No Ordinary Love
Page 19
“Are you a liar, Samira?” he asked quietly.
She flinched. “What? No.”
“Then why are you lying to me?”
“I’m not—”
“Do you want me to go first? Would that make you feel better? Fine. I will confess that the sight of you holding hands at the office with your former fiancé hours after you climbed out of my bed made me want to smash something. Jealousy is not an emotion I’m familiar with. I don’t like it. But I felt it.”
He stared at her, waiting.
Samira fumed in silence for a moment, telling herself to keep her big fat mouth shut and not give this man the keys to the kingdom on Day 3.
“I don’t just spill my feelings like that,” she snapped. “We’re getting to know each other. You never promised me exclusivity, or anything like that. So it’s really none of my business.”
His lips curled into something dangerously close to a sneer. “And to think you just lectured me about not wanting to build a relationship on quicksand.”
She grimaced, silently cursing both her faulty poker face for landing her in this mess and him for putting her so squarely on the spot.
Fuming, she thought back to her relationship with Terrance. All the times she should have spoken up and been honest about her feelings and had instead swallowed them whole and ignored the resulting stomachache.
“You want complete honesty?” she asked. “Fine. If that’s the type you go for, what do you want with me? And how soon until you go back to your little European playground and your topless Caucasian beauties?”
“Ah.” A glimmer of amusement lit his eyes. “I suspected that was all in there.”
Now that he’d unleashed her biggest inner demon—everyone she cared about left her eventually; the only question was the timing—this was no time for jokes.
“Don’t dodge the question.”
“I have no intention of dodging,” he said levelly. “That’s why I wanted to bring this up and get it out of the way. Have there been women? Yes. A lot of women? Yes. I’m a grown man. I enjoy women. I lost my head a little when my uncle died. I partied and had a good time. I don’t apologize.”
“Lovely,” she said, eyeballing her escape route. She had to fight the wild urge to dump the treats in his lap, climb out and slam the door in his face. “Good talk. Thanks for sharing.”
“But this is the thing: I do promise you exclusivity while we’re together. Look at me.” He put a hand on her arm to keep her where she was, his voice and expression gentling. She reluctantly faced him again, trying not to wear her entire heart on her face. “You have more in common with a hedgehog than you do with any of those women. That’s why I’m here with you. Not them.”
She examined his face for signs of insincerity and found none. Not that she was ready to give herself permission to get her hopes up.
“That’s why you’re with me? A hedgehog fetish?”
He burst into startled laughter. She laughed too, at least until he pulled her in again, raining kisses all over her face and mouth. Greedy for the feel of him, she ran her fingers up his arms and into his hair, catching handfuls of his silky curls. The sound of their harsh breath and her tiny mewls of pleasure filled the car. When he released her this time, her hot blood urged her not to let him go. She leaned into him, chasing his mouth, but he denied her by putting his lips to her ear.
“I have a fetish for you,” he said. “Only you.”
She nodded, glad he couldn’t see her face at the moment. Her burning cheeks probably glowed like a stoplight at night.
He sat back. Ran rough hands over his face, clearly trying to regain some measure of control.
She had to laugh. “This luxury car doesn’t provide cold showers, does it?”
“Eh,” he said, grinning. “That was an optional upgrade on this rental. I didn’t think I would need it.”
More laughter on both sides until he sobered and eyed her closely.
“So, we’ve settled several things between us, correct? Let’s make sure we both agree so I can get my soul food. Daniel and Sean acted like we were riding in the Tour de France today. I’m very fangry.”
“Hangry.”
“First,” he said, ignoring this interruption with dignity, “You understand about my past with women. You’re jealous, of course, but you’ve moved past it.”
“What?”
She punched him once in his rock-hard biceps and was going in for another when he caught her fist. Kissed it.
“Second,” he continued, his smile fading away to a searching look that was mesmerizing in its intensity. Absolutely hypnotic. “We’ve agreed to exclusivity while we work on this relationship. Haven’t we?”
Much as she didn’t want to deny him anything when he looked at her like that, her self-protective instincts simply would not sit down and shut up.
“Baptiste…”
“Don’t think. Don’t talk yourself out of it. Here. Close your eyes.”
In cases like this, where fear wrapped around her torso like a hungry boa constrictor, bravado and distraction were always the best options.
“I’m not closing my eyes, so you can forget it.”
“Do you think your bluster is going to keep me away?” he asked quietly. “Close them.”
She sighed, trying to regulate her too-fast breathing. Leaned back against her seat. Closed her eyes.
He was immediately right there again, lips to her ear with one hand on her neck and the other on her belly. It was simultaneously soothing and wildly arousing, especially when the one hand slid up to cover her thumping heart.
“Answer from here,” he said, tapping a finger against her chest. “We’re together now. And we’re exclusive. Aren’t we?”
The answer came quickly and easily when she sat quietly like this, as though it was a part of her body and had always been inside her somewhere, waiting for the right moment to come out.
