Читать книгу: «Sinful Revenge», страница 7

Two slashes of colour lined Luc’s cheeks and Jesse was desperately biting inside her mouth. She wanted him to touch her so badly. And then he did, and she almost arched off the couch.

All Luc could see was a red haze of lust. He heard nothing but a dull pounding in his ears and was vaguely aware that it was his heart. Jesse’s breast fitted into his hand as if made for it. Her hard nipple scraped his palm and he had to bite back a groan. He squeezed the firm flesh, making her nipple even harder, and then he couldn’t wait any longer. He bent his head and surrounded that tight pointed peak in hot moisture, rolling and flicking his tongue around it, biting gently.

He could feel Jesse moving with a response she couldn’t hide, and that sent Luc’s levels of arousal into orbit. The fact that this was surpassing anything he’d experienced with a woman before was something he was in no position or state of mind to think about or acknowledge.

Jesse had never known this drugging, all-encompassing feeling. It was exquisite and torturous all at the same time. She wanted Luc both to stop and never to stop. When he pushed her shirt apart completely and administered the same attention to her other breast she was no longer coherent. One hand was on Luc’s head, keeping it pressed to her breast, her fingers tangled in silky hair. The other was clenched into a fist beside her, nails digging into her palms.

Between her legs she felt sensitive and moist. As if reading her mind, Luc let his hand travel down Jesse’s belly. This rang alarm bells, but Jesse didn’t want to listen to alarm bells—not when her levels of desire were coiling higher and higher. Luc’s wicked mouth was on her breast. Jesse said nothing. She felt him unbutton her trousers and pull the zip down. Again she said nothing.

Was she actually lifting her hips slightly, as if to tacitly tell him something her brain hadn’t caught up with? When Luc’s hand delved down, underneath the barrier of her knickers, Jesse stopped breathing. Everything zeroed in on his mouth and that hand. Silently she begged him to keep going. She’d never wanted anything so badly.

At that moment Luc took his mouth off her breast and pulled back slightly. Jesse looked up at him and watched. He just looked at her while his hand moved down an inch. He was touching her curls now, threading through them with long fingers. Down another inch. Jesse’s breath was back, but it was laboured. Her hand had slipped from his head and was tight around the back of his neck.

She squeezed it with the slightest pressure.

Luc said huskily, ‘Is that a yes, Jesse? You want me to keep going?’

An inestimable moment passed and then Jesse squeezed again, harder this time. She barely noticed the flash of satisfaction across Luc’s face because she was so intent on him touching her right … there. Jesse saw nothing but spots and flashes of light for a long second when Luc’s fingers touched her with intimate precision.

His mouth came back over hers and, starving for him, she angled her head up to his, blindly seeking and searching for him, meeting his passion head-on with her own. Meanwhile between her legs he was stoking the raging fire within her to fever-pitch, his fingers gliding up and down, spreading her dampness, touching that most sensitive point over and over again until she had to break away and sob with frustration.

Luc looked as feverish as she felt. She felt him tugging her trousers down over her hips and, realising that this would give him more access, she raised her hips off his lap. And then he was tugging her knickers down, and her legs were free and falling open to him.

He looked down her body and said roughly, ‘I want to taste you …’

Jesse didn’t know what was happening until Luc shifted, so that one of her legs was over his shoulder, and he’d moved down until his head was over her belly. He pressed a kiss to her stomach, and then her belly button. She felt the rough abrasion of his tongue and squirmed against him. She knew she should be feeling vulnerable, but somehow she felt anything but.

Now his hands were on her thighs, holding them, and his mouth was descending. At the last second Jesse realised what he was doing, and the sheer carnality of it made her try to clamp her legs together.

But Luc was ruthless. He looked up at her, and his voice was guttural. ‘No, let me, Jesse. Let me taste you …’

And then his breath was there, hot and … moist. Her head fell back. She couldn’t hold it up. Her fingers were in his hair, ostensibly to stop him, but really she was holding him there, captive.

His tongue was touching her, laving her, finding all her secrets and laying her bare in a way she’d never allowed before. And then she felt his fingers parting her, exposing her, so that he could touch his tongue right to her clitoris and send her flying so close to the sun she thought she might burn to death.

