A Bride to Redeem Him

A low ache made itself felt between her legs. The same low ache she’d been pretending she didn’t feel all night. The same way she’d pretended she didn’t recall exactly how his hypnotising physique felt against her body.

But she’d only been fooling herself. She remembered it all. How he’d felt. How he’d tasted. How he hadn’t simply kissed her but had claimed her. Somehow branded her. Here, now, in his bedroom and looking at him through the glass wall, she couldn’t fool herself any longer. It was time to abandon the notion that she could somehow control the spark that darted and sizzled between them. Somehow master it. She could no more command the attraction they shared than she could save a terminally ill patient, although her analogy felt just as deadly.

It was as if the more she tried to deny her attraction to Louis, the greater his hold over her became. He demonstrated a determination, a drive, a competitive edge in every facet of his life, even right here in the privacy of his own pool. Characteristics Alex had always found to be utterly compelling, but never more so than in the utterly focussed Louis.

And more and more she was moving away from the idea this mad scheme with Louis was a hail Mary to save Rainbow House for now, and towards the consideration that Louis might be her best chance ever for securing the future of the place for a very long time in the future.

Somewhere along the line she’d gone from suspecting his motives to trusting more than she’d trusted anyone in a very, very long while.

When had that happened?

As if sensing her thoughts, Louis turned his head, his gaze slamming without warning into hers, and she felt pinned to the spot with the intensity of it. Her whole body came alive when he stared at her that way. As though he saw nothing else but her.

She had no idea how long they stayed that way. It could have been seconds, or even a minute—she had no doubts that Louis was some kind of Poseidon, able to hold his breath for just as long as he desired under that water. She watched, riveted, as he kicked out, propelling himself up to the surface and to the edge, where he pulled himself out of the water with apparent ease.

And then he was gone and still she stood there, staring into the roughly churning water and wondering why she suddenly felt so lost. She started towards the glass wall, her nose almost pressed to it as she looked up to the water’s surface.

‘Something wrong?’

Alex spun around, her tongue apparently glued to the roof of her mouth.

‘Alex, is everything all right?’ Louis demanded, descending a set of stairs in the bedroom that had been concealed like an illusion against the panelled wall behind it. Just as the layout of the room had concealed the fact that there was a mezzanine level at all.

But it wasn’t the clever architecture that had humiliatingly stolen her voice. Bare chested and glistening with beaded water, a towel now wrapped around his waist, Louis’s presence filled the space, making it feel too small to contain him, pressing in on her and leaving her unable to even draw a breath.

She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. Louis’s mouth curled up in almost grim triumph.

‘Or perhaps you were just missing me after all?’

The wryness in his tone licked through her like flames racing over a wood-dust floor, and in its potency it created a smoke fog in her head, smothering all but the most inappropriate, indecent thoughts. She tried to snag her eyes from the tiniest of rivers making their way down the contours of the muscular V of his body but found that she couldn’t. Her fingers itched to follow the path of the water, to trace their route, to smooth their flow, to actually lick them away.

Ludicrous.

And still she couldn’t shake the image. Couldn’t seem to regain control of her senses. She went first hot, then cold, and then impossibly hot again. And all the while Louis kept on approaching her, closing the space between them tantalisingly slowly. She needed to move, back away, turn to the side, do anything to halt his advance. It took her all her time to swallow. Hard.

‘Though if it were the latter I’d have expected something a little...less than whatever it is you’re wearing right now.’

That damned winceyette nightie. His grin was as wicked as if he could read her mind. It shouldn’t have been possible to make the situation any worse and yet as Alex flushed an

d her hands clutched at her chest to pull the material together—unnecessary since it already might as well have been a tent over her entire body—she realised she couldn’t have done a better job of broadcasting her lust if she’d hired a big screen in the car park of the hospital itself.

‘Where did you get it from?’ he continued, his rakish grin scraping through her, raw and exhilarating. ‘Your ninety-year-old grandmother’s wardrobe?’

‘Very funny.’

To her chagrin she could hear the huskiness in her voice. Louis’s eyes glinted but, try as she may, she couldn’t seem to loosen her grip. If anything, she found herself gripping the fabric even tighter. Still he didn’t slow his advance and Alex was forced to crane her neck up to watch him.

They both knew it was a deliberate ploy on his part.

‘Is this your idea of seductive nightwear?’

‘This is my idea of never becoming another notch on Louis Delaroche’s bedpost nightwear,’ she muttered, wishing her traitorous body had also bought into such a notion.

‘Ah, I see.’ Reaching her, he stepped right into her personal space and placed his hands on her shoulders, as if testing her.

Pull away, her head screamed. Her body—with the mental equivalent of sticking its fingers in its ears—refused to move a millimetre.

‘Is it working?’ he enquired over-politely, as if he was unaware of the current flowing between them, his touch like an flash on her skin.