Pleasure Games

by Daire St. Denis

  Luca leaned forward and kissed her softly once more, whispering in her ear. “Oh, and you may want to destroy those instructions after reading. They are for your eyes only.”

  When he walked out the door, every pair of eyes in the salon watched him go.

  Jasmine’s hand shook as she opened the envelope. She skimmed over the message once and then read it again, slowly. As she reread it for the third time, her heart fluttered in her throat when she reached the last line.

  Panties optional.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  WOULD SHE SHOW? Luca’s doubts far outweighed his confidence. He was also taking a big risk—no, a huge risk—by suggesting this rendezvous. But if there was one thing he’d learned, Jasmine was worth the risk.

  Thankfully, the paparazzi weren’t quite as fierce as they had been a few weeks ago. There was always a new scandal somewhere for them to prey upon. Besides, his televised declaration of love seemed to have swayed public opinion, especially when it’d been followed up with an announcement that he’d be running the estate, after all...with his brother. Now the world knew there were two Legrand heirs.

  He waited in the shadows of salon five in the Musée d’Orsay, the old train station in Paris that had been converted into a museum. It was not nearly as large as the Louvre, and it was much quieter. A necessity for what he had in mind.

  He checked his watch. It was five minutes past the appointed afternoon time. And then it was ten.

  Fifteen.

  She wasn’t coming.

  Suddenly a woman appeared in the entrance of the salon. She wore a red dress—bless her heart—a black bag over her shoulder and black heels that did amazing things to her already shapely legs. Her dark hair fell in stylish waves past her shoulders. She stopped inside the salon, glanced around, referred to a pamphlet in her hand and moved inside.

  She stood in front of L’âge d’or: La nuit by Léon Frédéric, just as Luca had instructed. He’d chosen this salon for its remoteness in the museum.

  He walked up behind her quietly, hoping she wouldn’t hear him.

  However, perhaps she felt his presence, as he did hers, because as soon as he was within earshot, she spoke. “Americans should adopt the European attitude toward the naked body.” Her voice was low and husky.

  “Do you think so?”

  “Oh, yes. We’re much too uptight.” She tilted her head to take a better look at the rendition of a group of people, mostly naked, sleeping together in a field. “The human body is very beautiful.”

  He brushed hair from her shoulder. “You are very beautiful,” he said softly against her skin. Then he raised her chin and turned her toward him.

  Her eyes were large and liquid as she gazed up at him.

  “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  She blinked and he felt her soft breath on his cheek. “You’re a hard man to say no to, Luca Legrand.”

  Relief filled him. “I hope that’s a good thing.”

  “Sometimes.” She smiled up at him.

  He recognized that smile. A lethal mixture of sensuousness and innocence.

  His relief grew. “I would like to thank you for making the trip.”

  She bit down on her lower lip. “How would you go about doing that? Thanking me?”

  “There are so many ways, Jasmine.” It was true. He wanted to be so many things to this woman. Her lover, yes, but more, too. He wanted to be the man she woke up to, the man she shared her fears and hopes and dreams with. He wanted to laugh with her, cook with her, read books together on a cozy couch. He wanted to share his life with her.

  While her presence suggested much, he needed desperately to know that she believed in him and there was only one way to find out.

  “Do you trust me?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t know, you’ve given me very little reason to trust you.” She shifted from one foot to the other. “Why?”

  While she was playing it cool, Luca could feel the warmth emanating from her skin, telling him that she already knew where this was going. He had been explicit in his letter...

  He leaned close and whispered in her ear. “There is a fantasy of yours I would very much like to fulfill.”

  Breath stuttered inside her throat. “Oh?” She was trying to sound coy. It was so fucking sweet.

  “But it requires trust.” He paused. “Can you forgive me enough to place your trust in me?”

  She blinked up at him, carefully considering his question. Good, because it was critical to him that she knew what she wanted. What he wanted.

  “Please?”

  “O-kay...”

  Relief washed over him and Luca curbed the urge to shout with joy. Instead, he took her hand and led her into an even smaller and quieter gallery adjacent to the one they’d just been in. Luca directed her to the corner, so she was standing behind a display of a statue and he stood close behind her, their backs to the wall. “Look at the sculpture. Read the inscription.”

