by Abby Green
She cringed with humiliation the whole way because, whether he’d intended it or not, Luc had just proven that he might still want her, but she was the last woman on earth he’d take into his bed again. She might’ve felt like Cinderella going to the ball tonight, but wearing a pretty dress and dancing with a prince wasn’t enough to make her a princess.
* * *
A short time later, Luc stood with a towel slung around his waist on the balcony of his opulent hotel suite. The moon reflected off the River Liffey where it snaked its way through Dublin city centre. He could hear late night revellers’ shouts drifting up from the street. He took a sip of the finest Irish whiskey, but nothing could put a dent in the levels of his arousal. Not even the cold shower he’d just taken.
What the hell was he thinking denying himself the pleasures of female flesh? Even if it was Nessa O’Sullivan and she came with a million and one complications.
Because of the way she looks at you...and because of the questions she asks that reach right down to a place you don’t care to analyse.
Luc cursed. He’d told her about Pierre. Pierre Fortin had been one of Luc’s saving graces while growing up, teaching him about this fantastical world of horses and racing.
Luc had called his very first racehorse Fortin’s Legacy, after his friend.
He never spoke about Pierre. It was too personal, too close to the bone. Sometimes grief for his old friend resurfaced, taking him by surprise with its intensity. But, for the first time, he felt as if he’d done a disservice to his friend by not talking about him more.
Luc cursed again. Tricky questions or no tricky questions, he still wanted Nessa. He realised now that denying himself the carnal satisfaction of taking her to bed again was doing nothing but messing with his head.
He wanted her on a physical level. That was all. And maybe if he reminded her of the physical, it would dissuade her from thinking about anything else. Like asking awkward questions that he wasn’t interested in answering or thinking about.
* * *
Nessa came second in the next race. Not a win but very respectable all the same. Pete was ecstatic. As for Luc—his reaction, Nessa couldn’t figure out, because his expression was always so unreadable and he’d given nothing away when she’d seen him on the sidelines after she’d finished the race.
A few days had passed since the function and she’d hardly seen him. Apparently he’d been in Dublin for meetings, and he’d also visited Paris in the meantime.
Nessa told herself that she didn’t care, as she checked herself in the mirror of the VIP guests’ bathroom. She pulled at the cream lace pencil skirt she was wearing, feeling overdressed. It had a matching top. Pascal had told her she’d need to dress up for the press, so she’d brought some of the clothes that the stylist had left for her from the night of the function.
She’d pulled her hair back so it looked as sleek as possible and had it in a low bun at the back of her head, and she wore one of those ridiculous-looking fascinator hats, set to the side of her head. She sighed, hoping she looked presentable, and made her way to the VIP room to meet Pascal.
When she got to the plush suite, however, it was empty. There were some refreshments lined up on a table but Nessa ignored her growling stomach and helped herself to some water, not wanting to be caught with a bun in her mouth and crumbs all over her clothes.
The room had an enviable view of the track where races were still being run, but it was blocked off from the other suites, making it very private.
She heard the door open behind her and turned around to greet Pascal and whatever press he’d brought with him but it wasn’t Pascal. It was Luc, in his three-piece suit. Looking like the most uncivilised civilised man on the planet.
His dark gaze swept up and down and Nessa’s skin prickled with self-consciousness and awareness. ‘Pascal told me to dress appropriately for the press.’
‘You look very...appropriate,’ Luc said. Nessa heard the unmistakable turning of the lock in the door, and her heart-rate increased as Luc prowled into the room like a predator approaching his prey.
Nessa took a step back and said nervously, ‘Pascal and the press are going to be here any minute.’
Luc shook his head. ‘He’s keeping them busy elsewhere for a little while.’
Nessa felt confused. ‘Why did you lock us in here?’
Now he was in front of her and looked very tall. And fierce, and sexy. Her body was reacting in spite of her best intentions to try and remain immune to his appeal.
