Sinful Revenge: Exquisite Revenge / The Sinful Art of Revenge / Undone by His Touch

‘How on earth could something like that happen?’

Jesse grimaced. ‘I knew she was very ill. She’d been sick for days but hadn’t gone to the doctor … I went to get help, but he wouldn’t listen to me.’

‘You mentioned your father just now … Was it your father you asked for help?’

Jesse nodded. She felt numb inside. ‘He was hosting a dinner party that night. He was drunk and didn’t want to be disturbed. He took me back to the bedroom and told me to stop bothering him. When I went after him again he locked me in …’

Jesse remembered her father lurching unsteadily over to her mother in the bed and feeling her clammy forehead before declaring, ‘She’s fine. It’s just a cold.’

She looked at Luc, needing to erase that memory of her father.

‘By the time morning came and someone opened the door she was dead—had been for hours …’

Luc frowned. ‘Where was your father?’

Jesse shrugged. ‘At work …’

Luc frowned, and then he said, ‘But earlier you locked the door to the study …’

Jesse blushed. ‘I just pretended to lock it.’

Luc’s mouth tipped up wryly. ‘I didn’t even think to test it.’

Something infinitely delicate seemed to stretch between them at that moment.

Luc gripped Jesse’s hands tighter. ‘I’m sorry for locking you in. If I’d had any idea—’

Jesse put her hand over his mouth, and took it away again quickly when his warm breath feathered against her palm. ‘You weren’t to know. I didn’t know I’d react like that.’ She ducked her head. ‘It’s embarrassing.’

Luc tipped up her chin and looked at her. ‘No, it’s not embarrassing. Your father was a monster, Jesse, to do that to you and your mother.’

‘Yes, he was.’

‘Is that why you told me you didn’t know who your father was? Because you don’t like to talk about him?’

Jesse felt guilty. ‘Something like that.’

To her surprise Luc stood up, and Jesse blushed when she registered what part of his anatomy her eyes were on a level with.

He stepped back and said lightly, ‘You must be tired. You should get some rest.’

Jesse stood up too, some of those tendrils of icy panic reaching out for her again at the prospect of Luc walking out. Without thinking she put out a hand, curling it around his wrist. It felt vital and alive beneath her palm. His pulse was strong and powerful. She suddenly knew that she needed this, needed him, as she’d never needed anything before in her life. Right in that moment she trusted him implicitly.

Huskily she said, ‘Please don’t leave me alone.’

He stopped and turned to face her directly. ‘What are you saying, Jesse?’

She looked up at him, feeling as if she was stepping out into a void. ‘Please stay with me tonight.’

Jesse could see Luc’s jaw clench.

Carefully he said, ‘If I stay with you we share a bed, and if we share a bed we won’t be doing much sleeping.’

Wild excitement rushed through her, obliterating the awful memories and the fear that had gripped her. She stepped closer to Luc, his wrist still in her hand. ‘That’s what I was hoping you’d say …’

In some dim and distant recess of her mind Jesse couldn’t believe she was being so forward, but for the first time in her life everything felt right. This man, this moment. The past few days, everything that had happened, the way he’d reacted just now and the moments when he’d shown her real gentleness—she had come to trust him on some very deep and vulnerable level, but she couldn’t really acknowledge that now. She could only act on it.

Luc said, ‘Are you sure?’

Jesse just said, ‘Stop talking, Sanchis …’ and dropped his wrist. She reached up and put her arms around his neck, funnelled her hands through his hair, urging his head down to hers. ‘Kiss me.’

Luc’s arms went around her waist, dragging her even closer. Jesse could feel the thrilling hard ridge of his arousal and moved against him.

He growled softly. ‘I thought I told you we’ve gone way beyond such formality …’

He lowered his head and pulled her up to meet him. Their mouths met and Jesse melted into a sea of raging hormones. They kissed for what felt like for ever, tongues tangling together in a languorous erotic dance. And then Jesse felt herself being lowered onto her bed. She lay back and looked up at Luc, eyes drinking in his hard-boned form greedily.