“Yes.”
Beside her, his breath hitched. “Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Good girl,” he said, pressing a sweetly lingering kiss to her lips.
She opened her eyes again.
He was right there, all bright green eyes and simmering excitement.
“Daniel told me something today,” he said slowly. “He is often a fool, so my tendency is not to listen. But in this one particular case, he may be right.”
“And what did he tell you?” she said, laughing.
“Well, first he told me not to overwhelm you when we’ve only just met. Clearly bad advice.”
“Clearly.”
Baptiste hesitated. Took a very long time to speak, muscles working in his throat as he gathered his words.
“He said that…sometimes you just know.”
Samira debated whether to ask the follow-up question. The potential for hurt was too great, and his answer, she realized to her growing dismay, mattered far too much for a woman determined to keep her feelings on lockdown.
In the end? Her curiosity never gave her a choice.
“Know what?” she asked quietly.
He stared her in the face, unsmiling now.
“You need to start thinking about how you’d feel if I fell for you a little bit.” A vivid flush crept over his cheeks. “That wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, would it?”
She gasped and looked for signs of insincerity. But there was nothing other than his gaze, which was direct and surprisingly vulnerable.
“That depends,” she said after a beat or two.
“On?”
“How often that happens to you.”
“It’s never happened to me before now, ma reine.”
There was only one smart thing to do when a man you’d only known for a few days (incidentally the sexiest and most intriguing man in the world) professed to be falling for you: you dismissed it.
Maybe you shot him down outright (you don’t expect me to believe that, do you?), or maybe you joked it away (right, because there’s such
a shortage of available women in France to fall in love with).
Either way, the only intelligent strategy was to deflect. Disbelieve.
Yet she couldn’t dismiss his words or the answering ache in her chest. The moment meant far too much to her, and his big heart sat right there on his face for her to see.
It lit his eyes when he looked at her.
It stopped her breath.
Maybe he couldn’t really fall for her so quickly. But he sure believed he had.
“It’s too soon to talk about anything like that,” she said.
“Ah.” His pause was long and deliberate, punctuated by a wry smile. “So I can feel it deep inside. But I must not speak about it. Understood.”
“Baptiste…”
“Out of curiosity, when is it acceptable to discuss?”
She thought that over.
“After one of us has the flu and the other one has to be the nurse. After I eat the last brownie in the house when you thought it was yours, and you want to hit me. When we have our first big fight without calling each other names or saying things we can’t take back.”
“You’re very wise. But what if I feel as though I know the most important things about you already?”
God. When would this man stop making her head spin?
“People don’t fall for each other after just a couple of days,” she said firmly.
“Ordinarily not,” he agreed easily.
Her heart sank. Just a little.
“But which part of the two of us together has been ordinary?”
Samira couldn’t answer.
Luckily, he took pity on her.
“So,” he said crisply. “Now that we’ve agreed to a committed—”
“I never said committed!” she cried in mock outrage.
“—and monogamous relationship,” he said, pressing two fingers to her lips to prevent any further protests, “are you ready for our next chapter together?”
“No,” she said on a shaky laugh as she batted his hand away. “I’m scared to death. And you should be, too. Especially since you’re about to meet my parents.”
His grin threatened to blind her.
“I’ve never been more excited in my life. I can’t wait for more adventures with you. Let’s go.”
* * *
Ready for the exciting conclusion to Baptiste & Samira’s sexy love story? Keep reading for an excerpt from Beyond Ordinary Love, which is now available!
Meet the Billionaires of Journey’s End…
* * *
One-night stands never lead to happily-ever-afters.
Or do they?
The road to true love never runs smooth. Especially when a sexy French billionaire meets his match in a no-nonsense career woman from small-town Journey’s End.
* * *
But the fiery chemistry between Jean-Baptiste Mercier and Samira Palmer refuses to die, and each new day reveals how much they don’t have in common—and how much they do.
* * *
One-night stands often end in disaster. But not always…
* * *
If you love contemporary interracial romance that’s hot and emotional, read BEYOND ORDINARY LOVE, the steamy conclusion to this two-part romantic saga today!
Chapter 1
Jean-Baptiste Mercier worked hard to repress his smile—at least some of it, if not all—but his cheeks refused to cooperate. Spending time with the woman in the passenger seat of his rental car did that to him. Suddenly he was part golden retriever, happy with the world and excited to experience the evening’s adventures.
“Are you going to keep grinning like that?” Samira Palmer, the beautiful source of all his enthusiasm, raised a brow. She kept her answering smile severely repressed, but her laughing eyes gave her away. For this evening’s Halloween bonfire in her hometown, Journey’s End in the Hudson River Valley, she wore a black maxi sundress beneath her jean jacket. One that allowed a breathtaking view of her shapely mahogany legs down below and her cleavage up top. Controlling his hands proved as challenging as reining in his smile, so he gave in to the impulse to trail his fingers up her thigh. “Everyone in the park is going to know we’ve been—stop that!”
