Seduction on the Cards (6 page)

Alex and Gaston were obviously the best of friends. Gaston was besotted with his wife Felice and his little daughters Camille and Georgine. He and Felice were enthralled with every kind of food and now ran a business which combined Gaston’s culinary expertise with Felice’s viticultural background. 

Kerri discovered Alexandre’s agile mind and fierce ambition were behind a company called Beaufort Technologies that produced specialized medical items.

“Do you know,” Gaston enquired, “that he started this when he was only sixteen?”

Alexandre waved the praise away.

“Not the company, but the first of the clever machines,” Gaston continued. “We had a friend at school who needed regular medication. It was imperative he remembered to take it, because if he did not the consequences were terrible for him.”

“Poor Henri,” Alex recalled.

“So Alex took apart a cell-phone. This was a very early model, remember—and somehow made it send Henri messages at the right times. And Henri had to signal back that he had taken the meds. And when he showed his doctor—boom!—great interest.”

“It was just something I could do,” Alexandre said, shrugging his beautiful shoulders.

“Clever,” Kerri agreed, annoyed to find she admired the man with the wandering hands.

So he wasn’t just a financial whiz? He was a practical inventor who really had worked for his money, and now used it to do good? 

“Is all your equipment medical?”

“Not all of it, but allied, I suppose. You might say ‘physical status monitoring’. Some of the devices keep people safe when they’re doing hazardous jobs.”

“Fighting dangerous fires. Cleaning up chemicals,” Gaston inserted. “With Beaufort you can know a person’s heart is beating safely and their breathing is good.”

“I’ll strap one on you, my friend, and see how your body performs while you’re cooking with truffles,” Alex teased.

“Deep breathing. Strong heartbeat,” Gaston chuckled. He turned to Kerri. “And the truffles are superb here in New Zealand. Good enough to offend my countrymen.”

Kerri nodded. “I think it’s quite a young industry,” she said. “My paper did a story about it earlier this year. They’ve been planting oaks and hazelnuts and infecting the roots with the Perigord black truffle spores somehow. Production is slowly creeping up, and the prices are astronomical. I heard three thousand dollars a kilo.”

“Excellent to have them fresh at a different time of the year,” Gaston confirmed, offering more wine around the table and not looking in the least surprised by the price she’d mentioned. “So—you’re here for how long, Alex?” 

“Until Monday morning. Then to Noumea again.”

“You should take Sylvie out on Sunday. Lunch on the harbor? Some sunshine?”

“She’s available?”

“For you—of course.”

“Perhaps. We’ll see.”

Kerri felt a slight territorial bristle at the thought of Alex and another woman, and then derided herself for having such a reaction. She certainly didn’t want him herself. Why would she? He might be wealthy and good-looking, but he was still a high-handed, arrogant, serious workaholic. Yes, that summed him up nicely. So why was she perversely pleased he wasn’t showing too much enthusiasm for this Sylvie who was apparently all-too-available if he snapped his fingers? 

She took a deep breath and had the satisfaction of knowing his eyes were attracted, yet again, to her far-too-exposed breasts. She leaned forward to push the pepper mill out into the centre of the table. That’d give the rat another good look at what he couldn’t have!

“And so we come to my special dessert,” Gaston said with a twinkle. “I made chocolate marquise, but this evening another inspiration arrived when I met Kerri. Talk to each other while I make some little preparations.” 

He stacked the plates from their previous course and carried them to the industrial-sized dishwasher, leaving her alone with Alexandre’s hungry eyes.

CHAPTER FIVE

The wind still gusted fiercely as they said their goodbyes to Gaston. Alex slung an arm around Kerri’s shoulders to steady her as he escorted her across to the motorcycle.

“You should have seen your face,” he teased, bending close so she could hear him over the gale. “It was most gratifying eating something that looked like your pretty breasts after being forced to watch them all evening.”

“It was very naughty of Gaston.”

“It was very naughty of
you, cherie
. Can you imagine the state of my body for hours on end?”