  “But I can’t read French...”

  His hand slid beneath the hem of her skirt, moving upward. “Try. Say it out loud.”

  “Um... Jean Hugues...” Her breath caught as his fingers explored higher: her thighs, her bare ass—Jesus!—the front of her.

  “Luca?” She glanced over her shoulder. “Are you sure?”

  “Shh,” he whispered. “Spread your legs, lean forward and keep reading.”

  Instead of words, a soft gasp slipped out of her mouth.

  The result was a fierce tightening in his groin. “There is no one else in this room. The light is dim. No one can see.” He was barely touching her, yet he could feel heat on the inside of her thighs and her skin was lightly damp. “Read.”

  “Torse de jeune-...” She grunted when he delicately parted her soft lips.

  “Go on,” he murmured, pressing his fingertips into her warm core.

  “Fille.” She angled her head. “I’m not saying that right, am I?”

  “You’re doing fine.” His other hand slid beneath her hair and around her neck as two fingers slid deeper inside of her.

  “What...what does that mean?” She panted.

  “Torse de jeune-fille means torso of a young girl.” Curving his fingers, he pressed against the satiny walls of her channel.

  “Ahhh...” Her back arched as she raised her ass into his hand.

  “Tell me, do you like being fingered in public?”

  “Yes.” She rocked back into him.

  “Are you worried someone will see?” He withdrew his fingers from her heat and rubbed the moisture across her pussy and clit before playing around the tight little opening of her ass.

  “Maybe...but...no. Not really,” she said, followed by a soft whine.

  Christ. So many things he still wanted to do with this woman. She was so willing and passionate and ravenous in her sexual appetite.

  And she was here. She’d come. That had to mean something. She wouldn’t have come all this way just for sex. It had to mean more.

  It did for him.

  A man walked into the room, glanced in their direction and then moved to study the Renoir near the entrance. Jasmine squeaked softly against his palm.

  “Shh,” he murmured in her ear. His hand drifted from her mouth to her jaw and down to her shoulder where he brushed hair away to place a soft kiss on her bare skin.

  “Luca.” His name was a soft moan.

  “I’m not going to stop until you come.” He nibbled her ear. “I want your come in the palm of my hand.”

  His comment resulted in her grinding into his hand.

  “This sculptor? Jean Hugues? How do you think he knows a woman’s torso so well?” He paused, even though he didn’t expect an answer. “By touching her.” He rubbed her fat little clit with his thumb while he vibrated his fingers inside of
her. “Caressing her.” While his hand on her shoulder and throat was gentle, the one beneath her skirt was not. “He probably fucked her in every way possible,” he whispered softly in her ear.

  The low whine, which Luca had come to learn meant she was close, started deep in her chest.

  “Shh, ma colombe.” He rubbed his jaw against her hair while he placed his palm flat between her legs, cupping her. “You need to keep quiet when you come.”

  Her whole body flinched within the circle of his arms and a surge of moisture filled his hand.

  “Yes, just like that.” He buried his face in her hair. “Luca.” She clung to him and he loved it. God he loved it.

  In fact, he loved it so much—loved her so much—he swept the hair away from her ear and told her how he felt.

  * * *

  Oh. My. God. She’d had an orgasm in a museum. With other people in the room. It was...unbelievable! But even better—like a billion times better—was the fact that Luca had told her that he loved her.

  And this time she believed him.

  After the museum, Luca took her to the Eiffel Tower and they went up to the top where a wind gust threatened to expose her, literally, to the world. As if she hadn’t been exposed enough in the last month. But none of that mattered anymore because she was here, at the Eiffel Tower, not gazing at it from a balcony alone but sharing it with the man she loved.

  It made all the difference.

  Once they were back down on the ground, Luca unpacked a picnic lunch and spread everything on a blanket on the grass. Before he let her sit, however, he wrapped his arms around her, held her close and whispered wonderful things in her ear.

