over one small hard nipple and it sent electric shocks through her whole body.
He looked at her and smiled and Nessa realised that he hadn’t smiled at her once until now. And it was as devastating as she’d suspected it might be. Wicked, seductive, gorgeous and irresistible.
Lust and need cocooned them from reality, and for one wild second Nessa could almost convince herself that perhaps she was still asleep and this was all just a very vivid dream.
But she knew it wasn’t a dream, and she knew that it was very important that she stand up and stop this.
Luc’s head was dipping towards her breast and Nessa had never wanted anything more than to surrender completely to this moment, but something within her, some small sane voice, broke through. She put her hands on Luc’s shoulders and levered herself off his lap, feeling like a foal trying to stand for the first time.
Luc just looked at her as if he couldn’t quite believe she’d moved away, and Nessa realised she was half naked. She pulled at her shirt, scrambling to do up at least one or two buttons. The bare flesh of her breast chafed against the material, sensitised by his touch.
She forced out, through the clamour of her own desire, ‘I didn’t come here for this. I really didn’t.’
Luc’s body was hard and throbbed with a need to claim and possess, things he’d never felt for a woman before. Nessa was looking at him with wide eyes and flushed cheeks, and hair coming loose.
I didn’t come here for this. Something slid into Luc’s mind: the very rogue possibility that she had just fallen asleep while on the job. And then he dismissed it. She was playing with him and he would not be manipulated like this. He’d already exposed himself far too much. And the fact that she’d been the one to pull away, signalling she was more in control than he was, was even more exposing.
Luc forced his blood to cool, and stood up in a fluid motion. Nessa took a step back. The thought that she was stepping back from him in case he touched her again sent something dark into his gut. And something far more unwelcome: a feeling of vulnerability, something that Luc had rejected long ago. He was invulnerable.
‘Sleeping with me isn’t going to improve your, or your brother’s, situation. I told you already that I don’t play games, Nessa, so unless you’re willing to admit that we both want each other with no strings attached then get out of here.’
His voice was so cold and remote it skated over Nessa’s skin like ice. She hated his obvious cynicism, and wanted to deny his claim that she would manipulate him to gain favour for her brother, but self-preservation kicked in at the last moment. She fled, taking the basket of cleaning supplies with her.
* * *
When Nessa finally made it back to her room she closed the door behind her and rested against it. Her heart was still thumping out of time, and her whole body ached for a fulfilment she’d never needed before.
And she reeled with the knowledge that she’d almost lain back for Luc Barbier and handed him something she’d never handed anyone else. Her innocence. She’d almost tipped over the edge of allowing Luc to see her at her most vulnerable. A man who had shown her nothing but disdain and distrust.
Thank God she’d pulled back from the brink. She shivered now at the prospect of Luc looking at her when he’d discovered her virginity. She could already imagine the mocking look on his face, and how he would spurn her with disgust.
But then she thought of how he’d said, Unless you’re willing to admit we both want each other with no strings attached, and she shivered again. But this time it wasn’t with trepidation or humiliation. It was with an awful sense of illicit excitement.
* * *
Luc had turned the shower to cold, but that still hadn’t cooled the lingering heat in his body. He couldn’t believe how close he’d come to stripping Nessa O’Sullivan bare and taking her in a haze of lust.
She’d been the one to pull back. And even though Luc hadn’t imagined the chemistry between them, it still got to him somewhere very vulnerable that she’d had more control than him.
He couldn’t trust her, and yet he’d been about to sleep with her, complicating an already complicated situation even more. He shuddered to think of the hold she could have had over him after sleeping together. He hadn’t yet known a woman who didn’t try to capitalise on intimacies shared, even when they were only physical. And he had no doubt—in spite of her protestations otherwise—that she’d had an agenda.
He looked at himself in his bathroom mirror and scowled. If she thought that she could whet his appetite like this, and he would come running after her like a dog in heat, she was mistaken. Luc wouldn’t be caught offguard again. She was resistable. Even if the pounding of his blood told him otherwise.
He pulled a towel around his waist and knotted it roughly, finding his mobile phone and picking it up. Within seconds he was issuing a terse instruction to the security firm he’d hired to seek out Paddy O’Sullivan, to step up their efforts.
Afterwards he threw the phone down and surmised grimly that the sooner they found Paddy and his money, the sooner he could get rid of the all too distracting Nessa O’Sullivan too.
* * *
Two nights later, Nessa was holding a tray full of champagne flutes filled to the brim, serving them at Luc’s glitzy party. She was dressed in a white shirt and black skirt. The uniform of waiters everywhere. Hair up in a tight bun.
She could appreciate the breathtaking scene even as her arms felt as if they were about to drop out of the shoulder sockets. The unusually mild Irish spring day was melting into a lavender-hued dusk. Candles imbued the guests and room with a golden light.
She smiled in relief as some guests stopped and helped themselves to drinks on her tray, lightening her load marginally. And then her gaze tracked back inevitably to where one man stood out from the crowd—dark head and broad shoulders visible from every corner of the room.
Her main objective was to avoid coming face to face with Luc Barbier at all costs. The enormity of what had almost happened still sent shock waves through her body every time she thought of it. So did the thought of a no-strings encounter, added a wicked voice.
And even though she was trying to avoid him, she couldn’t look away. Much like most of the women in the room, she’d noticed with a spurt of something suspiciously...possessive. He was dressed in a tuxedo and he was simply breathtaking. He was the epitome of virile beauty, but with that undeniable edge of something dark and dangerous.
As if reading her mind, two women stopped nearby and, in that way of seeing but not seeing Nessa, because she was staff, they were whispering loudly enough for Nessa to catch snippets.
‘Apparently he’s an animal in bed...’
‘They say he was found on the streets...’
‘Petty crime...’
‘Only got to where he has because he slept with Leo Fouret’s wife and the husband bought him off to keep him quiet...’
Nessa went still at that, something cold trickling down her spine. She hadn’t heard that final, particular rumour before. Although,
