I heaved a sigh of relief as she finally put her head around the door and waved me in, with another finger on her lips to remind me to keep quiet. I’d never shown so much self-control in my life. I went and poured myself a cognac from my decanter and angled one of the lounge armchairs to face the bedroom, the double doors to which she’d left wide open. I positioned myself in it, placing an ankle up on my knee as I took a swig of the warming liquid, which heated my throat as it trickled down. Not that I needed any heating, not when she was bending over in those tight jeans waving around not only her sexy backside, but whatever the hell that black implement was that she had in her hand, that occasionally beeped. She dismantled my clock radio and removed something, placing it on the floor and stamping on it, before putting the clock back together. Then again with something she extracted from the DVD player in the corner. I was fascinated watching her, she was focussed and fast, with nimble fingers. Fingers that I’d dreamed of wrapping around my shaft, forcing me to expel my load. I’d finished my cognac and was close to needing to masturbate to dull the ache in my balls, as I’d sat here imagining what I was going to do with her as soon as she was finished, but she reappeared, exhaling a long breath as she removed her trilby and tossed it onto the coffee table.
‘The rooms are clear, we can talk,’ she nodded. I slowly set my glass down and stood up. Without her heels she was forced to look up at me. I just held her gaze, my chest rising and falling rapidly as she looked up at me, confused. My confusion temporarily vanished, all I could think of was one thing. She squealed as I grabbed her hand and pulled her behind me into the bedroom. I quickly sat on the edge of the bed and threw her over my lap, anchoring her with one hand planted squarely in the middle of her shoulders and a leg over the back of her knees. I let my hand connect with her backside forcefully, wishing I’d taken the time to pull her jeans and knickers down first. She screamed in surprise, then called my name as I did it again.
‘You continue to defy and irritate me, Lulu McQueen,’ I hissed, as I continued to spank her. ‘These are for breaking and entering and spying on me. I will give you twelve in total, twelve that will ensure you feel them when I let you sit back down. You will feel them for the rest of the week and remember that I am a private man who does not welcome these intrusions into his life!’
‘Stop,’ she pleaded, as she tried to wriggle free, which only made me angrier. ‘This is inappropriate!’
‘As is your gross invasion of my privacy. How did you get in my room? How long have these cameras been in here?’
‘A week,’ she moaned as I smacked her again.
‘So, have you got off on watching me walk around my suite naked and hard. Stroking my cock frequently to the thought of you? Hearing your name leave my lips at the moment of my intense release? Answer me!’ I barked as my hand connected with her backside again.
‘Once, I only watched once,’ she cried. ‘Please, it hurts.’
‘It’s supposed to, because I am hurt at your actions, yet you forget how much you loved it last time. You protest but if I pull down your knickers and draw my finger through your folds they will be swollen and sodden with excitement.’
‘It’s wrong,’ she moaned, as I lay the last two on her. ‘I’m a grown woman. I didn’t give my consent.’
‘You did not obtain my consent either. Do you have any idea how angry and frustrated I am now?’ I snarled, as I looked down at her curvaceous backside and my stinging palm and gave her another two.
‘Owwww,’ she yelled, a sob escaping her lips. ‘You said twelve!’
‘They were for slapping me, rejecting me when I wanted to kiss you. You’re lucky I don’t have my chains and paddle right now, or you’d be screaming even louder and it would be a month before you could sit down again.’ I pulled her up and threw her back onto the bed, as I tried to calm down. If we were a couple I’d be tying her up and fucking her for hours without letting her come for the stunt she’d pulled. She quickly rolled onto her side, taking the pressure off her tender backside and reached up to wipe some tears from her eyes, smudging her black eye makeup. I sighed and threw myself back in the armchair at the side of the bed. ‘Much as I want to fuck you right now and trust me, I am a man in desperate need of ripping off your clothes and fucking you, I need answers. Talk!’
‘I told you, I was hired by your wife to uncover evidence of an affair, or to fabricate one.’
‘How did you get in my room and plant these devices?’
