The Highest Price to Pay (11 page)

“Yes,” she whispered, closing her eyes.

“I have a map of you now,” he said, his fingers drifting over her.

She wanted to tell him that he now knew her body better than she did, but she couldn’t speak for fear she’d dissolve completely into tears.

So she turned and kissed him instead, pouring every ounce of her emotion into it. He kissed her back, his hands moving now to cup her breasts, tease her nipples.

“Oh, I was waiting for that,” she sighed and let her head fall back.

“So was I,” he said, nipping her lip lightly and soothing the sting away with his tongue.

“You’re overdressed,” she said, touching his chest.

“I can remedy that.”

He made quick work of his clothes, discarding them onto the deck. She ran her hands over his chest, over his perfect, unblemished skin, his tight, muscular form. “You’re so perfect,” she murmured.

He caught her hand, kissed the tender underside of her wrist. “No more than you.”

Tears assaulted her again and she blinked them back, determined not to cry now, not when she craved release so very much. And crying would certainly destroy the mood of sensual intimacy that surrounded them.

She only wished she could give to him, as he had to her. What he had done was more than a sexy exercise, more than simple foreplay. He had touched her, looked at her, brought the part of herself she was most ashamed of into the affair, rather than ignoring it, or tolerating it.

He had taken the time to learn her body. All of it.

She stood for a moment, shimmying out of her dress and underwear, kicking her shoes off and idly hoping she was able to find them in the dim evening light.

She dropped to her knees, kissing his chest, running her tongue over his perfectly sculpted pecs. She craved him, more than food or drink, was suddenly driven by the need to taste him. She traced a line down the center of his torso and she felt his muscles contract sharply beneath her touch.

She gripped the thick, hard length of him in her hand, then dipped her head lower still, hoping she could give him half the pleasure tonight as he’d given her the night before. It was her turn to explore. Her turn to learn.

One of his hands gripped her shoulder, the other, forked through her hair, his masculine groans of pleasure fueling her own desire. That she could make his muscles tremble, bring him to the brink of sexual ecstasy, was a heady rush she’d never anticipated.

“Ella,” he rasped, his voice strained. “Enough,
ma belle.
I need all of you now.”

She lifted her head, could see his eyes, glittering with desire, the stars reflected in them. “I need all of you,” she said, pushing lightly on his chest. He leaned back against the pillows, giving to her slight physical command. “Condom?”

He grinned wickedly, white teeth shining in the moonlight as he reached beneath one of the pillows and produced a packet. She took it from his hand, tearing it open.

“So sure of yourself?” she asked.

“I did provide you with dinner on a yacht,” he said, still smiling.

And so much more. “Yes, you did.”

She fumbled with the condom for a moment, allowing him to place his hand over hers to help her roll it onto his length.

“I’ll figure it out next time,” she said.

“I’m not complaining at all.” He placed his hand on her cheek, kissed her lightly on the lips as his other hand cupped her buttocks, urged her to come nearer to him, to straddle his body as the kiss intensified.

She positioned herself above him, moving until she could feel the blunt head of his erection pressing against the entrance to her body. She lowered herself onto him slowly, her breath hissing through her teeth as he filled her.

“Good?” she asked.

He tightened his hold on her rear. “Yes.”

She started to move over him, finding her rhythm, the one that made her body pulse and made Blaise’s eyes close in ecstasy. His hands roamed over her back, traced the path where she was able to feel him expertly.

“Beautiful,” he grated. “So beautiful.”

His words, the movement of his hands, of his body, pushed her over the edge, her orgasm overtaking her, radiating through her body with all the force of a tremor. Shaking her, rocking her to her core.

He tightened his hold on her, gripped her tightly around the waist and reversed their positions, keeping himself buried deep inside her. He set the pace now, seeking his own release, still adding to her pleasure.

And when he found his release, she was hit with an aftershock, more mild than the first, a slower roll of pleasure that seemed to grow as it fed off his. She looked up at the stars, watched as they seemed to rain down over her.

She gripped his shoulders tight, kissed his collarbone.

