One Night With His Wife

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Awkwardly, barely crediting the decision she had reached and instantly terrified that if she lingered on that decision, she might decide against it again, Star cleared her throat, desperate to commit herself.

‘Tomorrow morning…’ she contradicted hoarsely, her mouth feeling as dry as a bone, her tongue too clumsy to do her bidding. ‘You won’t need the limo until tomorrow morning.’

CHAPTER THREE

LUC was not slow on the uptake.

Tomorrow morning! Star had changed her mind. Or had she? Had she merely been playing games with him all along? His lean, powerful frame tautened. On the phone, his chauffeur was asking for directions. Without any expression at all, Luc gave the details and altered the timing of the arrangement, but his thoughts were already light-years removed from the task at hand. He replaced the receiver in a quiet, controlled movement.

Yet Star tensed like a restive small animal scenting a predator down-wind. As well she might, Luc conceded in febrile abstraction. He wanted to rip her lithe quicksilver body out of those absurd clothes and enjoy the kind of raw, urgent sex he hadn’t fantasised about since he was a teenager. But even as the hot blood coursed to his loins, innate caution held him back.

‘Tomorrow, we part again.’

‘No problem…fresh start for both of us,’ Star pointed out shakily.

It was what she needed, Star told herself urgently. The opportunity to draw a final line beneath her disastrous marriage. The chance to rescue a little of her shattered pride at his expense: he was the one asking, not she. That was a most ironic first in their relationship. All of a sudden, she had power. He had given her that power. Why shouldn’t she use it?

In answer to that defiant question, she tensed as she thought of one very good reason why not for herself. ‘Are you involved with anyone else right now?’ she asked tightly.

‘No,’ Luc murmured drily.

Her eyes veiled, Star let her breath slowly escape again. So his mistress, Gabrielle Joly, who had caused her so many sleepless nights of anguish, had finally got her marching orders. Relief quivering through her, she lifted her head again.

Luc was as poised and still as an ice statue, his dark, devastating features unreadable. As he began moving towards her, her heart thumped like a giant hammer inside her.

‘Tell me…do you sleep curled up in the hearth here, like Cinderella?’ Luc enquired lazily.

‘No…Well,’ Star qualified tensely, ‘I did sleep in here over the winter because my bedroom was too cold.’

He reached for her slowly, as if he was afraid an abrupt movement might startle her into retreat. He wasn’t far wrong, Star admitted to herself. Nervous tension already strung her every sinew taut. It had just occurred to her that there was a vast difference between sneaking into Luc’s bed when he was asleep…and inviting him to her own bed when he was wide awake and fully in control.

‘Luc…?’

‘Don’t talk…’ He lifted a silencing forefinger to trace her parted lips with silk-soft sure delicacy.

She trembled, his merest touch awakening the intense hunger she had fought every day for eighteen months. Aquamarine eyes rested on his lean, dark face with a sudden flare of defiance. ‘I won’t let you hurt me again—’

‘I never meant to hurt you,’ Luc ground out, his dark, deep-set eyes flaring to lambent gold.

But how could he have done anything else when he hadn’t loved her? He hadn’t asked her to love him either, Star reminded herself ruefully.

‘It’s all in the past,’ she swore, as much for her own benefit as his.

Luc curved strong fingers to her exotic cheekbones and tipped her ripe mouth up to his.

As his hands slid down past her slight shoulders to lift her up to him, the sheer power of anticipation made her head spin in a dizzy whirl. He found her mouth, and for the timeless space of a heartbeat she lost herself in the hot, hard hunger of his lips. The most terrifying excitement laced with undeniable greed currented through her slim body. She linked her arms round his broad shoulders and pressed herself against the muscular hardness of his powerful physique, a fevered gasp of urgency torn from her throat.

He set her down on something hard. She wasn’t rational enough to care what or where. All that motivated her was the overpowering need to stay physically linked to him. One kiss and he lit a fever inside her. She burned, heart racing, pulses pounding, as he dug his fingers into the silky tangle of her copper hair. He drove his tongue deep in an intimate invasion as incredibly exciting as it was rawly sexual in intent.

At the height of that explosive passion, Luc dragged his mouth from hers and gazed down at her with smouldering heat. ‘Diabolique…’ he muttered thickly. ‘You’re on a table…’

So what? an impatient voice screamed inside her head. As he lifted his proud dark head bare inches from hers, Star reached for him with determined hands, sinking her fingers into the springy black depths of his hair and forcing him back to her. With a ragged groan of male appreciation, Luc melded his sensual mouth roughly to hers again, his hands sliding to the base of her spine to jerk loose the ties of her wrap top.

Hauling her back up into his arms, he lifted his tousled dark head again, colour scoring the fabulous cheekbones that lent his face such power. ‘Where’s the bedroom?’

Star blinked. She was in another world, in which neither language nor reason existed.

