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She pressed kisses feverishly to his face, mouth, neck, her hands seeking to rip open his shirt. Buttons popped and his bow tie disappeared down into the cracks between the seats. She blindly sought his belt buckle and opened it impatiently.
‘You’re like a fever in my blood, Alana. There’s no one else I want.’
His words set her aflame even more, and she bent to kiss him again. He lifted her slightly and she braced her hands against his shoulders. She bit her lip as she heard his zip come down, and as he pulled his trousers down with a rough urgency. Then he settled her back and she almost cried out at the sensation of his hard, virile, unsheathed heat, right there.
He lifted her dress at her waist, and she heard fabric rip as he brought two hands to the side of her knickers and pulled. He pressed a kiss to her throat as she felt the material being pulled away. ‘I’m not sorry and I’ll buy you new ones.’
She didn’t care. She wanted him inside her, right now. The ache was killing her.
As if he heard her silent plea, he lifted her again, and she could feel his hand on himself as he guided his rigid length to the apex of her thighs. He slid in easily, and as Alana sank down onto him, he surged upwards. She was so turned on, and the sensation was so shockingly thrilling, that she came right there and then, her inner muscles clamping around him in a series of minor convulsions.
She dropped her head into his shoulder. He was still rigid within her, filling her. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry …’ She was breathing heavily.
He pulled her back, tipped her head up, pressed a kiss to her mouth, slid his tongue between her soft lips. She could feel him stir within her, and inexplicably she could feel herself start to respond again, not being allowed to fall back to earth; she was kept on a high plateau of sensation that threatened to go even higher.
‘We’ve only just started.’
With a slow, burning intensity, Pascal moved within her like a devil magician. He brought her to the edge only to stop, then start again. In a fever of prolonged ecstasy, skin slick with sweat, it was only when he knew he couldn’t hold back that he allowed free rein to his movements, which became urgent. His big hands moulded her back, held her hips steady. Alana was beyond words. Everything in her was reverent, the orgasm that broke through her just before his was so powerful that she had to keep her eyes locked on Pascal’s or she would have disintegrated into pieces.
Pascal had never felt anything like it. He’d almost have believed that she hadn’t climaxed, if he hadn’t felt her body contracting powerfully around his. But she’d done it with such quiet intensity that it had made his own completion burst up in a never-ending stream of exquisite pleasure. Only her biting her lip at the zenith of sensation had shown any of her internal experience.
Alana shook all over. Pascal pulled her into his chest and cradled her against him. They were still joined intimately, and at that moment she couldn’t ever imagine being separated from this man. She’d never felt like this with her husband, not even in the early days of their marriage when she’d had so many hopes and dreams of a happy future.
Something extraordinary had just happened, and she hated to admit it.
* * *
When they reached his apartment, Pascal carried her straight up to his bathroom and ran them a bath. Then they made love. Again. And now she lay here, blissed out. Replete. Complete.
She heard a movement and looked up. Pascal was holding out a big robe.
‘Come on, or you’ll turn into a prune.’
Something in his eyes made her hold back a quick, joky comment. She stood up and reached for the robe, only to have him pull it back from her reach.
‘Pascal, come on.’ She groaned and immediately went to cover her breasts. She was totally exposed in the low lighting of the intimate bathroom. And it was silly to feel this way when they’d just made love, first in the back of his car and then in the bath. She flushed.
‘Let your hands down. Please.’ His voice sounded rough. ‘I want to look at you, Alana—will you let me look at you? As you are?’
Fear and embarrassment gave way to something else. The desire in his eyes emboldened her. She carefully and slowly climbed out of the bath and stood beside it. She dropped her arms and watched as his eyes travelled down, resting and dwelling on parts of her body that she’d certainly never inspected so intensely herself.
After a long, long minute his eyes met hers again. They were dark. He stepped forward and put the robe around her, drying her, before slipping her arms into the sleeves and tying it securely around her waist. He smoothed back her damp hair and ran a finger down her cheek.
