for a conversation that was taking place far below the level of her consciousness—a conversation that had one subject only.
Unspoken, but there—in every glance, in every moment her eyes were held by his, in her every helpless gaze.
The exquisite meal seemed to go on for ever, yet was over in a flash. And then, somehow, she was sipping a tiny demi-tasse of coffee, whose intensity of aroma was almost as heady as the wines she had drunk. Too many wines, too much. But she didn’t care. They had served only to exquisitely enhance the headiness lifting her which had nothing to do with alcohol or caffeine.
And everything to do with the man sitting opposite her.
The conversation died away. Around them, the rest of the diners were leaving. The room was nearly empty. The buzz of conversation all around had ebbed. The emptiness of the dining room seemed to throw a web of even greater privacy around them.
More than privacy.
Intimacy.
She felt it like a tangible brush of silk across her skin. It made her feel as if she were caught in a cocoon, cradling her, embracing her.
She gazed across at Xavier. She wasn’t sure at what point he had become Xavier, but now he was.
Xavier—she let the syllables of his name flow silently, caressingly, through her mind. Just as she was letting the warmth of his gaze caress her. She let her eyes mingle with his, let herself look deep into those beautiful, dark eyes that were looking back at her, looking at her in a way that was slowly, very slowly, dissolving her from the inside.
She knew its name. Had always known its name.
But now—now she felt its power. Power that she had never known.
Till now.
Her hands at her coffee cup stilled. She saw his hand move across the damask surface of the tablecloth. Saw, as if in slow motion, his hand reach for hers.
And touch. Touch with those long, sensitive fingers that she had watched cradle the golden flute of champagne. Now they were devastatingly cradling her fingers, turning her hand over so that her fingers were resting on his square, strong palm.
She felt a thousand feathering sensations in every millimetre that he touched.
His eyes held hers.
For an endless moment he did not speak. The whole world was this moment, this sensation.
Then, in a low, husky voice, he said what she had both longed to hear him say—and dreaded.
‘I want you very much. Will you stay with me tonight?’
He had said it. Beneath the low murmur of his voice, emotions surged like a flood-tide in him.
All evening he had felt the tide running. Running strong and silent and so powerful that its strength all but overwhelmed him. Where had it come from, this overpowering tide that was sweeping through him? Sweeping away things he must not let it sweep away.
He tried to drag those things back, because he must not let them be lost, but the tide was running stronger and stronger still.
He knew its name. Had felt its power before. But never like this.
He tried to fight it. But it was like swimming against a current so strong that he could make no headway. Nor did he want to fight it. That was the worst—that knowledge, that grim recognition deep inside him, that what he was doing now was not what he had planned to do.
It should not have come to this. He should have stopped it, halted it in its tracks, forced it by main strength back down into the subterranean depths of his being where it belonged.
But he couldn’t—and now, unstoppable, incurable, it had taken the ascendant. Brought him to this moment.
His eyes held hers, his hand had taken hers, and now nothing else mattered.
Except one thing.
The answer to his question.
He saw her eyes flare. Her lips part.
And then, like a long, slow exhalation, he heard her speak.
‘I can’t …’
For a moment he was still—quite still. Then, his eyes never leaving hers, never letting hers go for an instant, a second, he spoke, too.
‘Why not?’
His fingers, without conscious volition on his part, had tightened around hers.
Her eyes were huge, haunted. Haunting.
‘I can’t,’ she said again. Her voice was a thread of breath. ‘I have …’ She swallowed, and for a moment her face was stark and bleak. ‘Commitments.’
‘There is someone else?’ He spoke sharply, like a knife cutting.
The moment of truth now. Truth on so many points. All of them impaling him.
Slowly, she nodded. ‘Yes. Someone very important to me.’
He let go her hand. Forsaking it as if suddenly it were a poisonous snake. His jaw tightened.
‘And yet,’ he said, clipping out each word, harsh and hard, ‘you chose to dine with me tonight?’
She bit her lip. He could see it, and it sent a punishing flare through him to see the whiteness of her teeth indent into the soft curve of tender flesh.
‘I … I had to.’ She was forcing the words out, he could see, her eyes still wide and huge. ‘I told you—’
His eyes narrowed. Something in her face was pinched suddenly.
‘Ah, yes, your charming employers—threatening you with—what is that clumsy English expression? Ah, yes—threatening you with the sack if you did not accept my invitation to dinner.’
She’d slipped her hand from the table.
‘Yes,’ she said in a small voice. Her eyes would not meet his.
He got to his feet. It was an abrupt, sudden movement.
‘I regret, then, mademoiselle, that I have so mistaken the situation. Permit me, if you will, to offer you my apologies for having done so. And now allow me to place my car at your disposal. Feel free to be driven either to your place of employment or to your home, and, of course, to your “very important someone”.’
He gave a curt nod of his head and walked away.
Fury blasted through him. Blind, explosive fury. A white rage behind his eyes, obliterating everything.
It was irrational, deranged, insane.
He knew it was—knew it and didn’t care. Didn’t care as he strode out of the restaurant and across the marbled foyer to the bank of lifts. He punched the button savagely.
He wanted out.
Damn her. Damn her to hell for what she’d done. Letting him get sucked, deeper and deeper, into that running tide. Gazing at him like that all evening, sending her message to him as loud and clear as if she were using a PA system. Sitting there looking so extraordinarily beautiful that it had taken all his strength, all evening, not to reach out for her.
And then, when he had, she’d turned him down.
The fury blitzed in him again. She’d turned him down. Said no.
No.
A single word.
Denying him what he wanted.
Her.
Because that was what he wanted—he wanted her. He wanted her now—right now—tonight. He wanted her to be here, her hand enclosed in his, waiting to step inside the lift, the lift that would be closed and private. And he would turn her to him, and slide his hands around that slender, pliant waist, and slant his mouth down over her soft, sensuous lips and taste, taste the sweetness she would