The Billionaire Bodyguard(22)

       
           



       

'People do, particularly in Paris,' he mocked.

'But you weren't raised in Paris,' she mocked back. 'So how come?'

'Because  I spent the first few years of my life in New Orleans, and  then  whichever parent I happened to be with at the time insisted I keep  my  French-so I went to schools where the teaching was bilingual.' He   flicked her a smile. 'Maybe we should go and eat now.'

It was a  conversational cut-off, presumably as a way of avoiding  elaborating on a  childhood which sounded awfully disruptive. Maybe it  was his way of  saying that he had told her things about himself when  they were marooned  in the house, but now things were different. She  wasn't hungry, but she  wasn't risking any more barbs about her lack of  appetite, so she nodded  anyway. 'Sounds good.'

'Where do you want to go?'

'I suggested the film, why don't you decide the food?'

There  was a pause, and he touched her cheek with the tip of his finger,   snaking it down in a spine-tingling little spiral. 'But you might not   like my suggestion, Keri.'

She shivered at his touch. 'Try me.'

'I  don't want anything to eat,' he said evenly. 'At least, not yet. I  want  to take all your clothes off and run my hands over your body and  make  you gasp and cry again.'

He couldn't see the hot colour which had  flushed into her cheeks, nor  hear the frantic clamour of her heart. She  could look outraged,  shocked, appalled. She could refuse and hail a  cab. All those choices  available to her, and what did she do?

She smiled a slightly shaky smile. 'I have a fridge full of food.'

But he was already lifting his arm for a taxi.

The  ride back to her apartment was conducted in a tense and expectant   silence. He didn't touch her, nor did he say a word, and Keri's emotions   felt as churned up as cake mix. Was it right that this should feel   almost clinical? But that was down to Jay. Given the choice, she would   be snuggled up in his arms, smothering his face with tiny little kisses.   Not sitting at either end of the seat, as if they were on their way to  a  business conference.

She was barely aware of him paying the cab,  or of their swift journey  to her front door, only that once it was  closed behind them they fell  on each other with a wild kind of hunger.

He  pushed her coat from her shoulders and it fell to the floor, and she   found herself frantically unbuttoning his shirt, sliding her hands up   underneath the T-shirt he wore beneath and moaning when she made  contact  with the silken flesh.

Something hot exploded inside his head.  It was all buttons and lace and  hardness, and achingly moist softness  too. With some last vestige of  sanity he groped into his pocket for  protection and stroked it on, then  kicked his trousers off impatiently.  Her panties were down by her  ankles, and he pushed her up against the  wall and parted her thighs,  and her mouth sought his, sucked greedily on  his lips as he lifted her  up and drove into her with a low, exultant  cry torn from his lips.

He tried to slow it down, but it was  impossible-she was impossible,  urging him on with little pleas and moans  until she dragged her mouth  away from his. He felt her tense, her back  arching, and only when he  felt her begin to shudder around him could he  finally let go, in an  orgasm which seemed to go on and on and on.

Through  the slowing and muffled beat of her heart, Keri let her damp  face fall  heavily to his shoulder. 'Shouldn't I at least have offered  you a drink  first?' she questioned, her voice as sleepy as a well-fed  cat.

Jay  closed his eyes and locked his arms tightly around her waist. 'You  are  amazing,' he murmured. 'Completely and utterly and unbelievably  amazing.  Which way's the bedroom?'

'What bedroom's that?' she whispered. 'You've got me so I can't think straight.'

He tilted up her chin. 'How about a rough idea?' he drawled.

'Keep going, and I'll tell you when to stop.'

He  picked her up, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth as he  stared  down into her eyes. 'Well, I guess there's a first time for   everything!' he commented wryly.

He took her to bed, only this  time he made love to her as if he had all  the time in the world, slowly  whispering his fingertips all over her  skin, making her feel as if she  had only ever been briefly acquainted  with her body before, and now he  was introducing her to it properly for  the first time.

He teased  and stroked, tipped her almost to the edge of desire, then  drew her back  again, time after time, the flow building towards some  inexorable peak,  frustration growing alongside excitement until finally  she begged him  not to stop. He gave a small, low laugh of pleasure, as  though that had  been what he had been waiting for all along. Through  the tug of  enchantment a vague disquiet touched her as she became aware  of his  sexual power over her, but by then it was too late to try to  even the  balance.                       
       
           



       

And what followed felt as though the world had ended and  then begun all  over again, only this time her senses were so  heightened-so raw and so  feeling and so acute-that she didn't know if  she could bear to live  with that kind of intensity.

When Keri  finally drifted back to some kind of consciousness it was to  find Jay  dressed-well, half dressed. He was wearing his jeans, his  torso bare,  the hard, muscular body bathed in moonlight as he stared  out of the  uncurtained window. He looked like a warrior, she  thought-tense, alert  and watchful-though what was there to threaten him  in the winter sky  outside?

He must have sensed that she was awake, because he turned around. 'Hi.'

Did  he sound cautious? 'You're dressed,' she observed, stifling a yawn  and  hoping that she sounded impartial, not needy. 'Yeah. Time I was  getting  back.' He looked at his watch, as if to illustrate the point.  'It's way  past midnight.'

Keri sat up, her hair tumbling down over her  naked breasts, seeing the  fleeting light of reaction in his eyes-but it  was only fleeting. 'But  you haven't had anything to eat!'

'This from the woman who doesn't. Ever. Not unless coerced,' he teased. 'Actually, I'm not really hungry.'

But,  oddly enough, Keri was-utterly ravenous. She would have liked for  him  to climb back into bed beside her and for her to go out to the  kitchen  and pile high a tray full of goodies. They could have eaten  them  together and he could have fed her again, as he had done so  erotically  at the house. But maybe that kind of love-play was only part  of the  wooing, and now that he had no need to woo her he had got  straight out  of bed and distanced himself. Jay didn't seem to do the   cuddling-in-each-other's-arms bit afterwards.

'Could you pass me my robe?'

He  pulled a silken-looking Chinese thing from the back of the door and   handed it to her, his resolve momentarily wavering when he saw her  long,  pale limbs emerging from the rumpled sheets like a Venus.

'I'm  expecting a call from the States,' he said, by way of   explanation-except, of course, that was not the whole story. The kind of   sex he'd just shared with Keri was …  He shook his head. It took you too   close to yourself. Made you feel things you didn't want to feel. If  he'd  given in to that kind of stuff he could never have done the job  he'd  been trained for. And he didn't do night-times either, for they  brought  with them their own particular problems. He felt as if he had  strayed  into some kind of unknown trap, and he knew he had to get the  hell out  of there.


She knotted the belt. 'Of course,' she said  calmly-amazing, really,  considering what was going on inside her head.  The woman who had been  so thoroughly pleasured now desperately needed to  connect. She wanted  to run to him, to have him pull her into his arms  and show her that  what had just taken place in some way mattered.

Wasn't it worth a try?

She  walked towards him, leaned forward and kissed him softly, and as  she  deepened the kiss she felt him respond. But then he drew back, his  eyes  unreadable, the curve of his mouth regretful-but how true was  that? she  wondered.

'I have to go, Keri.'

He wanted to go; that was  the bottom line. She gave a brittle smile.  Sometimes you just had no  control over what your face did. 'I'll see  you out.'

In silence,  they walked towards the hall, where he located his T-shirt  and the shirt  she had ripped from his back like a hungry animal. Keri  as uninhibited  predator. It was an image she wasn't used to, and one  she wasn't sure  she liked very much.