‘I could quite easily have you again right now, on the floor … And all sorts of other images came into my mind as I looked at you.’ Pascal wrestled for a moment inwardly with the very real and disturbing reality that he could take her again right now. The knowledge made him cautious. ‘But there’s time …’
‘Time,’ Alana said stupidly, suddenly wanting very much instead that they could make love on the floor right now. She had an erotic flash of an image: kneeling at his feet and taking him into her mouth. The shocking heat that inflamed her made her feel weak. Where had that desire come from? She’d never even done that with Ryan. She’d never even thought that she found it sexy. But the thought of driving Pascal to the edge of all endurance was intoxicating in the extreme.
‘Yes, time. Let’s eat and have some wine.’ He cut through the fevered images in her wanton imagination and pushed her towards the bathroom door, and then out and down the stairs to the sitting room. A bottle of wine sat open with two glasses. Alana felt stone-cold sober all of a sudden, which wasn’t surprising as she hadn’t drunk all evening, but bizarrely she also felt drunk, heady … something very nebulous and disturbing.
He poured wine into their glasses and busied himself with something at the oven. Although Alana was in a robe, Pascal wore faded jeans and a plain shirt that was haphazardly buttoned, showing the light smattering of hair on his chest and a sliver of hard-muscled, olive-skinned belly. Alana took a quick sip of wine. He really did have the honed body of an athlete—again something niggled at her about that, but it was wispy and eluded her.
‘Look,’ she started nervously. ‘I’m sorry about … running out like that. I’m not normally so dramatic.’
Pascal closed the oven door and slanted her a look before taking a sip of wine from his own glass.
Alana flushed. ‘We should still be there. Didn’t you have to make some kind of speech?’
Pascal shrugged noncommittally. ‘My assistant did it. It’s no big deal, really; I wouldn’t have even been here necessarily if it hadn’t been for the match happening on the same day. It was an opportunity to drum up publicity and kill two birds with one stone. But, no.’ He smiled disarmingly. ‘I would much prefer to be here with you.’
She flushed again, unused to being flattered. ‘Well. Thank you. Next time—’
She stopped abruptly, her eyes flying to his with a sickening feeling as she realised what she’d been about to say—she’d been about to imply that there would be a next time.
‘That is, I don’t mean—’
Pascal hushed her and came round the counter, pulling her into him. ‘Next time I’m not going to let you out of my sight, so there will be no room for any confusion or misinterpretation, OK?’
Her mouth was dry and she just nodded.
He let her go and moved back, smiling easily, charmingly, and her world tilted all over again. ‘Now, how about you tell me about this lounge-lizard of yours?’
Alana shuddered delicately at the memory, realising that it had shaken her more than she cared to admit, but talking about it would lessen it. She told Pascal and acted out his slimy manoeuvres, and by the time she’d finished they were both laughing, and Pascal admitted that he knew exactly who she was talking about. Apparently the man was famous for pouncing on vulnerable-looking women. Their easy intimacy and Pascal’s ability to make her feel protected, to make her feel like she could trust him, was sucking Alana into a veritable whirlpool that she feared it would be nigh impossible to climb back out of.
The following evening, as Alana looked at the Italian capital grow smaller and smaller beneath her, she got hot in the face again thinking of the previous night. The erotic fantasy she’d had in the bathroom had become a reality. Pascal had let her push him to the edge of his endurance. She groaned inwardly; she seemed to be in a permanent state of heat since she met him.
She was alone on his private jet on her way back to Dublin. He was taking a commercial flight back to Paris, and he hadn’t taken no for an answer when she’d objected. He’d flown her to him, and now he was flying her home. Just like that. As if flying someone on a private jet was banal, ordinary. Easy. And she had to concede, for someone like him who strode through life and got what they wanted with a click of their fingers, of course it was easy. Accolades, money, women, beautiful houses—easy come, easy go. And she’d put herself firmly in that category, made no bones about the fact that she was fine with that.
She finally turned away from the view and recalled the stern set of his features as he’d sent her off, having insisted on accompanying her to the airport. They’d had their first row, of sorts. Except it had been more like a non-row. Alana still couldn’t quite figure what had happened but all she knew was that he hadn’t been happy.
