The Frenchman's Love-Child

was bothering when the very last thing Christien was likely to be doing after she broke the news about Jake was notice her appearance.

A bag of nerves at the prospect of the confrontation that lay ahead, Tabby paced the floor. She froze when she heard his powerful sports car pulling up outside. Way beyond any concept of playing it cool, she opened the door and watched him stride towards her: a breathtakingly good-looking guy in a lightweight pearl-grey designer suit.

Christien sent her a slashing smile that had a devastating effect on her defences. ‘I’m not stupid, ma belle. I’ve worked it out. You think you’re pregnant!’

CHAPTER SIX

TRANSFIXED by that charge, Tabby stared at him with wide startled green eyes, her dismay unconcealed. ‘Er…you think there’s a chance of that?’

‘I didn’t take any risks but I do know that accidents happen and you sounded as though you were crying on the phone.’ Dark colour now delineating the hard angles of his superb cheekbones, Christien shrugged back his broad shoulders in a dismissive gesture as he read her expressive face. ‘Mais non…I can see that that isn’t the “something serious” you referred to.’

‘No…er, it wasn’t.’

Black brows drew together over his clear dark golden eyes. ‘You’re ill?’ he breathed in a roughened undertone.

‘Healthy as a horse.’

‘Then we’ve got nothing at all to worry about, mon ange.’ Thrusting the door shut in his wake and without skipping a beat, Christien curved his hands round her slight, taut shoulders and pulled her to him.

Tabby snatched in a short, sharp gasp of air. ‘Christien-’

‘Don’t cry wolf with me. I was really concerned.’ But there was no true anger in his accented drawl for when she was that close he believed that he could have forgiven her anything short of cold-blooded murder.

‘I know, but-’

Moulding her slight body to him, he vented a husky groan of very male satisfaction as the surging peaks of her full breasts met the hard, muscular wall of his chest. His hands curved round her bottom to bring her into closer contact with the rigid thrust of his erection.

‘Zut alors…being with you is all I’ve thought about since you phoned!’ Christien dragged in a deep shuddering breath because all he wanted to do at that instant was sate the savage ache of his desire: push her back against the wall, lift her, sink into her over and over again. No more finesse than an animal, he acknowledged in shock at himself.

Weak with the same overwhelming hunger, Tabby trembled, awash with wild, mindless response to him on a half-dozen different levels. Fighting for the self-control to pull back from his lean, powerful body, she pushed her face into his neck, but the unique scent of his bronzed skin, of him was the headiest of aphrodisiacs. Her heart thumping like crazy, she rubbed against him, instinctively seeking relief from the throbbing sensitivity of her nipples.

Swearing barely audibly, Christien knotted long fingers into her hair to tip her head back. Smouldering dark golden eyes blazed down into hers and she stretched up to him as though he had thrown a switch somewhere inside her. He crushed her mouth under his, delved deep with his tongue in an explicit rhythm that made her knees buckle and damp heat pool between her thighs.

‘I need to be inside you…’ Christien growled and, backing to the sofa, he brought her down on top of him.

When she tensed and made a whimper of sound that just might have been the beginning of an objection, he was too clever to employ reason. Instead he pushed the camisole up out of his path and negotiated the hazard of the stretchy inner lining supporting her breasts. When the plump rosy-tipped mounds tumbled free, he groaned in raw male approbation of their bounty. Cupping the creamy swells, he used his tongue on her stiff, sensitised nipples and she gasped in tormented delight beneath his skilful ministrations.

‘We can’t…’ Tabby mumbled in despair, fighting her own unbearable craving with all her might.

Christien hushed her and a sob caught in her throat as he stroked a tantalising finger across the taut wet triangle of fabric stretched between her thighs. ‘I love your body, I love the way you respond to me-’

‘I…have to talk to you-’

‘I’ll be much more receptive in an hour’s time when I’ve recovered from nine days of deprivation,’ Christien promised huskily.

Already he had her so excited she couldn’t get oxygen into her lungs. He was touching her and she was lost in the ever-building flow of sweet, seductive sensation. Clutching his shoulders for support, she let her head fall back, helpless while he toyed with her.

‘Tell me how much you missed me, ma belle,’ he urged against her lush, reddened mouth, but she was way beyond speech. Her whole being was concentrated on the wicked joy of what he was doing to her.

At a fever pitch of desire, she was quivering all over. Heart racing, she gyrated against his expert hand, crazy with hunger as the throbbing ache at the heart of her drove her on with shameless eagerness. Knotting one hand into her tumbling hair, he plunged his tongue into her readily opened mouth, once, twice with explicit, erotic force…and it was enough to push her over the edge into a shattering release that wrenched a cry of ecstasy from her.

Only as the wild tremors of her climax and the mist of mindless pleasure receded did Tabby become aware of her mortal body again. He held her close, murmuring soothing, incomprehensible things in French as if he knew that, both emotionally and physically, he had turned her inside out. He tipped her back from him, smoothing her tangled hair back from her brow.

He sent her a slashing smile that made her heart lurch. ‘Although you couldn’t tell me that I was missed, you can certainly show me,’ he murmured with wicked appreciation.

Tabby reddened to the roots of her hair. He was still fully clothed. She had been so out of it that the pleasure had been hers alone. In a clumsy movement, her face burning with shame and embarrassment at how out of control she had been, she scrambled off his lap and pulled her camisole down from her bare breasts. While she stood there trembling from shock at what had happened to her in his arms, lean bronzed hands smoothed down her rucked skirt and then enclosed her clenched fingers.

Slowly, Christien turned her back round to face him. ‘Your passion gives me a hell of a kick. Don’t you know how rare it is? I don’t want a woman who worries about creasing her clothes or wrecking her hair-’

‘Basically, you’re happiest with a trollop!’ Tabby framed in a wobbly voice, and then she literally fled to the bathroom before she let herself down even more and burst into tears.

Even there she got no privacy. Christien opened the door a crack. ‘We’ll go out to dinner and lust over each other throughout at least five courses…will that make you feel better?’

A hairbrush gripped between her fingers, Tabby looked at her shameful reflection in the mirror and knew that nothing was likely to make her feel better. ‘We can’t go out…I have to tell you something…and you’re going to hate me.’

Silence fell and grew thick and heavy outside the bathroom door.

‘Is there another guy involved?’ Christien enquired roughly.

‘No.’

‘No problem…there’s nothing else I can’t handle. I’m very shock-proof,’ Christien asserted with complete confidence. ‘Do we have to sit through a five-course dinner? I’m hungry but I’m infinitely hungrier…and needier for you.’

Her throat thickened. ‘I’ll be out in a minute. Open one of those bottles of wine.’

‘You want me to wait upstairs?’ A ragged laugh sounded from Christien. ‘If I sound desperate, it’s because I