She smacked his hand away, squirming out of his reach as best she could.
“What? I’m not allowed to touch you now? I feel like we should consummate our new relationship. Strictly to make it legal.”
“First of all, consummation is for marriage,” she said, rearranging her dress so that her bare flesh was no longer visible to his avid gaze.
Without missing a beat, he leaned across the console to nuzzle the silky and fragrant side of her neck, capturing a whiff of sandalwood in the process. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her as close as he could.
“Marriage. Got it. My mistake.”
“Second,” she continued, a distinct and breathless coo in her voice now as she tipped her head to the side to give him better access, “we’re going to put sex on the shelf while we get to know each other.”
“Indeed,” he murmured against her neck, where he could feel her pulse thud its way to the thousand-beats-per-minute range. She melted into dark chocolate pudding when he scraped his teeth along the sensitive tendons, which gave him the idea to slide his hand up her side, beneath her jacket, and flick her nipples with his thumbs for the pure pleasure of feeling her gasp and arch against him. Ah. There it was. “Well, if you think celibacy is for the best, then who am I to argue with you?”
“And finally,” she said, her voice dissolving into little more than a whimper as he continued to stroke her breasts, “we’ve just agreed to see each other, right? No need for all this talk about legalities.”
He didn’t like the word just.
Raising his head, he pulled back enough to look into her brown eyes, glazed now with lust. But beneath that? Trepidation. Which was only fair, he supposed, when you were a small-town career woman who’d recently been engaged to another man and now found yourself unexpectedly embroiled in a passionate new affair with a French billionaire—Baptiste.
In fact, what had she called him yesterday?
Ah, yes. An international player.
More words he didn’t like.
“You’re mistaken, ma reine.” My queen. He took great care to maintain his hold on her breasts, which were deliciously soft and full, both to maintain the renewed connection between them and to remind her that he now had full access to her body with no intention of relinquishing it. “You have finally seen it my way, which is that a one-night stand could never be enough between us. We’ve agreed both that we’re forming a relationship and that it will be exclusive. Two things that I, for one, have never done before. So, you see, we’ve passed many relationship milestones already in our short time together, and there is a need for legalities.”
“I see,” she said. “And what do you suggest?”
What his seething hormones and rock-hard queue urged him to suggest was that they skip the bonfire, go back to his hotel suite and spend tonight as they’d spent their first night together—with him buried to the hilt inside her and their limbs twined together.
But…this was his opportunity to spend some time getting to know her and her delightful town better, and he wanted to meet her parents, who would also be at the bonfire.
That being the case, right now all they could do was the next best thing.
So he flashed her a dark look of intent and reached under the hem of her dress.
“Baptiste!” She shut her thighs to him, clamping down on his left wrist. “We are in a public—”
He put his lips to her ear. “Shhh. The windows are darkened. We’re parked far away, under a tree. No one can see us.”
She made a sound, half shaky laugh and half shuddering sigh. Cast a furtive look around with her too-bright eyes, and saw what he saw—namely that the car faced a park full of people, none of whom were within a hundred meters of them. Looked back at him, her face flushed and her lips dewy.
&
nbsp; He stared at her through his heavy-lidded eyes, trying to smile despite the growing tightness in his chest and throat and the blue balls that would keep aching until he got inside her tight pussy again.
“I’ve never done anything like this,” she said helplessly.
There was only one response to that.
“Because you were waiting for me, chérie,” he said tenderly.
She hesitated.
“It’s okay,” he said softly. “Anything we do to give each other pleasure is okay.”
Shaky laugh from Samira, tinged with despair. “Why can’t I ever tell you no?”
That wasn’t the question at all.
“Why do you keep trying?” he asked, curling his fingers against her satiny thigh…
If you enjoyed this excerpt, read BEYOND ORDINARY LOVE now!
Also by Ann Christopher
JOURNEY’S END Small-Town Contemporary Romance Series
“Book” 1: A JOURNEY’S END Novella
Book 2: LET’S DO IT
Book 3: ON FIRE
“Book” 4: LET’S STAY TOGETHER Novella
Book 5: UNFORGETTABLE
* * *
Billionaires of Journey’s End Contemporary Romance Series
Book 1: NO ORDINARY LOVE
Book 2: BEYOND ORDINARY LOVE
Click here for more titles in this series!
* * *
DEADLY Romantic Suspense Series
Book 1: DEADLY PURSUIT
Book 2: DEADLY DESIRES
Book 3: DEADLY SECRETS
* * *
IT’S COMPLICATED Contemporary Romance Series
TROUBLE
RISK
JUST ABOUT SEX
SWEETER THAN REVENGE
* * *
The Davies Family Contemporary Romance Series
Book 1: SINFUL SEDUCTION
Book 2: SINFUL TEMPTATION
Book 3: SINFUL ATTRACTION