One of his hands was under her buttocks, lifting her to him, and the fingers of his other hand were penetrating where she was so wet and aching, and suddenly Jesse couldn’t stop the momentum. She collided with the sun and exploded into a million and one pieces. Nothing of herself was left. She was weightless and attached to the earth only by the man who was clamping her thighs apart with his big hands.

Luc was pressing kisses to her inner thigh when Jesse finally floated back down. In the aftermath of a pleasure more intense than she’d ever known could exist she became aware of the fact that one leg was still draped over Luc’s shoulder and the other was wide apart. She was dressed in nothing but her shirt, which gaped open. Her breasts were pushed together because she had her hands on Luc’s head, holding him to her.

And he was between her legs, looking up at her with a lazy, sexy smile and a glow of satisfaction in his eyes.

It was that which finally brought her to her senses. She couldn’t believe that one second he’d been kissing her and the next she’d been acquiescing to anything—until she was almost fully naked and he was between her legs. And she had to acknowledge the worst bit of it—she’d been a very willing participant. Begging him.

Jesse moved away from Luc so fast that she caught him unawares. She sprang up from the couch and pulled on her trousers, not even bothering with her pants. Her shirt flapped open and she scrabbled to pull it back together, but her hands were shaking too much to put buttons in holes so she just held it together with one hand.

Luc sat up, and Jesse could see with a rising sense of humiliation and abject shame that not even a button on his own shirt was askew. He was pristine—even if his hair was a little dishevelled.

‘That was a mistake,’ she framed shakily, aghast at how easily he’d slipped under her guard.

‘It didn’t sound like a mistake a few moments ago when you were screaming with pleasure.’

Jesse’s humiliation rose another notch. She sensed that Luc’s louche pose on the couch was anything but. She could feel the taut energy coming off him in waves. She wanted a huge hole to open up in the floor and swallow her whole. And, what was even worse, she was dangerously close to thinking about calling for a plane just to get him out of there and away from her. The only thing stopping her was the realisation that this was exactly what he wanted …

She struggled to hang on to her sanity. ‘It was definitely a mistake, and it won’t happen again. I won’t let you do this … toy with me, pretend to want me … just because you think I’ll give in to your demands if you seduce me.’

Jesse was shaking now, and she pointed a finger of her free hand at Luc. ‘Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to, Luc Sanchis. All you’ve done is prove that I’m as humiliatingly susceptible to your overblown sexuality as the next indisciminate woman.’

‘Ouch,’ Luc said, and made a mock wincing face. Then his expression became much more stark and, sitting forward, elbows on his knees, he admitted, ‘For your information, Jesse, a man does not do what I just did for the hell of it. He generally needs to really, really want to do it.’

Jesse recalled his face as he’d looked up at her and said throatily, Let me taste you. A fresh wave of shame washed over her. She backed away towards the entrance to the room. Luc stood up and her panic rose. If he touched her again … Her mind blanked at the prospect.

‘No. It was a mistake. I won’t be so weak again.’

And with that she turned and fled, bare feet slapping across the floor of the hall and then up the stairs to her room, two stairs at a time. She heard Luc curse behind her, and then she could hear his footsteps. Panic galvanised her and she got into her room and closed the door just as his hand connected with it.

‘Go away!’ Jesse shouted.

But Luc opened the door and pushed. Jesse couldn’t hold it and sprang back into the room. Luc stood there like some marauding pirate of old, dominating the doorway. She was still clutching her shirt. A treacherous lick of excitement curled through Jesse’s abdomen.

It shook her so much she said, ‘Get away from me, you … animal! You don’t want me any more than you want a block of wood and you’re only trying to mess with my head. I won’t let it happen again.’

Luc emitted a sound like a growl and crossed the room to Jesse. He grabbed her hand and placed it roughly onto a very hard part of his anatomy. She could feel the blood rushing to heat her face—which was ridiculous when she thought of what he’d just been doing to her.

He felt massive.

He pressed her hand even closer. ‘Do you think I can just conjure that response up? Do you really think that’s the sign of a man who is disengaged with what he’s doing? I don’t know where you did your biology classes, but I can assure you it’s not.’

She was stunned to recognise that he was angrier than she’d ever seen him before. With that he flung her hand away and strode back to the door, leaving Jesse standing there tingling all over and with a dull, throbbing ache between her legs.

