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“I need to be inside you, chérie. I can’t wait.” He rolled her over and brought her onto her hands and knees.
He covered her like a male animal dominating his mate, filling her with a possessive thrust, so deliciously hard where she was soft and needy. One wide hand slid over her breasts, teased her nipples, rubbed her stomach, then fondled where they were joined as he moved in lusty thrusts.
She received him with cries of encouragement and abandon, so caught up in the raw excitement of it, she didn’t care who might hear or what he thought of her behavior. When she climaxed, the paroxysm locked a scream in her throat while he shuddered over and around her, his noises guttural and final. She was his. Neither of them could deny it.
That was in the dark.
When she woke in the light of day, and recalled all they’d done, she wanted to die.
Why, oh, why couldn’t she resist him?
Henri had been tempted to join Cinnia in the shower when he woke and heard her starting the water, but he forced himself to put a small distance between them while he contemplated a decision that had been rooting a little deeper into his mind with each hour of lovemaking that had ticked by.
He had never had a mistress, had never wanted anything long-term at all. Not since…
The wrenching memory struck like a kick in the stomach, ambushing him as that dark day sometimes did.
Do you love me?
She had been a pretty thing with caramel eyes and a mouth he’d been trying to kiss for weeks. They were cornered in a stairwell and he was flushed with more attraction than he’d ever felt. Suddenly there was Trella, telling him it was time to go.
Go, then, he told her. Little sisters are such a pain, he had told the object of his affection, as Trella ran off to be stolen by Gili’s—their affectionate name for Angelique—math tutor. I do, he had assured the caramel eyes as they were given privacy again. At least, he supposed it was love. He grew excited seeing this girl in the distance. He wanted to hold her hand, touch her all the time. He could hardly take his eyes off her when she was anywhere near him.
And then their friend Sadiq had shouted his name, telling him, “Trella’s been taken.”
He had seen that girl again, after Trella was home and he and Ramon returned to school. She’d tried to talk to him, but he’d avoided her.
After that, if girls and women came on to him, if they wanted to give up their bodies for mutual physical pleasure, fine. But he was never going to make the mistake of letting a female mean something to him. It put him off his game, exposed a flank.
It could cost the life of someone near and dear.
Romantic love, he had determined, was a weakness he couldn’t afford.
Taking a mistress, however, was a slightly less dangerous risk.
He presumed, wondering if he was rationalizing.
Dressing in his pants and shrugging on his open shirt, he moved into the lounge, where he called in an order for breakfast, put in a request for the boutiques to send a selection for them and picked up the paper left outside his door.
“Bon matin,” he said to Pierre, who had relieved Guy overnight. “Anything I should know about?”
“All the coverage seems run-of-the-mill, but fresh posts are still coming out. We’re keeping an eye out.”
Henri nodded, thoughtful, as he closed the door.
He’d never taken a mistress for the same reason he refused to marry and have children: the threat of kidnapping. Women who were only briefly linked to his name were not likely to be targeted or used against him. Precautions would have to be extended to Cinnia if he went through with this.
He scanned the headlines, then picked up his phone to see a text from Ramon. A question mark. Obviously he’d seen the headlines and wondered why Henri was seeing that woman from the nightclub again.
Henri ignored it and returned a text from Angelique with a video call.
“Problème?” he asked, continuing in French. “That was a cryptic message. Why are you worried about something you said to Trella about Sadiq? Are they having a romance I don’t know about?”
“What? No! Of course not. No, I think he’s falling for someone back in Zhamair. Do you know if that’s true?”
“He didn’t say anything when I spoke to him last.” Sadiq might be the best friend he and his brother had, but they did not discuss their love lives. They talked about important things like stock prices and politics.
“Why does that affect Trella?” he prompted.
“I don’t know.” She frowned in her introspective way and he knew to give her a moment to gather her thoughts. Angelique was a quieter personality, more like him, preferring solitude, while Trella and Ramon were the extroverts. Everything Trella did was full bore, including a nervous breakdown. She had been making him mad with worry since her birth, when she had turned blue in his arms the first time he held her.
He often thought that if it had been Angelique outside the day of the kidnapping, and her tutor had called her over, planning to stuff her in his van, she would have waited for Ramon and insisted he hold her hand and come with her. Shyness had been a hurdle for her, but it was a type of self-protection that served her well.
