The Virgin's Debt To Pay. Louise Fuller

of it right now. And he didn’t like how it had affected him when she’d mentioned her sister’s happy family. For a second he’d actually felt something like envy.

      It reminded him uncomfortably of when he’d been much younger and he and other kids from the flats would go into Paris to pick pockets or whatever petty crime they could get away with. Stupid kids with nothing to lose and no one at home to care what they got up to.

      One day Luc had been mesmerised by a family playing in a park—a mother, father and two children. The kids had looked so happy and loved. An awful darkness had welled up inside him and he’d tasted jealousy for the first time. And something far more poignant—a desire to know what that would be like.

      His friends had noticed and had teased Luc unmercifully, so he’d shoved that experience and those feelings deep down inside and had vowed never to envy anyone again. And he wasn’t about to start now.

      But eclipsing all of that now was the carnal hunger building inside him. He’d thought of little else but that incendiary kiss the other night. When he’d sought Nessa out after the party he’d told himself he could resist her. But the thick sexual tension in the air mocked him.

      She called to him, even in those plain, unerotic clothes. She called to him, deep inside where a dark hunger raged and begged for satisfaction.

      Suddenly it didn’t matter who she was related to. Or if she was playing mind-games. She threw up too many questions, but there was only one question he was interested in knowing the answer to right now, and that was how she would feel when he sank deep inside her.

      Luc closed the distance between them, and reached out to slide a hand around Nessa’s neck, tugging her closer. Her eyes went wide and her cheeks bloomed with colour. She put a hand up to his and said, ‘What are you doing?’

      Luc’s gaze was fixated on her mouth and he had to drag it away to look into those huge hazel eyes. ‘Do you really expect me to believe that you’re just an innocent who would do anything for her family? And that the other night was pure chance and chemistry?’

      For a taut moment, Luc held his breath because he realised that some small kernel of the little boy he’d once been, yearning for something totally out of his orbit, was still alive inside him. He waited for Nessa to gaze up at him with those huge eyes and move closer, to tell him in a husky voice, Yes, I’m really that innocent. The worst of it was, he wasn’t entirely sure that he wouldn’t believe her.

      But she didn’t. She tensed and pulled back, jerking free of Luc’s hand. Glaring up at him. ‘I don’t expect you to believe anything, Luc Barbier. You’ve got eyes in your head and if you choose to view the world through a fog of cynicism and mistrust then that’s your prerogative.

      ‘As for the other night—it was madness and a mistake. You won’t have to worry why it happened because it won’t happen again.’

      Nessa had almost moved past Luc when his shocked brain kicked into gear and he caught her hand, stopping her. Every cell in his body rejected what she’d just said. She was walking away again. A savage part of himself rose up, needing to prove that she wasn’t as in control as she appeared.

      He pulled her back in front of him. ‘You want me.’

      She bit her lip and looked down. She shook her head. Luc tipped her chin up feeling even more savage. ‘Say it, Nessa.’

      She looked at him, eyes huge and swirling with emotion but Luc couldn’t draw back now. Eventually she said with a touch of defiance, ‘I might want you but I don’t want to.’

      Something immediately eased inside him. She glanced down again as if by not looking at him she could avoid the issue.

      ‘Look at me, Nessa.’

      For a long moment she refused but then she looked up, eyes spitting golden sparks, and it ignited the fire inside him to a burning inferno of need. He pulled her closer again. She put her hands up to his chest. ‘No, Luc. I don’t want—’

      But he stopped her words with his mouth and used every ounce of his expertise to show her how futile her resistance was. Whatever else was happening around them, whatever she was saying, he could trust that this was true at least.