Summer Sins: Bedded, or Wedded? / Willingly Bedded, Forcibly Wedded / The Mediterranean Billionaire's Blackmail Bargain

His hands were cupping the lush roundness of her bottom, fingers spread, stroking and lifting. Lifting her into himself. He let his hips rest against hers, and with a surge of sudden excitement Lissa felt the hard, revealing strength of his arousal. Her breath caught and her eyes went to his.

There was knowledge in his eyes, and a rich, deep desire.

‘And now, cherie, it is time for you to touch me,’ he said softly.

For a moment she hesitated. She was supremely conscious of the fact that she was standing against him, stripped to her skimpy panties, her breasts swollen and peaked, her hair loose down her naked back—a woman waiting to be taken to his bed while he, fully aroused, was also fully clothed. The contrast shivered through her with erotic intensity.

Her arms lifted, and she draped them loosely around his neck. The movement brought the breasts he had caressed to ripened fullness into contact with his suited body. She felt the contact of his jacket against her nipples, and the sensation excited her yet more.

Her breathing quickened yet again.

She softly pressed hips barely covered by the thin silk of her panties against his, and felt the delicious contact there, as well. Against a yet more intimate part of her body.

She watched his face—quite deliberately. There was a line of tension along his cheekbones. It sent a thrill through her. Oh, she might be one of many women a man as gorgeous as Xavier Lauran could have for his pleasure, but right now she was the woman in his arms—she was the one who was causing that tension, that arousal, that absolute focus of his extreme attention.

It would not last. She knew it with a distant portion of her mind. But she did not care. She would pay the price when it came, and come it would, and then she would return to her real life, but for now she would have what she had never thought she would have, never thought she would experience.

For one delicious moment longer she held still, simply revelling in the feel of her silk-veiled pubis against the strength of his straining shaft, then she leaned back slightly from him, so that their hips were still in contact but she had the space to draw her hands back from around his neck.

Her fingers went to his tie. Teased open the knot. Then, never losing contact with his eyes, which were locked to hers, she slowly slid the tie out from beneath his collar. She discarded it on the floor. It lay, coiled, beside her bra and her other clothes, unseen, unattended to. She had more to attend to with her fingers.

One by one she slipped the buttons on his shirt, easing and teasing each button loose with deliberate slowness. As she worked her way down, the backs of her fingers rested on the smooth white surface of his shirt. She could feel the heat from his hard flesh beneath. Soon, so very soon, her fingers would be gliding over that smooth, firm flesh.

Opened, she eased the shirt little by little from his waistband, and then, when it was loose, her hands went back to his shoulders. His gaze was still locked to hers, still unreadable, although she knew perfectly well, with every feminine instinct, that he was exerting supreme control over his reactions, forcing himself to stay immobile while she stripped him down to the lean, perfect body beneath the expensive tailored clothes.

Her hands, at last, slid beneath the surface of the material of his loosened shirt, and the sensation of his warm, smooth skin beneath her palms was heady in its intimacy. Her fingers cupped his shoulders and worked the shirt from his body and arms. It slithered to the floor. Only then did she allow herself the luxury of letting her hands stroke over his torso. It made her breath catch—it was perfect, quite perfect. A column of lean, muscled flesh and bone, neither over-nor under-developed, neither broad nor slim, but perfect. It was bliss to touch, bliss to let her hands roam free, drifting in slow sweeps on its surface warmth, sliding around his waist to glide up over the muscled contours of his back.

And then, most blissful of all, to lift her body against his again, and let the contact of her swollen nipples graze across his own naked, exposed flesh.

She felt his arousal strengthen, and it made her breath catch, made the excitement surge again in her. As if it were a cue for him, suddenly, from being immobile, he took control again. His hands wrapped around her back, fingers splaying out in possession.

His mouth came down on hers.

This was no soft kiss as at the hotel, nor was it urgent with relief as it was at her flat. This was the kiss of a man, a male, strong, sensual, possessing her mouth as if it was his to take for the asking. He opened her to him with effortless intent and speared within, meeting her and deepening the kiss with sensual mastery.

