Dark blue study in seduc.., p.13
Dark Blue: Study in Seduction, Book 1, page 13
“Do you want to move?” he asked.
“Yes, very much, but it seems wrong.”
“Just do it, Carla,” he barked.
She should have been angry with him and refused. Instead, the relief of being ordered to do as he said overwhelmed any other thoughts. It felt so good to be relieved of the responsibility of feeling dirty or unladylike. All she had to concentrate on was pleasing him—and herself, because she wanted to rub herself against the seat. As she slid along it, the stitched seam chafed her swollen clit exquisitely. Alex walked forward to the front of the bike, watching her, watching her writhe through eyes that were dark with lust and satisfaction. His boots rang out on the concrete floor, and she inhaled the scents of leather, oil and sawdust as she pressed her swollen clit and pussy against the hide.
“Does it feel as good as it looks?”
She let her head drift back. “Yes.”
“The seat is wet. That’s your juices, and you’re ready. And much as I adore the sight of you shivering and displayed on that bike, I think I had better warm you up. Keep looking ahead.” He walked behind her.
The zip on his leathers rasped down, and she twisted her head, desperate to drink in the sight of his naked body. His leathers were around his ankles, and he wore no boxers. His erection was magnificent, and she wanted it so much.
“Eyes forward, or I will be forced to take action. It can get very cold in here overnight. The sooner you do as I ask, the sooner I can warm you up.”
She didn’t think he’d really lock her naked in the garage, but she didn’t want to even entertain the possibility, and she longed for his hot shaft inside her, his warm arms around her, his mouth on her neck this instant.
She heard him shed his boots and leathers; then the bike wobbled a little as he climbed behind her. “Slide that exquisite pussy forward, my lovely, to make room for me.” His arms encircled her, their heat enfolding her waist and breasts, the hair rough against her skin. She left a trail of wetness as she shuffled forward, the leather tantalising her swollen clit and his erection hot and hard against her butt cheeks. “Now lift yourself up a little so I can help you onto me.”
She stood, balancing on the foot stands as the bike shifted again. Alex lifted her up by her butt cheeks and positioned his thighs under her.
“You can sit down now.”
She lowered her bottom and was instantly and firmly speared on his hot, hard length. She was as wet as she could be, and glistening, but it was still a shock taking his whole length suddenly and completely. She let out a little cry.
“Are you okay, mon coeur? Shall I stop?”
“No, oh no.” Her inner muscles had already relaxed and stretched to accommodate him. The initial ache was now just a glorious fullness that came from having Alex embedded deeper inside than he had ever been before. “You’re beautiful. Hot. Amazing.”
He nuzzled her neck, dropping kisses on her skin, nipping her bare shoulders. He lifted her hips higher and started to thrust in and out of her slick heat. His hands must have been braced on the seat back, because he lifted and lowered her using only the power of his thighs. She grasped the handlebars and whimpered in pleasure as her climax stoked higher and higher. A few more thrusts and she heard his breathing quicken and felt his thighs grow iron-rigid under her bottom. Waves of intense pleasure rolled through her as her muscles spasmed hard around him, and her world went black. When she opened her eyes, Alex’s arms encircled her as he whispered a mix of Anglo-Saxon expletives and French endearments into her ear.
Who cared what anyone thought about them or tried to do to them? She wanted Alex, she was in love with him, and no one—save her or Alex himself—was ever going to tear them apart.
Chapter Seventeen
“Your time is up. Please put down your papers.”
Carla just had time to check her exam script for spelling errors before the exam invigilator called out. She flexed her aching fingers and heaved a huge sigh of relief. It was over. The past week had been one of the most intense of her life, workwise. Up late revising, awake half the night—and not in a good way. She hadn’t seen Alex more than twice in two weeks and not for the past week at all. He’d insisted on it, and, much as she’d missed him, she wanted to focus too.
