Black Ice - Anne Stuart [7]
“How available will she be?” Bastien spoke in German this time. “I may be in need of a little recreation.”
“Get your mind out of your pants, Bastien!” Madame Lambert chided him. “We don’t need your womanizing complicating matters. Men have a habit of confiding all sorts of unfortunate things when they’re between a woman’s legs.”
Chloe blinked, trying not to react as Bastien moved into her line of view. His smile was slow, secretive and impossibly sexy. “My wife tells me I fuck in total silence,” he said.
“Let’s not put it to the test,” Hakim said. “Once we’re finished here you can follow her back to Paris and screw her brains out. In the meantime we have a job to do.” He switched back to English. “I’m sorry for all this conversation, mademoiselle. As you can guess, only half of us understand the same language, and it gets very confusing. From now on we will have no languages other than French and English. Is that understood?”
Bastien was looking at her from beneath his hooded eyes. “Crystal clear,” he said in English. “I can always wait.”
“Wait, monsieur?” Chloe asked innocently.
A mistake. He turned the full force of his gaze on her, and the effect was startling. His eyes were very dark, and she wondered if anything even reflected off their opaque surface. She hoped she wouldn’t be in the position to find out. She hoped she wasn’t entirely without common sense. The man was undoubtedly gorgeous. He was also, undoubtedly, way out of her league.
“Wait for a late supper, mademoiselle,” he said smoothly. Before she realized what he intended he’d taken her hand and brought it to his mouth. She’d had her hand kissed before—it wasn’t an uncommon occurrence even in modern-day Europe. But it had always been by polite old men, flirting without meaning anything by it. Bastien Toussaint’s mouth on the back of her hand was neither polite nor meaningless, but he dropped it before she could pull it away.
“I’m certain you’re hungry, mademoiselle,” Hakim said. “Marie will take you to your room and see that a tray is brought. If you’re interested in exploring the grounds you have only to ask and one of the gardeners will take you on a tour. It’s a bit cold for swimming right now, though the pool is heated, and Americans are such a hardy race.”
“I don’t remember if I brought a swimsuit,” she said, wondering what the hell Sylvia had packed for her.
“You can always go without, Mademoiselle Chloe,” Bastien said in silken tones.
It should have been her first inkling that he was interested in her, though she couldn’t quite figure out why he was, when he’d barely seemed to acknowledge their introduction. Maybe he’d decided she was just the best of slim pickings.
But she wasn’t going to let him unnerve her. “It’s definitely too cold for that,” she said cheerfully. “I imagine if I want any exercise I’ll just go for walks.”
“You must be careful, Mademoiselle Chloe,” Ricetti spoke up in heavily accented French. “It’s hunting season, and there’s no telling where a stray bullet might come from. Not to mention that the guard dogs roam free at night and they’re quite merciless. If you want to go for a walk make sure you have someone to keep you company. You wouldn’t want to accidentally wander into someplace…unsafe.”
Was it a warning, or a threat, or a little bit of both? And what the hell was going on here? What had Sylvia gotten her into?
Sex and violence, she reminded herself. Just looking at Bastien filled the quota for sex, and violence wasn’t actually her cup of tea. Still, for a weekend it would, at the least, be entertaining, and she would be foolish to think that she was in any kind of danger. This was modern-day France, after all, and she was surrounded by staid, ordinary businesspeople. She’d been reading too many of Sylvia