Desire surged in her, stronger and more insistent. She returned kiss for kiss, her hands moving up to cup the shape of his skull beneath the pressure of her fingertips, buried in the silken, sable hair.

Her body was ripe, engorged, her lips swollen, her breasts straining, and between the vee of her legs, where the strength of his shaft pressed insistently, intimately against her, she felt a quickening that fed the hunger she must sate.

As if he felt she had reached that point, he suddenly caught her up and deposited her on the wide, soft bed. Her breath caught as he stood briefly, to strip, with controlled, swift movements, the last of his clothes. He came down beside her and in the same moment his fingers hooked into the hip-level waistline of her panties and peeled them from her. Where they fell she did not know or care. Knew only that she was lying naked to his view. And now he was perusing her, propped on one elbow, just a little way from her on the wide bed, his eyes moving over her naked body leisurely, lingeringly, until his gaze reached her eyes, and held.

It was the most intimate look he had given her yet, and Lissa knew that now they were truly about to start making love together. This was her moment of time with him.

She felt beautiful. More beautiful than she had ever felt in her life. The beauty of her naked female form, her long hair flowing out in a swathe behind her, her limbs, her body, all displayed for him, for him alone—the body of a woman in desire, a desire that she would consummate with this man, whose perfect body lay beside her, in a state of nature as was hers. There was a naturalness about it, a rightness about this coming together of two bodies, two people, giving themselves to each other.

Not in love, nor lust, but in mutual appreciation of the gift of physical sensuality.

She smiled. It was a warm smile as the recognition of the rightness of what she was doing, where she was, what was to happen, glowed in her. For just a second something veiled in his eyes—as if it might be a question, and then it was gone, banished, and he was looking down at her with an answering tug at the corner of his beautiful mouth.

‘Xavier,’ she said softly. A statement, a recognition. An acknowledgement of what she was about to do. Make love with a man she desired above all others. ‘Xavier,’ she breathed again.

It was all he needed. His head lowered to hers and he began to kiss her. Slowly this time, but with such skilled, arousing sensuality that she was lost—lost in a world she had not known possible, a world where every touch, every caress, drew from her a response that intensified with every exquisite contact.

He stroked her body, his hand warm on her flanks, her breasts, smoothing and gliding over her stomach, cupping her breasts with the bowl of his hand, fingers scything slowly either side of her nipples as if the touch were as pleasurable to him as it was to her. She moved her head in the soft pillows, sensuously revelling in the sensation as his hand moved down over her flank again, dipping between the pillars of her thighs, parting them for himself.

The tips of his fingers glided between, and she was dewed for him already, her breath catching with a soft cry in her throat as the incredible sensation of pleasure and bliss focused her entire being on that portion of her body. Against her thigh, as he moved closer to her, she could feel the strong length of his bared shaft.

He moved over her. He was against her stomach now, full and hard, and his hands framed her face, his mouth lowering to hers to kiss her yet again, sensual, deep kisses.

Then he lifted his mouth from her. ‘I must delay one moment,’ he said, and as he raised himself from her and turned away she realised what he was doing. Her eyes fluttered shut, and she let her head tilt slightly in the opposite direction. There was the subdued slide of a drawer, another moment’s delay, and then she felt his weight shift on the bed.

‘You may open your eyes again, cherie,’ he said. ‘The dreadful deed is done.’ There was amusement in his voice, and his hand reached to turn her head towards him again. He kissed her softly, reassuringly, and she relaxed, her eyes opening to his amused consideration. A man as experienced in affairs as Xavier Lauran would of course, she acknowledged, be prepared to take the necessary precautions, against both disease and the threat of an unwanted pregnancy with a woman who was, after all, no more than a passing desire to him. For just a moment unease flickered within her. She had come to this point knowingly, consciously, without any seduction or persuasion, simply because she was at a moment in her life when she had the time and opportunity to seize for herself an experience she would savour, appreciate, for the rest of her life. It was not real, this fantasy of desire with Xavier Lauran, but for its duration it was sweet, and oh so potent.

And it was now—now. The moment of consummation, of desire fulfilled, of yearning achieved, of fantasy indulged.

