AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘And this will be your bedroom.’
As Xavier held the door open for her, Sophie gasped. If she had thought his ballroom-sized sleeping quarters grand, then this bedroom was a real revelation. The walls were covered in ice-blue silk emblazoned with gold, and there was a canopy over the huge brass bedstead in the softest leaf-green colour. This was edged and tied back with a deep shade of rose and the bed-covering over the plump pillows and quilt was lilac, as was the stained glass decorated panel at the top of each high, arched window.
‘I hope it’s to your liking?’ he murmured, leaving her to walk about the room on what she guessed must be a priceless Aubusson rug in shades of cream, gold and rose.
‘It’s a little better than your base camp,’ Sophie said dryly. She saw his mouth quirk briefly before he continued the tour.
‘Here’s the bathroom, where you can indulge yourself while I’m in the meeting,’ he said, flinging open another door.
‘I thought I was to attend the meeting with you—to broaden my understanding of the project,’ Sophie said pointedly.
‘Not this first meeting—it’s private business. It has no connection with the project.’
‘I see.’
‘No, you don’t,’ he assured her softly.
Did he have to prowl around her like that? Sophie wondered as a frisson of awareness raced through her. However large the room—and this room was large—it felt as if Xavier inhabited every inch. There was no escape.
Rather than yield to the feelings stirring inside her, she pretended interest in an ornate centrepiece on a vast cabinet at the other side of the room.
‘Is George Jones majolica one of your interests?’ Xavier murmured, coming to stand within touching distance.
‘It looks so right here, but it shouldn’t, should it?’ she murmured, catching sight of her own reflection in an ornate gilt-rimmed mirror. Xavier was standing right behind her. She only had to lean back a fraction…
‘I don’t know,’ he observed softly. ‘The splendours of nineteenth-century English earthenware seem quite appropriate to me in this grand setting.’
Even reflected in the mirror, his dark gaze was hypnotic. It seemed to penetrate every inch of her and fill her with heat. ‘The colours are very beautiful…rich, and lustrous,’ Sophie managed breathily. Running the tips of her fingers over the deep turquoise surface, she could feel all the tiny hairs on the back of her neck rising in response to him. ‘Must you leave right away?’ she murmured recklessly, a part of her hoping he wouldn’t hear.
‘Why, Sophie? Is there something further you’d like to discuss with me?’
Discuss? No. Remaining with her back to him, Sophie remembered they had only an hour before his meeting. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘If this is your last stop before you leave Peru, I’d like to know when you leave…and what happens to me when you do.’
The bluntness of her question surprised him. She was hoping for some kind of commitment, Xavier realised. He slipped his arm about her waist and brought her close. They made a pretty picture in the mirror, he saw with cynicism. In spite of all that had happened, there was an ease between them. He dropped a kiss on the back of her neck. They could have been man and wife.
He pulled back. Sophie had to be seeing the same thing. He couldn’t let it go on. Even he couldn’t be that heartless. ‘I go back to Spain. You can come with me if you want, but Sophie—’
‘Yes?’
Already she sounded wounded, Xavier realised, hardening his heart. Better to set her straight right now before he did any more damage. ‘I can’t offer you the long-term.’
‘I know that,’ Sophie said quickly. What was ‘long-term’ anyway? Long-term misery like her parents? In her heart she had been expecting him to say something like this. She’d even thought she was ready to hear it. How wrong could you be? Sophie wondered, closing her eyes tightly shut to stop tears betraying the true extent of her feelings for him.
‘Don’t look so tense, Sophie,’ Xavier murmured, ‘I want you here with me. That’s all I want right now.’
And, in that moment, Xavier realised he was telling the truth. He also realised she would assume he only spoke the words to keep her as his mistress: an emotional down-payment on a very cynical arrangement. Averting his face, Xavier wondered if he had ever despised himself as much as he did at that moment.
‘Don’t tease me, Xavier,’ Sophie said softly. His reflection in the mirror wasn’t enough. She turned to search for the truth in his eyes.
‘Who said anything about teasing you?’ Xavier said tenderly.