Trella had possessed none of that. She had run headlong over to the tutor, eager to be helpful and say she wasn’t Angelique.
They had stolen her despite her kicks and screams, because how effective was a nine-year-old girl against two strong men?
The trauma affected his sister to this day, which made him blind with fury if he didn’t carefully drip-feed himself those memories. It made him want to hurry Angelique to tell him how she imagined Sadiq, their friend who had actually helped save Trella, could be a threat to their sister now.
“I was just talking to her about him,” Angelique continued as though still gathering her thoughts. “And saying it was bound to happen that he would marry someday, even if he’s not in love now. She got really quiet. Now I feel…” She shrugged. “You know. Like she’s upset.”
“Deeply upset?”
“No.” She said the word on a rush of relief. “Normal upset. But I think she’s worried that if he did get married, she wouldn’t be able to go to his wedding.”
“We can cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said. “But thank you for telling me.”
Trella had been stable for half a year. They were all holding their collective breath that this time she was actually conquering her panic attacks.
He heard Cinnia and glanced up to see her with dry, windswept hair, wearing one of the hotel robes. “I, um, just want my phone.” She scurried to where he had set her handbag on a table after finding it on the floor, where she’d dropped it last night.
“Who’s that?” Angelique asked.
“A friend.” A very beautiful goddess who had done wicked, devilish things with him in the night. He had not misremembered the power of their chemistry. He kept reminding himself he wasn’t a man to be led by his organ, but as many times as they’d made love last night, it wasn’t enough. That’s what he kept coming back to. He wasn’t prepared to go another few weeks, let alone a lifetime, without making love to her again.
“Don’t run away,” he ordered Cinnia before she could lock herself in the bedroom. “I’m finishing up here.” To his sister, he said, “I’ll touch base with her later. Let me know if anything changes.”
He ended the call and stood, still conflicted now his sister had reminded him of the threats they faced daily and their far-reaching effects.
At the same time, his hands rolled of their own accord, silently inviting Cinnia to come to him.
She didn’t move, only hugged herself and flicked her glance to his phone. “Who was that?”
“Gili. Angelique. My other sister.”
“You’re very close to your siblings.”
“They’re the only people I trust completely.”
She looked at her bare toes. “I speak French. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but I heard a little.”
“And?”
“And nothing.” She shrugged. “I feel bad for your sister. I don’t imagine something like that is anything you get over. I mean, I still cry about losing my dad and it’s been over a decade, but it sounds like she’s quite haunted and I’m sorry she’s still affected.” She glanced up, expression so soft with compassion it cracked things inside him. “I know you lost your father, as well. I’m sorry for that, too.”
“You’re sorry for a lot of things.” Deepening their relationship would come with many types of risk, he realized. Long-term relationships demanded more of this sort of thing. He was not eager to open up to her, but he hated the distance she was keeping between them right now. The physical distance, at least.
“Are you sorry about last night?” he asked, trying to understand why she wasn’t rushing into his arms.
“A little,” she mumbled.
“Why?” he demanded, not pleased to hear it.
She kept her head down, but he could see her growing red. With embarrassment?
He swore and went to her, tugging her close with gentle roughness so they knocked together and she threw back her head to scowl at him.
The vulnerability in her eyes made his heart swerve. He was not the only one disturbed by the level of intimacy between them. He found himself rubbing his thumbs against her upper arms where he gripped her, trying to offer reassurance.
“We gave each other a great deal of pleasure. That’s not something to be ashamed of.”
She swallowed and hid her thoughts with a lowered gaze. Her mouth pouted, maybe even showed a hint of bruising from their thousand rapacious kisses.
Oddly, that hint of injury was the turning point, allowing him to make his decision. They needed time so they could pace themselves. Otherwise, they were liable to kill each other.
“I like that you held nothing back,” he told her. “Quit being shy about it or I’ll do all those same things to you right here on the floor in the lounge. In daylight.”
Cinnia was tempted to scoff and say, “You can try,” but she had a feeling he would.
And she’d let him.
He started to kiss her, but the knock on the door interrupted. “Breakfast,” he said with a small grimace, releasing her to let in room service.
She touched fingertips to her tingling lips, scolding herself for being disappointed. She was achy and exhausted, very tender in delicate places, and all she could think about was how much she wanted to feel his touch on all those sensitized places again.
