A Greek Escape - By Elizabeth Power Page 0,55

like. And an infernally inquisitive, easy-to-fool fool!’

‘How can I forget it?’ he murmured, slipping those strong arms around her. ‘You aren’t prepared to let me.’

‘Any more than I’m prepared to let you forget that I’m here under protest.’

‘No, you aren’t,’ he purred silkily, drawing her close, sending Kayla’s senses reeling in shaming response. ‘I don’t think “protest” can in any way account for the way we’re both feeling now.’

This close to him she could feel every steel-hard muscle of his body—in the whipcord strength of his back and shoulders, in his hard hips and powerful thighs, and in the stirring evidence of his arousal. It made her want to press herself against him, and it took every shred of will-power she possessed not to do it.

‘You aren’t feeling anything. Just a bruised ego and severely dented pride because you can’t bear a woman ever saying no to you.’

He laughed very softly, and with his cheek against hers whispered in her ear, ‘Not a woman whom I know wants me as much as I want her—no.’

Even his breath was a turn-on against her treacherously pulsing flesh, without the stimulus of his stunning appearance and the way he’d had everyone there tonight eating out of his hand. It made her wish that they didn’t have the baggage of the past hanging over them and that she was somewhere else, alone with him, not moving like this under an exquisite chandelier, with three hundred other people in the room.

‘In fact, do you want to know what I think you are thinking now?’

The lights spun gold from Kayla’s hair as she lifted her head in challenge. ‘No,’ she dismissed with a saccharine-sweet smile. ‘But no doubt you’re going to tell me anyway.’

‘Well, let’s see if I’m right,’ he suggested. He was looking down at her and emulating her smile in a way that to anyone watching would have marked them undoubtedly as lovers—hungry for each other, wanting only the privacy of their bedroom. ‘I think that right now you would prefer to be back at the house and for me to be slowly undressing you with some soft music playing. And I think you’d like me to remain clothed while I carry you naked up to my bed. There’s nothing like the sensuality of cloth to add zest to lovemaking, is there, Kayla? Particularly when the man wearing it doesn’t give a fig for how you might abuse it, just so long as he can gratify your desires and make you sob with pleasure.’

It was so close to what she had been thinking that Kayla could scarcely breathe. She could feel her cheeks burning from the shaming imagery. ‘You’re just indulging in your own uninhibited fantasies.’ she croaked, her throat as arid as a Grecian hillside, and she felt those dark masculine eyes appraising the results of what his mind-blowing words had produced.

‘Am I?’ he challenged softly, with a knowing smile.

She wasn’t even aware that the music had stopped until his arms fell away from her, and then she could see one of the older male guests to whom she’d been introduced earlier beckoning him from the bar.

‘I’ll be a few minutes,’ Leonidas apologised, and left her to flee to the mercifully deserted sanctuary of the powder room.

A flushed-faced, bright-eyed creature stared back at her from the mirror above the luxuriously equipped basins. She felt as though she had just been aroused to fever-pitch only to be left abandoned and wanting. Wanting him, she acknowledged painfully, wondering how she still could.

How could she stay under his roof when every time he touched her it was like dropping a firework into a powder keg? When her common sense went up in smoke just at a look from him, even without the X-rated things he’d been saying to her just now?

And yet he hadn’t attempted to touch her intimately since he’d brought her to his house—had merely treated her with a detached respect that had kept her awake over the past two nights wondering why he hadn’t. Had he finally accepted that he had treated her unfairly and was now doing his best to make it up to her? Or was his plan to wear her down with the sort of earth-shattering sensuality he’d used just now until she was begging for him to make love to her?

She hadn’t met a company man yet whose motives weren’t entirely self-centred, so why should Leonidas Vassalio be any different? She rebuked herself for her moment of weakness in