Luc elbowed back the kitchen door. ‘Bedroom?’

‘First right…no, first left!’ Every pulse in her treacherous body was thrumming on a high, making it a challenge to think.

Luc dipped the tip of his tongue in a provocative flicker into the tender interior of her mouth, making her jerk with reaction. ‘You have the most gorgeous mouth, mon ange.’

The sun was going down, intense light flooding through the window to illuminate the small cluttered room. He settled her down on the side of her bed. Her heart was jumping to such an extent she had trouble keeping air in her body. She studied him with passionate intensity. His lean, hard-boned features were half in light, half in shadow. Taut cheekbones, eyes the colour of midnight, straight, arrogant nose, hard, masculine jawline.

She watched Luc cast off his beautifully cut jacket, pull loose his tie and peel off his crisp cotton shirt. He discarded the items with the same controlled cool with which he did everything. Yet she quivered, insidious heat rising from deep within at the sight of his muscular brown chest, the sprinkling of curling black hair hazing his pectorals, the satin-sleek smoothness of the skin over his flat, taut stomach. The strength of her own craving shook her.

‘I just love your body,’ she whispered, knotting her fingers together, nerves and anticipation headily mingling to keep her ferociously tense.

Luc flashed her a slightly uneasy glance. ‘That’s my line.’

Star frowned in dismay, taking him literally. ‘We don’t have to have lines, do we?’

‘We don’t need to talk, do we?’ Evidently even more threatened by that idea, Luc strode forward at speed and raised her upright. The edges of her loosened top fell apart. His hands tightened hard on hers. The silence sizzled. He gazed down fixedly at her bare pouting breasts crested by swollen pink peaks that stirred with her every quickened breath. A tide of colour washed her face as she resisted her own self-consciousness with all her might.

‘Sensational…’ Suddenly, Luc was dragging the sleeves of her top down her arms, freeing her of the garment and backing her down on the bed with a lack of cool that she found intensely gratifying.

‘Say it in French,’ she urged breathlessly. ‘Say everything in French.’

Momentarily, Luc stilled. ‘Try to smother the urge to tell me what to do.’

Star gave him a hurt look of confusion.

He lifted her up against the pillows so that she was level with him. Excitement glanced through her, sharp as a knife, but the pained light in her eyes lingered. He closed a soothing hand over her taut fingers, forcing her to release her death-grip on the corner of the duvet. ‘Just keep quiet,’ he practically begged. ‘Don’t talk…when you talk, you drive me crazy.’

Very slowly, Star nodded.

Eyes burning gold swept over her. He snatched in a ragged breath. ‘You just always say the wrong thing.’

Tears stung her eyes behind her lowered eyelids.

Luc gazed down at her in frantic frustration. She was lying there like a corpse now, still as death in human sacrifice mode. He curved not quite steady hands to her delicate cheekbones. ‘I always say the wrong thing,’ he contradicted in desperation.

Star opened her wonderful eyes and nodded forgivingly.

Without hesitation, he captured her lips again with potent driving passion. She stopped thinking, as if he had punched a switch. He slid lithely down the bed and closed his mouth urgently over one thrusting tender pink nipple. She gasped and jerked, every muscle straining in reaction, and instantly she was on fire again. The tormenting sensitivity of her own flesh made her moan helplessly and melted her quivering body to hot liquid honey.

‘I want to taste you…’ Luc muttered raggedly, wrenching her out of her skirt, his mouth travelling down over her slim, twisting length with a hot, devastating sensuality that overwhelmed her.

There was no escape from the raw force of her own need. Her heart racing, she flung back her head as he found the hot moist centre of her. A low, keening cry of reaction erupted from her. She was out of her mind with excitement, lost in the domination of an expert sensualist and increasingly frantic as the nagging, terrible ache for fulfilment built ever higher. Her fingernails scored his shoulders in a wild passion of impatience.

‘Luc!’ she sobbed in despair.

He came over her then, and slid between her trembling thighs. She couldn’t get him there quick enough. The fire inside her was all-consuming. He sank into her on one powerful thrust, and the pleasure was so tormentingly intense she almost passed out at the peak of it. Nothing had ever felt so good. And there was more and more and more, and she was hugely desperate to hold onto every sensation and make it last as long as she possibly could. Out of control, she let that mad spiral of tormenting excitement gather her up and send her sobbing and mindless to the intense height of a climax that totally wiped her out.

Afterwards, the first thing she was conscious of was the silence. Luc was still holding her, every damp, hard, muscular line of him welded to her smaller, slighter frame. For a moment she luxuriated in that feeling of intimacy and closeness. Then her mind awakened again, and with a sinking heart she recognised her own weakness.

‘Star…’ Luc husked in an indolent tone of satiation. ‘It’s never been like that for me.’