Kerri had indeed been imagining him for hours on end. She’d hoped he was hard and aching each time she’d glanced in his direction, because she’d been wet and aching herself. Filled with the infernal pain of lust not being attended to. She craved to have him buried deep inside her, rubbing that pain away. Wanted to claw at his back and shoulders, score his flesh with her nails, bite and nibble and suck his smooth olive skin. She’d never felt so turned-on in her life. Insatiable. Hungering. Ravenous. Greedy. Funny how so many sex-words were food-words as well, she thought. 

The perfect solution to their mutual aches was obvious, but it was out of the question. Sex with someone she’d been sent to interview just that afternoon?

Now she could see why some of her friends seemed to think of nothing else. And tried to arrange their lives to include plenty of it. But she knew if she could only hold out for another twenty minutes she’d be home in bed with her bright pink vibrator at her beck and call. Surely, surely, as wound up as she was, Buzzo would be kind to her tonight?

They coasted down the steep hill, the motor cycle’s powerful engine throbbing gently and not helping in the least. This time she needed no encouragement to wrap her arms around Alex’s waist and hang on tight. Damn, but he was a lovely man. Not just physically superb and as handsome as hell, but funny. Thoughtful. Clever. 

And leaving on Monday. 

Her heart lurched at the Monday bit. If things had been different she’d have wanted to get to know him better. He’d out-and-out admitted he was attracted to her. And for sure the desire was mutual, despite her certainty he was arrogant and high-handed, and a serious workaholic. Those aspects of him were somehow overridden when she nestled close to him like this.

But...Monday was just days away. He lived on the other side of the world. He disapproved of the way she liked a little bet. 

His eyes had snapped black and watchful when she’d mentioned filling in the Jet-bet forms for Daddy. It wasn’t such a big deal, surely? It was just fun. These days it was simply a little something to put a thrill in the empty spaces in her life. The spaces where other people had family.

Well, she might not have family, but she had great friends and a job she enjoyed. She was only twenty-four, and she had no wish to get tied up with a man yet, so why was she even thinking like this? 

Alex slowed for an intersection and Kerri found herself pressed more firmly against him as he braked. She certainly had no wish to get tied up with
him.
They agreed about nothing. They’d fight all the time, just like her parents, who’d argued constantly about money—her mother shrill, her father defensive. 

After Daddy had died her mother wasted no time finding a new husband.  Edward Browne was the absolute opposite of fun-loving Tony Lush. And he’d taken her mother away to Dubai because of his oil-company job. Not that Kerri had minded too much; she’d never have accepted Edward as a replacement for Daddy.

It was easier with them thousands of miles away. Living with Granny and Grandpa had been bearable. They were strict but they were old, and quite easy to fool sometimes.

Kerri huffed out another huge sigh as she and Alex glided through the darkness together, in and out of pools of light and shadow, under tossing trees, and then around bends which pulled them even more intimately together. Far too soon he brought the big bike to a halt next to the bus stop outside her flat and they dismounted.

She pulled off her crash-helmet and placed it on the seat.

“Thank-you for an amazing meal,” she said as she stood there ruffling her hair up. “Gaston’s a lovely man. I’ll enjoy writing about him.”

“And me?” Alexandre growled. He’d removed his own helmet and somehow hustled Kerri into the dimly-lit deserted bus-shelter. “Will you enjoy writing about me, too?”

Her heart beat far too fast and hard. It thudded inside her ribs, pounding out a relentless rhythm. 

“Yes,” she murmured. “You too. I thought you’d be complaining non-stop about gambling but you were really quite interesting about—mmmph...”  

The rest of her words were lost as his lips slid against hers, warm and teasing, gentle but insistent.

The heat spread right through her body—a slow delicious trickle out to her fingers, all the way down to her toes. And she wanted... 

Wanted to drown in him. Wanted this one-time-only chance far too much. Her ears buzzed and her heart thudded even faster, and one hand floated up to settle against the back of his head to hold him close.  

She had no idea how long they stood there, pressed together (grinding together if she was honest), his cock chafing against the notch of her thighs, their lips and tongues sharing dizzying pleasures.  

He tasted like brandied cherries and coffee and every good thing Gaston had served for dinner. He smelled warm, and clean and expensive and forbidden.

