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Star was pale as death now. His reaction shook her to her very depths. All right, so he had never thought of her as his wife. Yet when Rory had walked in Luc had been angry, aggressive, powered, it had seemed, by some atavistic all-male territorial instinct. She had never seen that side of him before, but now she had to accept that his reaction to Rory had simply stemmed from his savage pride.
Didn’t he have any normal feelings at all? How could Luc just stand there telling her that he was relieved and grateful that her babies were supposedly nothing to do with him? In pained fascination, she searched his face, absently noting the very faint sheen of moisture on his dark golden skin, the unyielding blank darkness of his hooded gaze.
‘Luc…I—’
‘I was leaving…’ Luc studied his diminutive wife, struggling to distance himself, black fury like a thick, suffocating smoke fogging his usually ordered thoughts. Suddenly he understood why so many unfaithful wives had ended up losing their heads to Madame Guillotine during the French Revolution. Feeling the slight tremor in his hands, he dug them rawly into the pockets of his well-cut pants. Nobody will ever love you as much as I do. Such soft words, such empty promises. He was not a violent man. But he wanted to remind her who she belonged to. No, she did not belong to him, he adjusted at grim speed. He did not want her to belong to him. He had meant every word he had said.
Star moved anxious hands. ‘Could we just talk?’
‘Talk?’ Luc growled, not quite levelly, watching the way the flickering candlelight played over her porcelain-fine skin, accentuating the distinctive colour of her eyes and the full, inviting softness of her ripe mouth.
‘About Juno?’ Star moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue and watched Luc tense, his stunning dark eyes welding to her with sudden force.
‘No.’
‘No?’ Colour mantled Star’s cheekbones as the raw tension in the atmosphere increased. Her heart skipped a beat and then began to thump against her ribcage. Her mouth running dry, she tensed in dismay as she felt her breasts lift and swell, the rosy peaks tightening into mortifying prominence.
Luc’s brilliant eyes flamed over her. ‘If you spend the night with me, I’ll let you both off the hook…’
‘I b-beg your pardon?’ Star stammered dizzily.
‘I won’t put the police on Juno’s trail.’ He gazed back at her steadily, not a muscle moving in his lean, strong face. ‘One night. Tonight. That’s the price.’
Her soft full mouth fell open. She closed it again, and tried and failed to swallow. She felt as if the ground had suddenly fallen away beneath her feet. ‘You’re not serious…you can’t be!’
The silence shimmered like a heatwave between them.
Star trembled.
‘Why shouldn’t I be serious?’ Luc angled his well-shaped dark head back, a hard smile slanting his wide, sensual mouth. ‘One night only. Then tomorrow you travel down to London with me to see Emilie. Together we reassure her that she has nothing further to worry about. After that, we never see each other again in this lifetime.’
Her stomach twisted at that clarified picture. ‘But you don’t want me—’
‘Don’t I?’ Luc moved a slow, fluid step closer, dark eyes mesmerically intense as they scanned her bemused face. ‘Just one more time…’
‘You don’t want me. You never did! I’m not your type,’ Star argued, as if she was repeating a personal mantra, a fevered, disbelieving edge to her voice.
‘Except in bed,’ Luc extended without hesitation.
Star stilled in astonishment. Then she jerked in reaction to that revelation. He was finally acknowledging a fact he had refused to concede eighteen months earlier. Luc could find her desirable. The night the twins had been conceived, Luc had genuinely responded to her, not just to the anonymous invitation of a female body in his bed. The following morning, his cold silence on that point had shattered what little had remained of her pride.
Anger and regret now foamed up inside her in a bewildering surge. ‘Couldn’t you just have admitted that to me eighteen months ago?’
‘No,’ Luc drawled smoothly. ‘It would have encouraged you to believe that our marriage had a future.’
The heat still singing through Star’s blood suddenly slowed and chilled. Such cool calculation stabbed her to the heart and unnerved her.
‘But that was then and this is now,’ Luc stressed with syllabic sibilance.
Now, she repeated to herself in reminder. Now, when Luc had knocked her sideways by suggesting that they spend one last night together. Why not? With his customary cool he had already boxed her in with cruel, unfeeling boundaries to ensure that she didn’t misunderstand the exact tenor of his proposition.
