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At that tart response unholy amusement quivered through Bastien’s lean, powerful frame and he laughed out loud.
‘So, what was the dream about?’ she prompted again.
In the low light, Bastien rolled his eyes and laced his fingers round her abdomen as she relaxed back against him. ‘I was getting beaten up... It’s something that happened when I was a child.’
Taken by surprise, Lilah twisted round in the circle of his arms and lifted her head to look directly at him. ‘When you were a child?’
‘I walked in on my mother, in bed with her drug-dealing boyfriend. She didn’t intervene. She was terrified that I would accidentally let it drop to Anatole that she had other men because Anatole paid all our bills.’
Lilah frowned down at him in disbelief. ‘For goodness’ sake—what age were you?’
He shrugged a broad shoulder. ‘Five...six years old? I really don’t remember. But I almost died because Athene didn’t take me to hospital until the next day—and then not until she had coached me to say that I’d fallen down the stairs.’
‘Damaged’—that was how Marielle Durand had labelled Bastien. And for the first time Lilah truly saw that in him, recognising the angry defensive pain in his eyes. His mother had neither wanted nor loved him, and by the sound of it had been a cruel and selfish parent.
Lilah recognised his discomfiture under her continuing scrutiny and she looked away, twisting round to give him back his privacy. Her eyes were smarting with tears, though.
As a teenager she had felt so sorry for herself when her father had been bringing a string of different women home for the night and she’d had to occasionally share the breakfast table with strangers. In retrospect, though, she was realising that she could have suffered much worse experiences, and that no matter how much her father’s sex-life had embarrassed her he had always looked after her and loved her.
Bastien had not been so lucky.
‘I don’t know why I told you that,’ Bastien breathed in a harsh undertone.
‘Because I’m very persistent when I want to know something,’ Lilah declared, with deliberate lightness of tone. ‘And because you’re shaken up.’
‘I don’t get shaken up,’ Bastien asserted predictably.
‘Of course not,’ Lilah traded, tongue in cheek.
Without warning Bastien sprang off the bed, carting her with him.
‘What—?’
‘I need a shower,’ he ground out.
‘I’ll go back to—’
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Bastien contradicted, striding into the en-suite bathroom and straight into the spacious shower with her still in his arms.
‘Bastien...what on earth...?’ she exclaimed in angry disbelief as he elbowed a button and warm water cascaded down on her from all directions, instantly plastering the nightdress she wore to her body.
Bastien knew he was acting like a mad man, but he was on automatic pilot and he didn’t care—because his hunger for Delilah at that moment was overwhelming. He hauled her dripping body up against him and closed his mouth hungrily to the luscious soft pink enticement of hers, long fingers stroking her wet hair back from her face.
Lilah’s hands closed over his broad shoulders, clenching there to steady herself as the hot, demanding intensity of the kiss took her by storm. His tongue delved deep into the moist interior of her mouth, plundering a response from her.
She recognised the force of his need, suspecting that Bastien was not in control the way he usually was. Rather than dismaying her, that suspicion excited her beyond bearing—because Bastien was generally so controlled that he unnerved her. In fact, the unashamed passion he was unleashing now was much more to Lilah’s taste, and it went to her head even more strongly than the wine that afternoon.
Her hands skimmed down over his lean, strong torso. She could feel the hard urgency of his erection against her midriff, and before she could even let herself think about what she was about to do she had dropped to her knees. The warm water teemed down, somehow separating her from the world and from all the anxious self-judgement that kept her from experimenting. For the first time ever she felt free to do simply as she liked. As she liked and as she wanted. And she was proud of that inner spur of passion for the first time.
