Louis lifted his head a fraction until his smouldering gaze met hers.
‘Relax,’ he murmured, his breath the most sensual whisper against the softest heights of her thigh, making her all the more molten inside. ‘I want to taste you. Claim you.’
He slid his hand under one leg, lifting it slightly as he shouldered his way under it, granting himself better access, and he lowered his head again, the way his eyes still locked with hers only making it all the more erotic. And then he licked into her again and it was like an explosion of fireworks across Alex’s eyes.
Louis toyed with her, kissed her, sucked on her, his dexterous fingers and devious mouth working in harmony to render her completely incapable of any action. Any thought. Blood roared in her ears and she could feel his hair through the fingers she couldn’t recall lacing against his head. She gave herself up to sensations she had never felt in her life before. Surely never would again.
She could feel fire inside her growing as he stoked it. Higher and higher. His long fingers slipped in and out of her even as her hips bucked involuntarily against his sinful mouth. Wild need coursed through her, dizzying, searing, clearing her mind of that last, insistent thought. He was moving faster now, making her clasp at the luxurious bedsheets in a hopeless attempt to gain traction, her gasps and pants fast and shallow.
And then he twisted his wrist and Alex stiffened and shuddered and then simply fractured. She splintered into a thousand perfect shards. She cried out his name again and again. Still he didn’t stop. Kissing her, holding her, playing with her, until she finally, finally stilled.
For several perfect moments Alex could almost imagine it was the start of something new. Then, abruptly, the outside doors to the suite banged, the sound of the vacuum invading her ears, and as Louis’s grip loosened for a single instant, Alex rolled back on the bed, exhaling in dismay. But not for what she’d let Louis do, instead simply for the fact that they’d been interrupted.
That was what she’d forgotten.
‘Your cleaning lady,’ she breathed heavily. ‘That’s what woke me up this morning. That’s why I’m here.’
His low curse reverberated between them and he crossed the room in two long strides. They were lucky the woman was still in the sitting area on the other side of the bedroom doors.
‘Wait here,’ he barked out. ‘She can’t see you like this.’
‘That was what I thought...’ Alex blurted after him.
But he was already gone, leaving her alone in the middle of his bedroom. And the shivers that accompanied her were nothing whatsoever to do with the temperature.
What had she been thinking? Losing herself with Louis to the extent that she’d even forgotten someone could walk in on them at any moment. That wasn’t who she was. It wasn’t who she’d ever been.
But it was who playboy Louis was.
It was one thing to agree to this charade of a relationship, the engagement to come and ultimately the marriage. To pretend she could be bought as a wife. It was quite another to actually act as though she was some booty
call mistress.
The worst thing about it was that a part of her didn’t want to listen. A part of her wanted to wait for Louis to come back through those doors and pick back up with her exactly where he’d left off.
Hot shame flooded through her.
Scampering off the bed, she searched the room for the nightgown that he’d balled up and tossed. It wasn’t hard to spot, lying on the floor on the other side of the bed like some huge, cheap rug.
Mocking her.
She hurried over and snatched it up, tussling with the long, ruffled sleeves, which had been pulled inside out in the moment, pretending she didn’t see the buttons that he’d torn off in his haste.
Righting it, she tugged it back over her head, telling herself she was glad it was as frumpy and unflattering as it was, and moved to the doors to listen.
She could hear the tone of the conversation, as one-way as it was, even if the words themselves were too muffled to get the detail. Still, she could tell that Louis was brief, firm, yet nonetheless polite; was forced to admit that it was a world away from the arrogant, entitled man who the press loved to hate.
Then he was closing the door as he stepped back into the room. Just the two of them, again. Him in his towel, her in her nightgown, just as they’d been at the start of this thing. Still, this time he kept his distance, staying across the floor from her.
She didn’t know whether to feel relieved or hurt. She only knew that the air felt thick around them. Oppressive. And she didn’t know what that meant.
‘She’s leaving,’ Louis stated flatly, but somehow she didn’t get the impression that he just meant the bedroom corridor.
Alex shook her head. Why did everything feel so muggy?
‘Who’s leaving?’
Louis offered a clipped nod.