Lynne Graham's Brides of L'Amour Bundle

Swearing barely audibly, Christien knotted long fingers into her hair to tip her head back. Smouldering dark golden eyes blazed down into hers and she stretched up to him as though he had thrown a switch somewhere inside her. He crushed her mouth under his, delved deep with his tongue in an explicit rhythm that made her knees buckle and damp heat pool between her thighs.

‘I need to be inside you…’ Christien growled and, backing to the sofa, he brought her down on top of him.

When she tensed and made a whimper of sound that just might have been the beginning of an objection, he was too clever to employ reason. Instead he pushed the camisole up out of his path and negotiated the hazard of the stretchy inner lining supporting her breasts. When the plump rosy-tipped mounds tumbled free, he groaned in raw male approbation of their bounty. Cupping the creamy swells, he used his tongue on her stiff, sensitised nipples and she gasped in tormented delight beneath his skilful ministrations.

‘We can’t…’ Tabby mumbled in despair, fighting her own unbearable craving with all her might.

Christien hushed her and a sob caught in her throat as he stroked a tantalising finger across the taut wet triangle of fabric stretched between her thighs. ‘I love your body, I love the way you respond to me—’

‘I…have to talk to you—’

‘I’ll be much more receptive in an hour’s time when I’ve recovered from nine days of deprivation,’ Christien promised huskily.

Already he had her so excited she couldn’t get oxygen into her lungs. He was touching her and she was lost in the ever-building flow of sweet, seductive sensation. Clutching his shoulders for support, she let her head fall back, helpless while he toyed with her.

‘Tell me how much you missed me, ma belle,’ he urged against her lush, reddened mouth, but she was way beyond speech. Her whole being was concentrated on the wicked joy of what he was doing to her.

At a fever pitch of desire, she was quivering all over. Heart racing, she gyrated against his expert hand, crazy with hunger as the throbbing ache at the heart of her drove her on with shameless eagerness. Knotting one hand into her tumbling hair, he plunged his tongue into her readily opened mouth, once, twice with explicit, erotic force…and it was enough to push her over the edge into a shattering release that wrenched a cry of ecstasy from her.

Only as the wild tremors of her climax and the mist of mindless pleasure receded did Tabby become aware of her mortal body again. He held her close, murmuring soothing, incomprehensible things in French as if he knew that, both emotionally and physically, he had turned her inside out. He tipped her back from him, smoothing her tangled hair back from her brow.

He sent her a slashing smile that made her heart lurch. ‘Although you couldn’t tell me that I was missed, you can certainly show me,’ he murmured with wicked appreciation.

Tabby reddened to the roots of her hair. He was still fully clothed. She had been so out of it that the pleasure had been hers alone. In a clumsy movement, her face burning with shame and embarrassment at how out of control she had been, she scrambled off his lap and pulled her camisole down from her bare breasts. While she stood there trembling from shock at what had happened to her in his arms, lean bronzed hands smoothed down her rucked skirt and then enclosed her clenched fingers.

Slowly, Christien turned her back round to face him. ‘Your passion gives me a hell of a kick. Don’t you know how rare it is? I don’t want a woman who worries about creasing her clothes or wrecking her hair—’

‘Basically, you’re happiest with a trollop!’ Tabby framed in a wobbly voice, and then she literally fled to the bathroom before she let herself down even more and burst into tears.

Even there she got no privacy. Christien opened the door a crack. ‘We’ll go out to dinner and lust over each other throughout at least five courses…will that make you feel better?’

A hairbrush gripped between her fingers, Tabby looked at her shameful reflection in the mirror and knew that nothing was likely to make her feel better. ‘We can’t go out…I have to tell you something…and you’re going to hate me.’

Silence fell and grew thick and heavy outside the bathroom door.

‘Is there another guy involved?’ Christien enquired roughly.

‘No.’

‘No problem…there’s nothing else I can’t handle. I’m very shock-proof,’ Christien asserted with complete confidence. ‘Do we have to sit through a five-course dinner? I’m hungry but I’m infinitely hungrier…and needier for you.’

Her throat thickened. ‘I’ll be out in a minute. Open one of those bottles of wine.’

‘

You want me to wait upstairs?’ A ragged laugh sounded from Christien. ‘If I sound desperate, it’s because I am. I’m in agony!’

‘Just stay downstairs,’ Tabby instructed unsteadily.

She shut her eyes tight, forcing back the tears that would have released her tension. She was convinced that no woman had ever made a bigger mess of a relationship. She loved him. She had never stopped loving him. She loved just about everything about him: his sense of humour, his forceful personality, the passion and energy that he brought into every aspect of his life, even that volatile streak of possessiveness that was so contrary to his cool façade. But he didn’t love her. He lusted after her like mad and that was the height of her power over him.

When he’d arrived, she should have kept him at arm’s length, maintained a formal distance that would have been more conducive to the confession that she had to make. What she had just done, what she had just allowed him to do to her, had been very unwise and wrong. But then in her own defence she still had no very clear idea of how she had ended up on that sofa with Christien. Any more than there was anything new in her shell-shocked reaction to her own behaviour with him. When Christien touched her, everything but him blurred out of focus and importance. However, this one time, Tabby thought painfully, just this one time she should have had enough gumption to stay in control for her son’s sake.

‘What’s worrying you?’ Emanating megawatt self-assurance and calm, Christien passed her a glass of wine when she came out of the bathroom, narrowed dark golden eyes intent on her troubled face.

‘What’s worrying me goes back nearly four years,’ Tabby informed him tightly, tipping the wine to her dry lips but barely able to bring herself to swallow.

‘You’ve just come back into my life. It would seem more sensible to leave the past where it belongs for now,’ Christien drawled.