Christmas Eve Wedding

They stepped out of the lift together, Jaz aware that her face was burning hotly and that her legs felt so weak they were barely able to support her. What if they had remained in the lift for longer? Would he…? Would she…?

As she turned away from him she heard him saying softly to her, ‘Let’s go to your room.’

Helplessly she stared at him. He was a man totally outside all her previous experience—which she had to admit was less than worthy of any kind of comparison. She had always led an unfashionably sedate kind of life, compared with the lives of her peers. Her battle to prove to her parents how important her chosen career path was to her had not left her with time to indulge in the sexual experimentation of other girls her age.

But it was a life which suited her and which she had always been very happy with. Sexual adventures of the kind that involved kissing tall, dark, handsome men in lifts were not something that had ever remotely interested her—or if they had she was certainly not prepared to admit it publicly, she hastily amended, as she wordlessly led the way to her hotel bedroom with her head held high but her heart thumping frantically in a mixture of excitement and apprehension.

It was only when they reached the door that qualms of conscience made her hesitate. She turned to him as she searched in her bag for her key.

‘I don’t think—’ she began, but he had taken her bag from unresisting fingers and was reaching out to draw her into his arms. In the same movement he slid open the door.

‘What is it that you don’t think, hon?’ he asked her with male emphasis. ‘That you don’t want this?’

Jaz’s whole body shook in the hard embrace of his arms as he bent his head and kissed her, a long, slow, lingering kiss that melted her bones and her will-power. They were inside the room, now and he had closed and locked the door, all without letting go of her, and now in the soft darkness he was still kissing her. Though what he was doing to her mouth was more, much more than merely kissing it. What he was doing was…

Jaz shuddered convulsively as his hands touched her body lightly, delicately, knowingly…This man knew women…He knew them very, very well. She could feel it in his touch…feel it in him. His tongue caressed her lips, as though he sensed and wanted to soothe her fears, circling them slowly and carefully, until the delicate pressure of his tongue-tip became not soothing but frustrating, tormenting…making her want…

The darkness seemed to increase her awareness of him, of the hot, musky male scent of his body. It made her doubly aware of the feel of his skin against her as she felt the roughened rasp of his jaw on her cheek, and the corresponding texture of his jacket sleeve against her bare arm. She was almost intoxicated by the cool fresh hint of cologne he was wearing.

In her mind’s eye she could see him in a very different environment from that of her hotel room—the Bourbon court had been exited from France to New Orleans, and it didn’t take much imagination on Jaz’s part to picture him at Versailles at the height of the Sun King’s reign. How well he would have fitted into that sophisticated and splendid milieu; his sexuality would have driven the court ladies into swooning fits of desire—would have had much the same effect on them as it was having on her right now!

He was like no other man she had ever met, dangerous and exciting, and she was drawn to him in a way that both shocked and thrilled her.

His teasing kiss was beginning to aggravate her. He was treating her like a girl, not a woman—not like the woman she knew she could be with him. All fire and passion, need and hunger. A woman to whom nothing else mattered more than her man, the feelings and desires they were generating and creating between them. Her made her feel…He made her feel alive, primitive, sensual—all woman! His woman!

Reaching up, she wrapped her arms around him, boldly tangling her tongue with his, drawing him into a kiss of fierce passion.

‘Uh-huh, so that’s what you want, is it?’ he demanded thickly against her mouth as he responded to her. ‘Well, in that case, hon—’

Jaz gasped as he picked her up as easily, as though she were a child, making his way sure-footedly towards the bed like a mountain cat.

As he laid her down he was already undressing her, and she made no move to stop him. She had known the moment they stepped into the lift together that this was going to happen. Had wanted it to happen. As it had happened with this man so many times since she’d arrived in New Orleans. She positively longed for Caid’s now familiar touch.

Moonlight streamed in through the unclosed curtains, silvering her exposed breasts. She gasped in pleasure as he touched them, running the slightly coarse pad of his fingertip round the exquisitely sensitive flesh surrounding each pouting nub.

Excitement, as hot and sweet as melting chocolate, filled her with shocked pleasure. Her body arched like a bow as she offered her breasts to him in the silent heat of the shadowy room, its stillness broken only by the raw tempo of their aroused breathing.

This was what she had been imagining them doing in the lift—she’d been picturing their naked bodies entwined in the still heat of the Louisiana night.

Fiercely she reached for him, her fingers tugging at buttons and fastenings, not stopping until she was able to touch the hot skin that held the muscled tautness of his naked body.

Just touching him unleashed within her a driven hunger she was half afraid to recognise. It was far, far outside the boundaries of her normal emotions. A reckless and alien, dangerous and wild wantonness that refused to be controlled or tamed.

As he reached for her, covering her body in fierce, rawly sensual kisses, she sobbed beneath the onslaught of her own response—which was immediate, feral and unstoppable.

Passionately they clung together, stroking, touching kissing, devouring one another in their mutual driving need. In the moonlight Jaz could see the scratches she had scorched across his back, and in the morning she knew her own body would bear the small bruise-marks of his hotly male demands on her, his desire for her. Then perhaps she would wonder at her own behaviour, but right now her thoughts were elsewhere.