She gathered up her pens and followed her fellow candidates out of the grand exam schools and out into the High Street, her white blouse sticking to her back. The sun made her blink, it was so bright. She pulled off the black bow at her neck and took off her academic gown. Why did they make you dress in this ridiculous outfit in the hottest time of the year when what you really needed to wear was shorts and a T-shirt?
“Carla!” Emma pushed her way through the crowds of laughing, shrieking students and flung her arms around Carla’s neck. “It’s over. Thank fuck, it’s over!”
“I know. I thought I was going to pass out in the heat in there. And the questions… I had to make up the entire last one. They were total killers.”
“Don’t I know it. I just know I’ve got a Third, if I’m lucky.”
Gideon was at their side with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a cigar in the other. “How did it go, girlies? I’m off to get totally slaughtered.”
“Me too, when I’ve got out of this outfit,” said Emma. A cork popped, and a spray of fizz drenched them. “Come on, let’s go and party!”
They ran back to college, running the gauntlet of friends spraying bottles of fizz, squirting foam and Silly String in the narrow lane that led back to college. Emma’s boyfriend handed her a huge bouquet, and as they neared college, and just as she regretted not having Alex to meet her, a group of girls from her power-walking club appeared with a bunch of flowers and a bottle of champagne.
“Oh, thanks. You needn’t have done this.” Happiness and relief flooded her as she hugged her friends. It wasn’t their gifts that had moved her as much as their turning up at all. After getting through the rite of passage of exams and now going off to celebrate like any other undergraduate, she finally felt she belonged. She was entitled to be here. She’d worked her butt off to earn her place and now to keep it.
Emma patted her back. “Come on, let’s go to the pub.”
Carla wrinkled her nose. “I need to change first. My clothes are sticking to me, and I smell like a bar.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
She laughed. “I’ll go to the locker room and get clean stuff; then I’ll meet you back here.”
Alex hadn’t been able to meet her outside the exam school, of course, but he had asked her to come to his house, and later they were going to dinner, to a very smart restaurant in a manor house that was miles out of Oxford. To add to her feeling of relief, there had been no notes since the shoebox, and she’d dared to hope that the sender had got bored or sated their malicious tendencies.
“Hello, there. Congratulations.”
“Alex!”
He was in the corridor outside the locker rooms. He wore running shorts with no vest. Perspiration glistened on his torso like dew. He smelled of clean, fresh sweat and testosterone, and he was ripped. She longed to lick his body, taste the salt and pull down his shorts and close her hand around his magnificent shaft. He was turned on now, she could see.
Throbbing with need, she glanced around her to make sure they were alone. “I didn’t know you’d be in college.”
“I was going to stay away, but I wanted to see you finish exams. I went for a run around town. I saw you come out of the exam schools and ran back here to wait for you. I want you in my bed right now.”
“You don’t. I’m really sticky, and I’m wearing Eau de Prosecco.”
“Sounds like a dream combination to me.” He lowered his head to her ear and whispered, “I want to tear off your knickers right now and lick every inch of you clean. I can’t wait until tonight. I’ve got something special for you as an exam treat.”
Her inner muscles clenched tightly. “Something nice?”
“I wouldn’t say nice, exactly, but you’ll enjoy it.”
She shivered in a delicious fever of anticipation. “I promised to go to the pub with some friends, and after that, I’ll be right over.”
“You want me to come to Provence? For the whole summer?”
Carla wriggled a little more upright, which was difficult with both her wrists shackled to Alex’s bedstead. When she’d walked into his room, the silk-tasselled cords were already looped around the metal frame. Now, stripped naked and firmly restrained, she was at his mercy.
Alex trailed his tongue between her breasts. “Not the whole summer, but for a month, yes. We can both work while we’re out there. Ah, now I see your face. You’ve only just finished exams, and you have a lot of reading and prep to do before the start of your second year.”
Carla groaned, while inside she was quietly delighted. Asking her to Provence was a big step for Alex and meant he was happy to acknowledge their relationship within the privacy of his own family.
