“Raw sugar, then.”
The waitress looked toward Daniel as if he were an interpreter. “What’s raw sugar?”
“Brown sugar if you can’t provide raw,” Isabelle said, annoyed. “Thank you very much.”
“About the mug, I can’t make any promises.”
Isabelle waved her hand in the air. “I am certain you will do your best.”
Bronson placed his order. The waitress understood him perfectly.
“Is my accent that incomprehensible?” she asked as the waitress hurried away. “People are always giving me the strangest looks when I place an order.”
“It’s not what you order, princess, it’s the way you do it.”
He got up and shrugged out of his coat, then reached for her shawl. She watched him as he looked around for a coat rack. His chestnut hair was longer than the last time, streaked blond in places by the sun. It gave him an agreeably rakish quality that provided a counterpoint to his urbane choice of clothing. His eyes were the same vivid green that she’d remembered, a color so intense and vital that again she thought it couldn’t possibly be real.
He was bigger, though, than she’d remembered, his shoulders broader, his legs longer and more powerful. It was as if he was most himself in the city of his birth, drawing upon the power of the streets and avenues and making it his own. Although it didn’t make a jot of sense, she noticed her heart was pounding so hard inside her chest that she found it difficult to breathe.
He found a hook near the back wall and hung the coat and shawl. His walk was both elegant and athletic. How he managed the combination was beyond her. Why it should matter was even more of a mystery. The man meant nothing to her. Fate might see fit to throw them together time and again, but in the grand scheme of things, their lives could never mesh.
He sat down opposite her.
“So tell me, princess, did she kick you out for sleeping with her husband?”
She bristled. “He wasn’t her husband when I was sleeping with him.”
“Small distinction when you’re the wounded wife.”
“I don’t care to talk about this, Mr. Bronson.”
“I think you do.”
“How could you possibly know what I want to talk about?”
“Call it a lucky guess.”
She refused to acknowledge the fact that he was right. Or the terrifying suspicion that they were inching toward uncharted territory. He had no business knowing her so well when he really didn’t know her at all.
“She stole Eric away from me.” Her words tumbled together in her haste to be rid of them. “She slept with Eric while he and I were involved. She was pregnant when they got married.”
“When did you find this out?”
“The night before Papa died.” Quickly, sparing no one, not even herself, she laid the whole ugly story out on the table before them. “If he hadn’t forgotten to keep the phony due date straight, I would have slept with him that night at the chalet. I had believed—I had convinced myself that he loved me and that after the baby was born, he would leave Juliana and marry me.”
“He’ll never leave her, princess, and it has nothing to do with you.”
“I know,” she said, looking down at the paper place mat on the tabletop. “Eric is a coward.”
“He’s also his father’s pawn. When he married your sister, he married her for life. His old man’s not about to let go of the keys to the kingdom. Not for something as unimportant as happiness.”
“I fear it isn’t much of a kingdom.” She loved her homeland, but she wasn’t blind to its shortcomings.
“Wait’ll Malraux puts up his casinos. You won’t recognize the place when he’s finished.”
She shuddered. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Can’t say I blame you.”
A flash of memory returned. “Didn’t you have some plans for Perreault, as well?”
“Could’ve made a big difference to your economy.”
“And to yours as well.”
“It’s a dead issue now, princess. I just came back from Japan a few hours ago.”
“Were you on holiday?”
“Business. I’m going back at the beginning of the year to oversee the project.”
“You certainly don’t waste time on regrets, do you, Mr. Bronson?”
“Not if I can help it.” That piratical grin slashed across his face.
The waitress appeared next to them. “Okay, coffee regular and tea, lemon on the side, with some kind of fancy sugar. Anything else?” They both shook their heads. She slapped their check facedown on the table. “Have a nice day, folks.”
Isabelle watched as he lifted his cup of coffee and brought it to his mouth. A powerful image of herself in his arms, his lips hot against hers, seared her brain, and she shook her head to be rid of it.
He put down the cup. His hands were large, the fingers tapering. They were beautiful hands, capable hands. Hands that would know how to gentle a woman, how to give her pleasure.
An odd sensation of destiny was building inside her chest, and she knew the only way she could deal with it was to run for her life. She stood up. “This has been delightful, Mr. Bronson, but I must dash.” She would put distance and time between them, anything that would make this strange feeling disappear.
He grabbed her wrist. His fingers encircled it with room to spare. “Not yet.”
She made to pull away, but he held her fast. “There’s really nothing else to say.”
“Have dinner with me.”
“No.”
“We need to talk.”
“We don’t talk, Bronson,” she said, a wild laugh escaping her lips. “We argue, and I’m sick unto death of arguing.”
“My name is Daniel.”
Oh God. “Dinner would be a dreadful mistake. We can’t spend five minutes with each other without getting into a row.”
“The problem isn’t that we don’t like each other, princess. The problem is that we want each other.”
Her body flamed with sudden heat. “Speak for yourself.” Dear Lord, she sounded soft, yielding—eager. “I’m not looking for a man. I don’t want anything except to be left alone to live my life.”
