The Frenchman's Marriage Demand

by Chantelle Shaw

  ‘Zac!’ She swallowed hard and tried to tear her gaze from the masculine perfection of his body. His skin gleamed like polished bronze in the lamplight and her eyes skittered down over the rippling muscles of his abdomen, following the path of dark hairs that arrowed down his taut stomach to his thighs. He was aroused—and it was the sight of his boldly erect manhood that finally penetrated the fog clouding her brain. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Taking what you were so blatantly offering to Lucien Giraud,’ he replied coolly, foiling her attempt to scramble off the bed by coming down beside her and pinning her to the mattress with insulting ease.

  ‘I was not.’ Tears stung her eyes at the contempt in his, but her traitorous body recognised its soul mate and molten heat surged through her veins, leaving her weak with longing. One look was all it took to arouse her to fever pitch—what chance did she stand if he touched her, kissed her…? ‘Zac, I don’t want this.’ She twisted her head frantically from side to side, her breath coming in shallow gasps.

  ‘Liar.’ His supreme self-confidence was mortifying, but when he captured her chin and slowly lowered his head, she shook with need and parted her lips to accept the savage mastery of his kiss.

  The bold thrust of his tongue into her mouth should have appalled her, but she was drowning in sensation, her senses set aflame by his potent male heat. After the lonely years apart he was impossible to resist and with a groan she slid her arms around his neck, loving the feel of his silky hair against her fingers.

  Sensing her capitulation, he eased the pressure of his mouth a little so that the kiss became a sensual, evocative tasting that brought fresh tears to her eyes. He was everything to her, the only man she had ever loved, but she meant nothing to him. It destroyed the last vestiges of her pride to accept that, even though he despised her, she wanted to make love with him one last time—a precious memory to cling to during all the bleak years ahead.

  Zac trailed his lips down her throat, his fingers tugging the ribbons at the front of her negligee before he pushed the delicate peach-coloured satin aside to expose her breasts to his hungry gaze. His eyes darkened as he brushed his thumb across her nipple and watched her pupils dilate. ‘I love the way you are so responsive, chérie,’ he said roughly. ‘There’s no pretence with you, is there? You are the most sensual woman I have ever met and I have never been able to get you out of my blood.’

  She tensed, sure that he was taunting her and expecting him to flay her with his sarcasm, but instead he lowered his head and the feel of his tongue drawing moist circles around her areola made her tremble with anticipation. He moved slowly, inexorably towards the centre until his mouth closed around the tight peak of her nipple and she gave a low cry as sensation pierced her. She arched up to him and clutched his shoulders while he teased her and tormented her, and just when she thought she could bear no more he transferred his mouth to her other breast and pleasured her until she was a limp mass of quivering need.

  ‘You want me, Freya, and, God help me, I can’t fight my hunger for you any more,’ Zac growled as he tugged her negligee down over her hips and followed its path with his mouth on her skin—trailing kisses over the sensitive flesh of her stomach to the tiny triangle of peach satin that hid her femininity from his gaze.

  It was purely physical, he reassured himself, his senses flaring when he caught the subtle, feminine scent of her arousal. The sexual attraction between them had always been explosive and, even though he knew she was a cold-blooded liar, he couldn’t resist her. Her skin felt like silk beneath his fingertips and she was so soft and pliant that he had to restrain himself from plunging into her and taking her with primitive passion.

  Drawing a sharp breath, he fought to leash his rampaging hormones as he slid his fingers beneath the lacy edge of her knickers. He pushed the material aside before he lowered his head and stroked his tongue lightly up and down the delicate folds of her femininity, coaxing and teasing until she whimpered and shifted her hips to allow him access to the moist heat within.

  Freya knew she should stop him, but her limbs felt heavy and her entire body throbbed with desire. She couldn’t do this again, couldn’t give herself to a man whose opinion of her was rock-bottom. But Zac was the only man she had ever wanted and she couldn’t deny him, not when it meant denying herself the exquisite pleasure of his possession.

