gave a small dissenting sound and went to pull her hand back, but Alix gripped it tighter and lifted it up, turning her wrist. He frowned slightly and bent to smell. Leila’s heart thumped, hard.
He looked at her. ‘This isn’t your usual scent?’
Damn him for noticing. Leila cursed her impetuosity and felt as if that scarlet letter was on her forehead for all to see. She pulled her hand back. ‘No, it’s a different scent—one more suitable for evenings.’
‘I like it.’
Leila could smell his scent too. The one she’d made him. She knew that it lingered on his skin from when he’d put it on much earlier that day—it didn’t have the sharp tang of having been recently applied. She thought of their scents now, mingling and wrapping around one another. It made her feel unbearably aware of the fact that they were so close. Aware of the warm blood pumping just under their skin, making those scents mellow and change subtly.
It was an alchemy that happened to everyone in a totally different way, as the perfume responded uniquely to each individual.
She finally looked away from Alix to see that they were leaving the confines of the city and heading towards the grittier outskirts. Nowhere near the Paris opera house.
She frowned and looked back at him. ‘I thought we were going to the opera?’
‘We are.’
‘But we’re leaving Paris.’
Alix smiled. ‘I said we were going to the opera. I didn’t say where.’
Flutters of panic made her tense. ‘I don’t appreciate surprises. Tell me where we’re going, please.’
His eyes narrowed on her and Leila bit back the urge to lambast him for assuming she was just some wittering dolly bird, only too happy to let him whisk her off to some unknown location.
Alix’s voice had an edge of steel to it when he said, ‘We’re going to Venice.’
‘Venice?’ Leila squeaked. ‘But I don’t have my passport. I mean, how can we just—?’
Alix took her hand again and spoke as if he was soothing a nervous horse. ‘You don’t need your passport. I have diplomatic immunity and you’re with me. The flight will take an hour and forty minutes. I’ll have you back in Paris and home by midnight. I promise.’
Leila reeled. ‘You said flight?’
Alix nodded warily, as if expecting another explosion.
‘I’ve never been on a plane before,’ she admitted somewhat warily. As if Alix might be so disgusted with her lack of sophistication that he’d turn around and deliver her home right now.
He just frowned slightly. ‘But...how is that possible?’
Leila shrugged, finding to her consternation that once again she was loath to take her hand out of Alix’s much bigger one. ‘My mother and I...we didn’t travel much. Apart from to other parts of France. We went to England once, to visit a factory outside London, but we took the train. My mother was terrified of flying.’
‘Well, then,’ said Alix throatily, ‘do you want to go home? Or do you want to take your first flight? We can turn around right now if you want.’
That was like asking if she wanted to keep moving forward in life or backwards. Leila felt that fire reaching out to lick at her with a tantalising flash of heat. Alix’s thumb was rubbing the underside of her wrist, making the flash of heat more intense. Leila thought of the car turning around, of returning to that square and her shop. She felt nauseous.
She shook her head. ‘I’d like to fly with you.’
Alix brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it lightly before saying, ‘Then let’s fly.’
Leila might not be half as sophisticated as his usual women, but even she knew that they were talking about something else entirely—just as the flames of that fire reached out to consume her completely and Alix moved close enough to slant his hard sensual mouth over hers.
She’d been kissed before—by Pierre. But his kiss had been insistent and invasive. Too wet, with no finesse. This was...
Leila lost any sense of being able to string a rational thought together when her mouth opened of its own volition under Alix’s and she felt the first electrifying contact of his tongue to hers. She was lost.
THE ONLY THING stopping Alix exploding into orbit at the feel of Leila’s lush soft mouth under his and the shy touch of her tongue was the hand he’d clamped around her waist. He was rock-hard almost instantaneously. He’d never tasted such sweetness. Her mouth trembled under his and he had to use extreme restraint to go slowly, coaxing her to open up to him.
He felt the hitch in her breathing as their kiss deepened and he gathered her closer to feel the swell of her breasts against his chest. Right at that moment Alix couldn’t have remembered his own name. He was drowning in heat and lust and an urgent desire to haul Leila over his lap, so that he could seat her against where he ached most.
She pulled back suddenly and he cracked open his eyes to look down into wide green ones. Leila had her hands on his chest and was pushing at him.
‘Please—don’t do that again.’
Alix was on unsure ground. Another first. He wasn’t used to women pushing him away. And he knew Leila had been enjoying it. She’d been melting into him like his hottest teenage fantasy, and he felt about as suave as a teenager right then. All raging hormones and no control.
Drawing on what little control he did still have, Alix moved back, putting space between them. He looked at her. Cheeks flushed, chest rising and falling rapidly, eyes avoiding his. Mouth pink and wet. It made him think of other parts of her that might be wet. He cursed himself silently. Where was his finesse?
He reached out and cupped her jaw, seeing how she tensed. He tipped her chin up so that she had no choice but to look at him. Her eyes were huge and wary. There was an edge of something in her eyes that he couldn’t read. He felt a spike of recrimination. Had he been too forceful? But he knew he hadn’t. It had nearly killed him to rein himself in.
‘Did you have a bad experience with a previous lover?’
She pulled his hand down. ‘That’s none of your business.’
She avoided his eyes again and he wanted to growl his frustration. But they were pulling into the small private airport now, and staff were rushing to meet the car.
Alix got out and pulled his coat around his body, not liking that he had to conceal his arousal. He glared at the driver who was about to help Leila out of the car and the man ducked back to let Alix take her hand. When she stood up beside him, the breeze blowing a loose tendril of dark hair across one cheek, he had to forcibly stop himself from kissing her again.
Gripping her hand, when he usually avoided public displays of affection like the plague, he led her over to the waiting plane: a small sleek private jet that he used for short hops around Europe. He realised then how much he took things like this for granted. Leila had never even flown before.
He stopped and turned to her. ‘You’re not frightened, are you?’
She glanced from the plane to him and admitted warily, ‘It looks a bit small.’
He grinned and felt the dense band of cynicism around his heart loosen a little. ‘It’s as safe as houses—I promise.’
He urged her forward and up the steps, past a steward in uniform. He chose two seats opposite each other so he could see Leila’s expression. He buckled them both in, and then the plane was taxiing down the runway. With a roar of the throttle, it lifted up into the darkening Paris sky. Alix had