him. He placed his brandy glass on the table. Alcohol wouldn’t help.
‘The one you were in?’
She nodded, her gaze fixed on her hands in her lap. ‘I escaped with scratches. He died almost instantly.’ Dry eyes lifted to his. ‘He slid under the wheels of an oncoming truck.’
He gripped her tight, needing to feel her in his arms as much as he wanted to offer comfort. ‘Olivia. I’m so sorry.’
She felt so right there. His chest ached as if the mouthful of brandy had burned through flesh and bone.
She was still for so long he wondered if she was shedding silent tears, but his shirt under her cheek remained dry and her voice when she spoke was low, but steady.
‘I understand how you feel about Jenny. Survivor guilt. Not a day goes by when I don’t feel its claws in me. Even three years later.’ She lifted her head, spearing him with a sincere, searching stare. ‘But it was an accident. One I didn’t cause and wasn’t responsible for. It could just as easily have been me who died.’
Words shrivelled in his mouth, their sharp edges pricking their way down his throat. How had she seen him so clearly when he’d failed to join all the dots? How could he let her go when for the first time in his life he felt truly connected?
He brushed undemanding lips over hers. ‘Tell me what you want. I’ll do anything—take you back to London, fly you home to New York. Tell me.’
She pressed her mouth to his, surprising him with the passion lurking just beneath the surface. Twisting her fingers in his hair, she angled his head until he yielded under her assault, welcoming the touch of her tongue to his with a desire that matched that simmering in him.
She broke away. ‘Don’t ask anything of me.’
Her breath gusted over him, the chips of amber in her eyes masking her vulnerability.
There it was. Her limit. Her ultimate demand.
He’d never wanted to deny her more.
She gave him no time to acquiesce. She straddled him where he sat, her fingers tunnelling into his hair as she tipped his head back, leaned over him and kissed him with a desperation that begged.
But he was done with games. He’d told her that in London. And he’d meant it. And now she’d shown him the raw, exposed part of her he wouldn’t let her retreat. This time he’d control as much as he conceded, show her what he couldn’t ask of her, feared telling her in case she skittered out of reach.
She writhed on his lap, pressing her moist heat to his already steely cock. Her whimpers notched up the urgency raging through him—the need to claim her, to convince her they had something worth exploring, something worth fighting for, something beyond a holiday fuck.
But he wouldn’t rush this. Wouldn’t allow her to rush it. Their chemistry, combustive enough to leave them both burnt alive, if harnessed could be ten times as rewarding. And he intended to show her that.
Libby tugged at his shirt, pulling it from his waistband with frantic fingers. He cupped her arse, grinding her onto his erection until she cried out, biting his lip so he tasted blood. Fuck, he loved her demanding side. She knew exactly what she wanted and made sure she got it. And he’d make sure he was there to give it to her.
Slipping one hand under her dress, he edged her lace panties aside, finding her soaked. He’d barely touched her. He located her clit, passing a few swipes over the bundle of nerves until she dragged her mouth from his and dropped her head back on a sigh of ecstasy.
He slid his mouth over her exposed neck, finding the sensitive spot beneath her ear and filling his nose with her unique scent as he pushed two fingers inside her and circled her clit with his thumb.
She was close. He could tell by the way her pants stuttered in her throat. Her hips jerked erratically and her eyes, when she opened them and gazed at him, were largely obscured by the dark crescents of her thick lashes. Beautiful. What she couldn’t give him in words, in declarations, her body gave him in the abandon she couldn’t conceal, in the depth of her stare and the way her fingers clung.
His chest ballooned. He was ten feet tall. A king.
He did this to her. Him.
Her internal muscles gripped his fingers. His other hand loosened its clutch on her hip and he lifted the swathe of dark silk from her nape, twisting her hair around his wrist and tangling the ends between his fingers. He held her captive, his hand cramping with the pressure of his working fingers between her legs and his fist entwined in her glorious, thick tresses.
His. She was his. Possession burned through him with the thrum of his racing blood.
She glowed. A beautiful woman on the brink of intense sexual pleasure. His balls tightened. His own lust was a dull kick in the gut, but he intended to prolong this night, to wring every ounce of rapture from her so that when she left him she’d be in no doubt as to the depth of his rapidly expanding feelings and hard pushed to deny her own.
She could run, but he’d make damn sure she couldn’t hide.
Her decadent lips parted on a strangled gasp. Her eyes widened, barely clinging to his, and her hips stilled.
His stare wide, so as not to miss one second of her orgasm, Alex gripped the back of her neck.
‘Olivia.’
Crushing her mouth with his, he captured her broken cries with deep kisses, swallowing each one.
Her pleasure became his pleasure. Her pain of moments ago his pain. Somehow, in a few short days, she’d come to mean more to him than any other woman.
She quietened in his arms, the last judders leaving her replete and languorous. He lifted her, scooping one arm under her legs and the other around her back, and carried her to the bedroom they shared.
He saw nothing but her. Didn’t give a fuck about his business, the charity or even his family enjoying a meal somewhere else in the château. All that mattered was Olivia, and his need to show her exactly what she meant to him.
THE SHEETS WERE cool at her back as Alex laid her gently on the bed. She searched his stare, trying to deny what she saw there. After his honest declaration in the pool, meeting his mother and witnessing the pain mirrored in eyes so much like her son’s, all his pieces slotted together. And his instincts about her own demons? Alex peered far too closely into her soul for comfort.
She’d tried to stay impassive, to distance herself. But in the end she’d been helpless against opening herself up to him. She understood guilt, knew first-hand how it burned away at you, slowly, like acid. And she didn’t want that for Alex—couldn’t bear to see it destroy what was left of his relationship with his mother. He gave so much of himself. To people, to his charity, to her.
When she’d probed him about Jenny, told him about Callum, she’d feared she’d push him even further away than her attempt to do so in the pool. But he stood over her now, slowly peeling her from her clothes and then shucking his own until there was little