  His wickedly intrusive tongue seemed intent on destroying her self-control as he brought her to the brink and she gasped, part relief, part disappointment, when he suddenly lifted his head and stared down at her. ‘You can’t do this,’ she whispered, shaken by the glittering contempt in his eyes when he removed her knickers with brisk efficiency. ‘You think I’m a cheat and a liar,’ she reminded him desperately, her eyes widening when he reached into the bedside drawer and took out a condom. He made no reply as he fitted it with practised ease and her heart thudded in her chest when he pushed her legs apart and moved over her. ‘How can you make love to a woman you despise?’ she cried jerkily, trembling with hurt and the frantic need to feel him inside her. She made one last despairing effort to halt him by beating her hands on his shoulders until he caught hold of her wrists and forced her arms above her head.

  ‘Unfortunately you’re not the only one to suffer from an embarrassing physical reaction,’ he mockingly reminded her of the excuse she had made after she had climaxed in his arms on the dance floor. ‘My brain tells me you’re a tramp, but my body isn’t so fastidious—it’s just hungry,’ he said grimly as he slid his hand under her bottom, lifted her and effected one deep, shockingly powerful thrust that made her gasp in awe at his potent strength.

  It had been a long time since she had done this, but the ministrations of his hands and mouth had brought her to the peak of sexual arousal and she welcomed the full, rigid length of him as he slowly filled her. As her muscles stretched around him to form a tight, velvet sheath, Zac gave a low growl of satisfaction, eased back a fraction and then thrust again and again, setting a rhythm that she eagerly matched.

  Each strong, deep stroke was sending Freya closer to the edge and she lost all sense of time and place as his male scent swamped her senses while the only sounds she could hear were her breathless cries for him to thrust faster and harder.

  ‘I’ll hurt you,’ he muttered against her throat when she wrapped her legs around his back and urged him on.

  In the dim recess of her mind she recognised the truth of his words—not that she feared he would cause her physical pain, but emotionally he had the power to destroy her. But she blanked out the thought as her whole being focused on the exquisite sensations that were unfurling deep inside her. ‘You won’t,’ she assured him huskily as she arched her hips in mute supplication for him to loosen his hold on his self-control and take her with the primitive force she knew he was capable of. ‘I want you, Zac…I want…’ The rest of her words were lost beneath the pressure of his mouth as he captured her lips in a fierce, drugging kiss that drove everything but her desperate need for fulfilment from her mind.

  Zac’s shoulders and brow were beaded with sweat and his face was a taut mask. He was a skilful lover who knew exactly how to give pleasure, but the time for playful seduction was long past and he was driven by a basic urge to satisfy his hunger. He slid his hands down Freya’s slim body and gripped her buttocks as he drove into her, his jaw clenched as he felt her muscles contract around him.

  He could feel his pleasure building to a crescendo, but just when he feared he could hold back no longer, she gave a sharp cry and her whole body convulsed beneath him in a shattering climax. The sensuous pleasure-pain of her nails raking down his back tipped him over the edge and he paused for an instant before giving one last forceful thrust that annihilated his control and sent shock waves through him as his body shuddered with the power of his release.

  Freya clung to Zac’s sweat-damp body and revelled in the weight of him as the lingering ripples of sensation drained from her. Recriminations were already mustering in her head,
taunting her with her abject stupidity, but she was determined to ignore them for a few more blissful minutes. She could feel Zac’s heartbeat thudding through her and she screwed her eyes shut and breathed in his musky, male scent. Making love with him topped the list of mistakes she had made—in her life that seemed littered with them—but she couldn’t regret it. Despite his mistrust and suspicion and his unshakeable opinion of her, she loved him, she acknowledged sadly, and it seemed likely that she always would.

  Eventually he rolled off her to lay flat on his back, his silence growing more ominous to her ears by the second.

  ‘I’ve decided that I want you back,’ he said in a voice devoid of all emotion, ‘to live here as my mistress the way we once were.’ He turned his head on the pillows and stared at her coldly. ‘You’re like a drug in my veins and, although I despise myself, I seem to be addicted to you,’ he grated harshly. ‘I’m prepared to overlook your…indiscretion with Brooks, and if you stay I’ll accept your child and provide for her as if she were my own. But if you ever look at another man the way you looked at Lucien Giraud tonight, so help me, chérie, I will not be responsible for my actions.’