“When I thought you were still sleeping with that bastard, I wanted to kill him.” His voice was low, filled with dark promise.
“You’re scaring me, Bronson.”
“I’m scaring myself. Everything about this is wrong, but I don’t give a damn.”
He released his grip on her wrist. She didn’t move away. “Tell me I’m crazy, and I’ll leave you alone.”
“You’re crazy,” Her voice was a whisper.
“I’m not going to leave you alone.”
“And you’re a liar.” Her eyes fluttered closed for a moment. “I’m glad.”
He told her what he wanted to do to her right there backed up against the wall of the coffee shop. A line of fire blazed from her brain down to the juncture of her thighs. He brought her right hand to his mouth, then kissed the inside of her palm. Her nipples grew hard in response.
“The waitress,” Isabelle said. “She’s watching us.”
He tossed a twenty-dollar bill down on the table, then held out his hand to her. “Come on, princess. Let’s see what this is all about.”
Chapter
Ten
Daniel’s apartment was an eight-room duplex on the top two floors of a building that overlooked Central Park. The elevator operator smiled at them as the doors slid open. “Good to see you, home, Mr. Bronson,” he said as they exited the car on the forty-ninth floor.
Bronson met his eyes, equal to equal. “Thanks, George. Regards to Emma and the kids. Tell Jason I hope he wins the quarterback spot on his team.”
“Will do, Mr. B. That’ll make his day.” The man nodded politely toward Isabelle.
She looked at Bronson curiously as he unlocked the door to his apartment. She wouldn’t have figured him to take note of elevator operators or the other peopl
e who served him. In the world she came from, they were an invisible part of the landscape of privilege. To Bronson, however, they were real people with names and families.
He swung open the door and motioned her inside.
“It’s a little stark,” he said as he closed the door behind them. “I’m not much on decor.”
She glanced around, quickly noting the white walls, the uncurtained windows, the black leather couch in the middle of the room. Her eye was drawn to an oil painting resting against the far wall. The slashes of crimson paint seemed to throb with life.
“That’s magnificent,” she said, moving toward the canvas.
He followed her gaze. “My sister Pat’s husband is an artist.” He moved toward her.
“You should hang it properly. If you leave it like that, the canvas will warp.”
“I’ll get around to it.”
She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the bloodred splashes of paint. “You should do it now. It would be a shame if—”
“Quiet, princess.”
“—the canvas shifted or—”
“Shut up.”
He reached for her, and she was in his arms in the space of a heartbeat. “You’re going to kiss me now, aren’t you?”
He crushed her closer to his body, so close his heat became her own. “That was the general idea.”
“This seems a wonderful time to do it.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
She lifted her chin. He lowered his head. His breath smelled faintly of coffee. She wrapped her arms about his neck, threading her fingers through the cool, silky strands of his hair. Hunger rose within her, dark and magnificent, a hunger like she had never known before. There was nothing safe about this man, nothing deferential or yielding.
“Open for me, princess,” he whispered against her mouth. “Let me taste you.”
Her lips parted on a moan. He claimed her swiftly, his tongue sweeping across her teeth, tasting, savoring, drawing her into a sweetly fatal battle of parry and thrust, domination and surrender. She wanted more. She slid her hands inside his jacket and frantically worked to strip him of it. He shrugged out of the garment, then threw it across the room, followed quickly by his tie. He pulled her shawl off her shoulders, and it fell to the floor, a pool of black silk.
Still it wasn’t enough. She fumbled with the buttons of his shirt. He reached behind her and tugged at the zipper of her dress. She felt a rush of cool air on her heated flesh, then gasped as he pressed his hand flat against her skin, matching her heat with his own. She bared his chest to her eyes and mouth. The mat of thick hair was soft against her cheek. The smell of his skin made her feel faint with longing. He was more beautifully made than a man had a right to be.
“This isn’t enough,” he said, his voice, a low rumble against the curve of her breast.
“I know,” she whispered in a voice that seemed to come from far away.
Claiming her mouth again, he swept her up into his arms and strode down the hallway, not breaking the kiss. There was a door at the far end of the corridor. He kicked it open with his foot. They fell to the bed together in a wildly erotic tangle of limbs. He pulled away long enough to strip off his clothes.
“Stop.” Her voice was husky with desire. “Let me see you.”
He towered over her as she looked up at him. His body was tanned a light gold all over, except for the faint outline of a small bathing suit. His chest and arms were powerfully muscled. He stood with his legs apart, and a deep throbbing pulse came to life between her own legs as she stared at his erection. He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen, and she wanted him in a way that defied reason.
She lay there trembling as he knelt on the bed beside her. The bodice of her dress had fallen off her shoulders. The skirt was bunched around her hips. The intensity of his gaze both thrilled and terrified her. Instinctively she made to cover herself, but he stopped her.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, stroking the line of her calf with his index finger. “So small, so perfect.”
She gasped as he encircled her ankle with his hand then bent to place his mouth against her instep.
“Don’t,” she whispered. She felt vulnerable and uncertain, more innocent and untried than when her dreams had been the dreams of a virgin.
