She shook her head. ‘It’s... You’re so big, but it doesn’t hurt so much now.’ She stumbled over the words. And he found himself cradling her cheek, feeling the heat of her humiliation.
Maybe that was faked too, but he didn’t think so, as he drew his thumb across the full lips, felt her body relax a little.
‘I need to move,’ he said, deciding all that mattered now was feeding this hunger. The questions could wait because he couldn’t focus on anything but the spasming grip of her muscles threatening to drive him insane if he didn’t rock his hips.
She nodded. But a tear leaked from the corner of her eye. He brushed it away with his thumb.
‘Why are you crying?’
‘I... I’ve never felt this way before,’ she said, the honesty in her pure blue eyes pushing at his chest. Surely this couldn’t be faked, this intensity, this desperation, this emotional upheaval. Did she feel it too? And what the hell did it mean?
But even as the panic ricocheted against his ribs, he dismissed it.
This wasn’t an emotional connection, this was just sex. And an insane chemistry that had exploded between them from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her.
He eased out of her then pressed back in, slowly, carefully, feeling her tight flesh soften to receive him more easily this time. She moaned, her fingers clinging to his shoulders, as if he were the only stable thing in the middle of the storm consuming them. As he withdrew and pressed into her again, her back arched, bringing her sex up to meet his invasion, welcoming it, revelling in his possession.
He began to rock his hips, in, out...slowly at first, establishing a rhythm that would satisfy them both. But as her moans became pants, her pants became sobs, the frenzy overtook him—and one shocking realisation charged through his brain.
He was the first man to touch her, to taste her, to feast on her fragrant flesh, to hear her sob in his ear as she surrendered to him.
The surge of possessiveness, the need to claim her overwhelmed him as his smooth moves became clumsy, faster and more frantic, the thrusts deeper and more demanding. His fingers dug into her hips as he clung onto his own climax, needing her to shatter first.
Her body bowed back and she cried out, the spasms of her orgasm gripping him as she flew over that final peak.
He let go at last, to tumble over that high ledge behind her, the climax shattering him, as his mind blanked and his body became boneless. And one word reverberated in his head.
Mine.
CHAPTER FIVE
AS THE BLISSFUL wave of afterglow cleared, Cara lay staring at the crack in the ceiling moulding, the crack she’d mapped each night before she fell asleep, for the last eleven months. But tonight everything was different.
The musky scent of sex and sweat surrounded her. The heavy weight of Maxim Durand’s body pressed hers into the old mattress as the thick length of him pulsed inside her tender sex.
She dragged in a shattered breath and sunk her teeth into her bottom lip to control the stinging tears that threatened to spill over the lids.
But there was no controlling the emotion sitting on her chest like a stone and threatening to crush her ribs.
What had she done? And why?
How could she have slept with her husband’s biggest rival on the day of his funeral? The man who was threatening to destroy La Maison de la Lune?
She shifted under Durand’s weight,
gently shoving his shoulder blade, which was digging into her collarbone. She needed to get away from him. He was still firm, still huge, inside her—and all she wanted to do right now was curl up into a tight ball and die.
He groaned and shifted and she gasped, unable to disguise the tenderness in her sex as he eased out of her, ashamed of the renewed prickle of yearning.
‘Pardon,’ he murmured as he rolled off her.
She edged across the bed, every part of her aching now, but most of all her heart.
What Pierre had done to Maxim all those years ago was wrong, terribly wrong. But surely what she had just done was even worse.
As she tried to leave the bed Maxim Durand’s hand shot out and grasped hold of her upper arm.
‘Where are you going?’