  Not naughty things—well, there may have been a couple of naughty suggestions—but mostly it was about how he felt about her. How scared he’d been that she wouldn’t show today. How he wanted to make her dreams come true, and her fantasies—like they’d just done. But mostly he wanted to prove to her that this was about more than sex.

  It was about connection and understanding and about two people who trusted one another.

  She turned in his arms and linked her hands around his neck. “Luca?”

  “Yes?”

  “I forgive you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “That simple?”

  “Um...you call confessing your love on international TV, giving up your inheritance, flying across the country to give me a lamp and then flying me here, simple?”

  He laughed. “Well, when you put it that way...”

  She went up on tiptoes and kissed him soundly on the mouth. Then she tilted her chin up and said, “By the way, I love you, too.”

  He whooped at the sky, then picked her up and spun her around.

  “Careful,” she squealed so he’d set her down. She patted her skirt into place. “I’m not wearing anything under this, remember?” She laughed, wondering at how life could change. Luca brought out extremes of emotions, from the most pleasure she’d ever experienced to the greatest anger. In between those extremes, her heart had ached for him. All of it, all of the emotions—even the extremes—made her feel more alive than she’d ever felt.

  They sat down and shared a lunch of bread, cheese, wine and pastries gathered from local shops. They were not the only picnickers in the park and Luca borrowed a corkscrew from a neighboring group.

  God, she loved Paris. The people were so uninhibited.

  Here she was drinking wine in a public place after being fingered in a public place, hanging out with a rich and famous man in a public place.

  This was living.

  “You’re smiling.”

  “I’m happy.” She gazed at him. “Thank you for inviting me here.” She covered his hand. “And thank you for...” She bit her lip. “Saying what you said in the press conference. I hope you didn’t really give everything up for me.”

  “Of course I did.” He grinned and there was a flash of mischief in his eyes. “But, as it turns out, my brother is a better man than I am. I’d intended to make him CEO, but we have decided to run the company together.” He took a drink of wine and a far-off look came into his eyes. “It’s what my father would’ve wanted.”

  “Oh, Luca.” She leaned over and kissed him.

  He kissed her back with the freedom and joy of a Parisien in love.

  “However, I have a new venture I am thinking about.” He stroked her cheek. “Though I need a partner.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. I want to market my mother’s wines again. It’s the area I love. The wines I love. It is a shame to let those vines go to waste.”

  “That sounds like an amazing idea.”

  “Yes. I think so.” He took her free hand. “And I’m wondering if you would consider being my partner in that venture?”

  She sat up, stunned. “You want me to come back to the villa?”

  “Yes. It will be hard work and it may not be your passion, becoming a vintner. So, give yourself some time—”

  “Yes!” Jasmine threw her arms around him before he could finish. “Yes, of course, yes.” She smiled up at him. What he was asking her was so different from a man telling her he wanted to take care of her.

  Being partners? That sounded like a dream come true. “From the very first, that place seemed more like home to me than anywhere else I’ve ever lived.”

  “It’s not too...provincial?”

  “No. I love it there.”

  “Bien.” He handed her wine back to her and they clinked glasses. “You may have to learn French.”

  “J’ai déjà commencé.” I’ve already started.

  Jasmine smiled broadly at Luca’s look of surprised approval. Then she squirmed when he whispered something about looking forward to teaching her more intimate French things while he inched his hand up beneath her skirt.

  She playfully slapped his hand away and rearranged her skirt, grinning. Then Jasmine reclined so that she could put her head in Luca’s lap.

  “I told you,” she said softly, eyes closed.

  “Told me what?”

  “That happy endings make the best stories.”

  She opened her eyes to find Luca gazing down at her with adoration in his eyes. “Touché,” he whispered.

  * * * * *

  If you liked PLEASURE GAMES, why not try

  BURN ME ONCE by Clare Connelly

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  Keep reading for an excerpt from LEGAL ATTRACTION by Lisa Childs.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  DAMN IT! RONAN HALL had been seeing her everywhere. But then, Muriel Sanz was everywhere: on every billboard in Times Square and on the cover of every magazine in every newsstand in the city. Hell, in every city...

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