Lilah hovered uncertainly.
‘Dress up...’ Bastien lowered his handsome dark head to murmur huskily in her ear. ‘Dress up for dinner so that I can enjoy undressing you later, glikia mou.’
Banners of self-conscious colour brightened Lilah’s porcelain-pale complexion as she turned her head to stare up at him. She collided with brilliant dark eyes that glittered like stars in the low light—stunning eyes, ringed by spiky lashes of velvet black. She was mesmerised. He curved long flexible fingers to the side of her face and brought his mouth crashing down on hers.
That kiss was a taste of heaven and a taste of hell in one package. It was heaven because she couldn’t get enough of that hot, hungry mouth on hers and hell because she hated the response she couldn’t suppress. He released her, staring down at her for a split second in silence, and then swung on his heel and walked out.
Lilah drifted into the marble bathroom, her fingers creeping up to brush her tingling swollen lips, shame and guilt rising like a dark, choking cloud inside her. It would be cruel if he made her like having sex with him, she thought wildly. Or would it? Surely that could only be foolish pride talking?
Her rational brain scolded her for the melodrama Bastien could somehow infuse into her very thoughts. Common sense told her that simply accepting that their intimacy was inevitable would make the experience much more manageable for her. After all, she wasn’t a masochist, was she?
Sex was supposed to be enjoyable, she reminded herself. But from listening to friends talk about their experiences she knew it often wasn’t that great. Once she had done the deed with Bastien she would probably wonder what all the fuss was about, she reflected wryly, because, after all, sex had to be the most ordinary pursuit in the world.
Stripping, she went for a shower, retrieved her cosmetics to do her face and finally returned to the bedroom wrapped in towels. In the dressing room she flicked through the formal wear now hung for her perusal. Dress up, Bastien had urged. Humour sparkling in her eyes, she pulled a ballgown from the rail and fanned it out on the bed. It was over the top and theatrical, rather like the chateau, and when she had modelled it she had noticed Bastien’s dark golden eyes blaze like banked-down fires.
* * *
Bastien stood in the hall, watching Delilah descend the stairs with the glossy grace and dignity of a queen. The dress was amazing—a glistening sheath in peach that hugged her slender body to just below the waist before it flared out into thousands of layers of net that swept the stone steps. Her black hair tumbled in a mane down her back, strands rippling round her triangular face to highlight her bright blue eyes. The tightening swelling at his groin was so instant he didn’t even question his reaction.
He stretched out a lean-fingered brown hand to greet Lilah as she reached the foot of the stairs, his arrogant dark head thrown back, smouldering dark golden eyes locking to the full pink pout of her lush mouth. He closed his fingers round hers.
‘In that dress you take my breath away,’ he told her.
Her mouth ran dry as she met his gaze and her small breasts swelled below the skin-tight bodice as she gulped in oxygen. She hadn’t expected that blunt compliment, didn’t know how to deal with it.
He walked her through an airy salon, with an ancient stone carved fireplace and sleek blue sofas, out on to a tiled terrace where a candlelit table awaited them.
‘I’m really hungry,’ Lilah confessed as a manservant moved forward to pull out a chair and lingered to whisk a napkin across her lap.
‘You should enjoy the meal. Stefan’s wife, Marie, is my cook, and she was a chef in a Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris before they came to work for me,’ Bastien remarked while the wine was poured.
‘You have a huge staff here...you live like a king,’ Lilah commented helplessly as soon as they were alone.
‘I do when I have the time to enjoy the chateau—which is rarely,’ Bastien qualified drily. ‘When I’m travelling on business I eat out or cook for myself.’
‘You can cook?’ Lilah said in surprise.
‘Of course I can. I’m not spoilt. I’ve never been spoilt. But I do appreciate the best things in life.’