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He uttered a low, guttural sound, and, while thunder and lightning played outside, Veronica exultantly embraced a whirlwind tempest of her own, pierced with violent delight as Luc stormed his way into her body, her heart, her soul…hoarsely shouting out her name in wrenching pleasure as he shuddered to his extravagant completion.
She was even more charmed by Luc’s evident chagrin when he withdrew and rolled pantingly onto his side, looked slightly dazed by the experience.
‘Are you blushing?’ she teased as he stripped off the used protection. ‘Don’t worry, I promise I won’t tell anyone about your lack of stamina,’ she added, basking in playful amusement at his expense, knowing that his bred-to-the-bone masculinity was equal to the challenge.
His eyes smouldered above his dark-smudged cheekbones as he looked at her lolling voluptuously against his mounded pillows, her bare breasts quivering as she tried to repress her giggles.
‘Think that was funny, do you?’ he drawled, a dangerous smile stealing across his mouth.
He jackknifed out of the bed and padded without embarrassment into the bathroom, flaunting the gorgeous, tight backside that had been a feature of her recent fantasies, and then over to the small refrigerator hidden in a wooden cabinet, coming back with a rattling jug of ice cubes, which he set down on the bedside table.
’I’ve been looking forward to this,’ he purred, scooping the first ice cube out of the jug and prowling back onto the bed, blatantly displaying to Veronica’s fascinated gaze that he was already semi-aroused, even though it had only been a few minutes since his shattering release. ‘Let’s see who has the last laugh now…’
Her laughter soon turned to squeals as the frozen cube stuck to her skin with an exciting burn, but it almost immediately began to melt and Luc began to trace intricate patterns all over her body, paying special attention to the most sensitive nooks and crannies, chasing the ice slivers with his tongue as they dissolved on her silky-hot skin.
In spite of the diminishing jug of ice cubes her body was soon suffused with heated tension and Luc leaned over and flicked a switch on the fan to stop it rotating, directing the smooth flow of air across her slick body, adding a piquant wind-chill factor to the effects of his wickedly applied ice. He teased arctic circles around and over her nipples, moulding them into frigid stiffness, following the ice-burning chill with the scalding heat of his mouth as he suckled to a thaw the frosty peaks. Then he shocked her by drawing the dripping ice cube down over her quivering belly and through the soft thicket on her womanly mound until it slipped into the crease between her legs. She gasped at the glacial caress, but he quelled her brief struggle with seductive promises, drawing the cube again and again along the secret folds, teasing her until she begged again for the exquisite heat of his mouth.
He coaxed the last ice cube into her mouth, kissing her as she clattered it around against her teeth and let the icy droplets trickle down her throat. When the sensitive inside of her mouth was almost numb with cold he whispered a wicked invitation in her ear and she quivered as she grazed her icy lips down the centre of his body, at the mercy of his cleverly caressing hands as she made him groan by pushing her frigid tongue into his shallow navel, and then shudder and moan when she reached her goal and froze him with her deep, loving kiss. His hands plunged into her thick, tangled locks as his back arched and his hips surged, his thighs cording as the tension ripped through his muscles.
‘Oh, no, not this time,’ he growled, drawing her up beside him, and pinning her spread-eagled to the bed. ‘You say I don’t tell you how I feel. Let me show you…’
The final, sexy flourish was when he rose above her on his knees and—just as he had in Paris—reached up to release his hair from its confinement, shaking his head, so that his glossy black mane skimmed across the top of his muscular shoulders, sliding forward to flare in a veil around their faces as he kissed her and rocked her with him to sweet oblivion.
Afterwards, as she drowsed exhausted in his arms, he was the one who wanted to talk.
‘So, tell me about this creepy ex-fiancé of yours…’
She was too relaxed to hold anything back as she told him about her abortive wedding. Neil had thought his windfall would solve all their problems, but it had only exacerbated them. It had been a huge shock to Veronica that he would make such a momentous decision about their future lives together without even consulting her…especially when the farm he had chosen was in a particularly isolated area where there was no phone line, let alone access to the Internet. He had known that she had no interest in farming and had only stayed on in the country out of obligation to her parents. He had always lived in a large town and boasted that rural banking was merely his stepping-stone to a city bank job. He had claimed to understand her desire to live an urban lifestyle—to travel and run a business, and to bring up her children where there was a choice of schools. And yet Neil had assumed that when he presented her with a fait accompli she would meekly bow to hi
s superior judgement.
‘Jerk!’ Luc sneered. ‘But you must have loved him once,’ he said, arranging a swathe of her hair across the pillow.
‘I thought you decided I was marrying him for his money!’ she said, and sighed when he didn’t respond to the provocative evasion. ‘Partly, I think, it was because I was so eager to get out in the wider world and experience life. Neil and I seemed to share the same aspirations—or so I thought. I loved who I thought he was—only he turned out to be someone completely different, someone I didn’t even like—’
‘Not to mention a total loony,’ said Luc, sounding annoyingly smug.
‘I have terrible taste in men,’ she agreed, but he merely smiled.
‘Until now,’ he pointed out.
Since it was too hot to remain entwined for long, he propped his head on his hand as he lay on his side, his dark hair winnowing slightly in the breeze from the fan.
He lazily told her something of his childhood with his father, a dare-devil character who was a great natural teacher and fiercely determined to be a good father to his only son, always encouraging him to watch, listen and learn, to question and inquire. When he touched on the difficulties of being intellectually advanced for his age, and his move to Oxford, Veronica suddenly wasn’t so drowsy any more. She hardly dared breathe for fear of spooking him, but then he casually mentioned the unmentionable:
‘I met Elise when I was sixteen—she was doing a post-grad when I was in my first year. She was my tutor for a while and I fell boyishly in love amongst the “dreaming spires”.’
‘Sixteen!’ She sat up, unable to help her burst of fierce outrage. ‘Why, that’s practically cradle-robbing! She’s nearly ten years older than you. What does a twenty-five-year-old woman want with a sixteen-year-old boy?’ She scowled.
He grinned at her charming naivety. ‘I was a very mature sixteen-year-old,’ he said modestly. ‘But, rest easy, love, I only lusted from afar. She was beautiful, witty, and sophisticated and much preferred men to boys. I didn’t get to actually sleep with her until I was eighteen and fully grown. Even then I was a borderline case as far as she was concerned, which was why we kept it quiet. Which was lucky because she’d fallen in with the political set and decided she wanted to marry Andrew.’ He sounded more cynical than enamoured, she thought in relief.
‘And this matters to me—why?’ she said loftily, clasping her arms around her updrawn legs. It didn’t mean anything that he called her ‘love’, she lectured herself sternly. He probably just used it as a generic term.
‘Well, since you did come slinking in to ferret out my secrets…’he said, stroking a finger up and down her bare hip.
‘Actually, I didn’t,’ she sniffed, trying to ignore the suggestive stirring in his loins. ‘I came looking for you because Melanie said Justin was coming up from Marseilles on the train tomorrow and since you needed to do a few things in Avignon she’d asked you to pick him up from the station. She suggested I go with you and have a look around the old city. I was going to ask if that would be all right—’
‘And that’s all you wanted me for?’
