The Mills & Boon Stars Collection. Cathy Williams

really hungry,’ Lilah confessed as a manservant moved forward to pull out a chair and lingered to whisk a napkin across her lap.

      ‘You should enjoy the meal. Stefan’s wife, Marie, is my cook, and she was a chef in a Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris before they came to work for me,’ Bastien remarked while the wine was poured.

      ‘You have a huge staff here...you live like a king,’ Lilah commented helplessly as soon as they were alone.

      ‘I do when I have the time to enjoy the chateau—which is rarely,’ Bastien qualified drily. ‘When I’m travelling on business I eat out or cook for myself.’

      ‘You can cook?’ Lilah said in surprise.

      ‘Of course I can. I’m not spoilt. I’ve never been spoilt. But I do appreciate the best things in life.’

      ‘Is your mother still alive?’ she asked abruptly as the first course was served.

      Bastien studied her in silence, black brows drawing together in a frown. ‘You’re very curious about my life.’

      Lilah shrugged her lightly clad shoulder. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

      Bastien set down his glass. ‘My mother died in a car accident when I was a child and I had to go and live with my father.’

      Lilah toyed with the artfully presented courgette flowers topping the tiny onion tart on her plate. ‘And how was that?’

      ‘Hideous,’ Bastien admitted grimly. ‘Anatole’s wife, Cleta, hated me on sight. I was the living proof of her husband’s infidelity. As for my half-brother... Leo was an adored only child and suddenly I turned up. Naturally he resented me. But there were some advantages to my new home,’ he conceded, his dark eyes veiled with mystery, his beautiful mouth compressing.

      ‘Such as...?’ The sliver of onion tart Lilah had selected was melting in her mouth.

      Bastien frowned at her continuing interest. ‘It was a fresh start for me in many ways. I was able to see Anatole regularly and I went to a much better school.’

      ‘Obviously you’re close to your father,’ Lilah commented, relieved to hear that hint of indulgent warmth in his dark drawl when he referred to his parent, because really it was brutally obvious to her that Bastien had been cursed by the most utterly miserable childhood.

      ‘Yes. I’m very fond of Anatole. He may have been a push-over for the wrong women, but as a father, when I needed him, he was the very best,’ Bastien stated with quiet pride.

      Relief filled Lilah that there had been someone loving in Bastien’s life, and she wondered why the idea of nobody having cared for him as a child should disturb her so much. His answers to her questions, however, had given her a certain insight into what had made him so tough and unyielding.

      ‘But that’s enough about my life, glikia mou,’ Bastien continued, smooth as glass. ‘Tell me about Josh Burrowes.’

      Thrown off balance in her turn, Lilah stiffened, her spine straightening. ‘There’s nothing to tell. We were on the same course at uni. He’s one of my friends.’

      Bastien lounged back in his seat as their plates were cleared and the main course served. ‘But obviously Josh wants to be something more. You should’ve told him the truth.’

      Lilah’s delicate bone structure tightened. ‘I gave my friends the same story you suggested I use with my family. I said you’d offered me a job.’

      Bastien rested his shimmering dark gaze on the voluptuous promise of her pink lips as she savoured the tender lamb on her plate. ‘But you should have come clean for Josh’s benefit and told him that you are mine.’

      Her small white teeth gritted as if she had trodden barefoot on a stone. ‘I am not yours, Bastien.’

      ‘You are,’ Bastien purred in immediate contradiction, his accented drawl vibrating through her slender taut frame. ‘I know it every time I look at you. No hunger this powerful is one-sided.’

      Lilah concentrated on her meal, deeming silence the most diplomatic response. She was very, very attracted to him, she admitted inwardly, but no way did she owe him that amount of truth.

      As she studied him a snaking curl of warmth stirred low in her pelvis and something tightened even deeper inside her, making her shift uneasily in her seat. The hard, masculine lines of his compellingly beautiful face and the suppressed ferocity of his stunningly intense eyes welded her attention to him.

      The first time she had seen Bastien she had known that she had never seen a more beautiful male specimen, and in the two years that had since passed that fact remained the absolute truth. Bastien was gorgeous. She knew it and he had to know it too.

      Perspiration beaded her short upper lip, and as a member of staff stepped up to the table to refresh their wine glasses she finally dragged her attention from Bastien and breathed in deep.

      ‘Stefan’s wife is a fantastic chef,’ she remarked, after savouring the first mouthful of a roasted pear dessert served with chocolate sauce and then pushing the plate away in defeat. ‘But I can’t find room for another bite...’

      ‘Coffee?’ Bastien prompted.

      ‘No, thanks...’ Lilah tensed as he rose fluidly out of his seat and strolled, jungle-cat-graceful, towards her.

      ‘I react like a teenager around you,’ Bastien murmured thickly. ‘I can’t wait one minute longer.’

      Lilah pushed her hands down on the table-edge and levered herself upright, the layers of her dress spilling out round her in peach abundance. Time to pay the piper, she thought crazily.

      Bastien didn’t immediately touch her. Instead he lowered his dark head and circled her mouth almost teasingly with his own, touching delicate nerve-endings that screamed with awareness to send pulses of heat shooting down through her. Her head swam a little...her knees wobbled.

      With a guttural sound low in his throat, Bastien swept her up in his arms.

      ‘I was so angry with you last night when I heard about you kissing Josh,’ he told her unexpectedly as he carried her up the stone staircase, contriving that feat as easily as if she weighed no more than a child. ‘Don’t let another man touch you in any way while you’re with me.’

      Her senses still drowning from that extraordinarily intoxicating kiss, Lilah looked up at him with dazed blue eyes and blinked. ‘Not much risk of that.’

      ‘Why not? You’re a beauty. I saw it... Josh saw it,’ he grated in harsh reminder.

      ‘But you see things in me that I don’t,’ she muttered uncomfortably, thinking of the conventionally beautiful fashion models he generally took to his bed.

      In comparison, she was an aberration. Each and every one of her predecessors that she had seen had been tall, blonde and classically lovely, with Marielle the perfect example of that ideal. Lilah, however, was small and kind of skinny. She had certainly been way too skinny and small in the bust and hip department for any of the boys to look at while she was at school, at an age where having curves had seemed so very important.

      ‘I know that I want you,’ Bastien spelt out. ‘Everything else fades in the face of that.’

      ‘Everything?’ Lilah questioned in disbelief.

      ‘Everything...’ Bastien husked, breathing in the coconut scent of her shampoo, the faint aroma of the cosmetics she had applied, the fragrance that was uniquely and alluringly hers. And those eyes, he savoured, those sapphire-blue eyes that shone like jewels...

      He settled her down on the bed in her room, and the hunger driving him spooked him more than just a little as he looked down at her. That hunger would fade as soon as he’d had her, he told himself cynically, and in all likelihood even the sex would be a disappointment. How could it be otherwise when she had no experience?