‘But I don’t want it to be just because of Jake or…’ But she bit back the word ‘sex’ for suddenly she could see how unfair she was being. He didn’t love her, but she was pushing as if she thought pressure might somehow change that and, of course, it wouldn’t. If lust and his son were all she had to hold him, maybe she was just going to have to come down to earth and get used to that reality.

She scarcely knew what she ate at that meal. She saw other women glancing at him, admiring that hard bronzed profile, the grace of the lean hands he used to express himself while he talked. An intensity of love that was almost terrifying filled her.

‘Shall we go to a club?’ he asked over coffee.

‘Not in the mood.’ She didn’t trust herself to look at him in the cab. She wanted him. She wanted him so badly it hurt to say no to herself. He followed her into Jake’s room. From the floor he retrieved the worn white stuffed lamb that Jake had slept with since he was a baby. He slotted it in beside their son and straightened his bedding.

‘Bon Dieu…I can’t believe he’s ours,’ Christien confided huskily. ‘When I think about him or look at him I have that same sense of wonder I used to have as a child at Noël…at Christmas.’

Her eyes prickled. ‘Thank goodness…I thought it was only me who could get soppy about him.’

In the corridor, Christien paused, lean, powerful face taut. ‘If I had known you were carrying my baby, I would have been there for you,’ he asserted in a driven undertone. ‘But that day at the accident enquiry, I didn’t trust myself to be alone with you-’

‘But why?’ she whispered, breaking into that emotive flood.

‘I was angry as hell. I believed that you’d two-timed me with the biker. I’d let that conviction destroy even the good memories I had of you,’ he admitted grimly. ‘I was still very bitter. I didn’t want you to know what I was feeling.’

He had freed her from the fear that he had rejected her that day because she was Gerry Burnside’s daughter. She knew how strong his pride was, but he had told her more than he probably realised. All those months later, he had still been furious and bitter over her supposed betrayal. The longevity of those emotions suggested to her that she had meant something rather more to Christien Laroche than a casual summer lover.

‘But I can see that you thought I was cruel. That was never my intention. I didn’t appreciate that I had the power to hurt you that day,’ Christien completed.

She stretched up on tiptoes, linked her arms round his neck and raised shining eyes to his. ‘I know. Thank you for my gorgeous ring.’

With infuriating control, Christien set her back from him again. ‘We have an early start tomorrow.’

It was a warm night and she wasn’t in the mood to go to bed. Earlier in the evening, Christien had given her a tour of the apartment and there was a pool in the basement. She descended the stairs and used the atmospheric lighting to illuminate the glorious pool shaped like a lake. Never had she seen a stretch of water look quite so enticing.

Stripping where she stood, she padded down the Roman steps and sighed with appreciation as the cool, silky water washed her overheated skin. She swam a length and then let her eyes drift shut while she floated.

‘You’d better vacate the water if you don’t want to be ravished,’ Christien’s husky drawl warned.

Her eyes flew wide and she flipped over with an ungainly splash. He was hunkered down by the side of the pool, bronzed hair-roughened chest bare. He vaulted upright again.

‘This is my equivalent of a cold shower,’ he told her bluntly. ‘You’re looking at a guy on the edge, mon ange.’

Her face suffused with colour as she noticed the bulge of male arousal delineated by the tight black denim. He unsnapped the waistband, undid the zip with obvious difficulty. Again she noticed the silky furrow of black hair that ran down over his flat, taut stomach. Dragging her half-embarrassed, half-appreciative attention from him, she swam for the steps. Only as she emerged from the water did she appreciate her own nudity and how provocative it must seem to Christien that she had not even set out a towel with which to cover herself.

Christien was stopped in his tracks by the sight of her. Her hair was a thick, damp tangle round her animated face and her skin had the luscious glow of a sun-ripened peach.

‘I swear I didn’t know you were coming down here,’ Tabby muttered feverishly. ‘I swear it.’

‘Stand up…drop your hands…show me what I want to see.’ Christien’s rich dark accented drawl was bold and rough-edged.

She met burning golden eyes and her heartbeat quickened and her head swam. She arched her spine, let her hands fall to her side, listened to the indrawn hiss of his breath with an inner stab of feminine satisfaction. ‘It’s our first date,’ she reminded him.