He rolled to the side, his arms encircling her. She rested her hand on his chest, sheltered her face in the curve of his neck.

“I didn’t need the yacht or the picnic,” she whispered. “This was enough.”

Blaise’s body still ached for Ella, even after the most explosive sex of his life. He wanted more. And even when he’d had it, he was certain his satisfaction would last for only a moment before the need to have her grew to near unbearable levels again.

He stroked his hand over her side, skimming the indent of her waist, the curve of her hip. She was unique, in so many ways. He could never mistake her for another woman. An innocent siren, perfect and yet damaged. She was a study in contradiction, and she fascinated him endlessly.

It was a new feeling. Women were indistinct in his mind, his past sexual encounters blurring together. Especially the ones that had happened just after Marie left him.

Marie was distinct still. But with her it had been a need to possess, to claim her for himself. He’d long since realized that what he’d felt for her hadn’t been love. He’d stopped believing in the emotion, or at least in his ability to truly experience it.

What he had with Ella felt different. It wasn’t about mere possession. He wanted to give to her. To know her body as intimately as possible so he could give her the pleasure she deserved to get from her lover.

Of course, any gift from him was something of a poison chalice.

And even with that realization, he didn’t release her. He continued to hold her, continued to stroke the contours of her body.

“No one except for doctors and nurses have ever touched my scars like that,” she said, her voice muted. “After the fire…my mother couldn’t even touch me anymore.”

He clenched his jaw tight. His own mother had struggled with the same issue, and then his father later. He had been caught in the middle of a bitter divorce, and as good to him as his mother had been, as passionate as she had been about taking him to Malawi with her, there were moments when he reminded her too much of his father. And when he’d returned to France at the age of sixteen, after his mother’s death, his father had seen too much of his mother in him, and had seen the son who’d left him.

“A reflection of her own issues,” he said tightly, “not yours.”

“I understand that. Now. I’m starting to anyway.”

“What happened, Ella?”

He felt a hot tear roll from her cheek and drop onto his chest. His stomach tightened. He didn’t do well with female tears. But Ella didn’t sob, didn’t give any indication she was crying other than the moisture she left on his skin.

“My family lived in upstate New York in this huge manor home. It was like a maze. Three stories, thousands of square feet and a lot of rooms. We were all asleep. By the time we woke up…it was so hot.” Her voice was distant, as though she were relaying secondhand information, not talking about something that had happened to her personally. “The knob on my bedroom door burned my hand.” She held out her left hand, traced the nearly invisible crescent of wrinkled skin on that palm. “I was too scared to jump from a third-floor window so I tried to just…walk out.”

He tightened his hold on her, a sick feeling hitting him. Seeing Ella’s scars, he knew there had been pain, and he was conscious of that fact every time he saw them. But to hear of it, that was something different.

He was helpless to do anything but listen. He hated the feeling. Hated that he had nothing to give her. Mostly he hated that it had happened to her. He had set the fire in his own life, and his consequences were his own. Ella had done nothing to earn such suffering.

“How did you get out?” he asked.

“The second-story window. I tried to get down the stairs to the front but it was…consumed and I was already burned from trying to make it down the hallway… I couldn’t breathe anymore.”

“Your family?” he asked, his throat tight.

“Was safe. They were on the lawn, all clinging to each other.”

“They had gone into my sister’s room and gotten her out first and then…they couldn’t come back inside for me.” Another tear landed on his chest. “And it is terrible of me to wonder why it went that way. To feel angry that they didn’t risk their lives for me.”

“But you do.”

Silence settled between them and he sensed the struggle in her, the war that raged in her body.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I have spent my life trying to prove I was worthy of the sacrifice they wouldn’t give to me. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything. They can’t…they can hardly look at me because they blame themselves, too, and…and they can’t handle their guilt.”

“And you’re not allowed to be angry.”

She shook her head.

“I’m sorry, Ella,” he said, the words torn from him. “You are worth more than that.” It was the absolute truth. She was worth more than a family that couldn’t put away their own guilt to help Ella heal. She was worth more than a man who could offer her nothing more than physical pleasure in the bedroom.

