Bernice showed her into beautiful bedroom suite with yet more soft light spilling over a huge divan bed made up with crisp white linen. Dragging her eyes away from it, Natasha stared instead at a spectacular curving wall of glass back-dropped by an endless satin dark sky.
Bernice was talking to her in her stilted English, telling her where the bathroom was and that her luggage would arrive very soon.
Luggage, Natasha thought as the housekeeper finally left her alone. Did one hastily packed canvas holdall classify as luggage?
Dear God, how did I get to be standing here in a virtual stranger’s bedroom, waiting for my luggage? she then mocked herself, and wasn’t surprised when her gaze slid back to that huge divan bed, then flicked quickly away again before her imagination could conjure up an image of what they were going to be doing there soon.
Heart thumping too heavily in her chest, Natasha sent her restless eyes on a scan of the remainder of her spacious surroundings, which bore no resemblance at all to Leo’s very traditional Victorian London home. Here, cool white dominated with bold splashes of colour in the bright modern abstracts hanging from the walls and the jewel-blue cover she’d spied draped across the end of the bed.
Needing to do something—anything—to occupy her attention if she didn’t want to suffer a mad panic attack, she walked over to the curved wall of glass with the intention of checking out the view beyond it, but the glass took her by surprise when it started to open, parting in the middle with a smooth silent glide—activated, she guessed, by her body moving in line with a hidden sensor.
Stepping out of air-controlled coolness into stifling heat caught her breath for a second, then she was dropping her purse onto the nearest surface, which happened to be one of the several white rattan tables and chairs spread around out there, and she was being drawn across the floor’s varnished wood surface towards the twinkle of lights she could see beyond the white terrace railing, while still trying to push back the nervous flutters attacking her insides along with the deep sinking knowledge that she really should not be doing this.
A city of lights suddenly lay spread out beneath her, looking so glitteringly spectacular Natasha momentarily forgot her worries as she caught her breath once more. She’d been aware that they’d climbed up out of the city on the journey here from the airport, but she had not realised they’d climbed as high as this.
‘Welcome to Athens,’ a smooth, dark, warm velvet voice murmured lightly from somewhere behind her.
She hadn’t heard him come into the bedroom, and now tension locked her slender shoulders as she listened to his footsteps bring him towards her.
‘So, what do you think?’
His hands slid around her waist to draw her against him. ‘Fabulous,’ she offered, trying hard to sound calm when they both knew she wasn’t by the way she grew taut at his closeness. ‘Is—is that the Acropolis I can see lit up over there?’
A slender hand pointed out across the city. When she lowered it again, she found it caught by one of his.
‘With the told quarters of Monastiraki and the Plaka below it,’ he confirmed, taking her hand and laying it against her fluttering stomach, then keeping it there with the warm clasp of his. ‘Over there you can see Zappeion Megaron lit up, which stands in our National Gardens, and that way—’ he pointed with his other hand ‘—Syntagma Square…’
The whole thing turned a bit surreal from then on as Natasha stood listening to his quietly melodic voice describing the night view of Athens as if there were no sexual undercurrents busily at work. But those undercurrents were at work, like the tingling warmth of his body heat and the power of his masculine physicality as he pressed her back against him. She felt wrapped in him, trapped, surrounded and overwhelmed by a pulse-chasing vibration of intimacy that danced along her nerve-ends and fought with her need to breathe.
‘It is very dark with no moon tonight but can you see the Aegean in the distance lit by the lights from the port of Piraeus.’ She had to fight with herself to keep tuned into what he was saying. ‘After Bernice has served our dinner I will show you the view from the other terrace, but first I would like you to explain to me, pethi mou, what has changed in the last five minutes to scare you into the shakes?’
‘Leo…’ Impulsive, she seized the moment. ‘I can’t go through with this. I thought I could but I can’t.’ Slipping her hand out from beneath his, she turned to face him, ‘I need you to understand that this…’
Her words dried up when she found herself staring at his white-shirted front. He’d taken off his jacket and his tie had gone, the top couple of buttons on his shirt tugged open to reveal a bronzed V of warm skin and a deeply unsettling hint of curling black chest hair.
The air snagged in her chest, the important words—this will be my first time—lost in the new struggle she had with herself as her senses clamoured inside her like hungry beasts. She wanted him. She did not understand why or how she had become this attracted or so susceptible to him but it was there, dragging down on her stomach muscles and coiling around never before awakened erogenous zones.
‘We have a deal, Natasha,’ his level voice reminded her.
A deal. Pressing her trembling lips together, she nodded. ‘I know and I’m s-sorry but—’ Oh, God. She had to look away from him so she could finish. ‘This is too m-much, too quickly and I…’
‘And you believe I am about show my lack of finesse by jumping all over you and carrying you off to bed?’
‘Yes—n-no.’ His sardonic tone locked a frown to her brow.
‘Then what do you expect will happen next?’
‘Do you have to sound so casual about it?’ she snapped out, taking a step back so her lower spine hit the terrace rail. Discomforted and disturbed by the whole situation, she wrapped her arms across her front. ‘You might prefer to believe that I do this kind of thing on a regular basis, but I don’t.’
‘Ah,’ he drawled. ‘But you think that I do.’
‘No!’ she denied, flashing a glare up at him, then wished she hadn’t when she saw the cynically amused cut to his mouth. ‘I don’t think that.’
‘Good. Thank you,’ he added dryly.
‘I don’t know enough about you to know how you run your private life!’
‘Just as I know little about your private life,’ he pointed out. ‘So we will agree to agree that neither of us is without sexual experience and therefore can be sophisticated enough to acknowledge that we desire each other—with or without the deal we have struck.’
‘But I haven’t,’ she mumbled.
‘Haven’t—what?’ he sighed out.
Too embarrassed to look at him, cheeks flushed, Natasha stared at her feet. ‘Any sexual experience.’
There was one of those short, sharp silences, in which Natasha sucked on her lower lip. Then Leo released another sigh and this one kept on going until it had wrung itself out.
‘Enough, Natasha,’ he censured wearily. ‘I did not come out of the womb a week ago so let’s leave the play-acting behind us from now on.’
‘I’m not play-acting!’ Her head shot up on the force of her insistence. All she saw was the flashing glint of his impatience as he reached out and pulled her towards him. Her own arms unfolded so she could use her hands to push him away again, but by then his mouth was on hers, hot, hard and angrily determined. Her fists flailing uselessly, he drew her into his arms and once again she was feeling the full powerful length of him against her body. Without even knowing it happened she went from fighting to clinging to his shoulders as her parted mouth absorbed the full passionate onslaught of his kiss.
There