“Not long now, chérie.”
She hadn’t noticed the accent in his brief, murmured words earlier. “You’re French?”
“Indeed.” He leaned lazily back against his seat but his fingers ceased to trace patterns at her neck.
“Is it true what they say about Frenchmen?”
“That depends what they say.”
God, that accent was sexy, especially when delivered in his deep, husky voice.
“That they make the most incredible...” She paused, and he raised an eyebrow at her. “...food.”
He laughed. “Sadly not, chérie.”
“Shame.”
She’d bet he had plenty of other skills to make up for any deficiency in the kitchen.
“Are you hungry?”
She met his gaze and her mouth went dry. “Oh, yes.”
He waited patiently by the cab while she texted his address to Julie.
“She’ll come looking if she doesn’t hear from me tomorrow. Just to warn you, she’s a former national karate champion.”
“I’ll bear that in mind.”
“Good.” Theresa wasn’t prepared to take any foolish chances, even if he was the sexiest guy she’d met in months.
“Any other urgent calls you need to make?” He stepped closer.
“Not right now.” She slipped the phone into her pocket and moved towards him.
“Good.”
“Kiss me.”
He grunted and reached for her. Theresa lifted her face, but he didn’t take the hint. Instead, he bent his head to her neck and scraped his teeth against her skin.
“Ow!”
He soothed her pain with soft lips and a rougher tongue, tasting and teasing until she forgot the difference between pain and pleasure. Theresa slid her hands into his hair and tugged his face up to hers, pulling hard enough to hurt him back. She knew what she wanted from him and was prepared to fight for it. His lips landed on hers in a clash of tongues and teeth, which gradually subsided into something more tender, subtler, and oh lord, even more arousing.
“We need a room,” she murmured against his mouth. “Now.”
He swung her into his arms, ignoring her surprised cry. “Faster,” he said, by way of explanation. He strode towards the glass doors of his luxury apartment block and nodded briefly at the concierge on the way to the lift. As the door slid across, Theresa levered herself out of his grasp and slid down his body.
“Two minutes,” he said.
Warning or promise, she wasn’t sure. The men she normally went out with preferred more verbal foreplay than this. But then, the men she normally went out with didn’t have sexual magnetism like they were the North Pole. She couldn’t have stopped touching him if she’d tried.
Two minutes was long enough to undo the buttons of his shirt. Long enough to flip the cotton aside and gaze at the silken muscles beneath. Long enough to reach for his belt and deal with the buckle. She let her hand slide down, tracing the hard curve of his erection.
“Two minutes, huh?” She grinned up at him. “I was hoping it would last a little longer than that.”
His lips tightened. “I’ll make you wish you’d never said that.”
She shivered under the intensity of his gaze. “Can’t wait.”
The lift pinged and the door slid back. He walked out, leaving Theresa to follow the short distance to the door of his apartment. She kicked off her heels while he dealt with the card key.
He stood aside to let her in. The lights came on automatically, giving a warm glow to the large space. She dropped her shoes and stepped forward to get a better look at his home. It was an interior designer’s dream, all sleek, shiny surfaces with chrome fittings and black mirrors. The walls were all but bare, with only the vast flat screen TV breaking up the flat white paint. Expensive, unique pieces of furniture had been chosen with exquisite precision, but not, she would bet money, by Emile.
“Great apartment.”
He gestured to the floor-to-ceiling window that made up an entire wall. “It has a nice view.”
London at night was never dark. The lights of the city from the high-rise apartment made a stunning sight. Theresa turned away from the window until her gaze rested on him. Deliberately, she let her eyes travel down his body and back up again. “The view is excellent.”
…
He cocked an eyebrow at her and met the challenge head on. “Right now, I can’t see enough of the view.” He gestured towards her. “There’s something in the way.”
Dressed for clubbing, she wore a simple blue jersey dress that clung to her body while giving her free movement. But its neckline reached up to her collarbone, its sleeves to her wrists, and the hem came almost to her knees. She’d taken off her shoes when she entered his apartment and her legs were bare. Emile estimated no more than three garments lay between him and his goal.
By way of reply, she picked up the hem of the dress and pulled it over her head. Merde. Her bra was a stretchy, non-sexy affair that she disposed of equally swiftly. With her eyes fixed to his, she hooked her thumbs into the edges of her plain black panties and shimmied them down.
Emile had seen plenty of women strip. He’d watched deliberately tantalizing erotic dances in which women gradually discarded their garments. He’d seen bras with so much cut out they might as well not have been there at all. He’d had thongs tossed to him and all manner of lips pouted at him. He’d even taken a few shy women to bed, women who’d had to be coaxed out of their clothes and persuaded to leave the light on. He had never known a woman so coolly confident and wholly natural as this. She knew she didn’t need to tease him. He was already hers.
Naked, she leaned against the wall and watched, hazel eyes fixed on him while he rid himself of the rest of his clothes. He didn’t bother to make a show of it for her. He wanted her to be turned on just by him, in the same way that he was turned on by the unadulterated her. She hadn’t hidden the evidence of her desire and she deserved the same honesty in return.
“Now that’s a view worth paying for,” she said when he bent over to remove his socks.
He grinned as he straightened up. “Likewise. Name your price.”
She tilted her head. “Not money.”
He gave a derisive laugh. “No.”
“It’ll have to be your body then. Make me come and you can look all you like.”
“It’s a deal.”
He loved a woman who knew what she wanted and asked for it with the right words. No fancying it up with prissy pretense of love. This was sex. Putain de Dieu, it felt good.
They moved together, just as they had back in the club, instinctively feeling the other’s rhythm and matching their own movements to it. She was strong and lean, even though she wasn’t tall. Her limbs were petite compared to his, but there was nothing delicate about her. She wouldn’t break, no matter how hard they went, and he loved knowing that about her. There wasn’t a shy bone in her body as she grasped and squeezed and pulled his body to do what she wanted of it. One hand propped against the wall behind her, Emile lifted her leg, tilted his hips and slid home, a second before he realized.
“Damn. Wait.”
Panting, she slid to the floor while he went to the bathroom and ransacked his cabinet.
“There’s one in my handbag,” she managed to say when he returned.
“I have eight.” He pulled a condom from the box and chucked it onto the coffee table. “And you need to come over here.”