She leaned in eagerly, but whatever she was about to say died on her lips as several camera flashes went off.
Louis barely remembered standing up, much less moving around the table. But one minute he was in his seat and the next he was pulling Alex to her feet, holding her close and ignoring the way she stiffened against him, while the staff ushered the photographers outside. It would only be later, on the drive home, that he would wonder at his instinctive reaction to protect her, shield her, when the entire point of the so-called date had been to flaunt their relationship to the world.
But for now, all that consumed him was the way Alex felt in his arms, her initial reticence already melting away as her body softened, curving into his, moulding herself to him. As if they had been designed to fit together.
‘Let’s go,’ he muttered, waving the apologetic maître d’ out of their way and tapping his watch and making a call to ensure his driver would be out front in a matter of minutes. Telling himself his body wasn’t celebrating the way she pressed herself tightly against him.
‘I can walk by myself,’ she muttered, though she made no move to push away from him.
‘But it would look better if you didn’t want to,’ countered Louis, refusing to acknowledge the voice suggesting he was motivated by more than just the way it looked to others. ‘Better if you preferred to be in my arms.’
‘But not like your typical Louis Delaroche date.’ She shook her head, toying with the fabric of his shirt, as though she was willing her hands to brace against him and push him away.
‘Isn’t that the point? That you’re meant to be unlike anyone I’ve been with before?’
‘Still, like you said, I don’t think wholesome, boring, grandmother’s Apple Pie Alex is going to convince the press. Do you?’ She barely gave him time to reply. ‘If we want to convince people that you’re a changed man, we need to give them a reason they’ll believe. A spicy apple pie. The Apple Pie Martini.’
‘Sorry, the what?’
But she didn’t stop to answer.
Flattening her palms against his chest, Alex propelled herself back and pulled herself up to her full height, more like the confident, feisty woman he’d seen that first night. The smile she cast him shot straight through him and to his sex and then she spun around and glided out the doors and into a sea of camera flashes, appearing for all the world like she was born to a life in the spotlight. Part girl next door but part fierce Amazonian. It filled him with a sense of pride, of...almost possessiveness.
He couldn’t explain it, all he did understand was that it meant the papers, once they found out who she really was, would be eating out of her hand in days. And that was before they saw the sheer drive and determination that governed her world.
How much more was there to Alexandra Vardy? What might he discover if he had the chance to peel back one skin after another? Why was he so damned intrigued by this one woman?
The questions jostled around his head with such eagerness that for a moment he almost forgot to follow her.
He, who never followed anyone.
Bursting through the doors, he covered the ground to her in a few long strides. Sliding his hand to the small of her back and guiding her the last feet to the kerb as their car headed towards them.
‘Quite a show,’ he murmured, leaning in to whisper in her ear, and exalting in the fact that only he could see her quickened, nervous breathing.
‘I think it got the message across.’
‘Perhaps. But a kiss would seal it.’
‘I don’t want to kiss you.’
‘Liar,’ he whispered, angling his head even closer to her ear so that her lips couldn’t be seen by the cameras, but there was no mistaking the way her body trembled. It sent waves of desire through him. ‘Love and lust are easily mistaken for each other. And there’s no denying you and I have the latter. We both feel it.’
‘I don’t feel anything,’ she refuted, but her voice lacked any conviction.
‘Is that so?’ he growled.
She was going to stall. Louis refused to give her the opportunity. He yanked her in, his mouth claiming hers and silencing any further objections.
Hot and glorious, and full of sinful promise. It wasn’t like any other kiss he’d ever known. His mouth moved over hers, the whisper of her tongue against his fanning the flames that raged inside him. This was the kiss he’d been imagining all night.
Maybe even the kiss he’d been imagining his whole life.
As though she was the drink he’d never been able to find anywhere else, and the only one that could ever quench the thirst that had plagued him for what seemed like for ever. It wasn’t just the way her tongue now scraped over his in sweet response. It wasn’t just the way she tensed, relaxed, and then pressed against him, her breasts splayed against his body, generating a heat that burned right through clothing he desperately wished he could just rip off. It wasn’t the way she tasted of need and longing and ultimately of promise.
It wasn’t any of that. Yet it was all of it.
His head was spinning and, as hard as he tried, there was only one thought he could seem to hold onto.