His silent hesitation lasted longer than Natasha’s instincts wanted to allow for. Beside her, Bernice shifted slightly and lowered her head to stare down at the floor.
‘I l-like Angelina,’ she rushed on, wondering if she’d made some terrible faux pas in Greek family custom by speaking out about personal matters in front of the paid staff. ‘None of what happened was her fault and I know she m-must be disappointed and upset.’
Still, he hesitated, and this time Natasha felt that hesitation prickle right down to her toes.
Then he gave a curt nod. ‘I will pass on your message.’ He strode on, leaving her standing there feeling…
‘This way, thespinis…’
Feeling what? she asked herself helplessly as Bernice claimed her attention, indicating that she follow her into a wide, softly lit hallway that led off the foyer.
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