He moved over her again, kissing her on her mouth, his elbows supporting the weight of his lean body, his hips against hers, his legs lying between hers, and on her abdomen rested the manhood with which he would possess her.

She was ready for him. Absolutely, completely. For this moment. Now. Her hands glided along his flanks and she felt him tense. She gazed up at him, desire in her eyes, and met his answering desire.

‘Now,’ she said softly. ‘Now.’

He lifted away from her, his strong thighs parting hers yet a little more, and then, his fingers still cradling either side of her face, he slowly started to enter her.

She gave a long, low gasp, an exhalation of pleasure that brought the tilted smile crooking at his lips again.

‘A little more?’ he asked.

She only sighed in reply, not wasting breath on words to give an answer he already knew. He eased further into her, deeper. She opened to him, her silken tissues making his entrance as smooth as satin. The sensation was like nothing she had ever known, widening her, stretching her, yet entirely without pain. Only pleasure—pleasure that was more than physical sensation, pleasure that went through her whole body, engaging every part of it, so that her blood began to throb in her veins. Her fingertips pressed into the sides of his body.

‘It’s so good,’ she breathed.

He smiled at her again, and the way his mouth curved, his eyes lit, made her catch her breath again. He deepened his penetration, his hips now coming into contact with hers. Instinctively she raised her own hips, bending her knees just a little to balance herself. As she opened to him further he surged yet deeper into her, fusing her to him, and her flesh enclosed him like a lover’s embrace.

She was filled—fulfilled. Entire and whole. Complete. Two bodies become as one. For precious moments he just lay like that, cradled within her, as her hands rested at his waist.

‘Don’t move,’ she breathed. ‘Just for a moment longer—don’t move.’

She wanted to go on lying there, her naked body taken by his, his taken into hers, the softness of the bed cradling them. It was perfect, so perfect.

For a little while she was indulged, and she felt, if it were possible, that he seemed to grow fuller and stronger within her as her own body tightened around him in perfect unison.

Then— ‘Cherie …’

There was a thread of strain in his voice that roused her from the sweet pleasure that was so perfectly balanced between ful-filment and further desire. She gave a slow smile, and lifted her mouth to brush his lightly. Then, with the same movement, she lifted her hips fractionally.

It was all it took. He surged within her, and as he did so, his internal caress of that most sensitive place of all fused into a single, absolute point of bliss.

She gasped aloud, and he surged again, then again. Her throat arched, and his eyes locked with hers. With absolute surety of stroke he built a pyramid of bliss within her, the soft gasping in her throat becoming almost a cry of anguish, anguish—so sweet that it was indistinguishable from the most intense pleasure.

He gave one final surge, and the incredible feeling blazed out through her body, torching it. She cried out, a sob of bliss, her eyes shutting so tightly there was nothing in the entire universe except this.

Her hands clutched him desperately, her heels digging into the bedclothes and her hips straining upwards against him to intensify the sensation that was sheeting through her. And then a new sensation impacted on her—her internal muscles were pulsing, convulsing, drawing him further, further into her, and then suddenly she felt him tense every muscle and sinew in his body, his body taut against her like an arrow in soaring flight.

He cried out, the strong muscles of his chest ridged, the cords of his throat rigid. For one timeless moment they held each other in the completion of their union, and then she could feel her body collapse in exhaustion. He closed down on her, his body warm and damp with a sheen of sweat that she realised in wonder was dewing her skin, as well. She was panting, her breath coming with unsteady inhalations against the exhausted, heavy weight of his body which she was cradling fast against her.

Wonder filled her, and an exaultation she had never known before. She felt her mouth part in a rapturous smile.

She speared her fingers into his hair—hair that was damp at the nape, tousled by her touch.

How long she lay like that, she was not sure. She was sure only that she wanted now for nothing, and that here, in this moment, was all she was and all she needed. Her eyes were closed, and she lay supine, her limbs exhausted but replete, his weight against her, his cheek against hers.

She felt him move. Softly, she felt her closed eyelids kissed.

‘Ma belle,’ he said.

Then he started to withdraw his weight—and more than his weight.

‘Do not move. I will be but a moment,’ he assured her.

Yet even that brief time apart from him left her feeling cold, abandoned, so that when he returned to her she held out her arms to him, wrapped him to her and clung to him.