“I want to. I really want to, but I ought to go home for a couple of weeks. I need to sort some stuff out with my tenant and visit my parents for a while. They’ve hardly seen me during exams, and they worry about me.”
His eyes sparkled wickedly. “Maybe they have good cause.”
“Yes. If I was my mother, I would warn any daughter of mine not to go within fifty yards of you, Alex Lemaitre.”
“Good. I’d hate to be someone you felt you could take home to your mum.”
She laughed. He was right. While Alex might feel comfortable with taking her to meet his family, Carla wasn’t ready to introduce him to her parents quite yet. Her mother would have too many questions, and there was more. Alex and the “normal” world—the one where she was sensible Mrs. Jonas, Stephen’s widow—existed in two different universes.
He glanced down at her. “I suppose I can allow you to leave me for a short time. I have vivas to invigilate for the next couple of weeks and papers to mark. I thought we could leave for La Bastide in mid-July? I have a mother too, who seems to tolerate seeing me occasionally, and my brother, Olivier, would love to meet you, I’m sure.”
He kissed his way over her rib cage and down the soft swell of her belly, circling her navel with his tongue. The sensation was delicious, yet she couldn’t surrender herself to it totally. There had been a definite edge to his last statement about his mother. A mother, who occasionally seemed to tolerate seeing him, and his brother. Added to the line about not knowing if his father was alive, it didn’t speak of a happy home life, and yet he had asked her to visit La Bastide with him. Now that was going to be interesting and might give her more insight into the man she felt she still barely knew.
Her relationship with her own parents and even her in-laws, to an extent, had been loving and warm. She knew the ties of parenthood were powerful but also guessed she couldn’t comprehend how strong, even as a daughter. She longed to feel that bond, but motherhood hadn’t happened for her. Now she had no idea if it ever would. She was still relatively young, and there was time, if not plenty of it, but… She looked at Alex, delicately licking the downy hair of her pubis. Ohhh…
She wanted Alex’s children.
The second the thought—the need—shot into her brain, she wanted to eject it. She had no idea if he wanted kids. No idea what he wanted, love or just a short, kinky fling. They’d known each other only a few months, so how could she think of spending her future with him and raising a family? Even the possibility of him leaving sent a shiver up her spine. How fragile their relationship was, and there were so many reasons for it not to last.
But it wasn’t crazy. Not with the way she felt right now. Her feelings for Alex went way beyond simple lust. She’d felt desire for Stephen. This was different. It was like a tidal wave of desire and need and hunger.
She was in love with Alex Lemaitre.
She twisted the sheets in her hands, scrabbling for control over that blinding realisation.
She loved him.
“What’s the matter, cherie?” Alex’s face, suddenly above hers, searched it intently.
“Nothing.”
“There is. You shivered, and you’re tense. Are you not enjoying this?”
“Yes, I am.”
“I’ll have to take firmer action if you don’t relax. In fact, it’s been far too long since I dealt with you in that way, and now your exams are over, I’m warning you I won’t go easy on you anymore.”
He slipped a finger inside her slick heat, and she finally surrendered to the overpowering pleasure.
After he’d made love to her, they sat on his sheltered terrace in the late afternoon sun, sipping Lanson and eating strawberries. Carla dipped a strawberry in the cream jug and popped it in her mouth. The sweet creaminess filled her mouth.
Alex sipped his champagne and waited for her to swallow the berry. “So you’ll come with me to Provence?” he asked when she’d finished.
“Yes. I’d love to. Can you tell me more about it? You said there was a vineyard.”
“We have a few vines that are worked by a local winemaker, who gives us a share of the harvest in return. We don’t have a chateau, so don’t be disappointed, although La Bastide has plenty of space around it.”
“Sounds fabulous.”
“It is, though Castellane is quite isolated. I’m afraid we’ll have a three-hour drive up there from Nice airport. It will be worth it, I promise. La Bastide is an old, fortified farmhouse, and we’ll have our own wing. It’s much too big for my mother these days, but she would never move out, and she often has family dropping by.”
