but clinical! A savage, relentless ache began to torment her body. The warm, perfumed night air of the garden was suddenly replaced by the aroused male scent of Xavier’s body and Mariella reacted to it blindly, wrenching her mouth from beneath his and burying her face in the open throat of his robe so that she could breathe it—him—in more deeply, her lips questing for the satin warmth of his skin, her moan of pleasure locked in her throat as she gave her senses their head.
Beneath her lips his flesh felt firm and hot, the muscles of his throat taut, the curve where it met his shoulder tempting her to bite delicately into it. She heard him groan as his hand covered her breast, her nipple swelling eagerly against his palm. She felt the warmth of the night air against her skin as he pushed her simple cotton robe out of the way, her whole body shuddering in agonised pleasure as he cupped her breast and lowered his mouth to her waiting nipple.
The pleasure that surged through her tightened her body into a helpless yearning arc of longing, exposing her slender feminine flesh to his gaze and touch, offering her up to them, Mariella recognised distantly as she shook with hunger for him. Wanting him like this seemed so natural, and right, so inevitable, as though it were something that had been destined to happen.
Lifting her hand, she touched his face, their gazes meeting and locking, silently absorbing one another’s need. The look in his eyes made her body leap in eager heat, the sensation of the slightly rough rasp of his jaw against her palm as he turned his face to kiss it filling her with a thousand erotic images of how it was going to feel, to have him caressing even more sensitive and intimate parts of her body. She was, she realised, trembling violently, as Xavier stroked his hands down her back and lifted her against his body so that she could feel its hard arousal. She ached so badly for the feel of him inside her, for the fulfilment of his possession of her, the completion. His mouth was on her breast, her nipple, caressing it in a way that made her cry out for the hot, deep suckle of a more savage pleasure.
In the moonlight Xavier could see the swollen softness of her mouth and her breast, his breath catching in his lungs as his gaze travelled lower, to where the delicate mound of her sex seemed to push temptingly against the fine cotton of her briefs.
The thought of sliding his hand beneath them and holding her, parting the delicately shaped lips and opening up her moist inner self to his touch, his kiss, sent a shudder of hot need clawing through him. In the privacy of this garden he could show her, share with her, give her the pleasure he could see and feel her body was aching for. But here in his garden, in his villa, where she was under his protection, a member of his family… a woman as off limits as any of the carefully guarded daughters of his friends.
His hand was already splaying across her sex, his thumb probing tantalizingly.
Hot shafts of molten quivers darted from the point where Xavier’s hand rested so intimately on her to every sensitive nerve ending in her body. Within herself Mariella could feel her own femaleness expanding rhythmically in longing. More than anything else she wanted him there inside her. More than anything else she wanted him…
Her raw sound of shocked protest broke the silence as Xavier suddenly released her.
‘I already owe you one apology for my… my inappropriate behaviour towards you,’ she heard him telling her curtly. ‘Now it seems that I am guilty of repeating that behaviour. It will not… must not happen again!’
As he stood up and turned away from her, Mariella wondered if he was trying to reassure her—or warn her! Her face and then her whole body burned hot with mortified misery.
Her throat was too choked with emotion for her to be able to say anything, but in any case Xavier was already leaving, walking across the garden to the small, almost hidden doorway that led through into his own quarters, and to which only he had the key.
Was she too destined to be a secret garden to which only he held the key?
Fiercely she resisted the dangerous and unwanted thought. It was simply sex that had driven her… a physical need… a perfectly normal response to her own sexuality. There was nothing emotional about what she had felt. Nothing.
Pacing the floor of his own room, Xavier came to an abrupt decision. Since he couldn’t trust himself to be in the same place as Mariella and not want her, then he needed to put a safe distance between them, and the best way for him to do that would be for him to return to his desert oasis.
CHAPTER TEN
‘IT IS almost a week since he left and still Xavier remains at the oasis.’
Mariella forced herself to concentrate on her work instead of reacting to Madame Flavel’s comments.
The prince had come to see how she was progressing earlier in the week and he had brought his wife and their young family with him. The sight of the four dark-haired and dark-eyed children clustering round their parents had filled her with such a physical ache of longing that she had felt as though her womb had actually physically contracted.
She was desperate to have her own child, Mariella recognised. And not just because she was missing Fleur. Fleur’s birth might have detonated her biological clock, setting it ticking away with such frantic urgency, but the longing she felt now was beginning to consume her, eating into her dreams and her emotions.
Now she felt she understood why she had wanted Xavier so much. Her body had recognised him as a perfect potential baby provider! Knowing that had in a way eased a lot of the anxiety she had been feeling; the fear she couldn’t bear to admit that she might actually have fallen in love with him. Now, though, she felt secure that her emotional defences had not been breached. Now it was easy for her to admit to herself just how much she had wanted him and how much she still wanted him. She wanted him because she wanted him to give her a child!
It made so much sense! Didn’t she remember reading somewhere that a woman naturally and instinctively responded to the ancient way in which nature had programmed her and that was to seek the best genes she could for her child? Quite obviously her body had recognised that Xavier’s genes were superlative and her brain fully endorsed her body’s recognition.
And this of course was why she was being bombarded by her body and her brain with messages, longings, desires, images that all pointed in the same direction. Xavier’s direction! Her maternal urges were quite definitely on red alert!
‘Xavier has telephoned to say that he will be remaining at the oasis for another week,’ Xavier’s great-aunt informed Mariella with a small sigh as they sat down for dinner. ‘It must be dull here for you, chérie with only your work to occupy you and me for company.’
‘Not at all,’ Mariella denied.
‘Non? But you do miss la petite bébé?’
Now it was Mariella’s turn to sigh.
‘Yes, I do,’ she admitted.
‘Then perhaps you should consider having enfants of your own,’ Madame Flavel told her. ‘I certainly regret the fact that I was not blessed with children. I envied my sister very much in that respect. I have to confess I cannot understand why two people like Xavier and yourself, who anyone can see are born to be parents, should decide so determinedly against marriage.
‘You are working very hard on your frieze. It would do you good to have a few days off.’
She had been working very hard—but if truth were told, the frieze was practically finished. But Mariella had been painstakingly refining