He stopped abruptly by the door and Jesse heard something clink, like metal against metal, and then he turned around to face her again. She couldn’t make out his expression, because he was in shadow, but she could see what he was holding up in his hand. It glinted in the low lamplight: the key from the door.

Instantly she went clammy all over. He wouldn’t …

‘Let’s see how you like being a prisoner for a while, Jesse. I think that’s only fair, don’t you?’

Then he was gone, and the door was shut, and Jesse heard the key turn in the lock. And her world disintegrated around her.

Luc went downstairs, borne aloft by the rage thrumming through his blood. All he could see was red, and he cursed his own rampant body which was refusing to cool down. What did he think he was doing? All but stripping Jesse completely and making love to her on the couch like some horny, out-of-control teenager?

Luc was used to sophisticated surroundings and sophisticated women. He was used to a certain controllable level of arousal which never became something so blindingly white-hot and intense that he forgot who he was and where he was.

And that was the problem.

He stood in the centre of the living room and funnelled his fingers through his hair. He’d never lost it like that. Not even with Maria. He scowled, hating how comparisons between Jesse and Maria kept popping into his head, as if to flag up to him that this whole situation was ten times more volatile.

He’d set out to seduce Jesse, yes. He’d set out to unsettle her, and perhaps to encourage her to trust him by making her vulnerable to him.

He saw her in his mind’s eye as she’d stood there clasping her shirt, spitting mad. He wasn’t making her vulnerable at all. He was making her even harder to win around. So much for his famed charm.

Luc cursed.

He strode into the kitchen and saw Tigger’s box. He hoped that by tending to the kitten for a few minutes it might calm him down. But the delicacy of the tiny animal in his hands only served to remind him of how delicate Jesse had felt under his hands. Damn, damn, damn.

Luc went back to the living room and found the drinks cabinet and poured himself a healthy shot of the finest Irish whiskey. Mentally apologising to the absent owner, he downed it in one.

The fact was his extreme response to kissing Jesse and how fast things had escalated out of control unsettled him. It had manifested as anger at her, but now he could see that it was entirely directed at himself.

Luc took another healthy swig of whiskey before putting the bottle back. He thought of Jesse, upstairs stewing, too stubborn to ask to be let out of her room, and felt a wry grin tugging at his mouth. And just as quickly that insidious heat he felt whenever he thought of her crept back into his body, firing his blood all over again.

Luc sighed deeply and then went towards the stairs. Time to repair the damage and try to keep his hands off Jesse long enough to make her believe that he had at least an ounce of civility in him—although he couldn’t imagine anything he wanted more than to strip her bare completely and lock them both in a room for the forseeable future.

Outside her door he couldn’t hear a sound. He knocked lightly. ‘Jesse?’

Nothing.

Something like foreboding trickled down Luc’s spine and he turned the key in the lock and opened the door. The room was exactly as he’d left it, and at first he couldn’t see Jesse, but once his eyes adjusted to the dim light he saw her: she was huddled with her knees up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them in a corner of the room.

Something about her form told him that this was not her sulking. He walked over and crouched down in front of her. ‘Jesse? What …?’

Her head was down on her knees, and Luc saw then that she was trembling all over. He sat and slid along the wall beside her, put his arm around her, tugging her stiff body to him. Something was terribly wrong.

‘Jesse, what is it? What happened?’

Her voice was muffled and she was out of breath. ‘Locked in … can’t get out … need help …’

Luc cursed his impetuosity. Carefully he tried to take Jesse’s arms from around her legs and put a hand under her jaw. His stomach clenched when he felt the unmistakable moisture of tears on her face.

She wouldn’t or couldn’t look at him. Her eyes seemed to be sightless. He recognised shock.

‘Jesse, you’re not locked in any more. The door is open. You’re here with me, Luc. It’s okay. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have locked you in.’

Jesse was shaking her head, the trembling in her body increasing. ‘No … you don’t understand. It’s my mother. She’s dead. She’s died and I can’t get out to tell anyone. He doesn’t believe me. I need to get help; I need to get out.’

Luc put his hands around Jesse’s face and turned it so she had to look at him. ‘Jesse, it’s me. Only me. Just the two of us. Your mother isn’t here.’

‘No,’ Jesse said brokenly, ‘because she’s dead. He killed her, let her die.’