The old bus-shelter creaked in the wind and time slipped by as they embraced with ever-increasing fervor.

Then Kerri felt his big hands settle around her waist, and he lifted her so she stood on the bench-seat and looked down into his hungry eyes, huge and black in the semi-darkness.

“I want the real thing this time,” he said raggedly, pushing her neckline down the last tiny distance and slipping his hands into her half-cup bra. He cradled her breasts in his long fingers... ran his thumbs over her super-aware nipples, kissed her creamy flesh, and breathed in the perfume of her skin.

“Ah, Kerri, you are so tempting, so beautiful, and such a
flirt
,” he groaned, before he settled his lips around one aching peak and suckled hard.

Sensation shot down to her belly. All the air left her lungs in a long ecstatic rush, and then she dragged it back in through sensitized lips.

“Alex,” she gasped. “No—that’s—mmmmmm.” 

Defeated, and dizzy with desire, she buried her hands in his silky hair as he pleasured her. Now she knew why he’d lifted her up; her breasts were exactly level with his mouth. Oh...that was...incredible...

After pleasuring one nipple until it was super-sensitive, he moved across to the other with a string of soft kisses.  

Again his lips settled around her and wreaked havoc with her self-control. Finally he leaned away so she was washed by faint light from the nearby streetlamp.

Kerri sighed as she felt the evening air caressing her damp skin. Her nipples were beaded hard and tight.

“As beautiful as I imagined,” Alex said, leaning toward her again to give each wet peak a tender nip. He re-settled her bra, and arranged the top as decorously as possible. “I think we are getting dangerous—no?  I would like to take you, but not in a place like this, and not where Sarah would hear.”

Kerri felt the wave of disappointment roll right through her. That was
it?
Did she dare suggest his hotel?

He took her hand and led her up to her front door. They couldn’t possibly stop now! Not when she was quivering and powered-up like a rocket about to hurtle into the dark unknown realms of space. Lift-off had surely been only seconds away. 

They stopped outside her door. Unbelievably he offered his hand to be shaken. Unthinkingly she shook it.

“Thank-you for a memorable evening, Kerri,” he said.

And high-tailed it away down the steps.

She stood there astounded until she heard the rumble of the motor cycle engine firing up, followed by the throatier roar as he accelerated.

Then she fumbled for her keys, wrenched the door open, and giving no thought to Sarah, slammed it behind her and lurched to her bedroom.

The
cheek
of the man! Where the hell was Buzzo?

So that was Monday. Next morning she bought a packet of marzipan icing, opened one end of it, and stashed it under a sheet of paper on her desk. In the warmth of the newsroom the almond fragrance spread just enough for her to imagine it was Alex’s cologne.

Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday passed like any normal working days—except for the tall dark Frenchman who kept floating across her computer screen and making her fingers hit the wrong keys.

Get over him, Kerri! He said he was leaving for Noumea on Monday. He’s quitting New Zealand. You heard him tell Gaston. Get him out of your brain. 

The article she’d written about him had gone well. It proved easy to describe him as generous, clever and interesting. Nothing like the tyrant who’d made her feel foolish when she was hiccupping in front of the guests at the Gamblers Anonymous function. Or the control freak who’d lectured her about her gambling habits. Naturally she’d included no hint of the sexy man who’d pleasured her breasts in the bus-shelter, but she’d thought of that unceasingly.

She closed her eyes and relived the sensations as best she could in her office chair. She’d been aroused for days. Her panties seemed constantly damp, her clitoris far too sensitive, her abdomen plagued with a low nagging dragging ache. He’d been beautiful. It was all his fault.

On Friday she checked the subbing on her article.

Bet they’ve chopped too much out to make it fit the space
. 

She gave a grudging smile once she’d reviewed it, and then turned her attention to the accompanying photo.

It showed Alex at a formal function. His thick hair was somewhat tamed. A bow-tie and tuxedo lapels framed his impeccable shirt. He looked straight at her—eyes dark, nose long, chin determined, lips too damn kissable. 

She cut him out and slipped him into her briefcase, then stretched luxuriously in her chair to relax her cramped muscles.