Now what?
Was he planning on returning to the marital bed?
Against her will, her eyes fastened on the dark hair on his chest and travelled downwards, knowing exactly what exciting secrets the towel concealed.
Her mouth dried and she felt the immediate response of her own body.
She ached in places she’d never ached before and when he casually dropped the towel on the floor and strolled towards her, a vision of bronzed, masculine perfection, her heart thundered in delicious anticipation.
Unable to drag her eyes away from his magnificent body, Alesia struggled to breathe. How could she not have noticed before how staggeringly good-looking he was?
And how could he be so relaxed and at ease when her entire body was humming with tension?
Didn’t he feel it too?
He strolled to the edge of the bed, cast her a sweeping glance from under thick black lashes and then reached for his Rolex which he’d left on the bedside table.
It was only when he turned away from her that she realized she’d been holding her breath.
She stared at him as he walked back across the room and started to dress and the question spilled out before she could stop it. ‘Are you coming back to bed?’
‘For what purpose?’ His tone was bored and he didn’t even glance in her direction as he finished dressing. ‘This was business, remember, and for now at least that part of our business is concluded.’
‘And that’s it?’ Her voice was barely a whisper as she sat up, clutching the silk sheets to her breasts. ‘That’s all you’re going to say?’
He paused in the doorway, his lean, strong face displaying not one flicker of emotion as he studied her in brooding contemplation. ‘Let me know if you’re pregnant.’
With that he strolled out of the room and let the door swing closed behind him.
Soaked in humiliation, Alesia sank back against the pillows.
How could he be so totally cold and unfeeling? Such an utter bastard?
Almost screaming with anger and frustration, she rolled over to try and ease the maddening ache in her body and gritted her teeth.
It didn’t matter what he said or how he touched her, she was never letting him back in her bed again!
CHAPTER FIVE
TWO weeks later Alesia was in the enormous kitchen at the far end of the house when Sebastien came striding into the room, simmering with barely restrained masculine aggression, a thunderous look on his handsome face.
‘What the hell are you doing in here?’ In raw frustration he raked lean bronzed fingers through sleek, dark hair and inhaled deeply. ‘I have been searching everywhere for you. No one had a clue where you were.’
Sexual awareness shot through her body and Alesia dug her nails into her palms.
Two weeks.
It had been two whole weeks since she’d last laid eyes on him and, like a young puppy seeing his master after a long separation, her quivering, yearning body just exploded with excitement.
One greedy, tentative glance at that lean, handsome face with its fierce, dark eyes and blue-shadowed jaw was enough to make Alesia’s stomach drop and her pulse rate double. One glance and she remembered every frantic, hot, seductive moment of the way this man made love. And, if that wasn’t bad enough, her whole being just lifted with happiness because he was finally, finally home.
Appalled by the strength of her reaction to him, she turned towards the fridge, hiding her face. She couldn’t help the way she felt about him but at least she refused to give him the satisfaction of showing him, she thought grimly. He’d already made his thoughts on the subject clear, having slept with her once and then absented himself for two whole weeks. Clearly their one sexual encounter had bored him in the extreme, whereas her complete lack of experience and sophistication meant that she’d left him in no doubt whatsoever that he was a God in the bedroom. The knowledge that she’d held nothing back made her squirm with bone-deep humiliation.
She wished she could put the clock back. Two weeks ago she hadn’t even noticed his firm, sexy mouth, the seductive glint in his Mediterranean dark eyes or the perfect musculature of his powerful body. She hadn’t noticed the superb bone structure or the slightly cynical smile that turned heads everywhere he went. She hadn’t noticed him as a man. Now she noticed everything and every feminine part of her shrieked in recognition of his raw, untamed masculinity.
‘Naturally I didn’t know that you were searching for me,’ she said coolly, poking around in the fridge until she was confident that her betraying colour had subsided. Only when she was sure that she was in control did she remove some cheese and a bowl of glossy dark olives from the fridge and place them on the table. ‘And in answer to your question, I’m making myself lunch.’