illuminated the hard cast of his stunning dark features, the perceptible tension in the knotted muscles of his wide brown shoulders. The sheet was at his waist, startlingly white against his magnificent torso. He looked startlingly handsome and startlingly intimidating. Angry too. About what? She could feel that anger. Why was he so angry? What had she done?

‘You seem to have the idea that I’ve been angling for some sort of approach,’ Star breathed with hot cheeks, her annoyance with him somewhat tempered by the fear that she had somehow been putting out sexually inviting vibes as easily
read as placards. ‘But I honestly haven’t been…at least,
not
knowingly.’

‘You are as hungry for me as I am for you,
mon ange
,’ Luc breathed in impatient interruption.

Star tore her dismayed eyes from his challenging scrutiny. ‘You’re very up-front about this sort of stuff, aren’t you? Can I use an analogy here? If I ate as much chocolate as I’d like to, I wouldn’t fit my clothes, so I control myself. Wanting to rip your clothes off all the time…well, it’s much the same thing.’

‘
Mon Dieu…
God give me strength,’ Luc growled half under his breath.

‘It
is
, whether you can see it or not,’ Star persisted, pleating the spread between her restive, taut fingers and not looking at him lest she lose the thread of what she was trying to say. ‘Last night we should just
leave
in the past—’

Luc groaned out loud.

‘You’re like too much chocolate, you’re bad for me, and I really don’t want to be tempted to do what’s bad for me…and bad for
you
too.’

Luc sprang out of bed. As he crossed the room, Star kept her head down and talked faster than ever. ‘Now I could be really angry with you for phrasing your invitation to join you the way you did…but I’m making allowance for the fact that maybe you’re annoyed with me for still seeming attractive to you. And maybe you’re tired and just not used to having to
ask
with all these women throwing themselves at you…
what are you doing?’
she squealed in disconcertion.

Luc clamped his hands to her waist and lifted her off the sofa to hold her in mid-air. ‘I am not bad for you. I am probably the sanest man you ever shared a bedroom with. Whether I’ll still be sane at the end of the summer is anybody’s guess. Think of me as a chocoholic, wholly at the mercy of ungovernable greed. Be compassionate,’ he urged thickly.

Star remembered wanting him on his knees with lust for
her. Her own feet were dangling a good foot and a half off the floor. He wasn’t quite begging but he was certainly on the road to very, very keen. And there was something in those stunning dark frustrated eyes that just filled her to overflowing with sympathy and longing and…?

As he interpreted the dreamy look in her aquamarine eyes with the instant recognition of a male who had once seen no other expression but that in her gaze, a blazing smile of satisfaction flashed across his lean strong face. Her heart literally tilted on its axis.

‘Indulge yourself with me,
mon ange
,’ Luc invited in a husky tone that made every nerve-ending in her treacherous body sit up and sing.

Common sense made a mighty and praiseworthy attempt to be heard inside her head. ‘I can’t…I
mustn’t
!’

Luc laid her down on the bed with the sort of achingly tender care she had not experienced since his accidental consummation of their marriage. The thoughts in her head started seeming detached from reality.

Luc gazed down at her with glittering dark eyes of hunger and then stilled, a more grave expression forming on his darkly handsome features. ‘Obviously I will look after you and the twins for as long as you need me to do so.’

‘Look after me?’ Reality was retreating so fast for Star that nothing short of a lightning strike was likely to bring it back. She was trembling, her pulses racing. The gloriously familiar scent of him was washing over her. After the emotional devastation which had followed their lovemaking the night before, there was now a sharper, needier, more desperate edge inside her; she had given him up and now he was back. She couldn’t help but be caught up in a sense of how precious that was.

‘
Naturellement…
I also believe that I can find you a house to live in here in France,’ Luc mused with growling sensual huskiness, a whisper’s breadth from her parted lips.

Her braincells surged together on the belief that something
enormously important was being said. Was he teasing her? A house in France? My goodness, how stupid she was being! Was he…could he be asking her to stay on at Chateau Fontaine? What
else
could he be doing? A tide of pure joy roared up through Star and left her feeling totally intoxicated. Her fingers slid into his luxuriant black hair and curved down to his magnificent cheekbones.