He had told her he wanted a divorce. He had told her that after tomorrow they would never meet again.
Star’s throat constricted. Her wretched body might quicken at one glance from those stunning dark eyes of his, but did he really think she held herself that cheap?
‘You don’t want me enough…’ Even as that impulsive contention escaped her Star tried to bite the words back, for they revealed all too much of her own feelings.
Luc surveyed her steadily, devastating dark eyes fiercely intent. ‘How much is enough?’
She wanted him on his knees. She wanted him desperate, telling her that never in his life had he experienced such hunger for any woman. If she couldn’t get into his mind, it would be the next best thing. Hot colour warmed her cheekbones.
‘How much?’ Luc repeated huskily.
‘M-more…’ The current of excitement he generated in her as he moved closer literally strangled her vocal cords.
More? What did that mean? Familiar frustration raked through Luc. He felt like a man trying to capture a dancing shard of sunlight. He felt out of his depth, which infuriated him. He had expected her to grab that offer with both hands. She never looked before she leapt. She was as hot for him as he was for her. He saw it in her, he could feel it in her, only this time she was holding back. Star, exercising restraint? Why? What more could he offer?
‘Cash inducement?’ Luc enquired with lethal cynicism.
Her eyes widened, and then she couldn’t help it. A nervous laugh bubbled from her dry throat.
His superb bone structure snapped taut, hooded dark eyes glittering. He reached out a lean brown hand, closed it over her narrow wrist and tugged her close, so close she stopped breathing. ‘You think this is funny?’
Belatedly, Star saw that he didn’t. He thought she was laughing at him, but sheer disbelief had made her laugh. She gazed up into the night-dark depths of his eyes. The wickedly familiar scent of him washed over her. The faint tug of some citrus-based lotion overlaying warm, husky male. She wanted to bury her face in his jacket and breathe him in like an intoxicating drug.
‘Not funny…sad.’ Star struggled to retain some element of concentration even as his raw magnetism pulled at her senses on every level. ‘I think you’d prefer it if I asked for money.’
He released his breath in a stark hiss. ‘That’s rubbish—’ ‘You could call me greedy then. You could judge me, stay in control.’
‘I’m not out of control.’
‘You like paying for things…you don’t value anything that comes free,’ Star condemned shakily, fighting not to lean into him.
‘Ciel!’ Luc countered with roughened frustration and impatience. ‘Since you and your mother entered my life, everything has had a price!’
At that charge, which had its basis in actual fact, Star paled. Simultaneously from somewhere in the distance there was the most almighty screeching sound, followed by a loud crash. As she jerked back from him, Star’s eyes flew wide with dismay.
Luc swung away with a frown. ‘What was that?’
Star groaned. ‘It sounded like the scaffolding coming down.’
Loosing an impatient expletive in his own language, Luc headed for the door. Star only then recalled that he had parked his car beneath the scaffolding surrounding the tower. Pausing this time to thrust her feet into the leather toe-post sandals lying on her bedroom floor, she hurried outside after him.
When she reached Luc’s side he was poised in silence, scanning the huge heap of twisted metal framing and rotten splintered wooden panels which had come down on top of his gorgeous sports car. The car was all but buried from view on three sides.
‘Pour l’amour du ciel…’ he ground out in raw disbelief, abruptly springing back into motion to stride towards the still accessible driver’s door.
‘What are you doing?’ Star cried in panic, grabbing his sleeve to hold him back.
‘I need my mobile phone!’ Luc launched down at her.
‘Are you crazy?’ Star pointed to the single tier of scaffolding still hanging at a precarious angle above the destruction below. ‘That could fall at any minute!’
‘Oui…I’m crazy.’ Luc flung her a grim slashing glance. ‘When you last looked into your little crystal pyramid, did you put a curse on me?’
Star stiffened until her muscles were as tight as a drum skin. After that derisive response, she resisted the urge to tell him that many people believed in the value of crystal healing. ‘There’s a phone in the kitchen. You’re welcome to use it.’
She walked away, but before she disappeared from sight she stole an anxious glance back. She could see that Luc was still calculating the chance of that last section of scaffolding falling at the exact moment he retrieved his phone from his car.
