he shucked his impeccable buttoned-up manners and proper English upbringing and dived for her, eyes glazed with lust.
‘Bossy, much?’ She pressed her thighs together. This was her game.
He nodded. ‘I want to give you what you want. What I want.’ His tongue touched his bottom lip. ‘Let me.’
Yes.
With a sigh she couldn’t contain, Libby conceded. Her legs parted, knees spread wide, her heels digging into the luxury carpet. She met his stare, bold, daring, counting the seconds until he snapped.
With a curse, Alex dropped to his knees, his hands gripping her thighs and spreading her open wider to his brazen look.
‘Do you understand what you do to me?’ His eyes sought hers in the car’s gloom, his gruff voice pricking her nerve endings alive. It was a whisper. ‘Do you feel the power you wield? Power over me?’
Libby stopped breathing. His questions were as close to any true emotions as they’d ever expressed, and they struck close to her own, so close her skin seemed to tighten and shrink.
She gripped the leather beneath her palms to stop herself from pushing him away and jumping from the moving vehicle.
What had started as a game—a risqué diversion of give and take—now erred perilously close to a chasm of emotion she daren’t cross.
Sex. This could only be about sex.
She focussed on breathing, her inhalations matching the tempo of his while they waited, watched, warred.
Alex broke first, a sigh gusting from him. ‘I can’t do this any more.’
Libby’s stomach flipped. ‘Do what?’
The rumble of the car’s engine faded away as the world stuttered to a halt. She only had days left with him. She wasn’t ready for this to be over—wasn’t ready to think about the end of this wild, hedonistic ride.
With the candour she’d grown to expect from him, he said, ‘I want you too much.’
His hand skittered along her inner thigh, his eyes seeking her permission before his fingers probed her entrance, which was slick, ready for him. His thumb circled her clit and her head dropped back, her thighs trembling with the effort of staying open to his avid stare.
He leaned over her, his gravelly voice sin-dipped. ‘Come with me.’
She was about to.
‘To France.’
The fog cleared and she opened her eyes to his penetrating gaze.
‘No games, Olivia.’
His fingers continued their lazy swirling, fogging her mind.
‘No jet-skiing. No work.’
He pumped his fingers faster.
‘Just two people attracted to each other, enjoying a social gathering in a stunning part of the world.’
Libby fought to make sense of his words while her body sang under his hand. He made it sound so simple. And on the surface, it was. But his idyllic scenario was pitted with potholes—landmines of repressed emotion that threatened to blow her carefully constructed and life-saving control apart.
‘I…’
He grunted, perhaps interpreting the denial on her face or hearing her unspoken refusal. He shifted, lowering his head between her thighs, his lips kissing her intimately and his tongue flattening against her primed clit.
All thoughts, all arguments fled. Only Alex remained, and the pleasure he wreaked expanded to fill her mind with every swirl of his tongue and plunge of his fingers.
‘Yes!’ she cried out, her hands tangling in his hair, holding him close as she rocked into his mouth.
The sublime glide of his tongue ceased, and the pleasure drained away to a slow simmer.
‘Yes, you’ll come to France?’
He kept her on the edge, with his thumb where his mouth had been. Not what she wanted, but enough to prolong the haze.
‘Yes…yes…’ She’d argue later, rescind her acceptance. Any agreement made under sexual duress was null and void.
‘Yes, you’ll come…on my face?’
The wicked glimmer in his eyes stole the last of her breath and all she could offer was a feeble nod.
When his mouth covered her again a second finger pushed inside her to join the first. She exploded, her thighs gripping his head and her fingers twisting in his hair as she clung on for dear life in the moving vehicle.
The spasms trailed away and she pushed at his shoulders, breaking the divine contact and missing it at the same time. Before her body had in any way recovered from the intense orgasm she pounced on him, kissing his wet mouth and tugging his belt free. He helped, their fingers working simultaneously to free him from his dress pants. She gripped him, her hand fisting his hard length, her tongue tasting him, tasting herself.
He produced a condom from his pocket and Libby jerked him up onto the seat beside her, snatching it from him in her haste to have him inside her. She covered him, feeling that ache back between her thighs. She didn’t want to think about games, or weddings, or the past. She craved him more than ever, more than the first time, her need only intensifying with each time they were together like this.
‘Hurry.’
She hitched her dress higher, straddling his lap. One hand gripped the leather upholstery behind his shoulder as the other delved between them to align him at her entrance. And then she was sinking onto him, their mutual groans resounding through the confined space, with only the darkened night outside to hear them.
Alex gripped her face in his palms, demanding eye contact as she rocked on his lap. ‘Mean it, Libby. Say you want to stop playing.’
He was pushing the boundaries, changing the game plan. But in that moment she’d promise him anything.
She gripped the lapels of his expensive, exquisitely tailored tux, crushing the fabric in her palms.
Part of her did want to stop playing. Part of her was desperate to get to know real Alex, the man, flaws and all. Part of her wished she could be the old, unguarded version of herself. But she couldn’t give him everything he wanted…everything she longed to give.
Another compromise? She could shore up her dread for one day. Go to this stupid wedding. Act, smile, drink champagne. Just one day. An end to this fairy-tale week that she hadn’t planned for but was powerless to stop.
She tensed her internal muscles, forcing another groan from him. Dipping her head to his shoulder, she traced her mouth in a path along the soft skin of the side of his neck, and feathered his ear with her lips.
‘I’ll come to France. No games.’
And then she’d head
