One Night with His Wife (16 page)

‘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 stimulation, 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.

‘I think,
mon ange…
’ Luc groaned indolently into her hair. ‘I think I shall adapt to being
really
married with remarkable enthusiasm.’

She shifted indolently against him, enfolded by the most marvellous sense of peace and satiation. Lifting his head, Luc gazed down at her abstracted expression and he laughed softly. ‘You’re still out of it.’

Out of everything, she conceded happily as he traced the relaxed fullness of her reddened lips with a fingertip and gave
her the sort of megawatt smile that made her heart sing. ‘Just keep on smiling at me…’

‘I believe I can definitely promise you that.’ His dark drawl husky with sensual amusement, Luc rolled over into a cooler patch of the tumbled bed, but he kept her welded to him with one powerfully possessive arm and covered her mouth very softly with his again.

It felt as if the whole world stood still while he kissed her. Glorious contentment enveloped Star. She closed her arms round him in helpless hunger, revelling in the damp, hard feel of his relaxed length and knowing that she already wanted him again.

Lifting his tousled head, Luc scanned her with stunning dark eyes ablaze with the same awareness. ‘It’s hard to believe that in the early hours of this morning. I was angry and drunk and climbing the walls with sexual frustration…and look at us now.’

Yes, look at us now, Star suddenly thought, tensing at the reminder of that upsetting confrontation during the night. It was as if Luc had pressed a panic button inside her head. Luc seemed to be suggesting that now everything was sorted, as it were. He thought, he had actually just assumed, that he had got what he wanted and that she had now agreed to stay married to him. And why
shouldn’t
he have made that assumption? Hadn’t she just fallen at abandoned speed back into bed with him again?

‘For the sake of our children,’ he had drawled piously, when he had stated the case for finally making their marriage a real and binding commitment. And didn’t she still love him? Wasn’t this probably the very most Luc was ever likely to offer her? What was she holding out for? Red roses and romance? Chance would be a fine thing! But how much could she even
trust
in what Luc was saying right now?

‘You know…’ she said uneasily, pulling away from him in a move that took an amount of will-power that embarrassed
her. ‘Only last night you were talking like you hated me…’

Faint colour surfaced over his hard cheekbones and he frowned. ‘I still believed that the twins had been fathered by some other man! You never put yourself in my place,
mon ange.
’

No, now that he said it, she had to admit that she hadn’t ever tried. But then she had never managed to work out what went on inside Luc’s head. However, she suspected that when his emotions became involved Luc’s sense of proportion and his pure logic went out of the window, leaving him vulnerable. How else did she explain an overwhelmingly practical guy who, on the basis of a goodbye note, had had the moat and the lake dragged for her body?