her breasts, before coming back outside into the now deserted garden.
A short time later Philomena emerged from the house with two glasses of something cool and refreshing—juice for her, Kayla realised gratefully, and something a little stronger for Leon.
‘I’ll take it out to him,’ she volunteered, putting her glass down on a nearby table and leaving a thankful Philomena hurrying back inside, because the telephone had started ringing inside the house.
Her discarded wrap had fallen down behind the chair, and wasn’t very easy to reach, so with a little sliver of excitement Kayla left it where it was and proceeded to take the glass to Leon as she was.
For the last twenty-minutes or so her ears had been tuned to every sound coming from the dirt road—from the slamming down of a boot to the chink of metal being laid down on sun-baked stones. Now, as she rounded the corner of the house, Kayla’s heart kicked into overdrive.
With his shirt removed, and faded blue jeans having replaced his linen trousers, Leon was crouched down, securing a nut on the spare wheel, and for a few moments Kayla could only stand there, watching him unobserved.
His body was beautiful. The bronzed skin sheathed muscles that were flexing as he worked, revealing the tension in his straining biceps and across his wide shoulders, in the tapering structure of his strong and sinewy back.
‘Philomena thought you’d like something to drink,’ Kayla told him, dry-mouthed, noticing before he turned around how his hair waved below the nape of his neck like jet against burnished bronze.
He dropped the spanner he was using and stood up, his movements cool and easy. That knowing curve to his mouth suggested that he was well aware of her reluctance to let him think that it was entirely her idea.
‘That’s very good of her.’ His answer and his lopsided smile assured her that two could play at that game. His eyes, however, were tugging over her scantily clothed body in a way that was making her feel naked.
‘You’ve been a long time. You should have let me help you,’ Kayla remarked, handing him the glass. The accidental touch of his fingers against hers sent a sharp little frisson through her.
‘And do you think I would have achieved much with you looking like that?’
Kayla swallowed, watching him drink, trying not to make it too obvious that she was having difficulty staying unaffected by his state of undress.
In fact she was finding it impossible not to allow her gaze free rein over his superb body—from the contoured strength of his smooth chest, with its taut muscles and flat dark nipples, to the black line of hair that started just above his navel and ran down inside the waistband of the denim that encased his flat stomach and narrow hips.
He was like a beautiful sleek stallion. All leanness and rippling muscle, with the power to dominate and excite, to control and to conquer using the pulsing energies and surging potency of his body.
‘Do you see what I mean?’ he taunted softly.
Yes, she did, and she could feel those energies transmitting their sensual messages along her nerve-endings, tugging shameless responses from every erogenous zone in her body.
Beneath the satiny white cups of her bikini her burgeoning breasts throbbed, sending a piercing arrow of need to the heart of her loins.
He was so raw, so masculine, and so shamelessly virile. She wanted to know what it was like to have a man like him filling her, taking her to the wildest edges of the universe with him while she lay beneath him, sobbing her pleasure, in glorious abandon to his thrilling and governing hands.
Shocked by her thoughts, she tried to shake them away, feigning an interest in his truck to try and restore some sense of propriety in herself, grappling for equilibrium.
‘Did this thing come with the house?’ she queried in a tight, strained voice, slapping the grimy, battered bonnet. ‘Or did you have to buy it?’
‘It’s mine,’ Leonidas answered, taking a breath from quenching his thirst and watching her from under the thickness of his dark lashes.
‘Perhaps it’s time you bought a new one,’ she suggested cheekily, amused, deciding that it wasn’t only the tyre that needed changing. The bodywork looked as if it wouldn’t object to a lick of fresh paint either.
‘Perhaps it’s time you stopped having a laugh at my expense.’
Was that what she was doing? ‘I’m sorry.’ Seeing his eyes darkening, quickly Kayla strove to suppress her mocking banter. After all, he