They’d woken late, well into the early afternoon. Pascal had insisted that she see something of Rome, and had taken her to the nearby Trevi Fountain and then to a tiny restaurant tucked away from the hordes of tourists. The food had been sublime, authentic Italian cuisine at its best. The experience had been intimate, the table so small that their legs had been all but entwined underneath, and it had been easier for their hands to stay linked, too, separating only when the food arrived.
It was when they’d got back to his apartment so that Alana could pack; they’d been standing in the kitchen and she’d been watching Pascal percolate some coffee. He’d turned round and said easily, ‘There’s so much more you should see. But we can do it again.’
Alana had immediately reacted to his words at a very deep, visceral level, an instant negation of something very fleeting and wishful rising up inside her. ‘Oh, well, yes. I’m sure I’ll be back at some stage.’
It was the way she’d said ‘I’ that got his attention, and she knew it. Even though he said nothing—at first. And then he did say, ‘I meant when you come back here with me.’
Alana took the coffee he handed her and walked away into the living room, holding the cup between suddenly chilled hands. She schooled her features and turned back round to face him, forcing her voice to sound as casual as she could. ‘You really don’t have to say that, you know.’
He took a sip of coffee, his eyes narrowed disconcertingly on her face. She was glad that he was still behind the island in the kitchen.
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
Alana gave a little laugh, which sounded fake to her ears. ‘I mean, you don’t have to do this … reassurance thing. I really don’t expect you to make me feel like you want me to come back …’ Her words trailed off, diminishing some of the vehemence with which she’d started the statement.
He walked round the island, ridiculously small coffee cup in one hand, his other in the pocket of his jeans. He looked astoundingly gorgeous in a dark sweater. Unconsciously, Alana backed away.
‘Believe me,’ he said throatily, ‘the only thing I want to make you feel right now involves a soft surface and no clothing in our way.’
Alana gulped and took a quick swig of coffee.
‘Look,’ she said weakly, ‘all I’m saying is that I know what this is and I’m fine with that. Really.’
‘And what would that be?’
She shrugged one shoulder; they were still doing a bit of a backward dance around the room, she backing, and he advancing.
‘It’s an affair. A fling.’
His eyebrows raised high. ‘Oh, so that’s what this is?’
Alana winced. No doubt his other lovers were far too experienced and suave to put a name on their experience with him. Suddenly she felt anger rise up. Why was he being so obtuse? Surely she was doing him a favour? She stopped backing away and put her coffee cup down carefully on the low table by the sofa.
She straightened and folded her arms. ‘Look, that’s exactly what it is. We both know that. I’d prefer if we could just be honest about it. What I’m saying to you is that I don’t need to be given any kind of platitudes. I’m not going to be clingy or want anything more. If you said to me right now that this is over, and thanks but goodbye, I’d have no problem walking out of here.’
Pascal had gone very still, his eyes very black. No doubt he wasn’t used to lovers calling the shots, Alana thought cynically. And why did her flip words cause an ache somewhere in the region of her chest? She pushed it aside. The truth was this: Pascal was not a man she could trust in a million years. And she’d vowed to herself never to trust again. Never to be so silly, naïve.
Pascal put down his coffee cup, too, and walked towards her slowly. Alana stood her ground, but had the impression that she’d woken a sleeping dragon.
‘I’ll admit that your honesty is both tantalising and refreshing.’
‘It is?’ she asked.
Pascal nodded. He was close enough to touch now.
‘Yes. We both know that when the time comes, we’ll walk away without a backward glance, happy with what we’ve had.’
‘Exactly.’ Alana nodded vehemently. ‘I don’t mean to sound … crass, it’s just that I’ve been married. I’ve had that experience and I never, ever want to go near it again. Not even in the form of a tenuous commitment—and I know you’re not even offering that.’ She stopped and cursed herself; she sounded like a bumbling idiot. ‘What I’m trying to say is that I’m not looking for anything. I know you’re a playboy.’
His eyes flashed, and Alana’s insides clenched painfully but she ploughed on. ‘I’m not expecting anything more. I can’t begin to tell you how comfortable I am with that.’
‘A no-strings, no-consequences affair—we both walk away when we get bored.’
She nodded. She knew that time wouldn’t be far off. A man of Pascal’s voracious tastes wouldn’t be content with someone like her for long. Not when there were other, more beautiful women waiting in the wings.