‘Don’t you dare, Luc Sarrazin!’ Star screamed back against the wind, infuriated by his obstinacy, that indefinable male streak which could not bear to duck a challenge.
And in that split second, with a wrenching noise of metallic protest, the remainder of the frame leant outward and came tumbling thunderously down, forcing Luc to back off fast.
Well, that took care of that problem, Star reflected gratefully, and hurried back indoors again.
Luc followed her into the kitchen and approached the huge built-in dresser where the phone sat. ‘Who owns this Gothic horror of a dump?’ he demanded in a flat tone of freezing self-restraint. ‘I intend to sue the owner.’
‘Last I heard, Carlton was on a Caribbean island repairing boat engines for the locals. He’s poorer than a church mouse,’ Star proffered ruefully.
At that news, Luc breathed in so deep she marvelled at the capacity of his lungs. ‘That structure was in a very dangerous condition—’
‘Yes. An accident waiting to happen.’
His glorious accent was so thick it growled along her nerve-endings like rough tweed catching on the smoothest silk. He was furious, she recognised, outraged by the owner’s irresponsibility, not to mention any circumstance which could maroon him in a dilapidated dwelling at the back end of nowhere. She watched him shoot a granite-hard glance of displeasure at his homely surroundings and the strangest feelings began blossoming in Star.
At that instant, Luc was just so human in his fury and his exasperation he provoked a huge melting tide of sympathetic warmth within her. His control over his emotions was so engrained he would not allow himself to shout and storm like most other men would have done. Yet he would be feeling so much less tense and angry if he let himself go. Of course, he wouldn’t let himself go, she conceded wryly. But such infuriating events as collapsing scaffolding did not figure much in Luc’s life.
He rarely drove himself anywhere. He was a brilliant banker with immense power and influence. A fabulously wealthy but driven workaholic, who had his routine as slavishly organised for him as a prisoner locked up behind bars. His daily existence was smoothed by servants, efficient bank staff, a fleet of chauffeur-driven limos and helicopters and a private jet. In his world of gilded privilege, disaster was invariably kept at a distance, and the irritating, time-consuming repercussions dealt with by someone else.
‘I’m really sorry about this…’ Star sighed heavily.
Luc lifted a candle to enable him to see the numbers on the phone. ‘This is medieval,’ he complained with slashing incredulity. ‘Did the storm bring down the power supply?’
‘No. The lights don’t work in here. The whole place needs rewiring, but Carlton can’t afford to do repairs. However, the phone’s still working.’ That was why the original caretaker had moved out, and the only reason why Star had a rent-free roof over her head.
She watched Luc stab out a number on the phone with an imperious forefinger. He’d be calling for another car. When he walked out, she’d never see him again. Her thoughts screeched to a bone-jarring halt on that realisation. Like an addict suddenly forced to confront the threatening horrors of denial ahead of her, Star was aghast at that reality. That sense of total loss felt so terribly final she wanted to chain him to the wall, to hold onto him for just a little longer. But she didn’t need to chain him, did she? He had already offered her a time extension, a little slot, a ridiculously narrow little slot.
Why had he asked her to spend one more night with him? Was it to be his treat or her supposed punishment? My goodness, she thought headily, that one night at the chateau must’ve been something reasonably acceptable on his terms. For here was the proof she had never expected to receive. Luc was asking to repeat that night, asking the only way he knew how, asking the only way he would allow himself to ask…bargaining from a position of strength and intimidation. Stripping everything bare of emotion, foreseeing every possible future complication but, with a remarkable lack of foresight, risking those same complications. Whooshing tenderness swept over Star like a tidal wave: Luc was acting out of character.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ Luc shot at her with a dark, questioning frown. ‘This phone is acting up!’
‘It’s the storm…put the receiver down and try again,’ she advised quietly.
One more night, she bargained with herself. It would be pure and utterly foolish self-indulgence. She would make no excuses for herself. It wasn’t sensible, but then loving and wanting Luc Sarrazin had never been sensible. Tomorrow she would have to face up to the divorce and the fact that they were like two different planets, forever condemned to spin in separate orbits. Just not meant to be.
Luc was now telling someone at the other end of the line that he wanted a limo to pick him up as soon as possible.