‘Last week in the bar I took your key card and passed it to my associate who came and put them in the lounge, bedroom and shower room while I distracted you in the bar. I returned the card to you when I ran out and I’ve regretted it ever since. I’m so sorry.’
‘So, what has changed? Why are you here telling me this? Taking them all down?’
‘I was swayed,’ she whispered as she cast her eyes down. ‘But I realised that I was wrong.’
‘Swayed?’ I questioned with a frown, then nodded as I realised what she meant. ‘She offered you money.’
‘Yes,’ Lulu nodded, looking embarrassed. ‘Enough to set me up for life, to expand my business and retire early.’
‘And how much was going behind my back worth?’ I growled, wishing I had Myrtille here too, I’d spank her a damn sight harder than I had Lulu.
‘It doesn’t matter, I’m not taking the money,’ she replied quickly.
‘How much?’ I demanded forcefully.
‘Two million pounds,’ she said quietly. I inhaled sharply and she looked up at me, regret written all over her beautiful face.
‘This is a lot of money,’ I nodded, still not sure why my wife would pay such a sum to be rid of me.
‘Not to a man like you.’
‘No,’ I shrugged. ‘It is not, but I would imagine to you it is,’ I suggested and Lulu nodded. ‘So she suspected I was having an affair and you were to capture this evidence?’ I frowned, wondering what would have made Myrtille think this. Until I kissed Lulu last week I’d never strayed. Despite my high sex drive, the only person I’d wanted I couldn’t find. And now here she was, lying on my bed.
Tempting me. As always.
‘No, the first time she came to see me, I thought she’d made the appointment to find out if you were having an affair, but she confirmed that she actually wanted me to set you up.’
‘First came?’ I sat up a little straighter, intrigued.
‘She came to see me again this afternoon, she knows that we have history, I suspected as much after I discovered it was you last week, it was too much of a co-incidence. She confirmed that she’d tried other ways to make you stray, but said that you were too honourable.’
‘I see,’ I nodded. So that explained the pushiness of some of the women who had sought me out in the bar. I liked a woman with confidence, one who was not afraid to approach me, but some of them had been far too aggressive, which to a man like me was a real turn off. ‘So she came to you, in the hopes that you could tempt me where others have failed?’
‘Yes,’ Lulu breathed, as she reached down and tugged at her corset, trying to cover more of her breasts. I closed my eyes for a second and slowly exhaled. I was so close to shoving her back on that bed and taking her roughly. ‘I told her that I knew she’d chosen me, because of our history and she confirmed it. She said she thought that for me you’d break.’
‘Then she’s a shrewd woman. For you, ma belle, I would,’ I confirmed.
‘I know,’ she replied with another blush. She hesitated, her breathing was coming hard and fast, her breasts still at danger of splitting the tight corset she was wearing, as much danger as my custom made suit trousers, that hadn’t been tailored to accommodate my large erection. I wanted to pull that corset off and take one of her large dark pink nipples into my mouth, suck and bite it until she came. ‘She has pictures, of us kissing outside last week. She’s given me a week to make a choice. I either sleep with you and hand over the evidence, even if my face isn’t captured she doesn’t care,
she just wants plenty of proof of an affair. That way she says she’ll pay me the money or … or …’ Lulu paused and pinched the top of her nose and she tried to calmly breathe.
‘Or what?’
‘She’ll go ahead and publish the pictures, saying that she came to me in good faith to see if you were being unfaithful, that I went behind her back and slept with you to obtain her money.’
‘She’s blackmailing you?’ I snapped, fury flooding my system.
‘Yes,’ Lulu confirmed with a nod, as she dropped her hand and looked up to hold my gaze. She looked worried, which did nothing to ease the tension I was feeling. I flexed my neck from side to side. Sleep with me and take two million pounds, or be blackmailed and quite possibly ruined in the process, I couldn’t understand why she wasn’t stripping off for me now.
‘So why are you here removing the recording devices?’ I demanded, confused.
