The Temptress (28 page)

‘There’s … there’s someone in my life who would
be deeply disappointed in me if I let myself surrender to you, if I was
involved in the breakup of a marriage. I owe him more,’ she whispered, slowly
opening her eyes to look up at me. It was like a punch in my gut and I felt my
entire body tense at the thought of her with someone else. I suspected that a
woman as beautiful as her might have a man in her life already, but having it
confirmed was far more painful than I’d ever imagined.

‘You
do
have someone in your life
already?’ I growled, jealousy ripping me apart from the inside out.

‘Sort of, it’s complicated,’ she sighed,
turning her head to the side, once again breaking our connection. Every time we
were close to seeing more in each other’s eyes, she looked away. She was still
fighting this.

‘I have told you, I will do whatever it takes
to make you mine, Lulu, I don’t care what relationship you have with this man, however
serious it may be. You wear no rings, so I assume that you are not engaged or
married, but whatever relationship you have with this man, I promise you that it
will not rival what I can offer you, or how good we’d be together.’

‘You can’t say something like that,’ she
laughed, as she looked back up at me, surprising me when I was trying to be
sincere. ‘We barely know each other.’

‘What else is there to know? We have undeniable
chemistry, sexual attraction and compatibility, you’ll never lack for orgasms
or my attentions. I can make you laugh, I can buy you anything your heart
desires and will spoil you every single day. Most importantly I will never let
any harm come to you.’

‘Unless it’s by your own hand,’ she tutted,
with a roll of her eyes.

‘Which you will feel again if you don’t explain
your reservations,’ I shot back, starting to lose my patience again. Not since
her had I been in the presence of a woman I wanted to fuck for so long without
achieving my aim.

‘My reservations are that we don’t know each
other on a non-intimate level, Luc! My life is complicated. I just can’t leap
into this blind and hope that our parachutes open and we both land safely,
unscathed. You have no idea what I’ve been through since Paris.’

‘So tell me, talk to me. What do you need from
me to agree to see me? I’ve never wanted a woman the way I want you,’ I stated
sincerely. ‘If you think I’m letting you walk away from me without even giving
me a chance, then you severely underestimate me.’

‘Am I just some sexual plaything to you? Or are
you saying you want a real relationship? What do you
want
from me?’ she
moaned as she struggled under me, like a floundering fish out of water, knowing
the end was approaching.

‘
Everything
,’ I replied softly, without
hesitation, frowning as a flash of fear crossed her face. ‘Why are you so
frightened of us?’

‘I’m scared that I’m going to fall for you and
that you’ll leave,’ she whispered, as tears filled her eyes. ‘I’m picky, Luc. I
rarely date men as they don’t meet my exacting standards and when I find one
who does, I make them work for me, I test their limits. I run background checks
and have them followed, I send one of my girls to try and entrap them, all to
make sure they’re not lying to me. I do this to protect myself against anyone
who might hurt me and I can count on less than one hand how many have ever made
it over those hurdles and as far as my bed, only to come up lacking next to the
memory of one bloody night with you! No one stands a chance with me. I’m
cautious by nature, Luc and when I’m around you I seem to lose all self-control.
Everything with you is so much faster and more intense and that scares me
because it means that I could really fall …’ she broke off her rushed
impassioned speech, her bottom lip trembling almost as fast as our hearts. Mine
was at the point of bursting out of my chest at the inference I’d just taken
from what she was trying to say.

‘You’re scared because you could fall in love
with me?’ I questioned, hope evident in my voice.

‘Yes,’ she whispered, some stray tears rolling
over the edge of her lashes as my breath caught in my throat.

‘Ma belle,’ I sighed, overcome with emotion.
‘You think I don’t feel the same? I don’t pursue women, I abstain from sex
because of a memory of a perfect day and night with one woman. I was so angry
that day I woke to find you gone, I raced to your hotel and waited until the
afternoon. I purchased a plane ticket to stalk the departure gates to try and
find you before you flew home. When I realised that I’d lost you I even hired
an investigator to try to find you from your name and a photograph. When this
failed I fucked a countless stream of women to try to get you out of my system,
but still you remained. Encore, tout le temps, tu es ici, dans mon coeur. Always
in my heart. Does it sound like I am the sort of man who is immune to falling
in love with this woman?’ I tightened my grip on her hands, overjoyed to find
her fingers curling to grip mine just as hard.

