You want me to stay downstairs on the couch? I will. I’m here, Jax. I’m here and I’m not goin’ anywhere till you tell me we’re done, mon coeur, so you call it. Where do you want me?”
She flinched, looking so beautiful and young and vulnerable, it made his heart throb with tenderness for her.
“Mon coeur?” she murmured.
He took another step toward her, placing his palm over his heart, meeting her gaze with surrender and hope. “It’s yours for the takin’, Jax.”
“With me,” she said softly, but with a certainty she’d been missing a minute before. She held out her hand to him. “I want you to sleep with me.”
He placed his hand in hers, letting her pull him along. She walked halfway down the corridor, stopped between chandeliers one and two, then stepped through an open door into a room. Reaching back, he closed the door behind them.
When he turned to face her, she was standing beside the bed, stepping out of her heeled sandals. Stepping forward, she pulled his bag from his shoulder, setting it down on the floor.
When she lifted her eyes to his, they were so full of aching tenderness, his breath caught, his heart clenched, and his chest tightened with the certainty that this woman was his one in a million, that she—and only she—held the key to his happiness in her hands.
“You’re so beautiful, it hurts to look at you,” he said, the words coming from a pure, visceral place of longing, of certainty, of gratitude, and yes, of love. “What do you want, mon coeur?”
“I want you to make love to me,” she whispered.
He placed his hands on her face, staring deeply into her soft, darkened eyes, then lowered his lips to hers.
***
Jax had known, after seeing him facedown on the pool deck with dark-red blood seeping from his head, that her feelings for him were deep and intense and real. It no longer mattered that they’d met by chance, that he was an ex-cop gardener and she a movie producer heiress, that his accent was Cajun and hers Parisian, that they’d fallen for each other so quickly and without restraint. None of it mattered. Her heart had already ruled on the matter—every other consideration be damned. She wanted him in her life. And having him here, in her home, in her bedroom, with their feelings for one another propelling them both forward, made this the only place on earth she wanted to be.
She’d worn a cream-colored linen tank top and short tailored, yellow linen skirt to pick him up at the hospital, and now she felt his fingers on the zipper of her skirt, pulling it down as he kissed her. She wiggled her hips just a little, and the light fabric slipped down her legs, pooling around her bare feet and leaving her in cream-colored satin panties and her tank top. As he dragged his lips to her throat, his fingers trailed over the material of the top, finding the three little pearl buttons at the back of her neck and slowly unfastening them. Then he stepped back and drew the tank over her head, dropping it to the floor, holding her gaze all the while. He reached up, pulling a pearl comb from her chignon, which released her waves of onyx hair, and he threaded his fingers through it from her temples to her shoulder blades. As his fingers found the clasp of her bra, she held her breath, then released it as the lingerie slipped down her arms, joining her skirt and top on the floor.
Standing before him in nothing but panties, she felt her cheeks flush with heat.
“You are so beautiful, Jax. My beautiful duchess,” he said softly, as though mesmerized, his fingers touching down gently beneath her ears, following the curve of her neck to her shoulders, trailing down her arms then clasping her hips, his palms just covering the waistband of her underwear.
Still staring up at her, he dropped fluidly to his knees, and she gasped to see the contrast of his thick, wavy hair just in front of her still-covered sex. Her blood coursed through her veins like liquid lightning, making her hot all over, making her long for more—more words, more touching, more everything.
“I want to taste you, cher,” he said, his fingers smoothing gently from her hips to the waistband of her panties. He tugged them a little, and they slipped over the curve of her ass, gliding down her legs with a