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

‘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.