Broken French: A widowed, billionaire, single dad romance by Natasha Boyd (books like beach read txt) 📕

in the dim corner. I felt curious eyes on me from the darkness and dismissed them.

“Is it true?” I stalked up to him.

He dragged his eyes from my face to my feet and back again. “Is what true?”

“You want to send me home,” I snapped. “You emailed Tabitha. Don’t be dense.”

He hissed and his eyes flashed in warning. He circled me, and I turned with him. “Evan?” he asked.

“It wasn’t Evan.” Shit, I didn’t want Tabitha getting in trouble either. “I overheard you.”

“No, you didn’t.” He stepped toward me, and I retreated to the darkness of the wall next to the couch. There was no way I would sit down and share a nice congenial moment with him. I needed to clear the air, and then I was getting out of here. There was a danger to this man tonight. Who was I kidding? There was a danger to him every night.

Why did everyone else see a kind, handsome, and broken pussycat?

All I saw was a lethal predator who I felt sure had the means to snatch my heart from my chest with a single swipe.

He loomed.

“What are you doing?” I gasped as my back hit the wall and he kept coming. “Y-you’re scaring me.”

“Good.” His palm smacked the wall by my head, and the smell of stale, smoky and alcohol fueled club air sifted slowly into linen and rough pine wood. “Because you scare the shit out of me,” he said. “Tu me détruis.”

I swallowed but my throat was stuck. “Wh-what does that mean?”

He leaned in, nose skimming up my cheek, inhaling me. We’d never been this close. My body lit up like a glowing tinder.

My breathing grew shallow.

Fingers lightly pressed into the hollow of my throat, resting. His skin to mine. “You don’t seem like a girl who scares easily.” The words, delivered so softly right into my ear, made every molecule of my skin vibrate.

“I’m not,” I managed, though I knew that wasn’t what he’d said in French. My hands, pressed to the wall on either side of my hips, dropped and I fisted them to keep from reaching for his waist. To stop my fingers curling into the belt loops of his jeans and tugging him closer. I was enclosed in the energy of his body, aching. But resisting. This was my boss. And he’d taken leave of his senses. One of us had to keep our head.

“What about me scares you?” he asked.

I squeezed my eyes closed, like I could gather my courage. I dragged in air laden with his woody scent. The same air that was weighed down with the heady and heavy atmosphere of the club. We were suspended in time. His face hovered next to mine, his mouth by my ear. My nerve endings screamed for contact as his every exhale stirred across my skin.

“The way you make me feel,” I uttered finally. Oh, Josie. You did not.

His body stilled. His breathing faltered. “Again.”

“What?”

“Tell me again,” he growled in my ear.

“I’m scared of the way you make me feel,” I said louder. “It’s not … it’s—”

“Oui,” was all he muttered. Yes. The fingers at my throat, flattened into a hot palm against my chest. “Oui,” he said again.

I blinked as my breath stuttered. Okay, this was happening.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

My fingers found Xavier’s waist, the soft nub of his linen shirt, and then curling into the tense muscle beneath, hard lines that trembled at the contact.

He trembled as I touched him. What sorcery was this?

The darkness of the club and the loud beat of the music seemed to channel all my senses to feel the scent of him. Telling him I was scared of the way he made me feel might have been the most reckless thing I’d ever done. Until I’d started touching him. But I couldn’t make my hands stop.

Against my ear, I heard his breathing falter as my fingers moved. Then my name tore through his lips in his French accent. “Joséphine,” and my insides spontaneously melted.

I turned my face, my mouth finding the rough skin of his jaw. I wanted, no needed, him to kiss me.

A tremor snaked through him under my palms.

And slowly, deliberately, our bodies moved and pressed closer.

I breathed calmly, consciously, trying to slow this heady rush that felt like I was plummeting downward. I had to keep my head, but it was almost impossible. I was giddy, flying, and pinned to the ground with lust and panic all at the same time.

His palm slipped up my throat and around to cup my nape. My skin burned.

A rough, denim-covered knee touched mine and pressed slowly, insistently, parting my legs. A hard thigh slipped between mine.

Oh my God.

My body arched, my mouth opened, and a whimper escaped. His mouth was so close, a slight turn of my face pressed against the sublime roughness of his jaw, and I could have it. But his mouth remained stubbornly out of reach. He was going to kiss me, right?

What was this torture? And when had I lost all control of this situation?

The hand against the wall by my head was suddenly an arm, hard as steel around my waist, locking me against him as heat blazed through me.

He growled in what I thought was a French curse, and his hand drew my hair into a tight fist, tilting my face up.

I was trapped. Unable to move.

His eyes in the dark seemed fevered and low-lidded. And then our mouths were there, millimeters apart. We breathed together. My heart hurled itself against my ribcage. My body throbbed and ached. And my hips made a small movement against him beyond my control.

“What about this?” he muttered into my breath, and his hips responded to mine and ground up in a slow roll. God. He was huge. And hard. “Does this scare you even more? We should both be fucking terrified.”

Holy shit. I was going to die. Arousal was going to cause an arrhythmia and my heart would stop. It burned through me. And