‘Xavier,’ she breathed into his skin, inhaling the scent of him. Then, as her eyelids closed again, she felt drowsiness sweep over her.

Dimly, she felt the covers being drawn over her. Dimly she heard him murmur something. Dimly she registered that the lights had been extinguished, and then, still cradled against him, held in the strong circle of his arms, she went to sleep.

For a while longer Xavier lay, looking up into the darkness overhead. What had happened? He had known he had wanted Lissa—that her beauty had struck him like a coup de foudre that night at the hotel, overpowering all his logic and reason and sense, stimulating in him a desire that had swept him away. He had been known that his thwarted desire for her had been a torment, and that he had continued to want her with an intensity that had been sharpened to unbearableness by the knowledge that she was beyond his reach, reserved for Armand, his own brother. And he had known, ever since that out-of-the-blue message had sent him chasing from Paris to London to claim her, that possessing her finally, as he now had, would be a release and a satiation all the sweeter because he had not thought to have it.

But what had just happened had gone beyond that.

Why? How?

He asked the questions, but his rational mind could find no answer. No reason. He was in unknown territory, that was all he knew. A place he had not been before. He tried to put it into words. As his mind searched, as he stared up into the darkness, he could feel the soft warmth of her body curled against him.

The reality of her presence in his arms, his bed, swept over him. What did anything matter compared with that? It was all that was important—all he would allow himself.

He shifted his limbs to ease them a moment. As he did, the weight of her soft, warm body shifted, too, bearing down on him more. He heard her murmur in her sleep, her dream. She lay so peacefully in his arms. So naturally.

She felt good to hold. Good to lie with.

Good to fall asleep beside.

He felt his focus dissolve, the drowsiness of post-coital satiation wash up over him. His eyes started to feel heavy and close, his breathing slowed. Instinctively for one second his arms tightened around her, checking she was still there. He let his body relax, his mind, too.

He slept in her embrace, embracing her.

It felt very good.

CHAPTER NINE

SUNLIGHT, AND THE smell of fresh, fragrant coffee stirred the senses of Lissa’s sleeping mind, luring her to wakefulness. As she surfaced from slumber she wondered why she felt so wonderful—and then she remembered. Her eyes flew open.

She was alone in the bed, but Xavier was sitting on the edge, clad only in a short white bathrobe that accentuated the fabulous golden tan of his skin and exposed—she gave a silent gulp—the smooth muscled surface of his chest and forearms. Her eyes flew to his and clung.

He leaned forward and kissed her softly on the mouth.

‘Bonjour, cherie.’ He smiled.

She felt her heart melt into a puddle inside her. Her eyes lit.

‘Xavier.’

A huge, joyous smile broke across her face.

It had been true, not a dream. A wonderful, blissful truth that made her breathless with delight. Xavier had swept down on her and scooped her up and borne her away to Paris, the most romantic of cities, to make her his. Her smile deepened and her eyes drank in the beautiful planed face of the man looking down at her, amusement and bemusement glittering in his eyes in equal measures.

Long, silky lashes swept down over his eyes.

‘Would you like coffee?’ he asked.

The aromatic, heady fragrance tickled at her nose again. ‘Oh— Please,’ she answered.

She started to sit up and then remembered, with a little thrill, that she wasn’t wearing a stitch. Sudden confusion and embarrassment swept over her, and she clutched the rumpled duvet to her breasts as she sat herself up. Xavier leaned around her and propped up the pillow. The silk of his hair brushed against her jaw as he did so, and her heart melted again. As he straightened and she leaned back against the head of the bed, she pushed back her own tumbled hair with fingers that trembled suddenly.

‘Black or white?’

His hand hovered over a jug of hot milk that stood on the coffee tray on the bedside table.

‘Oh— White, please—thank you.’

Her voice sounded breathless, even to her, and suddenly she was too shy to look him in the eye. She took the grande tasse and raised it to her lips for a tiny sip of hot, pale coffee, glad he had busied himself pouring his own cup and then settling back, one leg crooked under him on the wide bed, to drink it. As he did so she stole a look at him, feeling that thrill go through her again.

