‘Should but won’t.’
‘Is that a threat or a promise?’ she whispered.
‘What do you want it to be, mon ange?’
His presence was both threat and promise and she knew it. She had never stopped wanting him, had never learned to hate him. How could she when she understood the very forces that had ensured they stayed apart? The enormity of the tragedy that had engulfed their families that summer had shattered the tenuous remains of their relationship.
‘What do I want?’ She wanted him, only him. It was a truth that was rooted so deep in her that even pride could not make her deny it. ‘Take a guess…’
Eyes shimmering hard and bright, Christien snatched in a ragged breath. He reached out and lifted her right off her feet and up into his arms in a demonstration of confidence and unapologetic masculine strength that made her feel weak and wanton and dizzy.
He took her mouth with stormy hunger and pried her lips apart to ravish the tender interior. A violent shiver of response racked her. Her heart hammering, she stretched up to him to deepen that connection. It felt so good she was instantly, helplessly addicted to her own craving for more. He pinned her up against the wall and his tongue plunged and withdrew between her readily parted lips with fierce, driving hunger.
Wrenching her stinging lips from his with a mighty effort, she shut her eyes, fighting to maintain even a shred of restraint. ‘The whole world’s spinning,’ she mumbled.
In an almost clumsy movement that bore little resemblance to his usual sure, fluid grace, he peeled her back off the wall and clamped her to his big, powerful length. He held her tight, so tight she could barely squeeze air into her constricted lungs.
‘I’m sorry…I feel out of control,’ he grated.
Her arms linked round him then and a smile like the sunrise started inside her where he couldn’t see it. This was the guy who rarely took more than one glass of alcohol because feeling anything other than in total command of himself was anathema to him. To make him feel out of control even momentarily was an achievement of no mean order and to hear him confess it was a joy.
‘I’m never in control with you,’ she whispered back with neither resentment nor pleasure, just acceptance that that should be the case.
Christien felt light-headed with a triumph as old as time itself. She was his, she was still his. He was not a guy who reasoned in what he believed were primitive sexist terms and he had never felt possessive around any other woman. But she was different and, with her, he was different too and that was a conundrum he had never wasted any time agonising over. He set her down in the bedroom where an old Anglepoise lamp burned on an upturned box next to the bed. He did not think of himself as imaginative but he was already picturing the bare room furnished with the kind of pretty feminine clutter she adored.
Eyelids sensually lowered over his dark golden gaze, Christien treated her to a fierce, intent appraisal that fired her very skincells with awareness of her womanhood. ‘I take one look at you and I’m so hungry for you I’m in agony,’ he confessed huskily, sinking down on the edge of the bed and drawing her forward to stand between his spread thighs.
Was that why he was still so very special to her? Tabby asked herself. His ability to look at her with a wondering appreciation that suggested that she was an incredibly gorgeous woman when she herself knew that she was just an ordinary one? A marvel made all the more striking by the simple fact that Christien himself was very much in a class of his own? Even in well-worn jeans and a beige cotton sweater, he exuded exclusive cool and bred-in-the-bone sophistication. He possessed that degree of pure masculine good looks more often seen on a movie screen. Men of his ilk usually gravitated towards classically beautiful women, but she was wildly, humbly grateful that something she couldn’t see and couldn’t begin to understand had brought him to her instead.
Vulnerable and almost dazed by the intensity of her own emotions at that instant, Tabby looked back at him. ‘Christien…?’
‘You’re very lovely, ma belle,’ he said thickly, reaching up to tug the band out of her naturally curly caramel-coloured hair.
‘I’m not-’
‘Shush…’ He finger-combed her hair down onto her taut shoulders, leant forward to let his tongue penetrate between lips as sweet and inviting as juicy strawberries.
She shivered and leant into that kiss, knees wobbling under her, hands suddenly coming down to steady herself on his long, powerful thighs. The swollen tightness of her nipples hurt. The very thought of his expert hands on her made her tremble with eagerness and already she was way beyond rational thought or restraint.
‘Please…’ she heard herself say.
‘I want to take my time…I’ve pictured this too often,’ he murmured roughly.
Mesmerised, she stood there, gazing into gorgeous golden eyes shaded by luxuriant black lashes longer and more luxuriant than her own. Just like Jake’s, she conceded, and her throat tightened and she knew that she would have no choice but to tell him about his son now. Intimidated by the thought, she blanked out her mind.
Reaching up, Christien brushed the camisole straps down over her slim forearms, baring the proud, creamy swell of her breasts. The fabric caught on the taut rosy peaks. On fire with wanting, she felt her nightdress fall to her hips and he vented an earthy groan of bold appreciation.
‘Stop looking at me like that…’ she gasped, racked by shamed embarrassment for the terrible hunger that kept her standing there, exposed and desperate for his touch.
‘I can’t…you are exquisite,’ Christien ground out, hauling her to him and closing his mouth to a pouting pink nipple.
All the breath pent-up inside her escaped in a startled gush, her soft lips parting, her head falling back, sweet, intense sensation thrumming through her in a heady tide while the moist heat at the heart of her quickened. His hands on her rounded hips, he roved from one stiff, sensitive bud to the other and she whimpered in response to urge him on. There was only him and what he could make her feel, and what he could make her feel drove out all else.
Long fingers shaping and moulding her tender breasts, he took her lush mouth again and again and the hard, male urgency of his plundering kiss wiped her out. She clung, gasped, felt the nightdress fall away and cried out low in her throat as he let sure fingers explore the slick, wet flesh between her thighs. She was trembling, utterly seduced by the screaming demands of her own body. He brought her down on the bed and stood over her while he hauled off his sweater with something less than cool.
‘Ciel…I forgot how it feels with you, ma belle.’ Dark colour accentuating his proud cheekbones, he studied her with raw intensity.
‘I’ve never forgotten.’ Tabby was deliciously, wickedly aware of the size and the strength of his big, powerful body and the hard ridge of male arousal jutting below the tight jeans he wore left her weak with wanting. Belatedly conscious of her own nudity and the golden eyes flaming hungrily over her, she curled her legs up and he gave her a slashing smile of wicked amusement.