He came down over her on his arms, not even touching her yet, tantalising her. Emboldened, Jesse moved her hands to her robe and undid the knot. She pulled the robe open and saw Luc’s eyes widen and flash with fire as his gaze dipped and dwelled on all her secrets and hollows.

Impatient, Jesse came up slightly and reached for his towel, tugging so that it came apart and fell to the floor. Her own eyes widened when she took in the sheer male perfection of his body. She’d seen him naked already, but she hadn’t seen him naked and aroused.

A little overwhelmed, she fell back onto the bed, unaware that her legs were parting instinctively. Luc smiled, and it was feral. He stroked a hand down Jesse’s body, over her collarbone and over one tip-tilted breast, dwelling there to squeeze her nipple gently, making her gasp. And then his hand continued to the cleft between her legs.

His fingers found where she was moist and aching. Jesse moved her hips against him. ‘Luc … please.’

Luc’s fingers moved against her, teasing her. Biting her lip, Jesse moved so that she could reach him and wrap one hand around his hard girth. She exulted in his own deeply drawn breath.

‘You’re playing with fire now …’

Jesse felt urgency building and stroked her hand up and down his shaft, wanting him to fill her. She tried to draw him closer, every muscle in her body crying out when she held the tip of him at her entrance.

A wave of sensation was already rolling through Jesse’s body. And, as if she’d finally pushed him too far, Luc gently prised her hand from him and balanced on his hands over her, then thrust deep into her clasping body.

Jesse was so ready and sensitised that she convulsed around Luc immediately, countless waves of pleasure holding her suspended before diminishing and leaving her breathless. She felt the sweat on her skin, and tremors racked her body.

Embarrassed at the strength of her reaction, she ducked her head into Luc’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry …’

He tipped up her chin. ‘Never be sorry for being so responsive.’

Jesse felt intensely gauche. ‘But I … You haven’t even …’

‘No,’ he agreed in thrillingly deep tones. ‘But I fully intend to.’

And with that he started to move slowly, in and out. Jesse was over-sensitive for a second, but then her body started to adjust and she could feel that urgency building all over again. She gripped his arms with her hands and wrapped her legs around his back, feeling him slide even deeper.

Soon Luc’s movements became harder and faster, and Jesse could feel herself climbing. She only half heard Luc’s guttural-sounding, ‘Damn …’ She was too intent on reaching that pinnacle of pleasure again.

And then she saw the tortured expression on his face. ‘What is it?’

Luc gritted out painfully, ‘No protection …’

But they were both too far gone. Jesse could feel her muscles start to clamp around him, urging him to completion. Luc threw his head back and shouted out, and at the last second, when everything in Jesse broke free of the delicious tension and soared even higher than before, Luc pulled free of her body and twisted away from her.

Despite the intensity of her climax Jesse felt bereft, as if she’d been cheated of something. She lay there panting, the sweat cooling on her body, and became aware that her arms weren’t even fully out of the robe. She shrugged out of it now and instinctively curled into Luc’s back. She tucked her legs under his, breathed his scent in deep and welcomed a sweet oblivion she’d never tasted before.

Luc lay for a long time, staring into the middle distance as his body came down from the mind-bending crescendo it had just experienced. Jesse’s arm was around him like a vice and, contrary to what was usual for him, his first impulse wasn’t to get out of her embrace. Instead he found his hand coming up to hold hers against him.

He felt as if he’d just been turned inside out. He’d never, ever forgotten about protection before, was far too wary of unplanned pregnancies, and yet it had been the last thing on his mind right up until it had been too late. The only option left to him had been to withdraw and spill himself on the bed like a callow youth. For the second time that evening he’d been reduced to baser tendencies than he was used to.

But what was even more disconcerting was how right it had felt to thrust into Jesse’s tight, slick heat skin-to-skin, and how hard it had been to pull free as his climax had approached, robbing him of any remaining sanity. Even now he couldn’t be sure that they’d been entirely safe …

Luc shifted onto his back and Jesse snuggled sleepily into his chest, one leg coming up to rest over his thigh—disturbingly close to a far too sensitive part of his anatomy. The arm across his chest tightened. Her breasts pressed against his side. And Luc sighed deeply as the resurgence of desire rushed through his body …

What had happened in this room this evening posed far too many intriguing questions. The ease with which Luc had imagined rattling Jesse’s cage was almost laughable now. She was the one rattling his cage, and he didn’t like it one bit.