Even his voice had the power to caress her, to addle her thoughts and make her doubt her own resolve, Sophie realised. But he could cut her out too, she remembered. She was in Lima to do a job, not to be seduced by her boss. Her boss! Why could she never think of Xavier that way? Why must she always fight with him as if they were a couple, when it would be so much easier to accept him as her employer and occasional lover as many women might have done? ‘Why are we here, Xavier?’ she said firmly.
‘I thought I explained.’
‘I don’t think you did, not the real reason. And I think you owe it to me now—’
‘I owe you nothing on the personal front,’ he said abruptly, his eyes turning from sapphire to stone.
‘Because of Henry?’
‘No,’ he admitted curtly. ‘I smelt the drink on his breath when I sat with him at the table. And I think you got rather more than you deserved from that quarter. Henry’s out of the picture as far as I’m concerned. If you had only explained your understanding with him to me in a way a man can understand—’
‘A man like you?’
‘Any man who is not prepared to share his woman would ask the same,’ he said impatiently. ‘I thought we were close enough for you to trust me. After all your revelations about your parents…the intimacies we shared—physical, emotional—’ He stopped, seeing the tears in her eyes. ‘Sophie—’
As he reached out to her, she pulled back. Xavier was surprised to discover just how much that wounded him. Something closer to love than his customary pride made him try again. He only meant to draw Sophie to him, to hold her close for a few moments, perhaps kiss her head to reassure her before leaving her to prepare for his meeting. But as his arms closed around her and he felt her trembling beneath his touch, all he could remember, all that registered or mattered, was how much she meant to him.
They shared a hunger, and something even more than that, he realised, as Sophie raised her chin to gaze at him questioningly. But it was hunger now that was consuming him—that same hunger that, however hard each of them tried to subdue it, only continued to grow. It had become an all-involving passion for him, the like of which he had never known before. Would he ever sate the desire? Throwing back his head in one last attempt to regain control of his senses, Xavier realised he knew the answer to that even as he swept Sophie up in his arms and carried her across to the bed.
Stripping the lilac silk coverlet away in one impatient move, he laid her down gently on top of the softly yielding pillows. He helped her to undress, then turned his attention to his own clothes, removing them quickly and in silence. There was no need for words as they came together in an embrace that shook them both to the core. Sensuously, skilfully, he led her towards the inevitability of total pleasure, drawing out the tormenting seduction to its fullest extent before time constraints made him bring it to a close. And then, nudging her thighs apart, he teased her with a few lingering passes before tipping her up to meet him and inhabiting her completely. Xavier groaned, feeling her muscles tighten around him, drawing him deeper, insisting he pleasure her until the warm, silken noose of her body became a hot moist place that sucked on him convulsively as if she would dra
in the last drop of life force from him before letting go. It was pleasure such as he had never known…thought-robbing, breath-stealing, sensational pleasure, at an extreme he could never have believed possible. They needed each other, and that need was equally balanced, he realised, drawing back at the brink to look down at her flushed cheeks and passion-dampened face. What he saw mirrored his own fierce ecstasy. He slowed his strokes, making them long and firm, relishing each shuddering cry that escaped her lips and the sweet pain of her fingernails as they raked across his shoulders when she called out for satisfaction. But he would not be hurried. This was an experience to be savoured, and savour it he would, until the fire became an inferno, and with a few firm, fast strokes he pushed her over the edge into sensation-filled oblivion. He held himself aloof to relish the moment as she cried out his name, repeating it over and over as each fresh pleasure wave claimed her. And only when she stilled in his arms and moaned softly with contentment did he increase the pace again and find his own savage release.
Sliding out of her was the hardest thing he ever had to do, Xavier acknowledged, knowing Sophie felt it too when she groaned a soft complaint. But people were waiting for him…deputations, politicians, cameras. He sighed heavily as she clutched at him, her eyes still closed against reality, dozing in the light, sated slumber from which he knew he could so easily wake her, so easily arouse her again. But he could not stay in bed all day even if he wanted to and, with one final kiss, he went to take a shower.
‘How can you go when I still want you so badly?’ Sophie murmured sleepily when he returned to her at last to say goodbye.
‘We have all the time in the world,’ Xavier promised, sitting on the bed for a moment to relish her beauty. ‘And if I make you wait you will only want me all the more.’
‘I couldn’t possibly want you more than I do,’ Sophie argued, toying with the buttons on the front of his crisp white shirt.