‘House here in France?’ she echoed like an obedient child, eager to encourage further revelations but scared of the big prize being withdrawn if she seemed too pushy or greedy or impatient.

‘You’d like that…’ Luc gathered, lowering his proud dark head to sensually taste her full lips.

Liked that, liked
everything
! The hunger he expressed with one kiss sent heat hurtling through her at storm-force potency. She kissed him back with all her heart and soul and let her palms rove with wondering delight over his powerful shoulders. Mine, mine,
mine
, she wanted to yell to the rooftops, but she also wanted to live out every fantasy of eighteen months away from him.

She pushed at his shoulders with as much force as she could muster, grateful enthusiasm leaping through her. She wanted to show him just how much she could learn if he would only give her the opportunity and the time to pick up more experience. Then he would never, ever think that he needed a mistress like Gabrielle Joly in his life again.

Luc fell back against the pillows, a slight hint of disconcertion in his intent dark gaze. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing…absolutely nothing!’ Star was just a little shy now, on the spot, as it were, with all those lights on while being aware that Luc was very much a sophisticate. She was absolutely terrified of doing something wrong and spoiling the moment. After all, sex had to be of crucial importance to Luc if just one night with her could persuade him to ask her to forget that theirs was supposed to be a fake reconciliation and make it a real one instead.

‘Star…?’ Luc curved a hand to her downbent head. ‘I want you to be happy. I want to
make
you happy—’

‘Oh…you’re making me s-super-happy, because I—’ Just adore you. She swallowed it back hastily, not wishing to show herself too keen too fast. Goodness knows, that hadn’t got her very far before. Luc needed to believe that he had to make an effort to get those kind of results.

‘You
need
someone like me.’ Letting his fingers lace into her hair, Luc claimed a devouring kiss that left her quivering.

Intent on ensuring that he needed
her
even more, Star let an uncertain hand slide down over his taut stomach, fascinated by the way his muscles suddenly clenched and his equally sudden exhalation. She shifted position and bent her head, and let the tip of her tongue trace the intriguing little furrow of hair that ran down over his stomach and disappeared beneath the sheet. He jerked with satisfying responsiveness. Damp answering warmth surged at the very heart of her.

‘Later…’
His eyes blazing gold with desire, he tugged her up to him again, a ragged edge to his dark drawl. ‘But now there’s a couple of conditions to this arrangement that I need to be sure you understand and accept.’

Arrangement? In the act of drifting down to meet that wide sensual mouth like a programmed doll, Star found herself unexpectedly stayed by Luc’s hands on her arms. ‘Conditions?’

‘I expect total fidelity from you for the duration.’

Her lashes fluttered over bewildered eyes. She was really fighting to concentrate now, because Luc was wearing that deadly serious look which always intimidated her into listening.

‘Duration?’ she repeated dutifully, rather like someone knowing only about five words of a foreign language but working hard to follow and comprehend.

‘Inevitably this attraction will burn out.’

As Star stiffened, Luc locked both arms round her, brilliant
megawatt eyes intent on her now troubled face. ‘On the other hand, it could last for
ages
,’ he extended, quick as a flash. ‘But the other little condition I need to mention is that you’ll have to be more discreet as my lover than you were as my wife. Emilie must
not
know.’

Star worked out the significance of that assurance very, very slowly, because her brain was functioning very, very slowly. And when it came to working out something that crucial to her life and her happiness, and she saw with stricken insight that nothing but sheer pain and disappointment awaited her, she didn’t want to
think
any more.

But comprehension still marched on at supersonic speed. She had picked Luc up wrong. And wasn’t that huge misapprehension as to his meaning entirely self-inflicted? She had been pathetically eager to believe that Luc was willing to give their marriage a real chance. But he had no intention of doing that. He
still
wanted a divorce.

Yet, in spite of that, he could ask her to stay on in France as his lover.
Lover?
A euphemism. Without love, she would just be his sexual partner, his mistress. Did he really think that she was that desperate to hold onto him? Enormous hurt enfolded Star like a blanket, chilling her overheated body to ice.

‘Let go of me…’ she said unsteadily.