She stared down at the pale, moonlit sands. The dog was dancing through the waves excitedly, the faint splash of his movements coming clearly to her ears.

'What are you going to do?' Luc asked, his eyes on her averted profile.

She turned to look at him dully. 'I don't know.'

Luc drew in his lower lip. 'Don't face him with it, Lissa. It wouldn't be wise of you to do that. Just keep your eyes open from now on-stop seeing him in a romantic mist and start thinking. It doesn't take much digging to show what's going on underneath the tourist tinsel. All you have to do is use your eyes and your ears.' He paused, added, 'And your brain, Lissa. For God's sake, use that.' 'I wish you hadn't told me,' she broke out miserably.

Luc's brows twitched together in sharp anger. 'You would have preferred to stay in dreamy ignorance, would you? And married him? What then, Lissa? Are you prepared to share him with the lady in Joubeau Street? And turn a blind eye to his commercial activities?' ‘I don’t know,’ Lissa groaned, confused and bewildered. 'No, of course not. But Chris… I can't believe it.'

'You mean you don't want to,' Luc agreed. 'It would swallow you up too, Lissa. Don't you realise that? How long could you stay blind? And what would it do to you to find out later? You're changing already. That song you sang tonight-you sang it differently this time. You may not know it, but the scales are already falling and you may not like what he makes you. Corruption isn't always as simple as it sounds. It eats you up inch by inch like rust spreading on metal.'

'Chris loves me!' Her voice was low and he bent to hear her.

'Sure he does,' Luc said curtly. 'You're not only very sweet, you're potentially very sexy. You don't know it yourself yet. But he can see it and he's prepared to wait until you wake up. But he means to be the one to wake you. Brandon believes in monopolies. He's had you tied up and waiting for him for two years while he eases his frustration elsewhere. Lissa, open your eyes and look at him.'

She opened her eyes, but in the moonlight she was looking at Luc, her face pale and disturbed.

He lifted a hand to touch her cheek gently. She did not move, her green eyes enormous.

Luc kissed her softly, his lips moulding her own, brushing over them and returning.

Lissa drew back, breathing painfully. 'Don't,' she said under her breath.

Luc's hand dropped. He sat watching her.

'Why did you tell me all this?' she asked, staring at him.

His mouth twisted. 'Don't you think it was time someone did?'

'But why you? You paid someone to tell you these stories, you said.'

'I paid someone to dig up what they could about him,' Luc said. 'I hadn't expected to hear all that. I'd already realised he ran the casino like an armed camp. The rest of the stuff came as a surprise to me.'

'Why did you get someone to investigate Chris in the first place?'

Luc ran a hand through his black hair, grimacing. 'I was curious about him.'

'There's more to it than that,' she accused.

For a moment the blue eyes were as hard as steel, glittering between their shielding lids, then he shrugged. 'That's right, I told you, Brandon has something I want and I was trying to discover if he had any weak spots.'

Her body ran with a strange, cold flame. She looked away and Luc moved closer. She glanced back, shivering.

'Come away with me, Lissa,' he whispered. 'Let me ' take you out of all this-you can't marry Brandon.'

She was too confused to know what she felt or thought. She shook her head, feeling so brittle she would snap in two if he touched her.

'You're worse than he is,' she said bitterly. 'At least Chris loves me. Even if he's all the things you say he is-he still loves me. I may be stupid, but I'm not so stupid that I don't know what you want.'

'Do you?' He breathed close to her, his hard features unreadable. 'What do you think X want, Lissa?'

She turned her head sharply to look away. 'The answer is no, Mr Ferrier.'

'You don't even know the question,' he said mockingly.

She felt a peculiar melting sensation deep inside her as he moved even closer. 'Don't touch me,' she said shakily, jerking away and getting to her feet.

'I'm going to touch you,' Luc whispered, slowly raising himself from the sand. 'You want me to touch you.'

She shook her head fiercely. 'No!'

'Liar,' he breathed, smiling, 'From the minute I saw you on the beach that first morning I wanted to make love to you.'

'Is that why you told me all those lies about Chris?' she asked angrily.

'They were the truth,' said Luc. 'And so is this, Lissa

She pushed at his chest as he drew her closer, his arms going round her. He laughed at her impotent attempts to escape the tightening circle in which he held her. 'Will you let go? I won't____________________' she began furiously, and was silenced by the driving force of a kiss that was unlike any kiss she had ever been given.

Luc's hands were behind her, pressing her against him, pinning her to the lean hardness of his own body, and his mouth plumbed hers, the warm moist invasion leaving her shaking. A groan escaped her and she tried to shut her mind to the insidious, coaxing movement of his hands as they stroked down her back and caressed her hips. Her hands dug into his chest, clenching. Her mouth opened weakly. She felt and heard the hoarse sigh Luc gave.

'Liss,' he muttered, his kiss flaring hungrily. His mouth crushed her lips, the demand he made so fierce that she swayed in his arms.

She had her eyes dosed. All around them the palms breathed softly and the sea whispered on the moonlit sands. Luc's thighs were moulded to her body, forcing her to recognise the desire his mouth was reinforcing. Her hands slowly moved up to his shoulders, dung there, trembling against the warmth of his shirt.

Suddenly Luc lifted her off the ground and then lowered her again, but he had come with her and her eyes flew open in shock as she realised that she was lying full length on the sand with Luc's hard body pressing her down.

'Don't!' she groaned, pushing at his wide shoulders.

He looked at her with a twisted little smile. 'You're such an intoxicating mixture of innocence and fire, Lissa. You blush like a baby, but your eyes beckon. You don't even know what you're doing half the time, do you? It's all instinctive.'

She was too shaken by the wild tremors running through her body to be able to say a word, looking up at him and as much afraid of herself as of Luc.

'Come away with me,' he whispered. 'You can't stay here, and if you're honest you knew as well as I did the minute we met that this was going to happen.'

'No,' she muttered, stiffening under the powerful body which held her down with such ease.

'Don't lie to yourself,' he smiled. 'As soon as I set eyes on you I knew you were going to end up in my bed.'

Shock ran through her like fire. Her skin burned and her throat ached. She met the fierce flare of his blue eyes and shook her head dumbly.

'Your mouth promises so much more than you're prepared to admit,' he said huskily. He caressed her lips with his thumb, smiling at the helpless shiver which ran through her.

'Let go of me,' Lissa forced out through dry lips. 'You're not seducing me, Mr Ferrier, so get your hands off me!'

The smile vanished from his face. The blue eyes hardened and Dickered with heat. 'Aren't I?' He lowered his head and she felt his lips on the underside of her chin, his breath warm on her flesh. 'Aren't I, Liss?' The deep, breathed question sent waves of panic along her nerves.

'No,' she whispered, trembling so hard it was painful.

He lifted his head and the blue eyes mocked her coolly. 'What a little liar you are,' he drawled. 'No? That isn't the truth, is it, Lissa? You make all the correct responses-trained to a hair by the good nuns, I've no doubt. But even while you're mouthing all that shocked stuff about my wicked liberty-taking, your eyes are begging me to go on.'