Luc shook his head, trying to make sense of what she said. ‘Who killed her, Jesse?’

‘My father.’

Her voice scared him. It was so hard and flat.

Luc faintly remembered her saying that she didn’t know who her father was but clearly she did. He could feel her trembling turn into a violent shaking. Locking her into the room had obviously sent her back to some trauma in her life.

Luc cursed out loud, but Jesse was oblivious.

In one move, he stood and lifted her into his arms. He walked them both into the bathroom and put Jesse down for a moment, securing her limp body against him while he reached into the shower to turn it on. Soon steam was filling the room. He looked down at Jesse and saw how pale she was. He cursed again.

Without waiting, Luc put them both under the shower, and once under the powerful hot spray started to take off Jesse’s clothes and then his own. His heart ached in a peculiar way when he saw she was as unresisting as a child. When they were both naked he pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her, willing his body heat into her, stroking her head and back, saying nonsensical things.

He felt the moment she began to come back to herself. Tension came into her body—but a different kind of tension. She started to move, and Luc had to grit his jaw against the inevitable response in his own body. He was already as hard as a rock, and trying to angle himself in such a way so as not to draw attention to that fact.

He pulled back and looked down at Jesse. She was blinking up into his face, and a sigh of relief moved through him at the sight of colour in her cheeks again. He tried valiantly to block out the view of water running in rivulets over her pert breasts.

Reaching out, he snagged a robe and then turned off the water. He wrapped the robe around Jesse, rubbing up and down her arms and back briskly.

He stopped for a moment and looked at her. ‘Are you okay?’

CHAPTER EIGHT

JESSE looked up into Luc’s eyes. She had complete recollection of what had just happened, but it was as if it had happened to someone else. And in a way it had: to her child self.

Belatedly answering Luc’s question, she nodded abruptly. She was suddenly far too aware that she was standing in a steamy shower with a very naked Luc Sanchis. Praying that her legs would support her, she turned and stepped out of his hands into the bathroom, noticing their sodden clothes on the ground.

She found the holes for her arms in the robe and put them in, tying the belt securely around her. She felt raw, as if she’d been flayed. She heard Luc moving behind her and went into the bedroom to sit on the end of the bed. He was standing in the doorway to the bathroom with a towel around his hips. The light behind him was throwing his broad build into sharp relief, and Jesse felt that ever-present awareness curl into her belly.

He leant against the door and crossed his arms. ‘Do you want to explain what just happened?’

Jesse gulped and looked away. The strength of her reaction to being locked into the room scared her. She knew she’d always had a thing about it, but somehow here her past was reaching up to grip her around the neck with an ease that terrified her. She felt a strong urge to articulate it—as if she knew that it might be the only way to stop it happening again.

She glanced back to Luc and saw the lines of his face, intent and serious. She looked down at her lap and plucked at a stray thread.

‘When I was nine I was locked into a room with my mother for a night. She was sick, and during the night she died … I couldn’t get out. No one could hear me. I was with her dead body until someone finally opened the door the next day.’

‘Hell …’

She heard Luc moving, the muffled sound of a chair being moved across the floor, and then he was sitting in front of her, taking her hands. Reluctantly she looked at him, and the expression on his face made her feel a swooping sensation in her belly.

‘How on earth could something like that happen?’

Jesse grimaced. ‘I knew she was very ill. She’d been sick for days but hadn’t gone to the doctor … I went to get help, but he wouldn’t listen to me.’

‘You mentioned your father just now … Was it your father you asked for help?’

Jesse nodded. She felt numb inside. ‘He was hosting a dinner party that night. He was drunk and didn’t want to be disturbed. He took me back to the bedroom and told me to stop bothering him. When I went after him again he locked me in …’

Jesse remembered her father lurching unsteadily over to her mother in the bed and feeling her clammy forehead before declaring, ‘She’s fine. It’s just a cold.’

She looked at Luc, needing to erase that memory of her father.

‘By the time morning came and someone opened the door she was dead—had been for hours …’

Luc frowned. ‘Where was your father?’

Jesse shrugged. ‘At work …’

Luc frowned, and then he said, ‘But earlier you locked the door to the study …’

Jesse blushed. ‘I just pretended to lock it.’

Luc’s mouth tipped up wryly. ‘I didn’t even think to test it.’

