‘Kayla...’
The way he spoke her name never failed to turn Kayla’s bones to jelly.
‘Say it again,’ she murmured huskily.
‘What?’ He looked tense, she thought, and mystified too.
‘The way you say my name.’
‘Kay-lah.’
She groaned her satisfaction and nestled against his chest above the gaping V of his dark satin robe. His skin smelled of the lingering traces of shower gel overlaid with a sensual musk.
‘It should be censored—or at least X-rated,’ she purred, with her tongue coming out in a provocative caress of that bared skin. It felt silky and tasted slightly salty...
Dear heaven!
Leonidas dragged in a breath, at a loss for the words he needed to say. He didn’t know what powers this girl used to bewitch him, but even as he struggled to engage his normally incisive brain his body was responding with an urgent message of its own. It was taking all the mental strength he possessed not to rip down her panties, lay her down right here on the marble floor and enjoy the pleasure of having her beneath him, with himself in the driving seat this time. But he had to get her out of this room!
Swiftly his mouth swooped down over hers in a bid to distract her enough to manoeuvre her back into the hall. But he hadn’t reckoned on how distracting her soft mouth would be to him.
Feeling her warm body against his, he could only respond to it in a kiss that went on and on, until they both came up for air and her head dropped back against his shoulder.
A few moments later, lifting her head, she murmured, ‘What is that?’
Leonidas’s spine pulled into a tight, tense rod. All he had succeeded in doing was turning her round, so that their positions were reversed, and she was now looking at the plans he’d set up on an easel. Allowing her to pull out of his arms, he felt the slaying blow of defeat.
Stepping down into the kitchen and dumping the bread bag on the table, bewildered, Kayla couldn’t take it in. There were papers. Lots of papers. A laptop and a memo pad. And what she had thought were sketches looked like some sort of plan...
‘What is it?’ Her eyes skittered from the easel to the table and then the briefcase standing open on the floor. ‘Is it something you’re working on? Some building work...?’
Leonidas took a step towards her. ‘Kayla, I can explain.’
‘Explain?’ She looked at him with confusion in her questioning blue eyes. ‘Explain what?’
What was he doing with what looked like a whole set of plans for some development scheme? And a big, big development scheme by the look of it, she realised, when her gaze swept back over the table. Something proposed by the Vassalio Group—a big, big developer. She knew that much as her eyes took in the recognisable black and gold logo at the top of the plan she was staring at.
‘I don’t understand...’ Why had his cosy farmhouse kitchen taken on the look of some executive’s pad? Why was he looking so serious?
At that moment his cell phone rang from somewhere, shrilling across the sudden pregnant silence.
He pulled it out of the pocket of his robe, his eyes never leaving hers as he intoned incisively, ‘Vassalio.’ And then the penny dropped.
It was like an unashamed declaration directed specifically at her, Kayla thought, realising she had started to tremble.
Vassalio. Leon. Leonidas Vassalio. She knew the name. Of course she did! She’d heard it often enough in the media, seen the company logo on billboards and advertising for commercial developments, but she’d never taken much notice of it until now.
‘You lied to me,’ she accused in a virtual whisper when he cut the call short, feeling so shocked and betrayed that it was almost painful to breathe. ‘You’ve lied to me ever since I got here!’
‘Misled,’ he corrected as he dropped his phone back into his pocket.
As if it made a difference!
‘Most of it was what you assumed.’
‘Hah! Like I assumed I knew who you were when we were doing what we were doing just now?’
Leonidas Vassalio. The man she had just taken advantage of—and who had let her!
‘How could you do it?’ She was referring to the sex, shame creeping over her, scorching her already flushed cheeks. What a laugh he must have been having—and at her expense!
‘You didn’t give me much choice,’ he reminded her dryly.
‘You could have stopped me any time you wanted to!’
‘Really?’ A sceptical eyebrow arched sharply. ‘You think I’m that superhuman?’ His mouth twisted in hard self-derision. ‘Show me any red-blooded man you think would be capable of resisting being dragged out of sleep by a sex-goddess with no panties on.’
He made her feel cheap, and she wished fervently that she could turn back the clock instead of just standing there, hating herself for feeling the burn of desire stir deep down inside her where she was still moist and slightly tender from their spontaneous and unrestrained coming together.
‘If it makes you feel any better,’ he said, running fingers through his long dishevelled hair, ‘I didn’t intend for things to go as far as they did.’
‘Oh, really?’ she shot back, her features distorted with self-disgust. ‘What a bonus it must have been for you when they did!’
‘It wasn’t like that.’ He sounded defensive, exasperated—angry, almost. ‘Why the hell do you think I didn’t take things to their natural conclusion the other day on that island?’
‘Because it was more fun stringing me along.’
‘That isn’t true.’
‘Isn’t it? And what about just now? You wouldn’t have thought twice about doing it again.’
‘That wasn’t my motive,’ he stated decisively. ‘I was trying to coax you into the sitting room so that I could break it to you gently who I am without it flaring up into the mess we find ourselves in now.’
‘You mean instead of me finding out for myself what a rotten lying cheat you really are?’
‘If that’s what you want to believe,’ he rasped, grim-mouthed. ‘But it was never my intention to deceive you.’
‘Why?’ It was a small cry from somewhere deep down inside of her. ‘Why should I believe anything you say?’
‘All right. I deserve that,’ he accepted with no loss of dignity. He clearly wasn’t a man to grovel or to eat humble pie. ‘Look, I apologise for not telling you before now,’ he continued. ‘But I didn’t know who you were when you first arrived. For all I knew you were a snooping journalist on a mission for a story, and I came here for some privacy. To get away from all the media attention and publicity that’s been dogging me over this past year. I wasn’t going to risk losing all that for a girl I didn’t even know. Apart from which, I found it rather refreshing being with someone who wasn’t playing up to me because of the size of my bank balance.’
‘So you used me!’ Kayla breathed. ‘Just for your own amusement.’
‘That isn’t what I’m saying. But if you want to think that, then there’s nothing I can do to stop you.’
‘You could have trusted me enough to tell me the truth!’
He made a self-deprecating sound down his nostrils.