‘You really came looking for me? You waited at
the airport?’ she asked, her eyes swimming with more tears.

‘Oui,’ I stated quietly with a nod, remembering
that night so vividly. ‘I stayed for eight hours until dawn, when I had to
return for work. You must have left earlier than I expected that day, I had
already missed you.’

‘No, we left later, much later,’ she replied
with a shake of her head. ‘Our flight was overbooked, we were offered a night
in The Ritz to give up our seats, so we stayed until the following morning.’

‘You were still in Paris? Merde,’ I swore, as I
closed my eyes and exhaled heavily. All this time that had been wasted and
she’d still been there.

‘I went back to the nightclub to try and find
you that Sunday night,’ she said softly, making me snap my eyes open in
surprise. She bit her lip and nodded with the hint of a sad smile. ‘I even came
back to Paris the next year to look for you. I went back to the same club,
visited everywhere we’d been together, I tried to remember where you lived to
come and find you but …’ she shook her head as tears started to stream down her
face. I quickly rolled off her and pulled her against me, tucking her head onto
my chest, under my chin. I tore off the pink wig and stroked and kissed her
hair, overjoyed to hear that I hadn’t been alone in my irrational obsession
with her.

‘You came back for me? You really felt it too?’
I asked, my heart racing so fast I feared I was about to have a heart attack.

‘Yes,’ she sobbed against my chest. ‘And now
you’re here, telling me that you felt the same. I’m actually touching you again
after years of dreaming about it, but you’re married and your wife is
blackmailing me!’

‘And you have a boyfriend,’ I reminded her,
‘but I am not letting this stand in my way, Lulu. I refuse to. I have no choice
but to return to Paris tomorrow, I have urgent meetings that are essential to
free myself of Myrtille. I will return to London on Saturday morning, spend the
weekend with me, like we did in Paris, so we can get to know each other again. I
can’t promise not to try to make you drop your knickers again, but I can
promise that I’ll wait as long as you need until you decide if I am the kind of
man that you could welcome into your heart. All I ask in return is that if I
cannot touch you, then neither can your boyfriend. To ask me to abstain from
taking you is the most I can offer, you are taking every ounce of my strength, I
can’t muster enough to tolerate the thought of anyone else touching you.’

‘Trust me, there’s
nothing
sexual about
our relationship,’ she laughed, with a sniff as she reached up to wipe her
eyes.

‘He doesn’t want you?’ I gasped, amazed at the
thought that any man wouldn’t. What was wrong with this imbecile?

‘Most definitely not,’ she shot back.

‘Is he gay?’

‘Luc!’ she sighed. ‘I told you, it’s
complicated, but you can trust that I’m not having a sexual relationship with
anyone, just as I will have to trust you.’

‘So you will meet with me next weekend?’ I
asked, full of hope, my heart dropping like a lead weight as she hesitated and
pulled a face.

‘I can’t see you during the day, I already have
plans.’

‘Cancel them,’ I ordered.

‘I can’t.’

‘This stupid boyfriend of yours, who doesn’t
know what he has, is more important than us getting to know each other?’ I
snapped. ‘My time in England is limited, you know this.’

‘I have other commitments and promises have
been made for the next few weekends, don’t ask me to break my word to someone.
How would you feel if I did that to you?’ she asked, scanning my face. I sighed
and shook my head.

‘Then I expect to have you to myself for the
three nights I am here, Saturday through to Monday until you leave this jackass.
Do not give me any excuses. He has you in the day, I have you at night. Merde,
Lulu! Do you have any idea how difficult you are making this? I don’t want to
share you! I have all these confusing feelings inside of me right now that are
unfamiliar. I am jealous. I have never been jealous before. I don’t like this, pas
du tout!’ I quickly got up, being so close was too much. I headed to the lounge
to pour myself another drink. ‘How are we going to handle my wife?’ I asked, as
I knocked back a good glug, trying to get my mind off how badly I wanted to
fuck the woman currently lying on my bloody bed.