Something infinitely delicate seemed to stretch between them at that moment.

Luc gripped Jesse’s hands tighter. ‘I’m sorry for locking you in. If I’d had any idea—’

Jesse put her hand over his mouth, and took it away again quickly when his warm breath feathered against her palm. ‘You weren’t to know. I didn’t know I’d react like that.’ She ducked her head. ‘It’s embarrassing.’

Luc tipped up her chin and looked at her. ‘No, it’s not embarrassing. Your father was a monster, Jesse, to do that to you and your mother.’

‘Yes, he was.’

‘Is that why you told me you didn’t know who your father was? Because you don’t like to talk about him?’

Jesse felt guilty. ‘Something like that.’

To her surprise Luc stood up, and Jesse blushed when she registered what part of his anatomy her eyes were on a level with.

He stepped back and said lightly, ‘You must be tired. You should get some rest.’

Jesse stood up too, some of those tendrils of icy panic reaching out for her again at the prospect of Luc walking out. Without thinking she put out a hand, curling it around his wrist. It felt vital and alive beneath her palm. His pulse was strong and powerful. She suddenly knew that she needed this, needed him, as she’d never needed anything before in her life. Right in that moment she trusted him implicitly.

Huskily she said, ‘Please don’t leave me alone.’

He stopped and turned to face her directly. ‘What are you saying, Jesse?’

She looked up at him, feeling as if she was stepping out into a void. ‘Please stay with me tonight.’

Jesse could see Luc’s jaw clench.

Carefully he said, ‘If I stay with you we share a bed, and if we share a bed we won’t be doing much sleeping.’

Wild excitement rushed through her, obliterating the awful memories and the fear that had gripped her. She stepped closer to Luc, his wrist still in her hand. ‘That’s what I was hoping you’d say …’

In some dim and distant recess of her mind Jesse couldn’t believe she was being so forward, but for the first time in her life everything felt right. This man, this moment. The past few days, everything that had happened, the way he’d reacted just now and the moments when he’d shown her real gentleness—she had come to trust him on some very deep and vulnerable level, but she couldn’t really acknowledge that now. She could only act on it.

Luc said, ‘Are you sure?’

Jesse just said, ‘Stop talking, Sanchis …’ and dropped his wrist. She reached up and put her arms around his neck, funnelled her hands through his hair, urging his head down to hers. ‘Kiss me.’

Luc’s arms went around her waist, dragging her even closer. Jesse could feel the thrilling hard ridge of his arousal and moved against him.

He growled softly. ‘I thought I told you we’ve gone way beyond such formality …’

He lowered his head and pulled her up to meet him. Their mouths met and Jesse melted into a sea of raging hormones. They kissed for what felt like for ever, tongues tangling together in a languorous erotic dance. And then Jesse felt herself being lowered onto her bed. She lay back and looked up at Luc, eyes drinking in his hard-boned form greedily.

He came down over her on his arms, not even touching her yet, tantalising her. Emboldened, Jesse moved her hands to her robe and undid the knot. She pulled the robe open and saw Luc’s eyes widen and flash with fire as his gaze dipped and dwelled on all her secrets and hollows.

Impatient, Jesse came up slightly and reached for his towel, tugging so that it came apart and fell to the floor. Her own eyes widened when she took in the sheer male perfection of his body. She’d seen him naked already, but she hadn’t seen him naked and aroused.

A little overwhelmed, she fell back onto the bed, unaware that her legs were parting instinctively. Luc smiled, and it was feral. He stroked a hand down Jesse’s body, over her collarbone and over one tip-tilted breast, dwelling there to squeeze her nipple gently, making her gasp. And then his hand continued to the cleft between her legs.

His fingers found where she was moist and aching. Jesse moved her hips against him. ‘Luc … please.’

Luc’s fingers moved against her, teasing her. Biting her lip, Jesse moved so that she could reach him and wrap one hand around his hard girth. She exulted in his own deeply drawn breath.

‘You’re playing with fire now …’

Jesse felt urgency building and stroked her hand up and down his shaft, wanting him to fill her. She tried to draw him closer, every muscle in her body crying out when she held the tip of him at her entrance.

A wave of sensation was already rolling through Jesse’s body. And, as if she’d finally pushed him too far, Luc gently prised her hand from him and balanced on his hands over her, then thrust deep into her clasping body.

