‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she croaked, and he smiled crookedly at her.
‘Yes, you do,’ he corrected gently. ‘I can feel the way you’re trembling right now. You’re still in my system. It doesn’t make any sense, because you’re the last woman I should still be interested in taking to bed, but against all odds you are. Do you think it’s because what we had ended under such...bizarre circumstances?’
He sounded genuinely curious and his voice was calm, neutral and conversational. In fact, she had to sift through what he had just said and replay it in her head just to establish that she hadn’t misheard it.
That he still wanted to take her to bed!
She tugged her hand and he tightened his grip on it and focused on her, his fabulous eyes lazy with intent. ‘Now you’re going to tell me that you have no idea what I’m talking about, aren’t you? Maybe you’ll express horror that I could even suggest such a thing. Am I on the right track?’
Spot on, Abigail thought. She licked her lips and tried to still her racing pulse. He was still the sexiest man she had ever laid eyes on in her life, but she was not attracted to him. Because you couldn’t possibly be attracted to a man who had insulted, offended and disbelieved you. That just didn’t make sense.
But her skin was prickling and dampness had pooled between her legs. Fascinated and mesmerised, she stared at him, sucked in by the low, honeyed seductiveness of his voice.
Leandro could feel the racing of her pulse under his thumb. Her skin was so soft and his recall of her so clear. Just touching her like this made him remember how it had felt to touch her all over, to hear the little cries and whimpers she’d made as she climbed towards an orgasm, the way she’d moved and wriggled under him. He was so turned on he had to adjust his stance to try and subdue the discomfort of his arousal.
His eyes drifted downwards to her parted lips.
Abigail knew that he was going to kiss her before his mouth covered hers and her body strained towards his, as natural an instinct as a flower leaning towards a source of light. His lips, when they touched hers, detonated a series of little thrilling explosions inside her. She wanted him. She’d never stopped wanting him. She hated him and was terrified of being here, in his company, carrying a secret she knew could be as devastating as dynamite, yet she couldn’t get enough of his kiss.
With a helpless little groan, her fingers curled into his jumper and she angrily pulled him towards her even as he propelled her towards the wall without breaking physical contact.
His hands were hot and hungry on her, reaching to tug the prissy white shirt free from her trousers, then pushing underneath the shirt to cup her breasts and massage them until her nipples were pushing against the lace in a desperate bid to be caressed.
Leandro was shocked at how fabulously familiar her body was and even more shocked at how novel he still found the experience. Familiarity, in this instance, was showing no signs of breeding contempt.
He wanted, he needed more than just some schoolboy groping through a bra, and he discovered that his hands were shaking as he undid the tiny pearl buttons of her blouse. Given the option, he would have ripped the thing open, so desperate was he to suckle what his hands were touching, but taking his time at least had the advantage of imposing some control on his runaway libido.
Buttons finally undone, he delicately peeled aside her blouse and lifted her bra, pushing it up so that her generous breasts were on show.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said in a ragged undertone. He held her breasts in his big hands and rubbed his thumbs over her nipples, watching as they promptly stood to attention, the pink tips hardening and peaking under the caress. He looked at her. ‘I want you so much it hurts,’ he confessed, and Abigail shuddered because this couldn’t be more wrong and yet it felt so right. ‘Tell me right now that you don’t want me back...’
‘WANT YOU BACK? Want you back?’ Abigail fought the heat suffusing her body and pushed him away but her hands were shaking as she busied herself trying to rearrange her clothing.
In response, Leandro planted both hands on either side of her, caging her in, and he looked at her without batting an eyelid. ‘Shameful admission, I know,’ he murmured. ‘But the truth, nevertheless. I know you’re not acquainted with the fine art of truth telling, but personally I find it rarely pays to ignore it. And the truth is that we’re still where we were a year and a half ago—burning up for one another.’
This time Abigail did laugh. ‘How can you call me a liar in one breath and then tell me that I’m still stupid enough to fancy you in the other?’ Backed against the wall, and trapped by the sheer steel wall of his body inches away from her, she folded her arms defiantly and stared at him.
‘Because lust has nothing to do with whether you like someone or not.’
‘Maybe not for you!’
‘Shall we put that to the test? Oh, we already did. You failed.’
Abigail could feel the little nerve jumping in her neck. She should really hate all this cave man, macho stuff but the truth was that Leandro did it all so well. He’d always had that intensely masculine air of cool self-assurance and a careless assumption that the world would jump when he told it to. She’d found it novel, strange and a massive turn on all at the same time and she hadn’t even been able to work out why. She just had.
Now, he was exercising that self-assurance again and she could feel herself getting addled.
‘Leandro, this is crazy,’ she muttered. ‘If it hadn’t been for your ex-fiancée, I wouldn’t even be here. We wouldn’t have met again.’
‘I wish you’d stop calling her my ex-fiancée,’ Leandro said irritably. ‘That was all wishful thinking on her part.’
‘You were very well suited.’
‘Really? I had no idea you knew her.’
‘Oh, stop being so sarcastic, Leandro. You know what I mean.’
Leandro flushed darkly. In the space of only a handful of weeks, she had become the only woman who had never shied away from saying exactly what she thought. She hadn’t been impressed into obedience and he had liked that. ‘We’re moving off topic here,’ he drawled. ‘We were talking about this thing that’s still here between us. You were busy trying to pretend that there was nothing and I was on the brink of proving to you that there is.’
‘I didn’t say that there was...that there was nothing,’ Abigail denied in a harried undertone. ‘But whatever there is, it’s inappropriate.’
‘I don’t care about what happened in the past,’ Leandro lied smoothly. He cared all right but, in the end, this was an even better situation in a way. Shorn of emotion, this became a sating of their physical appetites and the most natural thing in the world. It was unthinkable that she would dig her heels in and deny what was obvious and, if she did, then he had every intention of using every bit of ammunition to hand to batter down her defences.
She was probably right. If she hadn’t shown up on his doorstep, their paths would never have crossed again.
But she had shown up and he had seen in a blinding flash that she was still in his system and would always be in his system unless he did something about it.
‘But I do,’ Abigail said stubbornly. ‘I didn’t have the greatest of backgrounds, and I was a coward for not admitting that to you from the beginning, but I didn’t deserve...’ She looked away, bright red, teetering between calling him out for the blind loyalty to his sister which had made him judge her without giving her a fair hearing, and just running as fast as she could away from him and the crazy feelings he had stirred