Was it for the grapes? It had to be, but why then did his passion feel as if it were infecting her body, rushing like wildfire over her skin, making the hot sweet spot between her thighs burn?
‘If you knew anything about viniculture, Cara, you would understand,’ he said, saying her name again like a caress, the harsh cynical anger morphing into something rough and raw with a devastating promise. ‘The soil here is unique, rich in complex minerals that give a specific flavour to the grapes.’
The thickness in his throat seemed to echo in the deepest reaches of her body. She didn’t know what was happening to her. But for the first time ever she felt truly seen.
He cupped her face, the rough calluses on his palm making her shudder as his thumb brushed across her lips. She should step back, away from that incendiary passion, but she felt trapped, owned and so desperately needy, the pulse between her thighs spreading out to ignite her entire body.
‘Once I own the vines,’ he murmured, ‘I can propagate them and replant on the land, creating a new vintage, even better than the Montremere.’
She was breathing heavily, they both were. She licked her dry lips and the passion in his eyes exploded, darkening the pupils to black. She felt the answering explosion in her sex.
But, instead of drawing her closer, his hand began to slip from her cheek.
The need seemed to spring from nowhere, more than passion, more than desire. Something deep and elemental, that probably went all the way back to that rejected girl.
And in that split second all she could see was the boy he had been too. The child who had been rejected and betrayed and exploited. She covered his hand with hers, the way she had attempted to do before at the table, to comfort him.
But this time comfort wasn’t the only thing she felt. She didn’t want to lose his touch.
Lifting on tiptoe, she placed her lips on his, needing to strengthen that connection, wanting to feed the hunger so she could obliterate his pain. And her own.
She heard him groan, but then his hands were gripping her cheeks, pulling her against him and his mouth was on hers.
Wild, hungry, demanding.
Her mouth opened on a gasp and he captured the sob as he angled her head, giving him better access. Her own hands dropped from his face and she found herself clinging to him, her fingers fisting in his linen shirt. She shuddered, too aware of the overwhelming heat of his body, the press of his chest against her swollen breasts, her thrusting nipples becoming more engorged as she rubbed against the muscular strength like a cat desperate to be stroked.
His tongue branded the secret recesses of her mouth. She tried to respond in tentative darts and licks. She had no idea what she was doing, all she knew was she needed more of his taste, his passion, his heat. His fingers threaded into her hair, releasing the pins she’d used to keep the wild mass aloft. She could hear them scattering on the stone flooring, hear the pounding rush of the blood pumping around her over-sensitised body and plunging into her sex.
At last he yanked his mouth free. His dark eyes stared down at her, his expression stunned. But not as stunned as she felt.
He swore softly, the searing gaze rising up to her hair then concentrating on her mouth. ‘I want you,’ he said. ‘Even though I should not. It is madness.’
The raw honesty in the confession spoke to something deep inside her.
‘I know...’ she said, because she understood exactly how mad it was.
They were in Pierre’s house. A house Durand wanted to destroy, a house she had come to love, on the day of Pierre’s funeral and she was Pierre’s widow. She shouldn’t want him and he shouldn’t want her. But all she could really feel was the need pounding in her blood, fuelled by the heady feeling of connection—their shared pain a living, breathing thing.
And all she could see was the possessive desire in his eyes.
No man had ever looked at her with that furious hunger, that passionate intensity. And, before she could stop herself, she said the words that had been echoing in her head ever since she first saw him climb out of his Jeep that afternoon.
‘I want you too.’
He frowned, and tensed, his body poised, shocked but undecided, and for one agonising moment she thought he was going to refuse her.
But then the confusion cleared, almost as quickly as it had come, and he scooped her into his arms.
‘Bien,’ he murmured.
She grasped his neck, struggling to catch her breath as he strode out of the room and down the hallway. He took the stairs two at a time to the first landing.
‘Show me to a room you did not share with de la Mare,’ he demanded, his voice gruff and broaching no argument.
The answer was simple. She pointed to her own bedroom at the end of the landing—the one she’d lived in ever since becoming Pierre’s housekeeper.
He kicked open the door and flicked on the light with his elbow, then let her down beside the narrow double bed.