‘We have history, I couldn’t do that to you, you’ve never done anything to hurt me. Not until you just spanked me that is,’ she added with a glare, as she rubbed her backside with her palm, making me smile. Good, it stung, I’d meant it to. It went some way to making her feel pain like I had when I woke up six years ago to find she’d fled. ‘She wants to ruin you, Luc. She says that she wants evidence to divorce you, to show that you can’t be trusted. She says it will ruin your business if people believe that they can’t take you at your word, they won’t entrust you with millions of their hard earned pounds.’
‘I’m confused. A simple divorce I could understand, it is hardly a conventional, or happy marriage. But to want to bring me down in such a fashion? This I cannot comprehend. I’ve never been anything but respectful of her, why would she want to do this to me?’
‘For such a sexually aware man, are you really so blind?’ she asked, shaking her head.
‘Blind to what?’ I asked, unclear of what Lulu was implying.
‘She’s in love with you,’ she sighed, with a look of disbelief on her face that I had not reached this conclusion myself, but why would I? The woman was a bitch, never a polite word to say to me, always sneering at my accomplishments.
‘Non!’ I laughed. ‘This is preposterous, you are wrong. She is most definitely not!’
‘Luc, look at you,’ Lulu sighed. ‘You’re … well you’re obviously stupid for starters. Trust me, she’s in love with you and she hates that you’re not with her.’
‘What would make you think this?’ I asked, beyond curious.
‘She told me without actually saying the words, Luc, it was written all over her face. She wants to hurt you, to hurt you the way that you’ve hurt her for years by rejecting her. She says that you only had sex the once and that …’ Lulu broke off and shook her head.
‘And what? That we only had sex the once I can believe, I have a vague memory of attempting to perform with her and waking up in her bed the day after our wedding, but since then we have slept in separate rooms.’
‘It was your wedding night when you had sex with her, she said you were drunk.’
‘Mon Dieu,’ I groaned. ‘I forced her?’
‘No,’ she shot back. ‘She didn’t say that, she was upset because apparently as you … came, it wasn’t her name you cried out.’
‘I see,’ I nodded as I sat back in my chair relieved. I may detest the woman, but to have forced myself on her would have been deplorable. I studied Lulu’s face for a moment and her cheeks went an even deeper shade of pink. ‘It was your name I called, instead of my wife’s?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered, embarrassed. ‘And she knows that you’ve been carrying my picture in your wallet and for …’ she broke off again.
‘For what?’
‘She says that she’s heard you say my name when you’re dreaming.’
‘Now this I can believe,’ I smiled. I spent most of my time in our Paris house in my study, often waking up in my office chair in the middle of the night. ‘I dream of you often, ma belle.’
‘Don’t! It’s wrong,’ she retorted quickly.
‘Why is it so wrong for a man and woman who have such intense chemistry to desire each other?’
‘For us it is,’ she replied defiantly, that stubbornness I’d seen in her the first night we’d met rearing its head again.
‘Then why are you here?’ I snapped. I was fed up with these games. I’d never wanted anyone as much as I wanted this woman. She was sending me constant mixed signals and had been part of an attempt by my wife to plot my downfall.
‘I felt I owed it to you to warn you what she was going to do to you.’
‘At risk of her ruining your own reputation? Why would you do this?’
‘Because it’s the right thing to do!’ she cried out. ‘I’ve always felt guilt at provoking men to invite me or my girls to their suites, then turning over that evidence to money digging wives, but until last week I did it, my pay check was more important, but now it’s you? I just ... I can’t.’
‘You care about me,’ I stated, as my chest puffed up and my heart swelled, hope was not lost.
‘We have a connection,’ she shrugged and quickly broke my gaze again.
‘Mais oui, of course we do,’ I confirmed, as I moved to the edge of my seat and clasped my hands, ‘but it wasn’t strong enough to keep you from running from me six years ago. What has changed? Maybe the fact that you now know of my financial status?’ I tested.
‘How dare you!’ she snapped back, her amber eyes heated with fire that spoke right to my core. ‘I just turned down two million pounds for you. My business affords me a very nice lifestyle. I don’t need a man with money.’
