Penny Jordan Tribute Collection

Mariella tensed, immediately flying to Tanya’s defence as she told him fiercely, ‘She is Fleur’s mother. She doesn’t have to consult me about… anything. This holiday will give the three of them an opportunity to bond together as a family. Tanya and Khalid are Fleur’s parents and…’

‘I miss Fleur too,’ Xavier stopped her gruffly, his admission astonishing her. ‘And in my opinion she would be much better off here in a secure environment with those who know her best, rather than being dragged to some fashionable resort where she will probably be left in the care of hotel staff whilst her parents spend their time enjoying themselves!’

‘You are being unfair,’ Mariella protested, and then winced as Xavier started to knead the knots out of her muscles, making it impossible for her to move.

‘No. I am being honest,’ he corrected her. ‘And when Khalid returns you may be sure that I shall be making it very plain to him that Fleur needs a secure family environment!’

Xavier would make a wonderful father, Mariella conceded, and then stiffened as she tried to reject the messages that knowledge was giving her! After all, like her, Xavier had no intentions of ever getting married!

‘Your muscles are very badly knotted,’ she heard him telling her brusquely as his thumbs started to probe their way over the tight lumps of pain.

It was heaven having the tension massaged from her body, Mariella acknowledged, and no doubt what he was doing would be even more effective if she wasn’t trying to tense herself against those dangerous sensations that had nothing whatsoever to do with any kind of work-induced muscle ache, and everything to do with Xavier himself.

The longer he touched her, the harder she was finding it to control her sexual reaction to him.

His thumbs stroked along her spine, causing her to shudder openly in response. Immediately his hands stilled.

‘Mariella.’

His voice sounded rough and raw, the sensation of his breath against her skin bringing her out in a rash of sensual goose-bumps. Was she only imagining that she could hear a note of hungry male desire in his voice?

She couldn’t trust herself to speak to him, just as she didn’t dare to turn round, but suddenly he was turning her, holding her, finding her mouth with his own and kissing her with a silent ferocity that made her tremble from head to toe as her body dissolved in a wash of liquid pleasure that ran through her veins, melting any resistance.

The hands that had so clinically massaged her shoulders were now caressing her flesh beneath her loose top in a way that was anything but clinical! A savage, relentless ache began to torment her body. The warm, perfumed night air of the garden was suddenly replaced by the aroused male scent of Xavier’s body and Mariella reacted to it blindly, wrenching her mouth from beneath his and burying her face in the open throat of his robe so that she could breathe it—him—in more deeply, her lips questing for the satin warmth of his skin, her moan of pleasure locked in her throat as she gave her senses their head.

Beneath her lips his flesh felt firm and hot, the muscles of his throat taut, the curve where it met his shoulder tempting her to bite delicately into it. She heard him groan as his hand covered her breast, her nipple swelling eagerly against his palm. She felt the warmth of the night air against her skin as he pushed her simple cotton robe out of the way, her whole body shuddering in agonised pleasure as he cupped her breast and lowered his mouth to her waiting nipple.

The pleasure that surged through her tightened her body into a helpless yearning arc of longing, exposing her slender feminine flesh to his gaze and touch, offering her up to them, Mariella recognised distantly as she shook with hunger for him. Wanting him like this seemed so natural, and right, so inevitable, as though it were something that had been destined to happen.

Lifting her hand, she touched his face, their gazes meeting and locking, silently absorbing one another’s need. The look in his eyes made her body leap in eager heat, the sensation of the slightly rough rasp of his jaw against her palm as he turned his face to kiss it filling her with a thousand erotic images of how it was going to feel, to have him caressing even more sensitive and intimate parts of her body. She was, she realised, trembling violently, as Xavier stroked his hands down her back and lifted her against his body so that she could feel its hard arousal. She ached so badly for the feel of him inside her, for the fulfilment of his possession of her, the completion. His mouth was on her breast, her nipple, caressing it in a way that made her cry out for the hot, deep suckle of a more savage pleasure.

In the moonlight Xavier could see the swollen softness of her mouth and her breast, his breath catching in his lungs as his gaze travelled lower, to where the delicate mound of her sex seemed to push temptingly against the fine cotton of her briefs.

The thought of sliding his hand beneath them and holding her, parting the delicately shaped lips and opening up her moist inner self to his touch, his kiss, sent a shudder of hot need clawing through him. In the privacy of this garden he could show her, share with her, give her the pleasure he could see and feel her body was aching for. But here in his garden, in his villa, where she was under his protection, a member of his family… a woman as off limits as any of the carefully guarded daughters of his friends.

His hand was already splaying across her sex, his thumb probing tantalizingly.

Hot shafts of molten quivers darted from the point where Xavier’s hand rested so intimately on her to every sensitive nerve ending in her body. Within herself Mariella could feel her own femaleness expanding rhythmically in longing. More than anything else she wanted him there inside her. More than anything else she wanted him…

Her raw sound of shocked protest broke the silence as Xavier suddenly released her.