  For a few seconds Freya stared at him in stunned silence while her brain assimilated his words. Bitterness, humiliation and rage congealed her blood and she closed her eyes for a moment, shocked by the level of pain he could still inflict on her. How could she love him when he seemed determined to shred her heart into a thousand pieces? She obviously possessed a masochistic streak, she thought as agony swept through her.

  ‘If—overlooking my indiscretion with Brooks—is your way of saying that you forgive me for having sex with Simon, you’re wasting your breath,’ she said tightly, her voice shaking with emotion. ‘At a risk of repeating myself, I never slept with him or anyone else—ever.’ She pushed against his chest with a force borne of desperation, terrified that she was actually going to be sick. ‘How dare you! How dare you take that high and mighty tone with me? Your arrogance sickens me—you sicken me,’ she flung at him.

  All this time she’d struggled as a single mother, juggling work and childcare and using her few precious hours of free time while Aimee slept to study for her degree, in the hope that she could improve her financial situation. And all the while Zac had lived here in his luxury penthouse apartment, refusing to accept that he was the father of her child while he thought the worst of her. Not for much longer, she thought furiously. The results of the DNA test would force him to accept the truth and she hoped he suffered an overdose of remorse when he realised how cruelly he had misjudged her.

  He was staring at her through narrowed eyes, his jaw tense, but she no longer felt overawed by him. Her pride had finally come to her rescue and, although it was way too late to salvage her self-respect, she had to try. With jerky movements she dragged her negligee over her head, ignoring the pain in her wrist. The pain in her heart was a thousand times worse and she scrambled to her feet, desperate to escape before she broke down in front of him. ‘I don’t need anything from you, Zac, certainly not your arrogant assertion that you’ll overlook something I didn’t even do,’ she told him fiercely. ‘But one day soon you’ll come crawling to me on your hands and knees, and hear me now—I will never forgive you for your treatment of me.’

  Freya woke with a start as sunlight filtered through the blinds and slanted across her face. Dazedly she stared at the clock on her beside table and gave a disbelieving frown—surely it couldn’t really be ten a.m.? She sat up and groaned as she quickly fastened the front of her nightgown, her cheeks flaming when she recalled how Zac had stripped her last night before he had pushed her flat on her back and taken her with a savagery that had escalated her excitement to fever pitch.

  What did that make her? she wondered dismally as she recalled her wanton response to him. And how could she have been so stupid and so utterly lacking in pride? He had looked down his arrogant nose at her while he’d stated that he was prepared to overlook her affair with Simon Brooks, but she was innocent and his lack of faith hurt as much now as it had two years ago. Every day that she spent with him he stripped away another layer of her protective shell, leaving her raw and vulnerable, and she knew she had to leave before the damage to her heart was irreparable.

  A hesitant tap on the door heralded the arrival of the maid. ‘Ah, you are awake,’ Elise said with a smile. ‘Shall I bring you breakfast in bed?’

  ‘No, thank you, Elise.’ Freya jumped to her feet. ‘Where is my daughter?’

  ‘She is in the pool with Monsieur Deverell.’

  Freya snatched up her robe and paused on the way to the en suite to stare blankly at the maid. ‘Zac has taken Aimee swimming?’ she queried, her voice sounding sharp as panic and confusion mingled. To her chagrin, Aimee had developed an instant fascination with Zac and, to give him credit, he treated the little girl with a gentle patience that he never revealed to anyone else—certainly not her, Freya thought bleakly.

  Elise nodded. ‘Madame Lewis is with them. Monsieur Deverell said that you’d had a disturbed night, and should be left alone to sleep,’ she told Freya innocently. ‘I’ll tell him you are awake now. He wishes to see you in his study as soon as you are dressed.’

  The temptation to pass on a message to Zac telling him to go to hell was so strong that Freya had to bite her lip. It wasn’t fair to involve the penthouse staff in their private war, she reminded herself, and had to be content with cursing him beneath her breath as she stormed into the bathroom.

