in her was reverent, the orgasm that broke through her just before his was so powerful that she had to keep her eyes locked on Pascal’s or she would have disintegrated into pieces.
Pascal had never felt anything like it. He’d almost have believed that she hadn’t climaxed, if he hadn’t felt her body contracting powerfully around his. But she’d done it with such quiet intensity that it had made his own completion burst up in a never-ending stream of exquisite pleasure. Only her biting her lip at the zenith of sensation had shown any of her internal experience.
Alana shook all over. Pascal pulled her into his chest and cradled her against him. They were still joined intimately, and at that moment she couldn’t ever imagine being separated from this man. She’d never felt like this with her husband, not even in the early days of their marriage when she’d had so many hopes and dreams of a happy future.
Something extraordinary had just happened, and she hated to admit it.
* * *
When they reached his apartment, Pascal carried her straight up to his bathroom and ran them a bath. Then they made love. Again. And now she lay here, blissed out. Replete. Complete.
She heard a movement and looked up. Pascal was holding out a big robe.
‘Come on, or you’ll turn into a prune.’
Something in his eyes made her hold back a quick, joky comment. She stood up and reached for the robe, only to have him pull it back from her reach.
‘Pascal, come on.’ She groaned and immediately went to cover her breasts. She was totally exposed in the low lighting of the intimate bathroom. And it was silly to feel this way when they’d just made love, first in the back of his car and then in the bath. She flushed.
‘Let your hands down. Please.’ His voice sounded rough. ‘I want to look at you, Alana—will you let me look at you? As you are?’
Fear and embarrassment gave way to something else. The desire in his eyes emboldened her. She carefully and slowly climbed out of the bath and stood beside it. She dropped her arms and watched as his eyes travelled down, resting and dwelling on parts of her body that she’d certainly never inspected so intensely herself.
After a long, long minute his eyes met hers again. They were dark. He stepped forward and put the robe around her, drying her, before slipping her arms into the sleeves and tying it securely around her waist. He smoothed back her damp hair and ran a finger down her cheek.
‘I could quite easily have you again right now, on the floor … And all sorts of other images came into my mind as I looked at you.’ Pascal wrestled for a moment inwardly with the very real and disturbing reality that he could take her again right now. The knowledge made him cautious. ‘But there’s time …’
‘Time,’ Alana said stupidly, suddenly wanting very much instead that they could make love on the floor right now. She had an erotic flash of an image: kneeling at his feet and taking him into her mouth. The shocking heat that inflamed her made her feel weak. Where had that desire come from? She’d never even done that with Ryan. She’d never even thought that she found it sexy. But the thought of driving Pascal to the edge of all endurance was intoxicating in the extreme.
‘Yes, time. Let’s eat and have some wine.’ He cut through the fevered images in her wanton imagination and pushed her towards the bathroom door, and then out and down the stairs to the sitting room. A bottle of wine sat open with two glasses. Alana felt stone-cold sober all of a sudden, which wasn’t surprising as she hadn’t drunk all evening, but bizarrely she also felt drunk, heady … something very nebulous and disturbing.
He poured wine into their glasses and busied himself with something at the oven. Although Alana was in a robe, Pascal wore faded jeans and a plain shirt that was haphazardly buttoned, showing the light smattering of hair on his chest and a sliver of hard-muscled, olive-skinned belly. Alana took a quick sip of wine. He really did have the honed body of an athlete—again something niggled at her about that, but it was wispy and eluded her.
‘Look,’ she started nervously. ‘I’m sorry about … running out like that. I’m not normally so dramatic.’
Pascal closed the oven door and slanted her a look before taking a sip of wine from his own glass.
Alana flushed. ‘We should still be there. Didn’t you have to make some kind of speech?’
Pascal shrugged noncommittally. ‘My assistant did it. It’s no big deal, really; I wouldn’t have even been here necessarily if it hadn’t been for the match happening on the same day. It was an opportunity to drum up publicity and kill two birds with one stone. But, no.’ He smiled disarmingly. ‘I would much prefer to be here with you.’
She flushed again, unused to being flattered. ‘Well. Thank you. Next time—’
She stopped abruptly, her eyes flying to his with a sickening feeling as she realised what she’d been about to say—she’d been about to imply that there would be a next time.
‘That is, I don’t mean—’
Pascal hushed her and came round the counter, pulling her into him. ‘Next time I’m not going to let you out of my sight, so there will be no room for any confusion or misinterpretation, OK?’
Her mouth was dry and she just nodded.
He let her go and moved back, smiling easily, charmingly, and her world tilted all over again. ‘Now, how about you tell me about this lounge-lizard of yours?’
Alana shuddered delicately at the memory, realising that it had shaken her more than she cared to admit, but talking about it would lessen it. She told Pascal and acted out his slimy manoeuvres, and by the time she’d finished they were both laughing, and Pascal admitted that he knew exactly who she was talking about. Apparently the man was famous for pouncing on vulnerable-looking women. Their easy intimacy and Pascal’s ability to make her feel protected, to make her feel like she could trust him, was sucking Alana into a veritable whirlpool that she feared it would be nigh impossible to climb back out of.
The following evening, as Alana looked at the Italian capital grow smaller and smaller beneath her, she got hot in the face again thinking of the previous night. The erotic fantasy she’d had in the bathroom had become a reality. Pascal had let her push him to the edge of his endurance. She groaned inwardly; she seemed to be in a permanent state of heat since she met him.
She was alone on his private jet on her way back to Dublin. He was taking a commercial flight back to Paris, and he hadn’t taken no for an answer when she’d objected. He’d flown her to him, and now he was flying her home. Just like that. As if flying someone on a private jet was banal, ordinary. Easy. And she had to concede, for someone like him who strode through life and got what they wanted with a click of their fingers, of course it was easy. Accolades, money, women, beautiful houses—easy come, easy go. And she’d put herself firmly in that category, made no bones about the fact that she was fine with that.
She finally turned away from the view and recalled the stern set of his features as he’d sent her off, having insisted on accompanying her to the airport. They’d had their first row, of sorts. Except it had been more like a non-row. Alana still couldn’t quite figure what had happened but all she knew was that he hadn’t been happy.
They’d woken late, well into the early afternoon. Pascal had insisted that she see something of Rome, and had taken her to the nearby Trevi Fountain and then to a tiny restaurant tucked away from the hordes of tourists. The food had been sublime, authentic Italian cuisine at its best. The experience had been intimate, the table so small that their legs had been all but entwined underneath, and it had been easier for their hands to stay linked, too, separating only when the food arrived.
It was when they’d got back to his apartment so that Alana could pack; they’d been standing in the kitchen and she’d been watching Pascal percolate some coffee. He’d turned round and said easily, ‘There’s so much more you should see. But we can do it again.’
Alana had immediately