‘I locked us in here because I’m done denying myself where you’re concerned.’
Luc put his hand around the back of her head, and before she knew what was happening she could feel her carefully constructed bun being undone and her hair was falling down her back. The silly, frivolous hat ended up on the floor.
‘Luc, what are you doing?’ Why did she sound so breathy?
In a silent answer, he pulled her into his body, tipped her face up and kissed her. Nessa had no defence for this sensual ambush. Her whole body ignited as if it had just been waiting for his kiss and touch.
Luc was like a marauding warrior, leaving no space to think about what was happening. All she could do was feel. Succumb. She’d wanted to experience this again so much, and now that it was happening she never wanted it to stop.
Before she could control herself her arms were lifting to wrap around his neck and she was arching her body into his, straining to get closer. His hands moved up and down her back, tracing her waist, going under her top to find the bare skin between that and her skirt.
But, like a cool wind skating over her skin, reality intruded, and she mustered up every ounce of strength she had to pull free.
Nessa was breathing as if she’d just run a marathon. Luc’s eyes were burning and she belatedly noticed the stubble on his jaw. She could feel the burn on her skin like a mocking brand.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘What’s wrong?’ Nessa wrapped her arms around herself defensively. ‘You said this wouldn’t happen again.’
His face was stark. ‘I thought I could resist you, Nessa...but I can’t. This will burn up, but then it’ll fizzle out. It always does. Let me be the one to teach you how it can be, for as long as we want each other.’
She shivered inside. He’d already done a pretty good job of teaching her how it could be. There was something very illicitly enticing about the prospect of burning up with this man and then letting it fizzle out. But she had to be strong. She shook her head. ‘I don’t think this is a good idea.’
His jaw tightened. She spoke again before he could. ‘I’m not just some convenient plaything you can discard and pick up again when it suits you.’
‘Believe me,’ he growled, ‘there’s nothing convenient about how I feel about this, or you.’
Nessa smarted. ‘Well, I’m sure there are plenty of women who would be far more convenient than me.’
He shook his head and closed the distance between them, reaching out to cup her jaw, a thumb moving against her skin hypnotically.
‘The problem is that I don’t want any other woman. I only want you.’
Nessa’s throat went dry. Luc Barbier telling her he wanted only her was more than she could handle. Treacherously, she could feel her resistance weaken.
Her heart thumped unevenly. As if trying to soothe a nervy foal, Luc gently cupped her face with his hands, tipping it up to him. He filled her vision.
‘I want you, Nessa.’
Her mind raced. Could she really handle another intimate encounter with this man? He was already sliding under her skin in a way that mocked her for thinking she could separate her emotions from the physicality.
Dark grey eyes held her captive. ‘This is just physical. Don’t overthink it. It has nothing to do with your brother or the debt. This is just for us.’
He was saying all the right things to make her weaken even more. Just physical. She could keep her emotions out of it if he could.
A sense of fatality filled her. She knew she couldn’t resist. She reached up and pressed her mouth against his in a silent gesture of capitulation, unable to articulate it any other way.
Luc didn’t like to acknowledge the surge of triumph he felt when Nessa’s mouth touched his. He didn’t like to think of the swirl of emotions he’d just seen in her expressive green eyes. But it wasn’t enough to stop him.
He wrapped his arms around her and backed her up against the wall so that he could fully explore that lush and sexy mouth that had been haunting his dreams for days now.
She was as sweet as he remembered. Sweeter. Her small tongue darted out to touch his, and went back again. He captured it, sucking it deep, making her squirm against him. His aching flesh ground into her soft contours and Luc knew that there was no stopping this now. He had to have her with a hunger that was unprecedented.
Somehow a sliver of cold realism entered his head and he took his mouth off Nessa’s for a moment. ‘I need you, here, right now...’
She looked up at him, eyes molten pools of desire. Slightly glazed. She bit her lip. ‘Okay.’
