The man kneeling at her feet lifted his head. In the fading light she didn’t see the lines of darker colour scoring his high slashing cheekbones, she could just see his eyes…and his mouth and…oh, God—!
‘You should take them off.’
Anything you say. God, please let me not have said that out loud! She ran the tip of her tongue nervously over her dry lips. ‘What…?’ she croaked.
‘The shoes,’ he replied. ‘You should take them off. The stockings too,’ he added as an afterthought.
‘How did you know?’ She stopped and shook her head blushing deeply. Far better, under the circumstances, not to know how he knew when a woman was wearing stockings and not tights.
‘Don’t worry, I don’t have X-ray vision.’
‘I wasn’t worried.’ The knot of heat low in her belly made it hard for her to concentrate on what she was doing and a second later she found herself standing in one shoe, teetering awkwardly to one side without having any clear recollection of how she had got to be in that position.
‘For God’s sake…’ His voice impatient, Luc caught her hands in his and placed them firmly on his own shoulders. ‘Hold onto me.’
It was either that or fall down in an ungainly heap.
‘Give me a minute,’ she heard him say. ‘That’s it.’ Hazily she saw him rise, her shoe minus the heel in his triumphant grasp. ‘The shoe’s a write-off, I’m afraid.’
She shook her head; the loss of a shoe was the least of her problems! Her response to this man was less easy to dismiss. In the gathering dusk it was impossible to read the expression on his lean, hard-boned face.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Awkwardness made her voice abrupt. Minus her heels she only just topped his shoulders. The illusion of being small and dainty was one she shouldn’t in this enlightened age of equality have found attractive…Shouldn’t…!
The impressive shoulders on which her hands were still hanging, quite unnecessarily, flexed and she felt the powerful muscles clench.
She uncurled her fingers. As if reluctant to lose the contact, her fingertips trailed slowly down the front of his open necked shirt. She felt his lean, hard body tense before she lost contact. It made her cringe to imagine that her action might have been interpreted as deliberately provocative, because she had no control whatever over her actions.
‘I suppose we ought to go back.’ The thread of reluctance she heard in her own voice made Megan’s eyes widen in alarm. Anyone listening would have been excused for assuming she wanted her pulse to carry on racing too fast…that she wanted to prolong the moment.
And you don’t…?
‘You could be right.’ she heard him concede. ‘Do you always do the right thing, ma chérie…?’
Just this once Megan let the endearment pass, when he said it in that deep smoky voice of his it sounded like a caress.
With a sigh she lifted her head, her eyes meshed with enigmatic silvered orbs that made her heart pound slow and strong…Luc; the name might be no more real than his supposed attraction for her, but strangely fitted him.
He really was the most incredible-looking man!
‘I try to.’ She gave a shaky little laugh as her eyes slid from his. ‘I won’t waste my breath asking you the same thing.’
Luc looked like a man for whom not doing the right thing was one of life’s guiding principles. Was the danger part of his attraction? Had she been playing it safe for so long that she couldn’t resist what was dark, dangerous and available?
‘I try to do what comes naturally.’ His explanation was not soothing. ‘We should definitely go back, only first…’ Luc’s dark head bent as he framed her face between his hands. She felt his breath fan her cheek as he fitted his mouth to hers. Megan’s eyelashes fluttered against her cheek as her hand came up to cover one of his.
She murmured his name; the sound was lost against his mouth. The pressure of his lips was gentle but insistent; his mouth was cool and firm against her own.
Luc drew back, his lashes lifted from the angle of his knife-edged cheekbones as he examined the passion-flushed features of the woman who stood in the circle of his arms. He gave an almost imperceptible nod of satisfaction.
‘Now you look like a woman who’s shared a few illicit kisses in the moonlight.’
She was floating; she was on fire, every inch of her skin was prickling with the heat of desire. His words had the same effect as an icy shower.
‘There is no moon and I will not be used by you or anyone else!’ she declared in a low, passionate voice.
‘I wasn’t using you; I was kissing you and,’ he added with a slow, contemplative smile, ‘I was enjoying it.’
‘How nice for you that you’re happy in your work. Next time maybe you might like to ask whether I want to be kissed,’ she told him, dragging a hand across her mouth. The symbolic gesture just reminded her of how sensitised and tender her lips felt.
Luc, no longer languid, looked suddenly incredibly furious. ‘Are you suggesting I kissed you against your will?’
‘Not exactly,’ she conceded, her glance dropping guiltily from his outraged face.
‘Good,’ he bit back, not sounding much mollified. ‘Because I don’t need a signed affidavit to know when a woman wants to be kissed. I know and you wanted it.’
The shocking sound of her hand connecting with his cheek resounded across the courtyard. Megan’s hand went to her mouth as her eyes travelled from the livid mark developing on his lean cheek to his eyes, they told her nothing more than his blank expression.
‘That was unforgivable,’ she said, totally contrite. The fact that physically she was much weaker than him was in her eyes no excuse for her loss of control. She felt deeply ashamed. ‘You’re right.’ Humiliation sat like a leaden weight in her stomach. ‘I did want you to kiss me.’
‘You did?’
She nodded; his expression was as unrevealing as his tone. ‘That’s why I was so angry…not with you,’ she hastened to assure him. ‘With me.’
It was ironic—she had been busy getting het up worrying that Luc was getting too immersed in his role, when in reality he wasn’t the one getting reality mixed up with fiction; she was the one letting her fantasies take control!
Luc watched as her slender shoulders sagged.
‘Obviously this thing is not going to work; it’s not your fault.’ Luc, after all, had done everything she had asked of him. ‘It’s me.’
‘You wanted me to kiss you…?’ A muscle in his hollow cheek clenched.
Megan looked at him, her frustration showing. Had he not heard anything she had said after that? She hoped he had; she didn’t much fancy grovelling all over again. In fact she refused to, she decided with a spurt of defiance.
‘Well, I wasn’t exactly averse to it,’ she admitted gruffly. ‘I appreciate you were doing what you thought I wanted.’
‘I was doing what I hoped you wanted,’ he contradicted, sliding his hands down her slender back until they came to rest on the firm curve of her bottom. His grin flashed out minus the edge of cool dispassion and mockery she had grown accustomed to. ‘Now I know…’
‘Know what?’ She gave a startled gasp as he drew her towards him until their hips collided. She inhaled sharply as hot desire zapped through her body; he was rock-hard against the softness of her belly. An energising wave zapped through her body, her knees sagged and Luc took up the slack ably, wrapping