Did it really matter at this late stage if she made the rumours true?
It was just between the two of them. It didn’t have anything to do with the cabaret, or the other girls, or the Paris press. It was private—and couldn’t what happened behind closed doors remain private?
Lulu had a hundred rules about men and dating, and all of them came down to the same thing. Respect yourself.
But Gigi rather thought the better thing was to be true to yourself.
It was the reason she’d climbed up on that tank two days ago, risking if not her limbs then her dignity. Despite that, she didn’t regret it—and she wasn’t going to regret this. Because sometimes a girl just had to do what a girl had to do...
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THEY NEEDED TO SEPARATE.
Khaled reached into the fridge and grabbed a bottle of chilled water to take upstairs. He’d put Gigi in the guest room and book a flight home for her in a few days. He’d hardly have to see her.
‘You’ll probably be happier in a hotel,’ he said, closing the fridge. ‘I’m not going to be here and you might get lonely on your own.’
He turned around, bottle in hand, expecting her compliance.
Only Gigi was in the process of peeling her sweater off.
She was wearing a thin thermal vest underneath.
He’d wondered what that extra layer was upstairs.
No bra and visibly erect nipples.
That would account for why a thermal vest suddenly became the sexiest item of clothing he’d ever seen on a woman.
That was until she stripped it off and everything sensible stopped working inside his head.
Milky freckled skin...delicate, gracile build...and small, high breasts tipped with—surprise, surprise—cinnamon-pink nipples.
It crashed through him. He’d thought he’d seen her naked onstage. He’d seen nothing.
She’d been telling him the truth.
This was Gigi as she was. Not some kitsch cabaret fantasy of a woman, but real, warm, not entirely sure of herself and incredibly sexy because of it.
He wasn’t an audience member, or even her boss. He was the man she’d chosen.
She gave him an uncertain smile. ‘Do you want to get naked with me?’
Yes. Yes, he did.
It was as if everything that had come before had fallen away. There was just this.
And if this was Gigi seducing him it was working.
It was also entirely unnecessary, because the first time she’d looked up at him from her vantage point on the dusty floor of that stage he’d been hers.
‘I take it that’s a yes?’ she said, and she closed the distance between them and began sliding his shirt down over his shoulders, not hurrying anything.
He felt the tips of her breasts brush against his chest and desire stabbed him as deeply as anything had in his life. He put his hands around her shoulders and felt the quiver through her delicate body.
Although she’d initiated this, he had the oddest feeling of having something not quite tame under his hands, and that any sudden move might change the trajectory of this encounter and see her scooting off into the underbrush—or running for her phone.
It was all beginning to make some sort of sense.
Her skin was like cool silk as he explored the narrow breadth of her back. Her whole body was trembling as she wound her arms around his neck, and now he felt the dancer’s tensile strength in her grip, and when she looked into his eyes hers were bluer than blue.
‘Khaled,’ she said seriously, ‘please don’t stop now.’
‘Nyet—no stopping,’ he assured her, and lifted her in a single movement up onto the bench.
‘Here?’
She blinked, and he wrenched his attention from her quivering breasts, alluringly close to eye level.
‘Not here?’
‘Maybe not...’
‘Where? Anywhere you want.’
‘You’re a man—you’re hardly going to argue with me right now.’
‘This is true.’
Only he’d been arguing with himself since he’d set eyes on her, but right now he couldn’t think of one damn reason why they shouldn’t have this night.
He couldn’t resist, and took one small cinnamon nipple into his mouth. She whimpered.
She tasted like heaven. She was heaven.
Her fingers tangled in his hair.
He used his tongue. He sucked. She made sounds of approval that invited him to move to her other breast and went wild against him.