‘I thought I wasn’t any good at … sex.’

Jesse blushed against Luc’s chest. What on earth had made her blurt that out? She felt Luc move, and then she was on her back and he was looming over her, looking deliciously tousled and with a dark shadow on his jaw.

They’d been in bed all day and most of the evening, after a brief hiatus at about seven that morning, when Luc had summarily carried her down to the kitchen for a delicious breakfast. By some unspoken agreement they’d spoken of nothing controversial—nothing beyond the island—to link to harsh reality. It was as if they’d silently mutually decided to embark on a tenuous truce.

‘Well, I can assert that you are very good at sex.’

Jesse blushed more now, and put her hands to her face.

Luc took them and pinned them over her head with one hand, before resting his other hand near the apex of her legs. It had an immediate effect on her breathing, and not for the first time in the last twenty-four hours did she welcome physical release over the clamour of voices in her head, urging her to stop and think about what was happening between them …

‘Whoever gave you the idea that you weren’t?’

Jesse squirmed, hating that the fact Luc was holding her hands captive sent such thrills of excitement through her body. ‘I was involved with someone briefly a few years ago. I tried to like it … but when he touched me I just felt cold inside. And yet with you I felt hot the first time you looked at me.’

Luc said, ‘Do you remember bumping into me at that function?’

Jesse nodded and bit her lip. She felt vulnerable now, remembering the way he’d thrust her away from him that night. Sudden doubt assailed her. The cacophony of inner voices became louder. Perhaps this was all part of his plan and even now he was playing her … pretending to desire her … forcing his body to respond.

‘I wanted you then.’

Jesse blurted out, ‘But you pushed me away from you …’

Luc grimaced, his hand tightening on hers fractionally. His other hand was touching the curls covering her sex. ‘I’d been watching you … wondering about you …’

All Jesse’s doubts melted away like traitors. ‘You had?’

He nodded. ‘And then you walked straight into my arms and looked up at me … and seemed to see right into me.’

Jesse felt scary emotion grip her. ‘That’s what I felt too …’

He bent his head to kiss her just as his hand reached for that sweet spot between her legs and Jesse’s back arched. She let emotion and doubt be swallowed up in the heat which rose around them again.

When Luc broke off the kiss he commanded her with a rough voice, ‘Don’t take your hands down or I’ll tie them there.’

Jesse felt the illicit burn of excitement and curled her fingers around the bed’s headboard. Luc made his way down her body, teasing every inch of her with a thoroughness that had her writhing and aching and begging for release. Until he got between her legs, when his breath and mouth sent her soaring up into the light where she couldn’t speak any more.

When he entered her with a cataclysmic thrust Jesse took down her hands, uncaring of his threat, because she had to touch him or die. She shut her eyes and rose up to meet the bliss Luc promised her, ignoring those insidious voices, whispering that she was heading for certain catastrophe.

‘So, tell me how you really learnt to cook.’

Jesse was sitting on a stool with her chin propped in her hand, watching Luc do something very complicated to a fish in a pan. She’d drunk half a glass of wine and felt incredibly mellow. Which most likely also had a lot to do with the fact that this was the evening after their whole day in bed. A bone-deep sense of satisfaction oozed through Jesse’s entire body.

Luc’s voice was light, but she sensed an undercurrent of steel—as if she was touching on a tender point. ‘I told you—my mother had a breakdown after my father died and I had to cook for me and my sister and her when she came out of hospital.’

Impetuously Jesse asked, ‘How did your father die?’

Luc’s jaw tightened. He drizzled some oil over the fish in the pan and it sizzled.

When he said casually, ‘He killed himself,’ Jesse almost missed it. Before she could say anything Luc was explaining, ‘I told you that my sister has special needs? That she’s verging on autistic?’

Jesse nodded, knowing well enough not to mention his father again. Her heart ached for Luc in a very peculiar way, but her mind skittered weakly away from looking at why too closely. Much as it skittered away from analysing anything of the last couple of days too deeply.

