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But when she hauled the covers up, she realised he was coming towards her. Fleur froze, watching him with eyes that grew wider and wider. Surely he wasn’t…No…
But he kept on coming. When he pulled back the bedclothes on the other side of the bed she bolted up and said furiously, ‘You said you wouldn’t—’
‘And I’ll keep that promise,’ he said between strong white teeth, obviously thoroughly fed up, ‘but if Gabrielle arrives I need to establish that I’ve actually been in this bed with you. It would be better, of course, if the bedclothes were in tatters across the floor and you and I were lying in naked abandon in each other’s arms, but somehow I don’t see that happening, do you?’
Chapter Nine
COLOUR scorched Fleur’s skin. She could have shrunk into a heap of embarrassment, but an angry pride kept her upright.
‘No, I thought not,’ Luke said, with a silky distinctness that sent a shiver running the length of her spine. He sounded dangerous, and she didn’t blame him.
After all, none of this was his fault, just as it wasn’t hers.
He went on sardonically, ‘So if you feel you’ll be contaminated by being in a bed with me—even with my clothes still on—you’d better get out for the five or ten seconds it’s going to take me to rumple the pillow and the sheets.’
‘Oh, all right!’ Humiliated, she scrambled out, snatching up her wrap to sling around her shoulders.
From beneath her lashes she watched him lower himself into the bed and stretch out full length, her throat drying at the easy litheness of his big body beneath the white shirt and narrow black trousers. Lord, but he was big! Even dancing with him hadn’t prepared her for the sheer physical impact of him. Little needles of sensation tingled through her and she felt a suspicious meltdown of electricity at the junction of her thighs.
He moved his dark head on the pillows, making sure there was an indentation.
Dragging her mind away from the startling, exciting contrast of his black hair on the white pillows, Fleur said with a twisted smile, ‘It’s just as well you know more about this sort of thing than I do.’
‘Sex?’ He registered her slight start with a cynical smile.
‘Yes,’ she said on a snap.
He didn’t say anything more, and the silence dragged, became taut and filled with unspoken words and emotions.
Finally he got out and looked down at the impression left by his body. ‘All right, you can get back in now,’ he said, and strode with that swift, noiseless panther stride across to the window.
Fleur scurried back into the bed, but the linen sheets carried the faint, earthy scent of his natural odour, a sexy hint to women that indicated his strength and his potency.
‘What happens now?’ she asked, carefully not looking at the side of the room that held him. The corners of her eyes caught movement; she suspected he was taking off his clothes. A wave of hot desire clutched her low down in the pit of her stomach, making her move uneasily.
‘I’ll strip off and lie down on the sofa. Don’t worry, it won’t be long before she comes.’
‘You seem to know an awful lot about Gabrielle if you’re so sure she’ll do this.’
His laugh was low and cynical. ‘I know a fair amount about women, yes. When she knocks I’ll come across and get in beside you.’
Her heart jumped in her chest.
She wondered if he could hear her breathing, and lay concentrating on breathing slowly and steadily. He didn’t stir. He’d probably gone to sleep, she thought crossly.
She wished he’d snore. Snoring would make him ordinary. You couldn’t possibly get into a lather over a man who snored.
Frowning she tried to think of home and what she was planning to do when she got back, but New Zealand seemed so far away, so thin and insubstantial, and her mind slipped into forbidden pathways.
What sort of lover was Luke? She wiped the ironic grimace from her lips. Superb, of course.
She suddenly thought of something and sat up. ‘Luke, what about…?’
The words evaporated from her brain, because he instantly switched on the light and got to his feet. The swift blossoming of the lamp spread a wash of golden light over the powerful muscles and sleek skin of his shoulders. Heat robbed Fleur of coherent thought. Dry-mouthed and dazzled, she noted the pattern of hair across his bare bronze torso.
‘What about…?’ he prompted brusquely.
A knock on the door jolted them both into silence. Heart pumping madly, she stared at the uncompromising determination of his face, and gasped when he picked up his shirt and tossed it on the floor beside the bed.
He took three strides and hauled her into his arms, kissing her with a passion that set her pulse rate soaring into the stratosphere.
Then he fell back onto the bed with her, knocking a pillow onto the floor.
He was half over her, kissing her passionately, when the door opened.
‘I am so sorry, but—’ Gabrielle’s voice stopped.
Luke lifted his head and gazed at her, then got to his feet in magnificent, half-naked authority. ‘What is it?’ he asked. And when she said nothing, he demanded bluntly, ‘Is something the matter, Gabrielle? Your grandfather?’