Her family was too selfish to see outside of their own pain and into Ella’s. And he was too selfish to let her go.

“What about your family?” she asked. “Do you see them now.”

“Yes,” he said. “Sometimes.”

“Your brother?”

His hands tightened slowly into fists. “Yes.”

She paused for a moment as if waiting for him to go on. “That’s good,” she said.

“We’re going back to Paris tomorrow.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“You sound sad.”

“I kind of like the yacht.” She laughed, the sound shaky still, her voice thick with the remaining tears.

He let his fingers drift from her arm to her collarbone, down to her breasts, tracing lightly around her taut nipple. “I have yachts in France.”

A
S SOON
as they were back on French soil, Ella started seeing evidence of the effects of their time in Malawi. Tabloids had photos of them, standing together on the beach at Lake Nyasu for the photo shoot, Blaise’s hand resting on her lower back in a casually intimate manner.

And the morning the story had hit the lifestyle pages, her boutique had been slammed with customers, all looking to see if they could find the white shift dress Ella had been wearing on the beach that day. Fortunately it had been stocked and it had translated to sales. It had also meant that owners of other boutiques had been calling, trying to find out if they could get her clothing in their larger stores.

It was the kind of thing that Ella had only ever imagined happening to her before, but it was happening now. The fact that she got to share it with Blaise only made it better.

Blaise.
She couldn’t think of him without a smile curving her lips. Her lover. The man who held her in his arms at night, the man who looked at her body with desire in his eyes rather than revulsion or detachment.

Ella finished placing and sizing the last photo in her virtual portfolio and readied it to send on to Statham’s department store. The massive retail chain had requested a chance to look at her more commercial pieces.

That was the biggest boon of all. And the ad campaign for
Look,
featuring her designs, hadn’t even been released yet. She couldn’t even imagine what might happen when it was.

Getting her line in such a prominent chain of stores would be the beginning of her being a household name. It would be the beginning of her feeling valid. Of her proving that she was worth it. That it was worth it for her to be alive. To prove that to her mother.

And yet, she found it just didn’t matter in that way anymore.

She was proud of the accomplishment, thrilled that it had come from the work she’d done with Blaise. Pleased that something she was passionate about was being received well. But it wasn’t about proving her worth anymore.

Because she felt like she was worth something. She had been validated by industry professionals and consumers.

And then there was Blaise.

They’d been back for two days and she hadn’t had a chance to see him. She missed him. Missed his touch, his kiss, his possession. She curled her toes in her boots and hit Send on the email, with her portfolio attached, to Statham’s.

She leaned back in her office chair, her heart thundering in her chest. She’d been a virgin for twenty-five years and she’d managed to bear it. Now, after two days without Blaise she felt like she might explode with pent-up sexual energy.

But he was busy. She was busy. She’d had a lot to catch up on with the boutique, and the different portfolio and meeting requests. But she was caught up now, until more came in.

She shouldn’t call him. Not until he called her. She really shouldn’t.

Snatching her mobile phone from the desk, she hit the speed dial for Blaise’s number and chewed her bright pink thumbnail, heart thundering in her temples as it rang.

“Ella.”

She shivered when he said her name, his voice as affecting, as sinfully delightful now as it had been the first time she’d heard it. No, more now. Because now she’d heard it whispering all the intimate, delicious things he wanted to do to her body. And better still, she had the experience of him being a man of his words.

“Hi. I was just…I know I’ve been really busy, but I just sent off the last of my unfinished business.”

She waited. Waited for him to take the hint and say he wanted to see her. This was almost more terrifying than the first time he’d seen her scarred skin. Because she was showing him more than just her external imperfections. She was giving him a look into her, into her feelings.

Feelings she wasn’t certain had a place in her life, or in his.

He didn’t say anything, so she pressed on. “I was wondering if you wanted to see me tonight?”

“I’m attending a social gathering tonight,” he said, his voice closed off.

“A party.”

“A gathering of people.”

“Yeah, a party.” She gripped her phone tightly, her palm slick with sweat. “You don’t want to take me?” It was a stupid question. Stupid to let her insecurity show like that. Stupid to
be
so insecure.