Other staff came in with the wheeled table of covered dishes. A woman brought an assortment of outfits and held up each in turn for approval.
“Not that one. It’s hideous,” Henri said as the woman showed them a green dress. “Why does it even exist? That one, the blue. To match your eyes,” he told Cinnia.
He accepted a striped button shirt and the boutique owner left clean underthings for both of them. Cinnia waited until everyone was gone to check the price tags.
“You’re not paying for those,” Henri said, barely glancing up from the plates he uncovered.
“Neither are you. I guess I’m going home in last night’s dress.”
“You’re my guest. I will provide everything you need while you’re with me.”
Something in her midsection did a little curl and twist, anchoring and panging inside her. Get what you can.
“Are you going to join me? Surely you’re as hungry as I am.”
“Are you going to keep teasing me about it?” she demanded.
“Last night? Did that sound like teasing? I mean it as praise and gratitude.” He looked at her and his shoulders relaxed as he gave her a perplexed look. “Vraiment, why does it bother you that we spent a night making love?”
He had stripped her bare, not just physically, but down to her soul. She was never going to be the same. He would always be the man who had done those things and made her feel that way and he would always know it. She would always know it and compare future lovers and feel wistful. Cheated, even.
“I told you,” she muttered, moving to sit across from him, absolutely starving from her expenditure of calories, but feeling defenseless and needy. Tired, she assured herself. She was just tired. And filled with impossible yearning. “I don’t do this.”
“If you think last night was common for me, you’re overestimating my libido.”
“Oh, I have a healthy respect for that animal, believe me.” Coffee. She poured a cup for each of them with shaking hands and quickly doctored hers, sighing with her first sip even though it burned her tongue.
When she glanced at him, he was watching her with an enigmatic look.
“You’re also underestimating your effect on me. We have a unique connection.” He seemed to choose his words very carefully. “We could leave things here and go on with our lives. I would probably call you the next time I was in London. I will optimistically believe you would be available and want to see me.”
That was what was killing her right now. She had been able to put him mostly out of her mind after the first time because she’d been angry and genuinely hadn’t thought she would see him again. For him to show up and pursue her so blatantly, however, set her up for believing he would do it again in the future.
She would counsel any girlfriend or sister to never wait on a man or give him so much power over her personal happiness, but here she sat, looking into her coffee because she didn’t want Henri to see that he already held her on the end of a leash and all he had to do was tug for her to come to heel.
That’s where her shame was coming from. Her eyes stung and she made herself blink to stem the tears of humility at being his sexual pet.
“What do I assume by your lack of response, Cinnia? That you would be agreeable to that arrangement?”
“I’m not going to hold a reservation for you,” she lied, setting her cup into its saucer with a hard clink and a little slosh of coffee over the rim.
“Exactly what I thought you’d say.” He braced his elbows on the table, hands loosely linked above his plate. “Much of your appeal for me is that you expect so little of me. You’re very independent. But I do not care to take my chances with your accessibility. I would like to propose a different arrangement.”
When she glanced up, his gaze was waiting to snare hers. The hazel-green tone was very, very green. Avid in a possessive, masculine way. Mine.
Her stomach swooped and she scented danger, yet it was the lofty danger of swinging out on a rope over a cliff on a bottomless lake. Life threatening, but exhilarating.
“A retainer?” she mocked.
“Of a sort. I’ve never had a mistress, but I begin to see the benefits.”
She was knocked speechless. For a few painful heartbeats, she could only stare, then pointed out, “So. Not a proposal. A proposition.”
Her pulse raced in panic and she looked across the room at the pretty clothes he was already trying to purchase for her.
Get what you can.
“I believe there are websites where women advertise for sponsors. Perhaps start there,” she suggested thinly.
“I don’t want a mistress. I want you. Look.” He waved at the plates they hadn’t yet touched. “I can eat plain scrambled eggs and there’s nothing wrong with that, especially when I’m hungry, but if I have the option to eat one poached to perfection, delicately spiced and accompanied by a tempting banquet of other flavors, one that not only sates the appetite but is a joy with every bite, why the hell wouldn’t I want the quality ones?”
“And since you’re used to buying the best, I’m sure you think you can afford the eggs you see in front of you today. In this case, you can’t.”
