She gasped aloud, and he surged again, then again. Her throat arched, and his eyes locked with hers. With absolute surety of stroke he built a pyramid of bliss within her, the soft gasping in her throat becoming almost a cry of anguish, anguish—so sweet that it was indistinguishable from the most intense pleasure.
He gave one final surge, and the incredible feeling blazed out through her body, torching it. She cried out, a sob of bliss, her eyes shutting so tightly there was nothing in the entire universe except this.
Her hands clutched him desperately, her heels digging into the bedclothes and her hips straining upwards against him to intensify the sensation that was sheeting through her. And then a new sensation impacted on her—her internal muscles were pulsing, convulsing, drawing him further, further into her, and then suddenly she felt him tense every muscle and sinew in his body, his body taut against her like an arrow in soaring flight.
He cried out, the strong muscles of his chest ridged, the cords of his throat rigid. For one timeless moment they held each other in the completion of their union, and then she could feel her body collapse in exhaustion. He closed down on her, his body warm and damp with a sheen of sweat that she realised in wonder was dewing her skin, as well. She was panting, her breath coming with unsteady inhalations against the exhausted, heavy weight of his body which she was cradling fast against her.
Wonder filled her, and an exaultation she had never known before. She felt her mouth part in a rapturous smile.
She speared her fingers into his hair—hair that was damp at the nape, tousled by her touch.
How long she lay like that, she was not sure. She was sure only that she wanted now for nothing, and that here, in this moment, was all she was and all she needed. Her eyes were closed, and she lay supine, her limbs exhausted but replete, his weight against her, his cheek against hers.
She felt him move. Softly, she felt her closed eyelids kissed.
‘Ma belle,’ he said.
Then he started to withdraw his weight—and more than his weight.
‘Do not move. I will be but a moment,’ he assured her.
Yet even that brief time apart from him left her feeling cold, abandoned, so that when he returned to her she held out her arms to him, wrapped him to her and clung to him.
‘Xavier,’ she breathed into his skin, inhaling the scent of him. Then, as her eyelids closed again, she felt drowsiness sweep over her.
Dimly, she felt the covers being drawn over her. Dimly she heard him murmur something. Dimly she registered that the lights had been extinguished, and then, still cradled against him, held in the strong circle of his arms, she went to sleep.
For a while longer Xavier lay, looking up into the darkness overhead. What had happened? He had known he had wanted Lissa—that her beauty had struck him like a coup de foudre that night at the hotel, overpowering all his logic and reason and sense, stimulating in him a desire that had swept him away. He had been known that his thwarted desire for her had been a torment, and that he had continued to want her with an intensity that had been sharpened to unbearableness by the knowledge that she was beyond his reach, reserved for Armand, his own brother. And he had known, ever since that out-of-the-blue message had sent him chasing from Paris to London to claim her, that possessing her finally, as he now had, would be a release and a satiation all the sweeter because he had not thought to have it.
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.