‘In case it has escaped your notice,’ she said stiffly, the merest tremor in her voice, ‘there are some things that do upset the average woman.’
‘I’ve heard. And I’m guilty of all of them.’ He flung up his hands, his sexy lips crushing each other in their vehemence.
‘No.’ She made a desperate bid to gather her serenity about her. ‘Maybe you’re right. I may have been a bit tense today. Maybe I’ve been unfair, but at least try to extend the limits of your male imagination. I have something—someone growing in here.’ Raking his lithe, angular, non-pregnant form with her eyes, she clutched her stomach region. ‘It’s hard to be charming and elegant when little eyes and ears are suddenly developing inside you. How do you think you’d cope with it, monsieur?’
His eyes glinted. ‘I think I can imagine it. I have seen Alien, the movie. But surely the ears don’t start to develop for another week or two?’
‘What?’ Jolted, she ignored his silky Gallic sarcasm to stare bemusedly at him. ‘Where’d you get that?’
A rather diffident expression crossed his face. Then his sensuous mouth relaxed and he looked less angry. Less sulky. His dark lashes flicked down as if he was suddenly feeling confident. Smug, even.
He lifted his shoulders with elegant nonchalance.
‘Last night, naturally, I was—working. As a pure accident or some strange prompting of fate I happened to stumble across a website that illuminated the—what do you say?—prenatal stages. It seems it is a long process, this development of the senses.’ While she goggled, his hands made an earnest demonstration of her abdomen growing to the size of a football field. ‘En fait, while some hearing will certainly be possible soon, I believe the entire auditory channels aren’t properly established until some time well after the baby’s birth. Eighteen months or so. It is still a very sensitive time in a child’s brain.’
‘Oh.’ She mouthed the word, actually. For though she parted her lips, no sound would come out.
Shock, of course. She’d imagined he’d used both the b word and the ch word, when even in her deepest womanly recesses she hadn’t permitted herself to think those frightening terms.
He placed his hand gently over her womb. ‘We’ll have to be very careful.’
As she stared down at that lean, tanned hand a sexual lightning bolt sizzled along her veins. Her mildly emotional state intensified a thousandfold, only it was with a more positive emotion, a more physical emotion, if such a thing could exist.
It certainly existed right then. Her devastated heart opened to him, while the rest of her being hotted up like crazy.
‘Well. I had no idea you … I’m surprised,’ she breathed. ‘I didn’t expect you to … Well, to be interested.’
‘I am interested.’
‘I thought you were deeply horrified by—the situation.’
‘I am thirty-six years old, Shari. An unexpected child—could be a beautiful gift.’
Oh, God. Her thrilled heart shook like an alder. ‘Well, you know … I’m so sorry about everything.’ Her eyes misted and her voice choked a little. ‘I know I’ve been too difficult. And too emotional. And I am a terrible frump.’
‘No, you haven’t. And you are not.’ His deep voice thickened. His hands travelled up her arms to her shoulders, where it was a short and entirely natural distance to her breasts. ‘I’ve behaved like un imbécile. Here you are feeling strange and unnatural and I have to behave like a … You’re—an angel. You’re perfect. So beautiful, so feminine. I want to …’
What he wanted to do he never quite had the chance to say, because even as her heart thrilled with more incredulous trembly emotion he started to kiss her face and eyes and throat. But he did murmur, ‘I don’t want us to be angry, chérie,’ and a lot of passionate and tender-sounding things in French—at the same time as sliding his hands under her top and unfastening her bra.
His lips found hers. She was so glad she hadn’t fled home with her tail between her legs. A man who could kiss like this deserved every chance to prove himself. While his tongue touched the insides of her mouth with fire and ignited her blood, he held her breasts in his hands and gently pinched her wildly responsive nipples.
She made no attempt to resist the sexual maelstrom. With desire blazing in every corner of her being she burned like a beacon, pushing up his black sweater the better to explore his gorgeous chest and rouse him to the same flaming lust consuming her.
She didn’t even have to try. The heat of his satin skin seared her palms, while one lick of his nipples had a dynamite effect. The rigid length straining against his jeans testified to that.
He stopped her hands from travelling too far, though still kissing her, he slipped his hand down inside her jeans. At the first delicious stroke of his fingers through the fabric of her pants she was moist, urgent to take him inside.
She clung to him, wrapping her legs around him as he carried her. Somehow they divested themselves of their clothes without completely separating for more than a second here, a moment there.
He pushed her onto the bed with his powerful body, and she surrendered, locking her ankles around him. His magnificent penis, hot, hard and virile, teased the yearning entrance of her sex deliciously.
Thrilling, she held her breath.
His dark eyes burned fiercely into hers. ‘Are you certain we should? Will it be too rough? Am I too grand?’
She held back a laugh. ‘Never too grand, monsieur. And I’m hoping for some rough.’
His eyes gleamed, then he thrust inside her with devastating conviction. The fantastic friction turbo-charged her excitement to such a violent pitch of ecstatic passion, she exploded into climax faster than was decent.
It was a long afternoon. After a time, though time was hazy, she pushed Luc onto his back and said, smiling, ‘Now then, lover. I’ll try not to be too rough.’
Straddling his narrow hips with sinful intent, she slid onto him and rode him until his dark impassioned eyes lost focus and the world dissolved in bliss.
IN THE heat of the moment, Shari hadn’t paid a great deal of attention to the chambre à coucher to which she was being transported. But there came a time when her eyes opened wide.
The room was still a yellow fantasia, but the empty space above the fireplace was now occupied by an exquisite rococo painting of some gentlemen with ladies—fully clothed—in voluminous dresses, lounging under the spreading boughs of a tree.
She studied it thoughtfully. She felt pretty sure she’d seen it somewhere before. It was too far away for her to take a squiz at the artist’s name, but she thought she’d wait until she was alone before investigating.
An expedition to the boudoir revealed that all evidence of any female occupation prior to her own had been obliterated. Her perfume bottle now graced the dressing table, and her clothes, meagre as they were, were hanging in the wardrobe. Her shampoo bottles imbued the bathroom with a personality she could feel at home with.
Returning to Luc’s arms, she snuggled against his chest. His bristly jaw brushed her forehead. ‘I love that picture.’
‘Mmm.’ His voice was a contented growl. ‘Me too.’
She spun a whorl of chest hair around her finger. ‘Since you’ve got a maid to leap to your every command, I’m thinking now I might stay the whole week.’