Her face opened into a huge, joyous smile of delight and wonder.

‘Did it really happen?’

The words came from her before she could stop them. Dark eyes lifted and looked into hers.

‘I thought it might all have been a dream,’ she said haltingly, her eyes meeting his, only to drown in their depths. ‘It was just so wonderful!’

A smile played at the corner of his sculpted mouth, and again there was that mixed look of amusement and bemusement in his dark eyes.

‘It was my pleasure,’ he murmured. his French accent making her insides quiver.

‘Mine, too,’ she blurted. ‘Heaps and heaps—’ She cut off dead, and, biting her lip, made a face. ‘I’m sorry, I’m being— What’s the French term? Jejeune? Is that it? Or—’ she made another face ‘—maybe just naïf. Anyway.’ She swallowed, ‘Um, er— Well.’ Hastily she drank some more coffee, dropping her head so that her tumbled hair covered her embarrassment at behaving like an idiot.

Fingers gently touched the side of her head.

‘Look at me,’ Xavier said.

She made herself do so. He leaned forward and kissed her on her forehead. And suddenly it was all right, just fine, and not embarrassing at all, and she gave a wide smile again. Happiness filled her like a warm balloon, and she felt that familiar feeling of starting to float up from the ground.

She met his eyes, and now it was all right—more than all right. It was fine and lovely and—right. That was the word for it. Not that she wanted to think about words just at the moment—or about anything, really. She just wanted to go on feeling as if she was lighter than air, and happy and floating. Sunlight filled the room—bright sunlight from drawn-back curtains—sending golden dust motes shimmering through the air.

‘Everything is good, cherie,’ he told her softly, ‘because you are here with me.’ He lowered his mouth to brush hers lightly, lingeringly. Then he drew back, nodding towards the coffee she still held.

‘Drink up,’ said Xavier, that half smile at his mouth again. It made his mouth even more beautiful, thought Lissa dreamily.

Obediently, she took another mouthful of coffee, the fragrance and taste of it carrying with it all that was France—pavement cafés and sunlit balconies. She watched Xavier drink from his own cup, and everything about the gesture registered as if in ultra-focus—the way his hand was splayed under the saucer, holding the weight of the cup, the elegant turn of his wrist as he lifted the cup, the fall of his hair as he lowered his head slightly to drink. Dreamily, she took another draught.

Then, ‘Ça suffit.’ It was decisively spoken, and then Xavier was setting down his cup, and removing hers from her grasp. For a moment, just a moment, Lissa’s eyes widened in alarm and anxiety. Was he going to send her packing now? Politely, of course, and charmingly, but packing all the same. Put her on a plane back to London, and get on with his own life.

But as he straightened and turned back to her she realised, with a dissolving stomach, that sending her packing was the last thing on his mind. That decisiveness had not been about getting on with his busy day, but about—

His kiss was long and slow and warm, and dissolved not only her stomach but every cell in her body. She gave herself to it, to the soft, sensuous delight of it. Her hands slid of their own volition across the smooth wall of his half-bared chest, her body sliding down into the bed. His mouth caressed hers, and she gave herself, wholly and entirely, to the soft, sensuous delight that was Xavier Lauran making the most beautiful love in the world to her.

They stayed one day in Paris.

‘I must clear my desk, hélas,’ he told her ruefully. ‘But tomorrow morning we can leave.’

‘Where are we going?’ she asked, wide-eyed.

‘You’ll see,’ he answered, a half smile playing on his face.

He knew exactly where he was going to spend this time with her. The season was a little early, but it was better than the heat of summer, and there would be no crowds to get in their way. It was a place he never took his amours to, but Lissa was different. Different how, exactly, he still did not ask—or answer. He only knew that the kind of affaire he was used to would not work with her. Lissa was not someone to leave in his apartment while he kept up his daily routine of business meetings and high-pressure work, spending only evenings with her in restaurants, or at the theatre or the opera, or social engagements, as had been his custom with Madeline and her predecessors over the years. No, he wanted Lissa to himself twenty-four-seven—safe by his side, in his bed. He had thought her forever forbidden to him—and now that fate had given her to him after all he would not neglect her.