‘She’s having me followed, hence the disguise
coming here. I can take evasive measures when required and I’ve set wheels in
motion to protect myself if she tries to expose me, just worry about yourself
and what you need to do,’ Lulu replied as she wandered over to me. ‘I need your
laptop to remove the tracking software we have inside.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ I sighed, shaking my head as I
shoved my hands through my hair. I strode over to the lounge to retrieve my
laptop from the briefcase and opened it up on my desk in the corner.

‘Don’t worry, I know the password,’ she advised
with a smile, as she grabbed it and slid it towards her. I watched as she typed
and got in first time, raising my eyebrows in surprise. ‘It’s not my first day
on the job,’ she grinned. ‘Change your password when I’m done. I’ll disable
everything but the system that’s scanning for other spyware. We think your wife
has access to it too, so until we confirm it’s clean if you have any important
meetings, don’t put them on this calendar. I know you’re seeing Crédit Agricole
and the Bank of China this week, assume that she does as well. It may be wise
to pay in cash for a new laptop and feed this one fake data for her, so you
avoid raising her suspicions.’

‘This is your life, this is what you do?’ I
asked, both shocked, yet stunned and impressed at the same time.

‘It’s not all chatting up men in bars,’ she
shrugged. ‘Surveillance plays a key part in catching out cheaters and now I’ve
decided that setting them up is against my moral code, it’s going to play a
larger part. There, done,’ she advised as she shut the lid and held out her
hand. ‘Mobile next.’

‘You’re bugging my mobile too?’ I shook my head
in disbelief as I grabbed it from my briefcase and slid it over to her. I
watched as she opened it up and removed the battery, then grabbed some tweezers
from her bag and extracted what looked like a tiny black speck from the core of
the phone, loaded the battery again and quickly reassembled it, handing it back
to me.

‘She doesn’t appear to have placed any devices
in your phone, but that’s not to say she can’t access records of your calls. If
we’re going to continue to communicate without her finding out, you’ll need to
get a burner phone, one you change weekly. Pay cash for it and only use it to
contact me or a member of my team if I’m absent, or for your business affairs
you don’t want her to know about. Don’t give the number to anyone that you
don’t trust implicitly,’ she advised, scribbling on a piece of paper. ‘Here’s
my personal mobile number and email. She won’t be able to trace any calls,
texts or emails between us this way. I’d suggest getting new key cards for your
suite and refusing access to any staff unless you’re in the room with eyes on
them at all times. I can have one of my team come and sweep it for devices
every day for you as well if you want. I suspect she’s either having someone
watch the hotel, or she has someone here on her payroll. When we meet next
weekend it would be best somewhere else.’

‘This is a lot to take in,’ I sighed, rubbing
my face with my hands. It was like I was in a Bond movie or something.

‘If you want to be free of her then it’s a
small price to pay. I need to go,’ she stated, as she strode over to the bedroom
and grabbed her wig.

‘Already?’ I exclaimed as I stood up and
marched over, watching her twisting her natural brunette locks and quickly
covering them with the pink hair. ‘But we’ve barely accomplished anything.’

‘We have, Luc,’ she replied as she skipped
around me, retrieving her hat from the coffee table and slipping her bag across
her shoulders. ‘Eight days ago you were just a memory, now we’re talking and
arranging meetings.’

‘Dates,’ I corrected as I quickly caught her
arm and hauled her against my body, an arm wrapped tightly around her waist. My
cock throbbed to have her so close, to hear the throaty moan that left her
throat. I reached up and held her chin, angling her flushed face up to mine.
‘Spoken for or not, sex or no sex, let me be clear that when we are together
next weekend, it will be a date. I will be wooing you, Lulu McQueen and I
expect you to fall for my charms as fast as you did last time. But if my cock
is not back inside you by the time I leave for Paris next Tuesday morning, then
I will consider our relationship to have been a failure and move on.’

‘You can’t set a time limit on this, that’s
unfair,’ she moaned, her breathing coming as hard and fast as mine was. God,
just being in the same room with her was torture enough, to have her pressing
against me, her breasts virtually exposed to my starving mouth was too much.