“I’m going to love you, princess, every inch of you. And I’m going to make it last.”
Shoes, panty hose—her clothing vanished. He took her to a place she’d never been, a place she’d never imagined. She came to life wherever he touched, as if she’d been waiting all her life for the heat of his mouth to awaken her. Her foot, her ankle, the muscle of her calf, the tender flesh of her inner thighs, the—
“Not!” This was insane. He couldn’t. She shouldn’t let him. “You can’t possibly want to—”
“I want you to open for me, princess,” he said for the second time, his mouth against the most sensitive part of her body, the most secret. Her hips began to move to a deeper rhythm, and she felt herself tumbling over the edge. “You’re so sweet, princess, hot and wet—”
Her cry of pleasure filled the room as he flicked his tongue against her swollen flesh, then covered her with his mouth. Wave after wave of sensation swept her farther out into the dark sea of sexuality.
Still it wasn’t enough. The aching void inside could be eased only one way, the oldest way on earth, the most wondrous. His mouth left a hot, wet trail along the flesh of her belly and ribcage. He drew each nipple into his mouth in turn, suckling hard, causing her womb to contract violently in response. She trailed her fingernails across his nipples, then moved down across his belly until she found him. She took him in her hand, the hard length of him smooth and hot beneath her fingers. She wanted to run her tongue up his shaft, taste him, know that she had demanded this fierce response from him.
But Bronson had other ideas. He pushed her back on the mattress, then spread her thighs with his powerful hands. “Tell me what you want, princess.”
She reached for him. He leaned away.
“You know what I want.”
“Say it, princess. Let me hear you say it.”
The words tore from her throat. “You, Bronson. Damn it, I want you.”
He’d waited a long time to hear those words. Longer even than he realized. The sound of her husky voice saying his name was almost enough to bring him to climax. But he wasn’t going to cheat either one of them out of one second of pleasure, not if he could help it.
He positioned himself between her slender thighs. She had a tiny birthmark to the right of her navel, fashioned in the shape of a heart. He leaned forward to kiss it, catching the scent of her, feeling her warmth. She whimpered in the back of her throat, arching her back off the mattress. Those dark, unfathomable eyes never left him. She watched, eyes widening slightly, as he entered her, and he couldn’t remember a moment more powerfully sexual. Or more dangerously real.
It was the last thing he remembered before insanity took hold. They came together with heat and urgency, a mating so primitive that no words could contain the powerful emotions he felt as he buried himself inside her body.
She rose to meet his thrusts, wrapping her legs about his hips and working her muscles in a way that made him groan out loud. She urged him on with hands and mouth and thighs until he came violently, his body wracked with waves of pleasure so intense they bordered on pain.
Afterward, after the storm had passed, they lay together, still joined, her breasts pressed against his chest, her long, dark hair obscuring her face. He touched her cheek with his finger, then brushed her hair back. She nuzzled against him like a kitten.
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded. “Mmm.”
He listened to the sound of their breathing, the faraway rumble of traffic on the street below, the ringing of his telephone. He waited for the inevitable moment when he’d grow aware of his cramping muscles, of the hour, of the need to reclaim himself from the situation, but it didn’t come.
> Sex was an old and familiar pleasure, but there was nothing familiar about the way he was feeling right now. He felt complete, as if it had taken this moment with Isabelle in his arms to put all the puzzle pieces of his soul into place.
An illusion. It had to be. Some kind of sleight of hand that occurred when the sex was volcanic and the stars were in the right position. It would diminish with repetition, fade away until the whole thing became a question of bodies, not souls. Nothing this good could possibly last. No man in his right mind would want it to.
* * *
The second time they made love slowly. There was a sweet grace to their movements, a tenderness that bordered on sacramental. They climaxed together, one ripple of sensation after another, so deep and intense that it seemed as if they were one person.
Neither spoke of it afterward, but it was there in the room with them, this sense that physical pleasure was only part of what had happened between them.
“Do you remember the first time we met?” she asked as he drew a quilt up over their naked bodies. “The first moment?”
He lay down again and pulled her close until she was lying across his chest. “This time last year. The Tricentennial,” He kissed her mouth. “You were wearing a shimmery peach-colored gown, and your hair was stacked up on top of your head. I kept wondering what you would do if I pulled out the pins and let it tumble around your shoulders. When I asked you to dance, you told me to go to hell.”
“I would never have said something so common.”
He laughed. “You’re going all royal on me, princess.”
“If I recall, you didn’t ask me to dance with you, you asked me to go out onto the terrace for some nefarious reason of your own.”
“I’d forgotten that part.”
“If I’d known how wonderful it would be, I might have said yes.”
“What would you say if I told you I’d only wanted to ask about my chances with your old man and the ski resort?”
“I’d say chivalry was dead and buried, and there was no hope left for civilization as we know it.”
“What else do you remember, princess?”
She looked at him curiously. “Can it be the great and mighty Daniel Bronson is fishing for a compliment?”
The Princess and the Billionaire (Billionaire Lovers - Book #2) Page 12