Luc went on. ‘I discovered that cooking calmed her. Getting the ingredients and putting them together seemed to occupy her.’ He grimaced. ‘Of course when things didn’t work out as they should she would fly into a rage, but that just made it more imperative that I learn how to do things properly. The more complicated the recipe, the more it would have an effect on her. She would sit for hours and watch a boeuf bourguignon cooking slowly.’

He looked at Jesse and smiled faintly. ‘She’s now working as a chef for a company that caters for people with special needs. It’s like meals on wheels, and they offer opportunities to people like Eva.’

Jesse’s voice was husky. ‘Eva is a pretty name.’

Then Luc asked, ‘So, what happened after your mother died?’

Jesse blanched and took a hasty sip of wine. She almost resented Luc for skirting so close to dangerous reality.

Very reluctantly she said, ‘I was taken in by the Social Services … I lived in foster homes until I was eighteen.’

Luc looked at her. ‘That must have been rough.’

Jesse shrugged and avoided his eye. ‘It wasn’t easy.’

‘But what about your father? Why didn’t you live with him—despite what he did?’

Jesse realised that Luc must have assumed that her mother and father had been married. The old shame crawled up her spine. ‘My parents weren’t married … My mother was my father’s housekeeper.’ Her mouth twisted with bitterness as she revealed, ‘He was married to a very honourable woman from English society.’

Luc’s hands stilled. ‘So … your mother and father had an affair and you were brought up in the house?’

‘More or less … except it wasn’t so much an affair as my father using my mother whenever he felt like it.’

Luc’s voice was cold. ‘He knew he was your father?’

Jesse nodded and finally looked at him again, not sure how she felt at seeing the condemnation in his eyes.

Before she knew it the words were tumbling out. ‘I went to him one day when he was in his study … I don’t know where I got the nerve … I must have been about six. I was going through a phase where I was missing not having a daddy. And I knew he was my father. So I went and asked him why he didn’t act like the fathers I saw at school …’

‘Jesse—’

But she held up a hand, stopping Luc in whatever he was going to say, and finished. ‘He said nothing at first. He just got up and went and closed and locked the door to his study. And then he took off his belt. He whipped me with it, all down my back and legs, until there was blood on the floor. The buckle broke my skin …’

Luc had left the fish and come round to stand in front of Jesse. When he cupped her face in his hands and lifted it up she was surprised to feel tears running down her face.

‘He told me never, ever to call him my father again, and that if I repeated what I’d said to anyone he’d kill me and my mother.’

Luc shook his head. ‘No wonder you have a thing about locked rooms. Was he violent to your mother?’

Jesse nodded. She felt Luc gather her into his chest and rock her. He felt so solid and strong and warm. Her hands gripped his shirt, holding on tight until she was still.

When he let her go and gave her a tissue she hiccuped. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve never told anyone about that before … I don’t usually cry.’

‘Don’t be sorry. Is he still—?’

Jesse stopped his words by blurting out, ‘Please—I don’t want to talk about it any more, okay?’

After dinner, and much later that night in bed, Luc asked softly, ‘Those scars on your legs … are they from that day?’

Jesse came up on one arm and looked at Luc. She just nodded. And then, to stop him asking any more questions, she bent down and kissed him on the mouth, slid over him so that her thighs were straddling his hips and her breasts were crushed into his chest.

Luc clamped his hands around her hips and lifted her slightly until she felt him guiding his erection between her legs. And Jesse weakly obliterated everything from her mind except this exquisite moment.

When the storm had passed Jesse curled into Luc’s side, once again claiming him in sleep in a way which should have had him prising her from him, but which was having the opposite effect.

Luc felt more than a little pole-axed. When Jesse had told him about her father earlier a tidal wave of anger had come over him at the thought of her being so abused. And also a feeling of pride … that she’d come through something like that and forged such a successful life for herself.

He sighed deeply and recognised that he was in serious danger of becoming so sidelined by this woman that he’d forget about his primary focus, which was to get off the island and get back in time to deal with O’Brien.