“So I’ll get to meet them?”
“Of course. No one there will care about you being a student. Please don’t be too alarmed. They are harmless, although I must warn you…they’re a little, shall we say, farfelu—quirky. Take what they say with a pinch of salt.”
So Alex’s family would be cool with her being his student? She hoped so. She hadn’t told her own family yet about Alex. Was it because she felt guilty or worried that her mother would be shocked—worried for her? No matter how many times she reminded her mother that she was more than capable of making her own choices in life, her mother would take a different view and worry. Then there was the question of Alex being her first serious relationship since Stephen, It was simply easier all round to avoid the issue. Like a lot of things in her life.
Like she was doing now, with Alex, falling in love with him and pushing the consequences to the back of her mind.
She swallowed down a gulp of champagne. “My French is really rusty. I was studying it at school years ago, until I walked out halfway through the course. I don’t think I can hold a conversation with your family.”
“Don’t worry, cherie. Most of them speak good English, and besides…” He leaned forward and tilted her chin with his fingers. “I intend that you’ll be fully proficient in every French practise by the time you leave La Bastide.”
Chapter Eighteen
“We’re almost there, I promise.”
Alex shot Carla an apologetic smile as he coaxed their hired car up the final hairpin bend to La Bastide. They’d picked up the Renault at Nice airport and set off on the tortuous drive from the Cote d’Azur through the foothills to Haute Provence. Although Carla had been to France several times, she hadn’t ventured into this region, and she was already blown away by it. The greenery, the scents of flowers and herbs, the overwhelming heat and glittering brightness of the cobalt sky were an assault on all her senses at once.
He swung the wheel hard to the right, his arm tanned and glistening in a shaft of sunlight through the window. To Carla, he’d already melded with his surroundings and become more a part of them with every kilometre. His French was fluent, of course. She’d expected that but still been impressed as he’d dealt with the hire-car staff at the airport and stopped for lunch at a village bistro en route.
His English had changed too. The barely there inflections had become more noticeable. He was back home, and she knew instinctively that home was not the US or even Britain. It was here in the strange heat of Provence.
He braked, and they turned left towards two open metal gates.
Even though the sign on the stone pillar was fading, she could still make out the curly script that said La Bastide. A few seconds later, they’d pulled up on the gravelled forecourt of a rambling Provençal farmhouse.
“This is it,” he said. “I’ll get our bags, if you want to get out.”
Heat slammed into her as she opened the door. It dried the back of her throat and wrapped itself around her like a sheath. Even through the filter of her sunglasses, the light dazzled her eyes, bouncing off the ochre walls of the house and the dusty gravel driveway. The house seemed weighed down by its tiled roof and thick stone walls and shuttered windows. It was picturesque, yet a little forbidding.
“Oh my. How old is it?”
Alex took off his sunglasses and shrugged in so Gallic a way, she wanted to laugh out loud.
“Not entirely sure. Definitely sixteenth century, with probably medieval origins. There was a crusader’s castle just a kilometre away. Some locals say they used the stones from the ruins for the foundations. Who knows? My mother may be able to tell you more. I know she wanted to be here to meet you, but she’s got a hospital appointment that she couldn’t cancel.”
“Nothing serious, I hope?”
“Just routine, she assures me, and she should be back in an hour at most. I’ll show you our room. Maman has put us in the guest wing.”
Alex carried their bags as Carla followed him around the side of the main farmhouse, drinking in the dizzying lushness of their surroundings.
“Wow!” In front of her, a swimming pool set in a terrace glittered in the sunlight. “You didn’t say there was a pool.”
The warmth in Alex’s voice betrayed his pleasure. “I’m glad you like it.”
“And this view is incredible,” she said from the terrace, taking in the prospect, which dropped away steeply to a small wooded area. The property was surrounded by vineyards that stretched to the banks of the river that tumbled through the valley. She shaded her eyes. The sky was the deepest blue she’d ever seen.