Awkwardly, barely crediting the decision she had reached and instantly terrified that if she lingered on that decision, she might decide against it again, Star cleared her throat, desperate to commit herself.
‘Tomorrow morning…’ she contradicted hoarsely, her mouth feeling as dry as a bone, her tongue too clumsy to do her bidding. ‘You won’t need the limo until tomorrow morning.’
CHAPTER THREE
LUC was not slow on the uptake.
Tomorrow morning! Star had changed her mind. Or had she? Had she merely been playing games with him all along? His lean, powerful frame tautened. On the phone, his chauffeur was asking for directions. Without any expression at all, Luc gave the details and altered the timing of the arrangement, but his thoughts were already light-years removed from the task at hand. He replaced the receiver in a quiet, controlled movement.
Yet Star tensed like a restive small animal scenting a predator down-wind. As well she might, Luc conceded in febrile abstraction. He wanted to rip her lithe quicksilver body out of those absurd clothes and enjoy the kind of raw, urgent sex he hadn’t fantasised about since he was a teenager. But even as the hot blood coursed to his loins, innate caution held him back.
‘Tomorrow, we part again.’
‘No problem…fresh start for both of us,’ Star pointed out shakily.
It was what she needed, Star told herself urgently. The opportunity to draw a final line beneath her disastrous marriage. The chance to rescue a little of her shattered pride at his expense: he was the one asking, not she. That was a most ironic first in their relationship. All of a sudden, she had power. He had given her that power. Why shouldn’t she use it?
In answer to that defiant question, she tensed as she thought of one very good reason why not for herself. ‘Are you involved with anyone else right now?’ she asked tightly.
‘No,’ Luc murmured drily.
Her eyes veiled, Star let her breath slowly escape again. So his mistress, Gabrielle Joly, who had caused her so many sleepless nights of anguish, had finally got her marching orders. Relief quivering through her, she lifted her head again.
Luc was as poised and still as an ice statue, his dark, devastating features unreadable. As he began moving towards her, her heart thumped like a giant hammer inside her.
‘Tell me…do you sleep curled up in the hearth here, like Cinderella?’ Luc enquired lazily.
‘No…Well,’ Star qualified tensely, ‘I did sleep in here over the winter because my bedroom was too cold.’
He reached for her slowly, as if he was afraid an abrupt movement might startle her into retreat. He wasn’t far wrong, Star admitted to herself. Nervous tension already strung her every sinew taut. It had just occurred to her that there was a vast difference between sneaking into Luc’s bed when he was asleep…and inviting him to her own bed when he was wide awake and fully in control.
‘Luc…?’
‘Don’t talk…’ He lifted a silencing forefinger to trace her parted lips with silk-soft sure delicacy.
She trembled, his merest touch awakening the intense hunger she had fought every day for eighteen months. Aquamarine eyes rested on his lean, dark face with a sudden flare of defiance. ‘I won’t let you hurt me again—’
‘I never meant to hurt you,’ Luc ground out, his dark, deep-set eyes flaring to lambent gold.
But how could he have done anything else when he hadn’t loved her? He hadn’t asked her to love him either, Star reminded herself ruefully.
‘It’s all in the past,’ she swore, as much for her own benefit as his.
Luc curved strong fingers to her exotic cheekbones and tipped her ripe mouth up to his.
As his hands slid down past her slight shoulders to lift her up to him, the sheer power of anticipation made her head spin in a dizzy whirl. He found her mouth, and for the timeless space of a heartbeat she lost herself in the hot, hard hunger of his lips. The most terrifying excitement laced with undeniable greed currented through her slim body. She linked her arms round his broad shoulders and pressed herself against the muscular hardness of his powerful physique, a fevered gasp of urgency torn from her throat.
He set her down on something hard. She wasn’t rational enough to care what or where. All that motivated her was the overpowering need to stay physically linked to him. One kiss and he lit a fever inside her. She burned, heart racing, pulses pounding, as he dug his fingers into the silky tangle of her copper hair. He drove his tongue deep in an intimate invasion as incredibly exciting as it was rawly sexual in intent.