“I didn’t think you would be interested. I’m going to talk business.”

“And if I had a business social function to attend would you expect to go with me?”

“Yes,” he said, without hesitation.

“Can you say ‘double standard’?”

“Double standard,” he said wryly. “I didn’t say I was right, I simply said I would expect to go with you.”

“You implied that you were right,” she said acidly, “because you always think you’re right.”

“True.”

She blew out a breath. “Okay, I know that what we’re doing here isn’t a permanent thing. I know that this is physical. But in my mind, it’s a relationship. I was a virgin because of the scars, because I was so afraid to be rejected because of them. But I think, even without them, I would have taken a sexual relationship seriously. And that means I sort of expect to be the date to things.” Her stomach tightened. “You aren’t taking someone else with you, are you?”

“I see no point in playing two women at once. If I want a woman, I take her. If I do not, I break it off with her,” he said, his tone hard, more like the Blaise she’d first met than her fantasy lover of the past week.

But she’d insulted him, she realized that. She’d accused him of cheating, basically, and she had no reason to do so. “Sorry. But you have to admit, not telling me about something like this seems a little shady from my perspective.”

“It was not my intent to be—” he seemed to be searching for a word “—shady. But I keep my business life and my personal life separate.”

“Except when you’re managing my business.”

“What has happened between us was unavoidable. Normally I would not sleep with a business associate.”

“I feel all warm inside now,” she said, her voice flat.

“Are you determined to start a fight?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“How do I make you happy now?” he asked, frustration edging his voice.

She laughed. “It’s not…I’m not trying to be petulant and get my way. You go to the party by yourself if you want to. I just felt excluded. If I’m a two-night stand then tell me, but I was assuming that we were going to continue on.”

“You’re not a two-night stand,” he said roughly.

Her thoughts wandered back to the night on the yacht, when he’d drifted the rose over her body, his fingers following, as he learned the map of her body, how to touch her. No, it was more than a simple fling, she was sure of that. She just wasn’t sure Blaise wanted it to be more.

“And you’re not ashamed of me?”

“
Mon dieu!
Ella, no I am not ashamed of you.” He sounded genuinely affronted by that.

“Sorry again. My own family was, though. My parents wouldn’t allow me to wear a normal swimsuit when we went to the Country Club. I had to wear one that was styled like the Olympic swimmers wear.”

Silence hung between them. Again, she’d said too much. She’d told him things she’d never told another soul before. But she longed to get it out now, longed to purge herself of it and be done with it.

“Ella, I don’t know what you want from me,” he said slowly.

“Honesty,” she said, her throat tight. “I’ll take honesty.”

“And I’ll give it to you.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll talk to you later.”

Ella nodded, even though he couldn’t see, and pressed the End Call button on her phone.

Blaise swore loudly into the empty silence of his office. It did nothing to make him feel better. Ella made him feel like the inside of his chest was bleeding sometimes. To realize she thought him ashamed of her, to know why she felt that way, because of her family and the clumsy way they had dealt with the aftermath of the fire.

He wasn’t the right man to handle her. He had tried to distance himself since their return to Paris, in an effort to cool things between them, in an effort to stop before she got hurt. Before he hurt her.

But then she’d called, her siren’s voice luring him to the rocks again.

He’d been so close to asking her to come with him tonight anyway. But he would not be manipulated. Marie had been a master of manipulating him. And he had allowed it.

He would not allow Ella to do the same.

Most of his relationships in the past three years had been brief one- or two-night encounters, and he didn’t want that with Ella. He wasn’t through with her yet. Just the thought of her had him hard and aching to be in her again. He was dying for the taste, the touch of her, to be sheathed in her tight, wet body while they were both driven to the peak.

But she was working at his control. He recognized that. He couldn’t allow it.

No. He held the cards in their relationship. There was no question. And he wanted Ella. Tonight. He wanted her by his side at the party, and he wanted her in his bed later.

And he would have her.

“It was a mistake, to think I would be better off without you for the evening.”