Fleur sat up on the bed, and the intruder’s stormy gaze went from Luke’s handsome, controlled face to Fleur’s—flushed, embarrassed and very obviously seriously kissed.
She had to admire the girl’s composure, although her next words shocked her.
‘Slut! Whore!’ Gabrielle hissed, and started a low, fierce tirade in French.
Immediately Luke silenced her, his voice swift and cutting as the crack of a whip. ‘I won’t ask why you feel entitled to walk into someone else’s room without invitation, but I’m telling you to go.’
Gabrielle’s face crumpled, her veneer of sophistication fading to reveal her youth. She said unevenly, ‘I am sorry. I just wanted to…’
With disciplined, formidable force, Luke said, ‘I don’t know how you developed the idea that there was some connection between us, but I want it stopped right now. When the time comes I will choose my own wife. Do you understand me?’
The girl nodded and repeated, ‘I am sorry.’
‘No more interviews with magazines hinting at a secret engagement, and no more sly tips to gossip columnists.’
Colour flooded Gabrielle’s face. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No more,’ and, gulping, she turned and fled.
Fleur didn’t blame her. Luke in a temper—even one so well controlled as this—was a truly daunting experience. But she couldn’t let her go like that, and bolted off the bed.
‘Don’t follow her,’ Luke said, closing the door, his expression rueful. ‘I feel like someone who’s just pulled the wings off a butterfly, but she’ll need time to herself, not with you.’
‘Perhaps the Princess—?’ Fleur suggested tentatively.
His brows shot up. ‘Your compassion is misplaced, I suspect. No, Lauren is probably sound asleep by now. Anyway, for all her flaws Gabrielle has guts and pride. I think she’d rather deal with this herself. Wouldn’t you?’
Fleur shivered. ‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘I’m older than she is, though.’
‘Probably not as experienced.’ He looked down at her, his expression aloof. ‘I’m sorry you had to endure that. I know I was cruel, but I needed to establish once and for all that she’s been spinning moonbeams.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said awkwardly.
He was too close. Adrenalin was still surging through her veins, and the subtle scent of aroused male was doing something weird to her thought processes—to say nothing of the remembered imprint of his mouth on hers and the weight of his body.
‘When I asked you to do this I hoped I was anticipating something that might not even exist,’ he said. ‘I had no idea it was already such a problem, or that she’d be so persistent.’
‘Do you think you’ve scotched it?’
He shrugged, the light gleaming on his wide shoulders, tanned and sleek and eminently touchable. Fleur’s fingertips tingled, and only a massive exercise of will stopped her from leaning the few inches between them and pressing her mouth to his skin, drawing him back down onto the bed with her so they could finish what they’d started…
‘I hope so. I’ll talk to her grandfather tomorrow in case he’s been feeding her these ideas.’
She nodded and stared straight ahead. ‘Right. Now, as that’s done, you might as well go back to your own room,’ she said brightly, the brittle words almost shattering as she articulated them.
‘Sorry,’ he said coolly. ‘But just in case, I’m staying here.’
She swung around, eyes enormous in her flushed face, her breasts heaving beneath the fragile camisole top. ‘No!’ she said explosively. ‘I don’t want you—’
He was watching her with narrowed, intent eyes, but he interrupted with a smile that was half scorn, half hunger. ‘Don’t lie to me, Fleur,’ he said. ‘You’re scared, but you want me all right. Just as I want you.’
He trailed a lean fingertip along her collarbone, letting it linger as he watched the shifting expressions on her face, the swift fear replaced by a slow dawning of desire mirrored in her green eyes and the soft curves of her lush mouth.
‘Whoever named you Fleur should have chosen Margaret,’ he said, his voice deep and barely controlled. ‘It means pearl, and you were born to wear them. Your skin is more beautiful than the pearl you wore tonight, because it’s warm and fine and smooth as silk. Did you know pearls fade and die if they’re not worn?’
She dragged a breath into her lungs, and Luke had to concentrate on her mouth, her eyes, so that he didn’t get driven astray by the soft curves beneath the flimsy camisole.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Do they?’
‘They need to be caressed and oiled and loved by their owners.’
He shouldn’t be doing this. He should stop the slow wooing with words, the silken caress, the heated, desperate appetite that had been a constant companion since the moment he’d seen her.
Luke had never made love to a woman who hadn’t made it obvious that she wanted sex with him. Always he’d steered clear of virgins and the inexperienced, but something stronger than caution and respect drove him now, a raw hunger that undermined his self-control.
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