‘Ready, hon?’ he demanded as he gathered her closer, so close that she could feel the heavy thud of his heart as though it were beating within her own body.

Wordlessly she answered him with her body, lifting her legs to wrap them tightly around him as he thrust into her.

The sensation of him filling her, stretching her, made her shake with almost unbearable pleasure.

Each movement of his body within hers, each powerful thrust, increased the frenzy of need that was taking her higher, filling her senses with the immensity of what was happening. And then abruptly the fierce, breath-catching ascent was over, and she was cresting the topmost wave of her own pleasure, surfing its heights, awed by the power of what she was experiencing. She cried out unknowingly, clinging to the body covering her own, feeling the male release within her; her body accepting the satisfaction of knowing it had given him completion whilst her exhausted senses relaxed.

Caid leaned up on one elbow and gently tickled the impossibly delicate curve of Jaz’s jaw with his fingertips. She was so tiny, so fragile, and yet at the same time so breathtakingly strong, this Englishwoman who had walked so unexpectedly into his life and his heart.

He had had his doubts—one hell of a lot of them, if he was honest—and with good reason. But then he had overheard her godfather talking to his mother about her background, and Caid had started to relax. Knowing that she came from farming stock—that she had been raised in a country environment and that her role within the store was simply a temporary one she had taken on to show her independence until she was ready to settle down and return to her roots—was all he had needed to lower his guard and stop fighting his feelings for her.

Which was just as well, because there was no way he could stop loving her now. No way he would ever contemplate settling down with a girl who did not share his deep love of country living and his determination that their children would be raised on his ranch, with their mother there for them, instead of travelling all over the world in the way his own mother had done. She had never been there when he had most needed her, and his parents finally divorced when his father had grown tired of his mother’s constant absences, her single-minded devotion to the family store. Caid had never been in any doubt that the store mattered more to his mother than he did. She had always been frank about the fact that his conception had been an accident.

As a young boy Caid had been badly hurt by his mother’s open admission of her lack of maternalism. As a teenager that hurt had turned to bitter resentment and as Caid had continued to grow his resentment had become an iron-hard determination to protect his own children from the same fate. Like many people who’d experienced a lonely and painful childhood, Caid had a very strong desire to have his own family and create the kind of closeknit unit he felt he had missed out on.

One of the most painful episodes of his childhood had been the time when his mother had not even been able to be there for him when his father—her ex-husband—had been killed in a road accident.

Caid had been eleven at the time, and he had never forgotten just how it had felt to be taken to the mortuary to identify his father…How alone, how afraid and how angry with his mother he had felt.

He had made a vow then that there was no way anything like that was ever going to happen to his kids. No way!

Consequently he had been very wary of becoming emotionally involved, despite the number of women who had tried to coax and tempt him into falling in love with them.

Until now…Until Jaz.

He had walked into the restaurant where the family, including his mother, was having dinner with Jaz and her godfather, and the moment he had set eyes on her he had known!

He had known too, from Jaz’s dazed expression and self-conscious pink-cheeked colour, that she was equally intensely aware of him.

It hadn’t taken him long to skilfully detach her from the others, on the pretext of showing her the view of the Mississippi from the upper floor of the restaurant, and even less time to let her know how attracted he was to her.

That his behaviour had been somewhat out of character was, he recognised, an indication of just how strong his feelings for her were.

Ironically, he had almost not met Jaz at all.

Although Caid had now established a workable and accepting adult relationship with his mother, one of the legacies from his childhood was his intense dislike of the family business. Had he been able to do so he would have preferred to have nothing whatsoever to do with the stores at all. However, that simply wasn’t possible. His maternal grandfather had left him a large portfolio of shares in the family business, which he held in trust, and as a further complication his mother had put emotional pressure on him to take on the role of the business financial adviser, following the completion of his Masters in Business Studies, claiming that if he didn’t she would never be able to believe he had forgiven her for his childhood.

Rather than become involved in painful wrangling Caid had given in, and of course the family had insisted that he further his role as financial adviser on their proposed purchase of the English store his mother was so keen to acquire—to add to the portfolio of highly individual and specialised stores already operating in Boston, Aspen and New Orleans.

Unlike the rest of his mother’s family, Caid’s first love was the land, the ranch he had bought for himself and was steadily building up, financed by the money he earned as a much sought-after financial consultant.

But he had come to New Orleans, protesting all the way like a roped steer, and thank heavens his mother had persevered, insisted on his presence. Because if she hadn’t…

The sexy smile curling his mouth deepened as Jaz opened her eyes.

‘Mmm, that sure was another wonderful night we spent together, ma’am,’ he teased her softly.

As he had known she would, Jaz started to blush. It fascinated him, this delicate English colour of hers that betrayed her every emotion, and made him feel he wanted to wrap her up and protect her.

‘You’d better go,’ Jaz told him unsteadily. ‘You know we both agreed that we wanted to keep this…us…to ourselves for now, and my godfather will be expecting me to have breakfast with him. Your mother has arranged for us to visit her warehouse this morning.’