Luc took his hands off her even though it was the hardest thing. ‘Take off your clothes.’
Nessa shivered, feeling vulnerable for a moment, but then Luc started to disrobe and she couldn’t take her eyes off him as he cast aside his jacket, waistcoat, tie, shirt, and unbuckled his belt.
In a bid to try and keep breathing, Nessa reached for the zip at her neck, but her fingers fumbled and were clumsy. Luc was bare-chested, his trousers open, showing the trail of dark hair that led down into his underwear. She couldn’t function.
He stepped forward and said, ‘Turn around.’
She did. His hand came to her zip, pulling it down, and then the top slid off from her front. He opened her bra and turned her to face him, pulling it off completely. The crowds outside the VIP box roared as another race was won, but Nessa barely noticed.
Luc discarded his trousers and she could see where the material of his underwear was tented over his erection. Her mouth watered.
‘Your skirt. Take it off, now.’
The rough quality of his voice made the flames lick even higher. Nessa knew she should be feeling more self-conscious as she shimmied out of the skirt but she felt emboldened under Luc’s appreciative gaze.
For the first time in her life she felt a very feminine thrill of power. It was heady to know she had this effect on a man like Luc Barbier, who was normally so in control.
As soon as the skirt pooled at her feet, she kicked off her shoes and dropped a few inches in height. Luc yanked down his underwear, freeing himself, and pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her and hauling her up and into him as his mouth landed on hers and he devoured her.
She loved the feel of his hard body next to hers. It made her feel delicate and soft. Her arms twined around his neck as she lost herself in his kiss and she wasn’t even aware that he’d carried her over to a seat until the earth tilted and she realised he was sitting down and she was straddling his lap.
His hands felt huge on her back and his mouth was on a level with her breasts. He surrounded one hard peak in hot, wet, sucking heat and Nessa’s head fell back. When his teeth teased her tender flesh she sucked in a breath, tensing all over.
His erection was thick and long between them. She reached down and touched him, feeling the bead of moisture at the tip. He hissed a breath and she heard the sound of foil being broken before Luc set her back slightly to roll protection onto his length.
He reached for her again, putting his hands on her hips. ‘Sit up slightly...that’s it...’
As he manoeuvred her into position over his body, Nessa had never felt more animalistic, or earthy and raw. Luc ripped the side of her panties so they were no longer an impediment, and she felt the thick, blunt head of his erection against her slippery folds.
She had a moment of remembering the brief pain of his first penetration, but as if he were reading her mind his hand soothed her, up and down her back, and he said, ‘Trust me, minou...it won’t hurt again, okay?’
She nodded, bracing her hands on his shoulders as he slowly joined their bodies. Nessa couldn’t look away from his eyes as, inch by inch, he filled her so completely that she couldn’t breathe.
‘You dictate the pace, ma belle...’
Luc’s voice sounded strained and Nessa felt that rush of feminine power again as she experimented by moving up and down on his body, rolling her hips.
He huffed a laugh against her breast. ‘You’re going to kill me...’
But Nessa was too distracted by the building tension at her core and how, by moving faster, she could make it build and build. Luc was pressing kisses all over her bared skin, his teeth and mouth teasing her breasts unmercifully. Nessa’s movements became wilder, more desperate, as she sensed the shimmering peak approaching. She was losing control. But just as she thought that, Luc took over, demonstrating his experience and mastery.
He clamped his hands onto her hips, holding her still as his body pumped up into hers, stronger and harder and deeper than before.
Sweat glistened on their skin, black eyes burning into hazel. Nessa couldn’t hold on. She thought she might die, and then with one cataclsymic thrust she did, but it was an exquisite death that brought with it rolling wave upon wave of pleasure. It was so intense that she had to bite his shoulder to stop herself from screaming out loud and informing the entire racetrack what was happening in this room.
In the aftermath, Nessa couldn’t have said how long she was slumped against Luc’s body, wrapped in his arms. Her body pulsated rythmically around his, and it sent new shivers of awareness through her.