At the height of that explosive passion, Luc dragged his mouth from hers and gazed down at her with smouldering heat. ‘Diabolique…’ he muttered thickly. ‘You’re on a table…’
So what? an impatient voice screamed inside her head. As he lifted his proud dark head bare inches from hers, Star reached for him with determined hands, sinking her fingers into the springy black depths of his hair and forcing him back to her. With a ragged groan of male appreciation, Luc melded his sensual mouth roughly to hers again, his hands sliding to the base of her spine to jerk loose the ties of her wrap top.
Hauling her back up into his arms, he lifted his tousled dark head again, colour scoring the fabulous cheekbones that lent his face such power. ‘Where’s the bedroom?’
Star blinked. She was in another world, in which neither language nor reason existed.
Luc elbowed back the kitchen door. ‘Bedroom?’
‘First right…no, first left!’ Every pulse in her treacherous body was thrumming on a high, making it a challenge to think.
Luc dipped the tip of his tongue in a provocative flicker into the tender interior of her mouth, making her jerk with reaction. ‘You have the most gorgeous mouth, mon ange.’
The sun was going down, intense light flooding through the window to illuminate the small cluttered room. He settled her down on the side of her bed. Her heart was jumping to such an extent she had trouble keeping air in her body. She studied him with passionate intensity. His lean, hard-boned features were half in light, half in shadow. Taut cheekbones, eyes the colour of midnight, straight, arrogant nose, hard, masculine jawline.
She watched Luc cast off his beautifully cut jacket, pull loose his tie and peel off his crisp cotton shirt. He discarded the items with the same controlled cool with which he did everything. Yet she quivered, insidious heat rising from deep within at the sight of his muscular brown chest, the sprinkling of curling black hair hazing his pectorals, the satin-sleek smoothness of the skin over his flat, taut stomach. The strength of her own craving shook her.
‘I just love your body,’ she whispered, knotting her fingers together, nerves and anticipation headily mingling to keep her ferociously tense.
Luc flashed her a slightly uneasy glance. ‘That’s my line.’
Star frowned in dismay, taking him literally. ‘We don’t have to have lines, do we?’
‘We don’t need to talk, do we?’ Evidently even more threatened by that idea, Luc strode forward at speed and raised her upright. The edges of her loosened top fell apart. His hands tightened hard on hers. The silence sizzled. He gazed down fixedly at her bare pouting breasts crested by swollen pink peaks that stirred with her every quickened breath. A tide of colour washed her face as she resisted her own self-consciousness with all her might.
‘Sensational…’ Suddenly, Luc was dragging the sleeves of her top down her arms, freeing her of the garment and backing her down on the bed with a lack of cool that she found intensely gratifying.
‘Say it in French,’ she urged breathlessly. ‘Say everything in French.’
Momentarily, Luc stilled. ‘Try to smother the urge to tell me what to do.’
Star gave him a hurt look of confusion.
He lifted her up against the pillows so that she was level with him. Excitement glanced through her, sharp as a knife, but the pained light in her eyes lingered. He closed a soothing hand over her taut fingers, forcing her to release her death-grip on the corner of the duvet. ‘Just keep quiet,’ he practically begged. ‘Don’t talk…when you talk, you drive me crazy.’
Very slowly, Star nodded.
Eyes burning gold swept over her. He snatched in a ragged breath. ‘You just always say the wrong thing.’
Tears stung her eyes behind her lowered eyelids.
Luc gazed down at her in frantic frustration. She was lying there like a corpse now, still as death in human sacrifice mode. He curved not quite steady hands to her delicate cheekbones. ‘I always say the wrong thing,’ he contradicted in desperation.
Star opened her wonderful eyes and nodded forgivingly.
Without hesitation, he captured her lips again with potent driving passion. She stopped thinking, as if he had punched a switch. He slid lithely down the bed and closed his mouth urgently over one thrusting tender pink nipple. She gasped and jerked, every muscle straining in reaction, and instantly she was on fire again. The tormenting sensitivity of her own flesh made her moan helplessly and melted her quivering body to hot liquid honey.
‘I want to taste you…’ Luc muttered raggedly, wrenching her out of her skirt, his mouth travelling down over her slim, twisting length with a hot, devastating sensuality that overwhelmed her.