He had Jesse exactly where he wanted her—literally—but he found that instead of exploiting this intimacy he was intent on seducing her some more … and then some more. She was a fever in his blood, and he was very much afraid he wasn’t ready to douse it just yet.

Luc felt the old tentacles of vulnerability reach out to touch him with ghostly memories, but he pushed them aside and damned them all. Jesse was different … this situation was different. He would never be led astray again.

As he fell asleep he reassured himself that he hadn’t lost sight of his goal at all. He was still entirely focused on his endgame, and in complete control of what was happening …

Jesse was sitting on the couch in the den, feeling more sated than she’d ever felt in her life. After waking late, and a lazy, lingering brunch, which had inevitably ended with them back in bed, she’d left Luc asleep upstairs to come down and see to Tigger. Before she’d left the bedroom, though, she’d spent an indulgent moment watching Luc, his big body sprawled in abandon, utterly self-confident even in sleep.

She watched Tigger now, who was valiantly trying to unthread the stunning oriental carpet on the floor with his tiny claws, and deftly lifted him out of harm’s way and onto the couch beside her. He promptly went to the edge and looked down the great distance. He miaowed indignantly, and she smiled at his clear frustration.

She lifted him up and took him into the kitchen saying into his sweet fur, ‘I think it’s milk and nap time for baby cats …’

It was only when she was tucking him into his box and watching him lap greedily at the milk that Jesse realised with a shock just how far into a fantasy world she’d allowed herself to travel.

In the past few days, since everything had become physical between her and Luc, she had somehow begun to imagine that perhaps this was real. That this bubble was not some mad aberration. When the reality was that she’d kidnapped Luc Sanchis to stop him from saving her father … which he must still want to do at all costs. She’d conveniently blocked that out because she’d become far more interested in the physical nirvana Luc promised every time he touched her.

She heard him call her name now, faintly, from upstairs. Galvanised by panic, because she couldn’t have him look at her with that far too perceptive gaze when she felt so exposed, Jesse lurched out of the villa and down a path she hadn’t yet explored. It led to a beautifully soft and sandy private cove. But Jesse was oblivious.

She hugged her arms around herself at the water’s edge, feeling cold. What had she been thinking, allowing Luc to seduce her like this? She mocked herself. More accurately, what had she been thinking, allowing herself to be a full and willing participant in that seduction?

The deadline was in three days’ time. Three days and her father would be ruined. She’d almost lost sight of that goal. If Luc had turned to her that morning as they’d lain in his bed and said to her, I really need to get back to work … Jesse would most likely have tripped downstairs and rung for a jet before she’d even realised what she was doing.

With a little sob of emotion that made her clamp her hand over her mouth, she realised I don’t know who I am any more! The cool shell she’d built up to keep people at arm’s length was well and truly gone. She’d turned into someone who cried at the drop of a hat and was happy to blurt out secrets she’d harboured for a lifetime. Not even the nicest of her social workers or foster parents had managed to get her to reveal what had happened to her, and yet with Luc she’d spilled it all.

How could she trust anything that had happened between them? She imagined Luc waking and remembering with distaste that he had a job to do: to try to make Jesse believe he really wanted her. This whole environment was contrived and false. From the moment she’d forced Luc onto this island she shouldn’t have trusted anything. Or him. No matter how much the weak part of her believed she could or longed to.

She’d seen how her father had charmed people when she was small—only to turn around and stab them in the back with cruel words as soon as they’d gone. And now she knew worse than that: her father had ruined the businesses of people who’d slighted him over dinner. So she knew how easily someone could present a façade when it suited them …

Luc’s words came back to her—words he’d said only days ago: All you’ve done is make yourself a foe for life … I will find out all your secrets and you will pay …

After long minutes of looking blankly at the sea, feeling as if a part of her soul was ebbing away, Jesse went back inside. She found Luc in the den, and valiantly ignored the kick of her heart when she saw him.

He turned from where he’d been looking out at the view, with his hands in the pockets of his trousers. His hair was damp from the shower. Incredible pain lanced Jesse, but she ignored that too.

He said to her now, ‘That storm never did materialise, did it?’

Jesse shook her head. Not that storm. But another storm had. It had whipped her up inside so intensely that she knew she’d never emerge as the same person.