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‘No.’ He had removed his sunglasses and was hooking them onto the waistband of his trousers. Now she could see his eyes clearly.
They were dark and heavy-lidded beneath the thick swathe of his lashes, and glittering with such intensity of purpose that her every nerve went into red alert as he closed the screaming distance between them.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_c69f8472-a2f4-54c0-96d1-ada747f2c6b4)
HIS MOUTH OVER hers was like an Olympic torch blazing into life, setting her insides on fire and sending molten sensations of light searing through her blood.
His kiss was passionate, yet tender. Dominant, yet testing. And the mind-blowing expertise with which he lured her mouth to widen for him was the technique of a man who had studied and understood women—a far cry from a man who had such a laid-back attitude to life. A wanderer. A drifter. Without purpose or design.
He smelled of the earth and of the pines that clad the higher slopes of the hillsides. He was burning with everything wild and unfettered, unrestrained. And yet she felt his restraint—a purposeful holding back—as he held her loosely within the exciting circle of his arms.
That was until the hands that were still clutching her camera and the sunscreen bottle against his wide, cushioning shoulders suddenly slid around his neck. Then, with a groan of defeat, his restraint fell away, leaving only raw passion in its wake as he tossed her hat aside and pulled her hard against him.
Kayla heard a gushing in her ears and wasn’t sure whether it was the heavy pounding of her blood or whether she was being captured and submerged beneath the relentless power of the sea.
She could feel the whole hard length of his body—every last inch of it—and she could feel her own responding to the drugging hunger of his mouth.
His back was firm and muscled, and she wished she wasn’t encumbered by her possessions so that she could slide her eager hands across it. There was no such encumbrance though in the way her body locked with his. His chest was a wall of thunder, crushing her aching breasts, while the potent evidence of his hard virility was making her pulse with need.
When he put her from him, holding her at arm’s length, she uttered a strangled murmur of breathless shock and disappointment.
‘Why did you do that?’ she quavered. Why had he kissed her when he had just claimed he had no intention of trying to get her into bed?
He was breathing as heavily as she was, and a deep flush was staining the olive skin across the strong, hard structure of his cheeks.
‘Because you were wondering what it would be like if I did.’
Still trembling, and perturbed by how easily he could not only read her mind but also by how easily he could bend her to his will, she challenged brittly, ‘So why did you stop?’
‘Because, as I told you before, I have no intention of taking advantage of a woman on the rebound,’ he reminded her, even though his breathing was still laboured and his strong face racked from the passion he was struggling to keep in check.
‘And—as I told you before—I’m not on the rebound,’ Kayla protested adamantly, shamed by her response when he was showing such self-control, and when she seemed to have relinquished all of hers in one experimental kiss!
‘Aren’t you?’ he disputed, although there was a wry smile tugging at one corner of his mouth that softened his challenging remark, before he went on to add, ‘You had a relationship with him, didn’t you?’
‘Well, of course I did,’ Kayla returned. ‘Of sorts.’
‘Of sorts?’ He tilted his head, his brows drawing quizzically together. ‘How am I supposed to interpret that?’
‘Any way you like!’ Kayla tossed back at him, too embarrassed to tell him that Craig’s enthusiasm for her had seemed to go off the boil for several weeks before their break-up, and that she was ashamed of herself now for not suspecting the truth. She had believed him when he had blamed work overload for his not showing enough interest in her. When he’d assured her that things would be different when they were married. When he had got the precious promotion he’d spent all his time working for.
‘Were you living with him?’
‘No.’
‘Why not? If I ever set my mind on a woman I want to become my wife, then she will be firmly in my life—and my bed—before I even ask her.’
‘I didn’t want us to move in together. Not until we were married,’ Kayla emphasised. ‘And Craig was in full agreement with that.’
‘Really?’ Mocking scepticism marked that hard masculine face. ‘You could do without each other that much?’
‘Not that it’s any concern of yours,’ Kayla pointed out, hating having her relationship with her ex scrutinised so closely by this man she scarcely knew, ‘but we wanted to start married life properly. In a place that was our own. I didn’t want to just move into his flat. Anyway, there’s more to a relationship than jumping into bed with each other at every given opportunity,’ she stressed, unconsciously wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her lips still felt bruised and swollen and, like her susceptible body, burning from Leon’s wholly primal, earth-shattering kiss.