He gently tugged her head back. She was too sated and exhausted to care how she looked.
‘Next time, we make it to a bed and do this properly.’
Next time. More shivers went through her body. This is only just beginning.
‘Next time?’ She injected her voice with a lightness she didn’t feel.
Luc smiled and it was wicked and sinful and gorgeous. ‘Oh, yes, there’ll be a next time and one after that too...and possibly even one after that.’
He punctuated his words with hot, open-mouthed kisses along her bare shoulder. Weakly, Nessa blocked out all of the voices trying to burst the amazing afterglow bubble surrounding her and told herself that she could handle this. She could handle anything, as long as he didn’t stop kissing her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘THERE’S A HORSE at my stables in France that I’d like you to try riding. He’s tricky and none of my jockeys there seem to be able to handle him.’
Nessa looked over at Luc from where she was brushing down Tempest, who she’d just been riding out on the gallops. Luc was dressed in his casual uniform of worn jeans and a long-sleeved top with boots. He leaned nonchalantly against the stable door, arms folded. He took her breath away all too easily and she had to focus to remember what he’d said. It had been two days since the X-rated interlude in the VIP suite at the track and her body still felt overly sensitised.
‘Ok.’
Luc straightened up. ‘When you’ve finished here go and pack—we’ll leave in a couple of hours. We’ll stay in my Paris apartment tonight for the function and go to the stables tomorrow.’
Nessa swallowed as she absorbed this information. ‘The function?’
He nodded. ‘We’ve been invited to the annual French sports awards. Apparently you’re a sensation outside of Ireland too. Everyone wants to see you up close.’
Nessa quailed at that and distracted herself by asking, ‘You said we’d stay at your apartment, is that appropriate?’
Luc came towards her and he said, ‘It’s very appropriate. What part of next time didn’t you
understand?’
He slid his hand around the back of her neck under where her hair was gathered in a messy ponytail and tugged her towards him, saying in a low voice, ‘Maybe you need reminding...’
The stable and horse were blocked out as Luc’s mouth covered hers. It was so explicit that all she could think about was heat and desperate need. She was barely aware of the brush falling to the ground or the horse moving slightly, jostling them.
Luc lifted his head after a few moments and it took a second for Nessa to open her eyes. Damn. She was toast, as well as being well reminded.
With a smug look on his far too gorgeous face, Luc backed out of the stable and walked away, leaving Nessa standing there feeling as if a bolt of lightning had just gone through her body.
She knew that it wasn’t a good idea to allow Luc to affect her like this, for many many reasons, not least of which was self-preservation. But the thought of going to Paris with him was just too seductive to resist.
* * *
A few hours later, Nessa increasingly felt as if she were in a fairy tale. She’d been to Paris before, on a school trip, but it had been nothing like this. They’d flown in by private jet and then been whisked from the airport into the centre of Paris.
Nessa had noticed that, as they’d passed the graffiti’d high walls on the motorway on the outskirts of the city, Luc had seemed to tense and had looked resolutely out of the window at something she couldn’t see.
But was there a more beautiful city than Paris, with its distinctive wide boulevards and soaring magnificent buildings? Especially at this time of year, on the cusp of summer and when spring’s blossoms lined the ground like a multicoloured carpet. Not to mention the iconic structures of the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower that Nessa could see through the open doors of her bathroom right now.
When they’d arrived at Luc’s apartment, at the very top of one of those massive ornate buildings on a wide boulevard, he’d disappeared into a study to take some calls, and a friendly housekeeper had shown Nessa into a guest bedroom suite.
She’d shown her a dressing room that was full to the brim of a stunning array of clothes. Nessa hadn’t really known how to react to the fact that Luc was evidently always prepared for his female guests, but it had certainly been sobering. It had been just as well, she’d told herself stoutly, as she hadn’t even thought to pack a dress before leaving Ireland.