‘Let’s say I believe you, that you are not financially motivated, I want to know what has changed. Why you see a connection now that you did not back then?’
‘I did feel a connection back then, Luc, but I’ve grown up and matured now. I’m not that scared young woman anymore,’ she said so quietly I barely heard her.
‘That’s why you ran from me? I scared you?’ I uttered, horrified. Yes I could be dominant in the bedroom on occasion, but never without consent. She felt bullied into what we had done together?
‘Not like that,’ she replied quickly, flashing me a reassuring glance, that eased my mind and had me breathe a sigh of relief. ‘I was scared because … I fell for you too fast, I’ve never slept with a man that quickly before, nor have I since and the way you … the sex was …’ she raised her eyebrows as she shook her head.
‘Intense, erotic, mind blowing and unmatched in the history of this universe,’ I suggested, as I nodded my head. ‘I felt it too, I also felt empty and broken to find you gone in the morning. Which took me completely by surprise. I have never formed an attachment to any of the women I slept with, Lulu McQueen. They were toys, playthings to satisfy my sexual cravings. Yet with you … it appears we fell for each other, but time has been a cruel mistress putting distance between us.’ We stared at each other, a silent understanding passing between us, one of regret. I suddenly felt choked up, a ball of emotion catching in the back of my throat, the sting of salt in my eyes. I shook my head and rolled my shoulders, this was not a pleasant or familiar sensation. Luc Le Grand did not do emotions or tears. ‘So, this is your way of an apology,’ I asked, breaking the uncomfortable silence and tension. ‘For breaking my heart all those years ago? For turning me into a shell of a man and accepting a life with her to further my business career, as a means of distraction?’
‘I guess,’ she mumbled, as a sob left her lips. I shot to my feet and strode over to the bed, feeling my stomach twist in agony at the sound of her tears. It seemed I was not the only one with a belly full of regret, something that oddly eased my sudden bout of pain. I hauled her up into my arms and sat back down onto the bed, cradling her against my chest, breathing in her unique scent that spoke a thousand words to my mind, body and soul.
‘Then let me do something for you,’ I murmured against her strangely coloured hair, quickly realising that she was wearing another
wig.
‘I don’t need anything from you. I don’t deserve anything from you, not after doing what I did to you last week.’
‘You are here, being honest with me are you not?’ I asked, she shrugged and buried her face in my chest, her whole body trembling, as mine heated up to have her so close. ‘We can both turn this situation to our advantage.’
‘How,’ she mumbled.
‘As soon as I saw you last week Lulu McQueen, as soon as I felt that surge of happiness to have you back in my arms, I realised just what depths of despair with her I had sunk to. You woke me up, made me realise that there is more to life. I have already started divorce proceedings and am solidifying my financial position, to brace myself for whatever blow she will inflict. I am well aware of what my wife is capable of, given my connection to her family’s financial institution and how I have benefitted from this over the years. In a few weeks I should have obtained the necessary backing from some of her competitors to ensure that I will survive whatever she throws at me. I will have nothing to lose, she has overstated her hand.’
‘What if she hasn’t? You could lose everything.’
‘Lulu, the businessmen of the calibre I deal with are astute enough to set aside personal and professional dealings. Many of the men I manage portfolios for have had me set up funds for their mistresses, not to mention their secret offspring. Myrtille will certainly be able to throw a curve ball in my path, but with the backing of another AAA rated bank, she will not knock me back to the point that I have to pick up the pieces and start over, from scratch. So, I suggest that you put up your cameras and turn on those microphones, let her see and hear me making love to you. She doesn’t even have to know that it’s you, you can have your team doctor the tapes to eradicate any parts that give away your identity. Together we can create evidence of the affair that she requires. You take this to her in a few weeks when I am ready to face her and her legal team and you get to walk away with two million pounds of her money, with your business and reputation intact, I get the divorce that I want anyway and she thinks she has won. Everyone is happy.’
The Temptress Page 22