‘So I’m a sure thing, ma belle.’ His gaze clung to the creamy swell of her voluptuous breasts and lingered on distended pink nipples still beaded with water. A groan broke low in his throat. ‘In fact, I’m a pushover…I’m the sort of guy who gives his all on a first date.’

‘Are you?’ Tabby shivered although she was not cold. She was, however, very wound up. She knew she ought to run like hell. He was putting out vibes like placards: go…or else. She had to be a wanton hussy because just the thought of his knowing hands on her left her giddy and weak. Standing there naked in front of him while he looked her over, she felt shameless, but it was very exciting too.

He reached for her in one sudden movement. He took her mouth with sexual savagery, penetrating fast and deep between her lips with an urgency that sent the blood drumming in a crazy beat through her veins. Trembling with desire, she let herself be carried over to the padded bench by the wall. He spread her there and knelt to lick the crystalline water droplets from her breasts and toy with her pointed pink nipples. He tipped her back and spread her thighs to trace the lush, swollen flesh below the soft curls that crowned her womanhood.

As she lay there open to him, her face burned. ‘Christien-’

‘You’ve got shy,’ Christien teased with hungry appreciation and he located the tiny bud that was unbearably sensitive and wrenched a startled gasp from her.

Hot, almost painful sensation was tugging at her every sense, making it more and more impossible for her to concentrate on anything but her own pleasure.

‘This is one more reason why you have to marry me,’ Christien growled with raw satisfaction. ‘You’re down here at two in the morning because you can’t sleep for wanting me and I’m the same. We belong together.’

‘But-’

‘Don’t you dare say “but” to me,’ Christien told her bossily. ‘You can stuff the separate beds too.’

He slid a finger into the slick heat of her and she was lost. He employed his mouth and the tip of his tongue on her most tender place. Writhing in abandonment, she moaned like a soul in torment and clutched at his hair. Pleasure as she had never known had her in its grip and she couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, couldn’t handle anything but the incredible impact of what he was doing to her. Then, when she was way beyond any form of control, he lifted her up as though she were a doll, turned her over to arrange her exactly to his liking and drove his hard shaft into her tight, wet sheath from behind.

‘Oh…oh!’ Tabby cried out in sensual shock as he held her fast and delved deeper with every sure stroke.

His ruthless domination was indescribably exciting. Setting up a pagan rhythm, he proceeded to drive her out of her mind with excitement. She hit a high in a blinding instant of shattering release and her entire body convulsed in an explosive orgasm. Her legs just collapsed under her at that point. With an understanding laugh, Christien pulled out of her, threw himself down on the bench and lifted her up to bring her back down on top of him.

‘I’m so hot for you, I feel like an animal,’ he confessed raggedly.

She whimpered as he eased back into her passion-moistened depths.

‘Am I being too rough?’ he groaned.

‘No…I’m passing out with pleasure,’ she managed to mumble.

Reassured, he pushed her hair off her damp brow, kissed her and spread her thighs a little more to deepen his penetration with an earthy groan of appreciation. ‘Moi aussi, ma belle.’

The wild pleasure began to build afresh for her. When his magnificent body shuddered with the raw excitement of his own release, he sent her flying to the same uncontrollable heights of fulfilment a second time. It was a burst of ecstasy so intense that her eyes were awash with tears in the aftermath. Clasping him close and glorying in the wondrously familiar scent of his hot, damp masculinity, she knew that she never wanted to let him go.

‘We’re sleeping together tonight too,’ Christien delivered, pressing a kiss to her temples, lacing his fingers into her tumbled hair and then smoothing the tangled tresses again. ‘Ciel! Suppose one of us was to die tomorrow…imagine how we would feel if we had slept apart.’

That very suggestion was too much for Tabby in the emotional mood she was in and she sobbed, ‘Don’t ever say anything like that!’

‘I was only kidding.’ Christien hugged her so tight that breathing was an impossibility. For a sickening second he had been jarred by the thought of how he would have felt had she been in that car with her father and his friends that night almost four years earlier, and it was as if he had been punched in the gut by a iron fist.

‘But stuff like that happens-’

‘We’ve already come through a lifetime of bad luck and we’re together again,’ Christien drawled forcefully, but he was wondering uneasily what was the matter with him.