Jesse was so ready and sensitised that she convulsed around Luc immediately, countless waves of pleasure holding her suspended before diminishing and leaving her breathless. She felt the sweat on her skin, and tremors racked her body.

Embarrassed at the strength of her reaction, she ducked her head into Luc’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry …’

He tipped up her chin. ‘Never be sorry for being so responsive.’

Jesse felt intensely gauche. ‘But I … You haven’t even …’

‘No,’ he agreed in thrillingly deep tones. ‘But I fully intend to.’

And with that he started to move slowly, in and out. Jesse was over-sensitive for a second, but then her body started to adjust and she could feel that urgency building all over again. She gripped his arms with her hands and wrapped her legs around his back, feeling him slide even deeper.

Soon Luc’s movements became harder and faster, and Jesse could feel herself climbing. She only half heard Luc’s guttural-sounding, ‘Damn …’ She was too intent on reaching that pinnacle of pleasure again.

And then she saw the tortured expression on his face. ‘What is it?’

Luc gritted out painfully, ‘No protection …’

But they were both too far gone. Jesse could feel her muscles start to clamp around him, urging him to completion. Luc threw his head back and shouted out, and at the last second, when everything in Jesse broke free of the delicious tension and soared even higher than before, Luc pulled free of her body and twisted away from her.

Despite the intensity of her climax Jesse felt bereft, as if she’d been cheated of something. She lay there panting, the sweat cooling on her body, and became aware that her arms weren’t even fully out of the robe. She shrugged out of it now and instinctively curled into Luc’s back. She tucked her legs under his, breathed his scent in deep and welcomed a sweet oblivion she’d never tasted before.

Luc lay for a long time, staring into the middle distance as his body came down from the mind-bending crescendo it had just experienced. Jesse’s arm was around him like a vice and, contrary to what was usual for him, his first impulse wasn’t to get out of her embrace. Instead he found his hand coming up to hold hers against him.

He felt as if he’d just been turned inside out. He’d never, ever forgotten about protection before, was far too wary of unplanned pregnancies, and yet it had been the last thing on his mind right up until it had been too late. The only option left to him had been to withdraw and spill himself on the bed like a callow youth. For the second time that evening he’d been reduced to baser tendencies than he was used to.

But what was even more disconcerting was how right it had felt to thrust into Jesse’s tight, slick heat skin-to-skin, and how hard it had been to pull free as his climax had approached, robbing him of any remaining sanity. Even now he couldn’t be sure that they’d been entirely safe …

Luc shifted onto his back and Jesse snuggled sleepily into his chest, one leg coming up to rest over his thigh—disturbingly close to a far too sensitive part of his anatomy. The arm across his chest tightened. Her breasts pressed against his side. And Luc sighed deeply as the resurgence of desire rushed through his body …

What had happened in this room this evening posed far too many intriguing questions. The ease with which Luc had imagined rattling Jesse’s cage was almost laughable now. She was the one rattling his cage, and he didn’t like it one bit.

‘I thought I wasn’t any good at … sex.’

Jesse blushed against Luc’s chest. What on earth had made her blurt that out? She felt Luc move, and then she was on her back and he was looming over her, looking deliciously tousled and with a dark shadow on his jaw.

They’d been in bed all day and most of the evening, after a brief hiatus at about seven that morning, when Luc had summarily carried her down to the kitchen for a delicious breakfast. By some unspoken agreement they’d spoken of nothing controversial—nothing beyond the island—to link to harsh reality. It was as if they’d silently mutually decided to embark on a tenuous truce.

‘Well, I can assert that you are very good at sex.’

Jesse blushed more now, and put her hands to her face.

Luc took them and pinned them over her head with one hand, before resting his other hand near the apex of her legs. It had an immediate effect on her breathing, and not for the first time in the last twenty-four hours did she welcome physical release over the clamour of voices in her head, urging her to stop and think about what was happening between them …

‘Whoever gave you the idea that you weren’t?’

Jesse squirmed, hating that the fact Luc was holding her hands captive sent such thrills of excitement through her body. ‘I was involved with someone briefly a few years ago. I tried to like it … but when he touched me I just felt cold inside. And yet with you I felt hot the first time you looked at me.’