He came very close and snaked a hand round the back of her head. His eyes were still dark, unreadable, and his jaw had a rigidity to it that made Alana instinctively want to smooth it, relax it.
‘Well, then, seeing as how it’s doubtful you will ever be back here with me, now that the sands of time are slipping away from us, we should make the most of here and now, n’est-ce pas?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What I mean, Alana—’ his voice had a hard edge ‘—is that we’re wasting too much time talking when we could be saying goodbye to Rome and this weekend in a very satisfactory way.’
He kissed her for a long, drugging moment, hauling her whole body against his. When he pulled back, and Alana fought to regain her breath, she said, ‘But your plane … we have to leave.’
He shook his head, eyes flashing dangerously. ‘That’s the beauty of being a playboy—my crew are very used to last-minute changes.’
Alana felt a knife skewer her inside, so hurt for a moment that she felt winded. And yet this was exactly what she’d asked for. Demanded. And when he bent his head to kiss her again, and started to open her shirt, she couldn’t stop him because if she did he’d know that all of her proclamations were built on a very flimsy foundation.
With the lingering heat of their recent impassioned love-making still in her blood and heavy limbs, Alana’s focus came back to the present. The earth below was an indistinct mass of brown mountains seen through breaks in the cloud. She sighed and let her head fall back against the seat, closing her eyes. She was playing with fire; she knew it. And all the trust issues in the world weren’t going to keep her safe from harm.
As his private jet winged Alana home in style and comfort, the novelty and charmlessness of commercial travel was quickly reminding Pascal how far he’d come. Although, he could never forget his upbringing; it was branded onto his skin like a tattoo. He could remember how close he’d come to being one of the lost youths of the Parisian suburbs: lost to a life of crime and drugs, hopelessness. Until his mother had died and had thus saved him, by ensuring that he would go to live with his grandfather. She had redeemed herself and her woeful mothering by making sure he’d take another path, despite the fact that he’d been a representation of everything that had failed in her own life.
Pascal strode free of the gnarled mass of human traffic in Charles de Gaulle airport and sank into the back of his car which was waiting just outside the doors. Why was he thinking of such things now, when he hadn’t thought of them in years?
Alana.
A woman was making him think of these things, when no other lover had ever done so. He had to concede that no other lover had taken him by the scruff of the neck and rattled him so completely. No other lover had evoked within him a compelling need to obey instinct over intellect. He hadn’t lived like that for a long time. She connected to something within him, primitive and long-suppressed, deep and visceral. He searched desperately to justify this feeling, to rationalise it, but his brain wouldn’t cooperate.
When she’d stood there earlier and had coolly informed him that she was fine with their temporary affair, that above all she didn’t expect commitment, he should have been rejoicing. Wasn’t it a man’s ultimate fantasy? For a man like him, happy to take lovers for a short time until they bored him, or until they started looking for more.
Here he was, being offered this fantasy on a plate, and he well knew that she meant every word she’d said. It wasn’t some kind of devious reverse-psychology. So why had he felt anything but relieved? Why had he wanted to challenge her? Why had that instinct not to let her go felt so strong? He’d certainly never aspired to the empty heights of marriage, either; he’d learnt at an early age that searching for that elusive happiness only bred disillusionment and pain. His parents had both proved in their own ways to be prime examples of that. His father had seen him as nothing but a threat to his own marriage, and had rejected him outright because of it.
Yet Alana was making him question the very bedrock on which he’d built his life. His sluggish brain finally kicked into gear: attraction. That had to be it. A rare form of lust. He just hadn’t met a woman who’d taken possession of his body and mind before, that was all. That had to be all. OK, so she wasn’t into anything permanent—well, neither was he. He just wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of the ultimatum, that was all. He relaxed. Their affair certainly wasn’t over yet. Not by a long shot.
‘You know we’re just concerned, love.’
‘I know, Mam, I know.’ Alana sank into her couch, still wearing her coat.
‘He seems like a very nice man. He’s awfully important, isn’t he?’
Alana bit back a rueful smile. ‘Nice’ hardly did him justice. ‘Em, yes, he’s quite important. But, Mother, don’t go getting any ideas, now. It’s nothing special.’ Liar.