‘I already owe you one apology for my… my inappropriate behaviour towards you,’ she heard him telling her curtly. ‘Now it seems that I am guilty of repeating that behaviour. It will not… must not happen again!’

As he stood up and turned away from her, Mariella wondered if he was trying to reassure her—or warn her! Her face and then her whole body burned hot with mortified misery.

Her throat was too choked with emotion for her to be able to say anything, but in any case Xavier was already leaving, walking across the garden to the small, almost hidden doorway that led through into his own quarters, and to which only he had the key.

Was she too destined to be a secret garden to which only he held the key?

Fiercely she resisted the dangerous and unwanted thought. It was simply sex that had driven her… a physical need… a perfectly normal response to her own sexuality. There was nothing emotional about what she had felt. Nothing.

Pacing the floor of his own room, Xavier came to an abrupt decision. Since he couldn’t trust himself to be in the same place as Mariella and not want her, then he needed to put a safe distance between them, and the best way for him to do that would be for him to return to his desert oasis.

CHAPTER TEN

‘IT IS almost a week since he left and still Xavier remains at the oasis.’

Mariella forced herself to concentrate on her work instead of reacting to Madame Flavel’s comments.

The prince had come to see how she was progressing earlier in the week and he had brought his wife and their young family with him. The sight of the four dark-haired and dark-eyed children clustering round their parents had filled her with such a physical ache of longing that she had felt as though her womb had actually physically contracted.

She was desperate to have her own child, Mariella recognised. And not just because she was missing Fleur. Fleur’s birth might have detonated her biological clock, setting it ticking away with such frantic urgency, but the longing she felt now was beginning to consume her, eating into her dreams and her emotions.

Now she felt she understood why she had wanted Xavier so much. Her body had recognised him as a perfect potential baby provider! Knowing that had in a way eased a lot of the anxiety she had been feeling; the fear she couldn’t bear to admit that she might actually have fallen in love with him. Now, though, she felt secure that her emotional defences had not been breached. Now it was easy for her to admit to herself just how much she had wanted him and how much she still wanted him. She wanted him because she wanted him to give her a child!

It made so much sense! Didn’t she remember reading somewhere that a woman naturally and instinctively responded to the ancient way in which nature had programmed her and that was to seek the best genes she could for her child? Quite obviously her body had recognised that Xavier’s genes were superlative and her brain fully endorsed her body’s recognition.

And this of course was why she was being bombarded by her body and her brain with messages, longings, desires, images that all pointed in the same direction. Xavier’s direction! Her maternal urges were quite definitely on red alert!

‘Xavier has telephoned to say that he will be remaining at the oasis for another week,’ Xavier’s great-aunt informed Mariella with a small sigh as they sat down for dinner. ‘It must be dull here for you, chérie with only your work to occupy you and me for company.’

‘Not at all,’ Mariella denied.

‘Non? But you do miss la petite bébé?’

Now it was Mariella’s turn to sigh.

‘Yes, I do,’ she admitted.

‘Then perhaps you should consider having enfants of your own,’ Madame Flavel told her. ‘I certainly regret the fact that I was not blessed with children. I envied my sister very much in that respect. I have to confess I cannot understand why two people like Xavier and yourself, who anyone can see are born to be parents, should decide so determinedly against marriage.

‘You are working very hard on your frieze. It would do you good to have a few days off.’

She had been working very hard—but if truth were told, the frieze was practically finished. But Mariella had been painstakingly refining it to make sure it was absolutely perfect. Could she take a few days off? To do what? Have even more time to miss Fleur and to ache for a child of her own? Even more time to wish passionately that Xavier had not brought an end to their intimacy before they had… If only she had pressed him a little harder, persuaded… seduced him to the point where he had not been able to stop, she considered daringly, then right now she could already be carrying within her the beginnings of her own child!

Restlessly her thoughts started to circle inside her head. Once they had finished eating Madame Flavel retired to her own room, leaving Mariella to walk through their private garden on her own. If only Xavier were here in the villa now, she could go to him. And what? Demand that he take her to bed and impregnate her?

Oh, yes, she could just see him agreeing to that!

Why would she have to demand? She was a woman, wasn’t she? And Xavier was a man… He had already shown her that he could be aroused to desire for her…

But he wasn’t here, was he? He was at the oasis.

The oasis… Closing her eyes, Mariella allowed herself to picture him there. That night when he had thought that she was Tanya, he had come so close to possessing her. Her whole body was aching for him now, aching with all the ferocity of a child-hungry woman whose womb was empty!

Irritably, Mariella threw down her sketch-pad, chewing on her bottom lip as she glowered at the images she had drawn: babies… all of them possessing Xavier’s unmistakable features. She had hardly slept all night, and when she had it had merely been to be tormented by such sensually erotic dreams of Xavier that they had made her cry out in longing for him. It was as though even her dreams, her own subconscious, were reinforcing her desire for Xavier’s child.

In fact the only thing about her that was still trying to fight against that wanting was… was what? Fear… Timidity… Did she really want to look back in years to come and face the fact that she had simply not had the courage to reach out for what she wanted?