“Come on. Show’s over.”

“I guess we can cross ‘make you watch a live lesbian sex show’ off that list, too,” Lucien said dryly, as he guided her along the corridor. Sophie couldn’t look at him. Her head was spinning. Too many sexual images. Too many positions. Too many emotions she hadn’t expected and didn’t know how to handle. She was ashamed of her reaction back there in that room, embarrassed by the fact that she’d found it so erotic.

Lucien was pushing her too far. She had no clue who she was any more, how to act, how to return to normal after he’d done with her.

“Please, Lucien. Can we go back now?”

She turned to him, and his eyes scanned her face for a few silent seconds.

“Enough for now, huh?” He cupped her cheek.

“More than.” Sophie said, her throat suddenly clogged with tears. This was all wrong, wrong, wrong.

“I want to go home.” Sophie gathered her bag from Lucien’s bedroom as soon as they reached his suite. She was weary more than tired, jaded more than enlightened, and she wanted to be alone to keep her own counsel.  Lucien seemed to rob her of the ability for rational thought; one touch and her resolve melted like an ice cube faced with a blowtorch. She didn’t want to melt any more. If only she could stay cool and composed around him, then none of this would have happened.

Lucien put his head on one side.

“You could always sleep here.”

Sophie shook her head and glanced away from him.

“I need to go home, Lucien.” She knew her voice sounded watery, probably because she’d had to force it past the tears that welled up in her throat.

Lucien looked as if he was going to say something but then thought better of it. He reached for his keys off the desk and tossed them up in the air.

“That’s all right.” He caught his keys and nodded towards the door. “I’ll drive you now.”

Sophie puffed out hard, relieved that he’d chosen not to battle with her. “Thank you,” she mumbled, following behind him as he locked the door and headed for the fire exit again. She gulped in lungfuls of cool night air as she clicked her way down the metal fire steps, beyond grateful that Lucien hadn’t steered her back out through the club. She couldn’t face all of that again tonight.

He blipped the car and she slid into the safety of the leather interior, the glass and metal around her a welcome wall separating her from the debauchery beyond.

And then Lucien was inside with her, the grandmaster of all of the debauchery, and she wasn’t safe in the car, or anywhere. Because if Lucien was around, she wasn’t safe from herself.

They drove in silence, the car eating up the miles like candy. Sophie’s body ached, but her heart ached more. Everything was such a jumble in her head. She loved Dan. She wanted Lucien. Sex with Dan was… she squeezed her eyes together. Sex with Dan was boring. She just hadn’t known it until Lucien had stripped the scales from her eyes. Jesus, she hadn’t even had sex with Lucien, not properly, but he’d still excited her more in the last two days that Dan had in the last few years.

Her eyes slid to his profile as he watched the road, handling the sports car with easy expertise. Lights from street signs and shop fronts flashed multi- coloured shadows across the slopes and angles of his face. Neon greens, hot pinks, dangerous reds. Foreign, yet familiar. A beautiful stranger. He’d thrown on a battered leather jacket over his T-shirt, lending him the air of a louche model from an expensive magazine. He wore his beauty with no apology, just as he made no apology for the business he’d chosen for himself. He was a man totally at ease in his own skin, and seemed to live a life without compromise or convention. Sophie couldn’t help but envy him.

He eased the car to a stop outside her house; he hadn’t asked where she lived and it came as no surprise that he already knew. He’d taken one look at her and seemed to see her innermost secrets, some of which were so deep that she hadn’t even been aware of them herself.

“Home sweet home,” he murmured as he idled the engine. “Are you going to ask me in for coffee?”

The idea of Lucien inside her house, inside Dan’s house, horrified Sophie. To see him sit in Dan’s chair… drink from Dan’s cup… it was just too wrong. Inviting him over the threshold blurred all the lines, made him part of their marriage rather than in the distinct space Sophie had set aside for him in her mind.

“Or you could just ask me in for sex. I prefer sex to coffee.”

“Lucien…” she sighed and twisted her fingers in her lap. “Lucien, I can’t work for you anymore. This is all such a mess.” She shook her head and stared out of the window, lips pursed. “I can’t believe I’ve done any of this.”

He twisted to face her, but she refused to meet his gaze.

“You’re wrong,” he said. “The mistake would be for you to scuttle back under your rock and hide from who you really are.”

Anger licked hot inside her.

“Oh come on, Lucien. What do you really know about me?” This man didn’t really know her, not in any way that mattered. Their relationship had followed none of the conventional routes; he knew her intimately and yet barely at all.

But then there was the sex. Oh God, the sex.

“I know enough. I know you’ve felt more alive in the last couple of days than you have for a long time. You were on pilot light when you came to me. Now…” he shrugged. “Now, you’re blazing.”

Sophie closed her eyes against the tears that threatened. She wasn’t given to crying, but being around Lucien seemed to intensify all of her emotions. He definitely made her come ten times more powerfully than she’d ever known before. She groaned and pushed the heels of her palms into her eyes and rubbed hard.

She couldn’t lie. He was right. Maybe she had been drifting through her married life in a state of unknowing unfulfilment, but that didn’t excuse her behaviour. She cringed at the idea of herself in the club, in that room, watching those women have sex, with Lucien’s erection nestled in her hand.

“Go inside, Sophie, get some sleep.” He gunned the engine. “We start after lunch again tomorrow. Don’t be late.”

Sophie already knew enough to realise that there was little point in arguing with him. She needed to escape into the sanctuary of her own four walls, to get Lucien and his flash car off her driveway.

He clearly didn’t believe she could resist him.