Her mother trilled a laugh down the phone. ‘I might not quite understand these new relationships, but, love, I know how hard it was for you when Ryan died. It’s OK to move on now, it’s been long enough. No one would expect you to mourn for ever.’
Alana felt a wave of isolation come over her. Her parents had never really acknowledged the fact that she’d been divorcing Ryan; it had simply been too painful for them to admit that one of their children had failed in their marriage that way. So, when Ryan had died so tragically just before the divorce had come through, Alana had known that in some awful way, it had allowed her parents to believe in the myth of her fairy tale. Was it any wonder she hadn’t been able to confide in them?
After a few more words they finished the conversation, and Alana was relieved that her mother hadn’t mentioned Pascal again. She shook her head and then resolutely turned off her phone before she could get another acerbic call from her sister, Ailish, who would no doubt have seen the same gossip rags as her mother. She and Pascal were all over the press; the reporters had been waiting at Dublin airport. She knew she’d been naïve to think for a second that perhaps people wouldn’t be interested.
Why did she have to go and meet someone who made her feel alive again, someone she couldn’t resist? Someone in the public eye on a level that made Ryan O’Connor seem as if he’d been in the Z-list celebrity pile? It was as if she’d had a list of things to avoid and had blithely ignored each and every one of them. Alana just hoped that she could look at Pascal one day soon and not feel that burning desire rip through her entire body like a life-sustaining necessity.
CHAPTER SIX
THREE heady, passion-filled weeks later, that day was eluding Alana spectacularly as she looked down from her position in the press box to the VIP area in Croke Park. Déjà vu washed over her as she caught Pascal’s eye and made a face before turning her attention back to the game between Ireland v England. Her heart was singing, her breath was coming fast, and her blood was zinging through her veins. She put her intermittent feelings of nausea down to that see-sawing feeling and tried to forget that she’d been compelled to buy an over-the-counter pregnancy test that morning on her way to work after Pascal had said goodbye to her from her own modestly sized double bed.
She wouldn’t think about her late period or the pregnancy test now. It couldn’t be possible. And yet, a small voice niggled, it could. But in the years of her marriage to Ryan, while they’d still been sleeping together, she hadn’t had one scare despite not having used contraception. It had been the source of some of their main problems, and, while Alana had got checked out and been told everything was fine, Ryan had refused, clearly unable to deal with the fear that it could be something on his side.
The match picked up in pace just then and Alana let it distract her. At the end, Pascal found her as the usual scramble started.
‘I’ve agreed to go on the post-match analysis panel to give my opinion on how I think the tournament is going to go. They’re doing it in the press centre here.’
‘OK,’ Alana said, feeling slightly breathless and hating herself for it. ‘I’ve some interviews lined up, and then I’ve got to head back to the studio, so I’ll see you later.’
He nodded and bent close to her ear for a moment. ‘I want to kiss you so thoroughly that you’re boneless in my arms, but I don’t think you’d thank me for that in front of the entire pressbox.’
Alana felt boneless already, and fought the rogue urge to let him do exactly that. She just shook her head swiftly, alternately disappointed and relieved when he stepped away with a cool look on his face.
His tall, powerful frame disappeared down through the seats, taking a little piece of her with him. She sighed. She was in so much trouble, and she was potentially in a whole lot more trouble too. The kind of trouble that Pascal Lévêque wouldn’t thank her for. And yet … She placed a hand on her belly. Right at that moment she thought that, if she was pregnant, it was something she’d always have for herself. A baby, a child.
Just then the cameraman signalled that they were ready to go with the first interview, and Alana gathered up her stuff and hurried down to the pitch.
By the time they were onto the last interview with one of the Ireland players, Alana was feeling exhausted. She glanced up and her stomach contracted painfully when she saw who it was—Eoin Donohoe, one of her late husband’s partners in crime. He was a huge, intimidating presence, one of the biggest players on the team. Like Ryan, he, too, was married, but that hadn’t stopped his own hedonism. Waves of old mutual antipathy flowed between them as Alana prepared to ask the questions. Eoin smiled at her, but it held a nasty edge which she ignored.