  After the quickest shower on record, she dressed in a simple skirt and blouse suitable for travelling in, although her injured wrist still made it impossible for her to fasten her bra. She packed the few belongings she had brought from England and moved into the nursery where she swiftly stowed Aimee’s clothes into a holdall ready for their immediate departure. With any luck Zac was still on the roof-garden, she thought as she raced along to his study and scooted across to his desk to search for her and Aimee’s passports. One thing was certain, after her humiliating capitulation in his bed she could not risk remaining in Monaco for another night.

  ‘Looking for something?’ His lazy drawl brought her head up and she blushed and jumped guiltily away from the desk to find him standing in the doorway.

  ‘Passports,’ she replied, swallowing at the sight of him in chinos and a cream shirt, open at the neck to reveal the tanned column of his throat. ‘Aimee and I are leaving. I refuse to stay here and be subjected to your vile accusations any more,’ she said heatedly.

  ‘Ah.’ He stepped into the room and her heart lurched when he shut the door behind him and turned the key in the lock.

  She could not look at him without remembering how she had writhed beneath him in abject surrender just hours before and she gave a silent groan of despair as her body stirred into instant life. Her palms felt suddenly damp and she wiped them down her skirt. ‘Elise said you wanted to see me about something,’ she muttered, tension prickling her skin when he moved towards her. As he walked around his desk she edged away from him, and at his terse command to sit down she subsided into the chair facing him.

  He studied her speculatively for a few moments, but his gaze did not quite meet hers and she gained the curious impression that he felt awkward.

  ‘I owe you an apology,’ he said brusquely.

  Astounded, she stared at him, wondering if she had heard him correctly. Zac apologising to her had to be a first, but the fact that he felt the need to made her realise how much he obviously regretted making love to her. ‘It’s all right,’ she mumbled as she inspected her lap with sudden fascination. ‘I’m not proud of my behaviour either. We just got carried away, but obviously it’s an experience neither of us wants to repeat.’

  Black eyebrows winged upwards. ‘I was not apologising for last night, chérie,’ he said silkily, his eyes glinting with amusement. ‘It was an incredible experience that I have every intention of repeating. You enjoyed it too,’ he added before she could comment, ‘so don’t play th
e innocent martyr with me because you’re a wildcat in bed and I have the scratches on my back to prove it.’

  ‘Oh!’ Scarlet-faced, she wished a hole would open up and swallow her, and more than anything she longed to wipe his smug grin from his face.

  ‘My only regret about last night is that I was rough with you,’ he continued, his husky, accented voice sliding over her like a velvet cloak. ‘I was, as you so succinctly put it, carried away, and I’m afraid that in my urgency to possess you I might have hurt you. Did I, ma petite?’

  His words evoked a stark image in Freya’s mind of how she had begged him to take her; how she had enticed him with her desperate pleas to move faster and thrust deeper into her as he took her to the heights of sexual ecstasy. Zac’s regrets had nothing on hers, she thought sickly, tearing her gaze from the knowing gleam in his. ‘No,’ she choked thickly, ‘you didn’t hurt me, but last night was a mistake I regret bitterly.’

  She ran a shaky hand through her hair and forced herself to look at him. ‘If it wasn’t…that, then what are you apologising for?’

  In reply he took a folded document from the drawer and handed it to her. For a few seconds Freya’s heart stopped beating and then started again at twice its normal rate. She knew instinctively that it was the results of the paternity test and she stared at him without opening it. ‘I already know what it says,’ she told him quietly. ‘And now, so do you.’

  She searched his face for some sign that would tell her how he felt about learning that Aimee was his child, but his expression was shuttered. This should be her moment of triumph, but she felt empty inside. For two years she’d played out a stupid daydream in her head that one day he would discover he was Aimee’s father and would immediately beg her to forgive him for the way he had treated her, before sweeping her into his arms and pleading for a chance for them to live together as a family—in true happy-ever-after tradition. His grim face shattered her dream and the little seed of hope she’d carried in her heart withered and died. He didn’t want their child any more than he wanted her, and it was about time she accepted that fact.