Sale or Return Bride

His attention was suddenly caught by her perfectly shaped mouth and for a moment he couldn’t quite remember what was so important about the financial markets. Mesmerized by the soft curve of her lips, Sebastien watched as they parted slightly and a delicate pink tongue darted out nervously.

His whole body tightened in a primitive male response to the gesture of vulnerability.

‘You’re deluding yourself,’ Alesia said shakily, her eyes darkening in consternation. ‘No one looking at us can possibly think this marriage is anything other than a business arrangement.’

Reminding himself that there was nothing vulnerable about a wealthy woman who’d just married someone she clearly loathed, he dragged his eyes from her mouth.

‘Then it’s up to us to prove them wrong.’ Without thinking, he pulled her hard against him in a gesture of pure possession and felt her quiver of shock as her body came into contact with his for the first time.

Awareness exploded between them and Sebastien stopped breathing. Shocked into stillness by the unexpected power of their mutual response. It was as if their bodies had recognized something that both of them had failed to notice. Alesia’s subtle scent oozed over his senses and seduced his mind and body into forgetting everything except the woman in his arms.

Neither of them spoke but he saw her breathing go shallow, watched the pupils dilate in those amazing violet eyes as she acknowledged the throbbing tension in the atmosphere.

He felt her tremble against him and frowned slightly, registering for the first time just how delicate she was. She’d revealed enough of her full cleavage during that first meeting with her grandfather for him to have formed an impression that she was generously built, but now he realized how totally wrong he’d been in that initial assessment. With predictable masculine focus, he’d been seriously distracted. The rest of her was impossibly slender. Fragile.

Still shocked by the power of his response to her, Sebastien curved a hand over the base of her spine in brooding contemplation and gave a wry smile as he acknowledged the eternal weakness of man. His libido was clearly indifferent to the fact that she was a self-confessed gold-digger. But then what was wrong with that? Gold-digger or not, she was incredibly beautiful and he should be rejoicing that his new bride might well prove to have her compensations. Providing they didn’t have to indulge in conversation, the forthcoming night promised to be far from boring.

Since he’d removed her hairclip, her blonde tresses poured down her back in a shiny silken sheet and he found himself resisting the temptation to bury his face in its scented mass.

She tried to pull away but he held her firmly, his gaze faintly mocking as he looked down at her.

‘Amazing is it not,’ he murmured softly, curving her against him as they swayed in time to the music, ‘that our bodies can feel something that our minds tell us not to?’

She planted a hand in the centre of his chest, panic in her eyes as she tried to hold him at a distance. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

He removed her hand in a deliberate movement, pulled her closer still and lowered his head so that his mouth was only inches from hers. Her unexpectedly seductive scent made his head swim. ‘Oh, yes, you do, you know exactly what I’m talking about.’

‘What are you doing? Everyone is staring—’

So was he. He’d never seen eyes such an unusual shade of blue, he mused, his gaze still fixed on her face. The colour of English violets.

‘For a self-confessed gold-digger you are extraordinarily sensitive,’ he murmured in her ear, sliding his other arm round her and pulling her closer still. ‘Why would you care what people think?’

‘I just don’t like being stared at.’

He gave a short laugh. She was an heiress, albeit a ridiculously protected one. ‘Then you’d better get used to it fast, pethi mou. I spend my life being stared at.’

Other couples joined them on the dance floor and Sebastien suddenly realized that she was barely moving in his arms. Instead she was holding on to him tightly as if he were the only solid, dependable thing in her life. As if she were afraid of letting him go.

He frowned down at the blonde head which was only inches away from his chest.

Where did it come from, this vulnerability that flowed from her?

His mouth hardened as he reminded himself forcibly that this marriage had come about because she didn’t have a principled bone in her body. If she seemed vulnerable then it was probably all part of an elaborate act to attract wealthy men. The truth was that she was a ruthless, manipulative woman, who was willing to go to distasteful lengths to swell her already swollen bank account.