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The comparison jarred, but it worked its magic, and Bastien pulled away from the strangely tempting pleasure of having her small, slender body lying against his. He sprang out of bed and headed for the bathroom.
‘I’m a restive sleeper and I prefer my own space,’ he told her carelessly. ‘I’ll be sleeping in the room next door.’
Lilah could feel herself freeze with regret and discomfiture. Yet such separation was what sex without caring was like, she scolded herself. It was a bodily thing—not a mental thing. Bastien didn’t feel any deep connection with her. He had satisfied his lust for the moment and that was that: he had leapt out of bed and straight into the shower. She could already hear it running.
Had she expected a warmer conclusion to their intimacy?
Well, if she had expected that she was an idiot. After all, wasn’t this exactly why she had lost her temper with Bastien two years back? He had only offered sex when she had wanted more, and that had hurt—hurt her pride, hurt her heart too. Wasn’t it time she was honest about that? She had started falling for Bastien Zikos the first moment she’d laid eyes on his fallen angel face and stunning eyes.
Of course she hadn’t known him in any way, so it had been infatuation rather than love, but his magnetic attraction had called to her on every level. And resisting it, recognising that he could only make her unhappy, had cut deep and filled her with disappointment. But it was the truth and it remained the truth, Lilah conceded ruefully. Bastien skated along happily on the shallow side of life, taking pleasure where he chose, discarding women whenever he got bored...and now she was one of those passing fancies—a sexual whim.
She shifted in the bed, and the ache between her thighs made her wince and grimace. Once she had said no to Bastien, and evidently that had put a price beyond rubies on her head because he wasn’t used to the word no and evidently couldn’t live with it.
Stop thinking these negative thoughts—stop it, she screamed inside her head, shifting on the pillow as if to clear it. It would be better to concentrate on the positive—think of the factory up and running again, her father back in his office and her little half-siblings secure because their parents were no longer worried sick about how to pay their bills. That was a good picture, she told herself soothingly.
And what about all Moore’s former employees? Her father had mentioned that he’d be calling a meeting on site today, to discuss the relocation of the factory and the planned reopening. That news would make a lot of people very happy.
Indeed, only a very sad, total loser would sit feeling sorry for herself when she was surrounded by so many positive reminders of what sacrificing her pride had achieved. And she wasn’t a loser, she told herself angrily, and she wasn’t going to make a big dramatic deal out of what couldn’t be changed. So she had had sex with Bastien—that was all it had been and she could live with that reality.
Sliding out of bed, she walked naked into the dressing room and extracted a robe, knotting the sash at her waist with impatient hands.
As she walked back towards the bathroom, Bastien emerged from it, lean bronzed hips swathed in a towel. Crystalline drops of water sprinkled his hair-roughened chest and his thick black hair curled back damply from his brow.
Seeing her out of bed, he frowned. ‘I thought you’d be sleeping.’
‘No. I need to shower.’ To wash his touch and the memory of it away, Lilah thought frantically, colliding with smouldering golden eyes framed by velvet dark lashes and feeling her heart skipping an entire beat. A shadow of faint black stubble accentuated his hard masculine jawline and his beautifully modelled sensual mouth.
As Delilah attempted to sidestep him, Bastien shot out a hand to enclose her wrist and force her to a halt again. ‘You were amazing, glikia mou,’ he husked.
Mortification drummed up hot below Lilah’s skin, but she lifted her tousled head high. ‘It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be,’ she admitted prosaically, tugging her wrist free to continue on past into the bathroom.
Taken aback, Bastien blinked. How to damn with faint praise, he reflected grimly, thrusting open the communicating door between the bedrooms to stride into his own. And how very typical of Delilah to sting him like a wasp.