Ella blushed beneath Blaise’s rather intimate appraisal. Mostly because she still felt ashamed for acting so transparent earlier, and for essentially begging herself a spot as his date for the night.

But when he’d called back less than twenty minutes after their initial conversation she’d been hard-pressed to say no when he’d asked her to go with him. It would just seem way too contrary and ridiculous to refuse after making such a big deal of it. She only wished she hadn’t said anything.

It had been honest, though. She wasn’t in this relationship lightly. Even if it was only sexual. It had been huge for her to open up to him, to show him her body, to let him touch her, caress her. Revealing her physical self to him had been the beginning of revealing all of herself.

Blaise wore his scars on the inside, and that afforded a kind of protection she didn’t have. Blaise knew more about her than anyone else on the planet, and she couldn’t help but feel like she had some claim on him because of that.

He didn’t share with her. Nothing but his body.

She’d tried to find out about his family when they’d been on the yacht, but she’d only gotten simple, one word answers that had left her with nothing real to go on. It bothered her more than she wanted to admit, because he had gotten hold of her heart.

“Thank you for the almost-compliment,” she said, tight lipped as he led her into the ballroom of the luxury hotel.

He was meeting with a potential client, someone he was interested in investing in. Someone who was hesitant to get Blaise involved thanks to his reputation, so he’d told her on the limo ride over.

He gripped her arm and turned her to face him. “It was a compliment. I made a mistake. What more do you want?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Except for you to have thought to ask me in the first place.” She winced as soon as the words left her mouth.

“I did think of it,” he said, his voice low, eyes intent on hers. “But this is a business meeting as far as I’m concerned and I need to concentrate.” His gaze flickered over her and she became acutely conscious of just how short and tight her gown was. And she warmed when she saw the heated approval reflected in the golden depths of his eyes. “I do not need to walk around so turned on I can scarcely see straight.”

She felt the corners of her lips turn up.

“You enjoy that?” he asked.

“Crude as compliments come, but yes, I enjoyed it a little bit.”

Far better to have him not want her here because she was a distraction than to have him not want her here because he was bored with her already.

“Glad to hear it.”

“Somehow, I don’t think you are.”

“Oh, I am.” Blaise took her arm and turned her to him, seemingly unfazed by the people that were watching them with rapt interest. “What man doesn’t want to hear that he’s satisfied his lover?”

“Am I your lover?” she asked.

Blaise dipped his head, his lips skimming her cheek as he leaned in. “Do you not remember?” he whispered.

A sensual shiver crawled over Ella’s skin, reached into her and made her entire body tighten at the memory of his touch, his kiss. Of course she remembered. She could do nothing else.

“It’s hard to remember since it’s been so long,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

“Has it?”

“I thought you might have lost interest.”

His lips flattened, his eyes growing distant. “I don’t do the insecure-female thing, Ella.”

Anger ignited in her, just as hot as the longing it replaced. “This isn’t the ‘insecure-female thing.’ This is me not being appreciative of the lack of contact. I’m not needy, but I do expect some respect.”

“Have I ever given you a reason to believe I disrespect you?”

“Only when you didn’t call after we came back to Paris. Fine if you want to keep things casual, but not if you expect to go incommunicado and only come around for booty calls.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Classy.”

“No, it’s not. And that’s why I don’t want any part of something like that.”

“I thought you might need space.”

From anyone else, it might have seemed like a line, but she could feel the real sincerity in his voice. And she knew he was probably right. She really, probably did need space. Because their intimacy had been so complete in Malawi. He had been in her, and not just in a physical sense. She had shared everything with him. Had given him a piece of her.

And maybe space would keep her feeling from developing into something that was absolutely futile.

“Well, I don’t. I mean, it would have been nice to be sure of where we stood when we came back here.”

Blaise dropped a soft kiss on her lips and she froze, luxuriating in the feel of his mouth on hers. It really had been too long.

When they parted he stayed close to her, his voice low. “No matter what I intended, I think it’s clear what our relationship has to be, as long as we’re in close proximity.”

Ella shivered. “I suppose so.”