She hoped it never would be again. In fact she hoped she would be a tantalising memory that infuriated him until the day he died. Mustering every scrap of self-discipline she possessed, she forced herself to pull away from him. Unexpectedly, he caught her back to him. In the half-light, dark golden eyes appraised her flushed triangular face, her lowered lashes which betrayed only a wary glimmer of aquamarine.

‘You can talk now,’ he murmured, almost teasingly. ‘I’ve got nothing to say.’ Once she would have told him she loved him. And that recollection of her old self now made her cringe.

Luc came up on one elbow, stunning dark eyes level. ‘Star—’

‘We left the candles burning in the kitchen.’ She snaked out of his hold before he could guess her intention. Stretching out a frantic seeking hand for the wrap lying on the chair by the bed, she got up, keen to make her escape.

In the kitchen, she shivered, cold as ice without him, even colder when she looked into the future. Yet her body still thrummed and ached from the glorious possession of his. How dared he make it even better than she had remembered? How dared he tell her that that was the best sex he had ever had? He didn’t have a sensitive bone in his entire body. But then what did that matter now?

She felt anguish beckoning like an old friend, but she turned away from it, older and wiser now. Making a meal of misery wouldn’t change anything. She forced herself to put away the groceries which Rory had brought. The prosaic task dragged her down from the heights, gave her the chance to get a grip on her turbulent emotions.

It was past time that she faced up to the truth she had spent such an impossibly long time evading. Their marriage had been a fake! She had known that from the outset but had stubbornly refused to accept the fact. Luc had never wanted to marry her; Luc had simply felt that he had to marry her, Star acknowledged painfully.

That winter his father had been dying, Star had enjoyed a long-awaited and very emotional reunion with her mother. Only one awkward fact had shadowed that reconciliation: Juno hated the Sarrazin family and had been desperate to persuade Star to leave France. But Star had been head over heels in love with Luc…and quite incapable of choosing to remove herself from his immediate radius.

On an unannounced visit to the chateau, her mother had been genuinely appalled to walk into a room and find Star in Luc’s arms. Accusing Luc of taking inexcusable advantage of her teenage daughter’s naivety, Juno had threatened to create a major scandal. Determined to protect his sick father from the distress of such sordid publicity, Luc had insisted that they get married. It was ironic that Juno had been even more outraged by their marriage.

But Star had entered their marriage of convenience with a hidden agenda the size of a jumbo jet. She had honestly thought that if she prayed hard enough, tried hard enough, she could make Luc love her! Every scrap of misery she had suffered since, she decided, she had brought on herself.

Fortunately, she didn’t love Luc any more, she told herself fiercely. He was her first love. It was understandable that she would never be totally indifferent to him. But here, tonight, she promised herself that she would say goodbye to that humiliating past and move on. When the dawn came in tomorrow, there would be no looking back.

Having got her flailing emotions back under control, Star drifted back to the bedroom and lodged uncertainly in the doorway, striving for a cool stance. In the moonlight, Luc was lying in a relaxed sprawl on his side, his skin vibrant gold against the pale bedding. He looked like an incredibly gorgeous oil painting. Her heart gave a treacherous lurch. She waited for him to lift his handsome dark head and say something. When he didn’t, she moved slowly closer. She couldn’t believe it. He had gone to sleep! But then when had Luc last slept? She swallowed a rueful laugh, bitterly amused by her own intense disappointment. He followed a relentless schedule. He would have had to make time for a trip to England. To do so he might well have worked through most of last night. And now, tension released by a rousing bout of entirely uncommitted sex, he had given way to exhaustion and fallen asleep. How touchingly, uncharacteristically human! It shocked her that she was really tempted to wake him up again.

Refusing to give way to that degrading desire, Star sat in the kitchen by the light of one candle. She didn’t trust herself to get back into bed with him. She didn’t even trust herself asleep in bed with him. Around Luc she did things she would not have dreamt of doing with any other man. Of course this time it was only the lure of his sexual magnetism, his heartbreaking good-looks, his lithe, beautifully built body. In other words, sex—and he was very, very good at sex; that was the only reason she was still tempted…

* * *

The limousine arrived at eight the next morning. The chauffeur delivered a garment bag and a small case to the door and then retreated back to the car.

By then Luc was already up, although Star had yet to see him. Minutes earlier she had heard the shower running in the bathroom, and had marvelled at Luc’s staying power under that freezing cold gush. Her own record was three minutes, and she always boiled the kettle for hot water to wash her hair. She put the garment bag and the case into the bedroom and went back into the kitchen to wait.

She had already fed the twins and dressed them in their best outfits: Venus in a pink velour top and leggings, Mars in navy dungarees with a checked shirt. They looked cute. At least, Star thought they did. Hopefully, at some stage, a vague memory of the twins looking cute and cuddly would slightly soften the blow of paternity coming Luc’s way. When the divorce proceedings began she would have to get a solicitor. She would then tell her solicitor to tell Luc’s solicitor that Luc was the father of her twins.