‘Is there?’ he asked, and she could feel those perspicacious eyes following her involuntary action, mocking her, disconcertingly aware.
‘Yes!’ She was trembling, knowing that the way she had just behaved with him made nonsense of everything she was saying. And the worst thing was he knew it too. ‘The type of man I let myself get involved with doesn’t just give in to basic animal lust.’
He chuckled under his breath. ‘Is that what I was doing? Then you must forgive me if I fail to live up to the constraints of the type of man you are obviously used to. Although I could hazard a guess that your relationship was sadly lacking in what was required to make a lifetime commitment, and that the lack of passion between you could have been why he was getting his satisfaction elsewhere.’
The reminder hurt, stinging her pride and giving rise to that same feeling of inadequacy she had felt after she’d got over the initial blow of Craig’s betrayal—especially coming from someone who oozed the sort of sexual potency that this man did.
‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured, surprising her suddenly. ‘I didn’t mean to rub it in.’
‘Didn’t you?’ she accused, hiding her hurt pride and dignity beneath the burnished gold of her lowered lashes.
‘Well, all right.’ A self-effacing smile touched that mouth that had the power to drug her. ‘I did. But until it stops hurting, Kayla, you aren’t ready for an involvement with any other man. And even if you were, the last thing a sensitive girl like you would want is an involvement with a man like me.’
Why not? Crazily, she heard the mortifying question spring to her lips and was half-afraid that she had actually spoken it. Wasn’t he just the type of man she needed right now to drive the bitter after-taste of Craig and all his shallow-minded smart set out of her mind?
‘Believe it or not, I’m not looking for one,’ she responded, to assure herself as much as Leon. Well, she wasn’t, was she? Wasn’t she better off—as her mother had always claimed to be—on her own?
‘Sensible girl,’ Leonidas drawled and, stooping to pick up her hat, deposited it gently and unceremoniously on her head.
‘Thanks.’ Kayla pulled a wry face. ‘Perhaps you’d like to sketch me like this?’ she challenged broodingly, relieved, nevertheless, that the disconcerting subject of her love-life had finally been swept aside.
What wasn’t so easy to sweep aside, however, was the memory of what had transpired between them a few moments ago.
Why had she responded to him so shamelessly if, as he’d suggested, she was still affected by what Craig had done? Was she so wanton? So desperate for a man? Any man? she wondered. Might she have let this virtual stranger take her here on the shingle without a thought for how it might leave her feeling afterwards?
‘I won’t be sketching you at all,’ he said dismissively. ‘For the simple reason that you are wrong. I’m no artist. But if I were, and if I had to keep looking at you looking like this...’ His gaze slid over her tantalisingly wet top, making her quiver inside from the powerful impulses generated by the naked need in his eyes, ‘then—old boyfriend or no old boyfriend—I definitely would wind up taking you to bed.’
* * *
The climb up through the scrub to Philomena’s cottage was hot and hilly, and Leonidas walked ahead of Kayla, protecting her from the dense and thorny vegetation that was encroaching on the narrow path, thriving in the rough terrain.
He had had an exacting morning, sorting out a problem that had arisen back in his London office—a case of divided opinion between a couple of members of his board, which his second-in-command had apologised for bringing to his attention.
They said it was tough at the top, he reminded himself with a grimace. And they could say it again, because no matter how much he needed to escape the rigours of the office for a while, he still needed to keep his finger on the pulsing heart of his business.
Shopping malls, leisure complexes and housing developments didn’t build themselves, and after the flak he had taken from the press over the neglect of local residents with last year’s bitter fiasco he needed to ensure that no loopholes were left for mercenary lawyers and unprincipled members of his team to make unscrupulous deals over.
Being labelled ‘ruthless’, ‘unscrupulous’ and ‘a profiteer’ by the media wasn’t something he wanted repeated any more than he wanted further episodes like the one with his publicity-hungry bed-partner Esmeralda Leigh. He had a reputation to uphold—one that he valued—both in his corporate and his private life, and he would protect and defend it with every shred of his power and his unwavering principles. But he hadn’t got where he was today without treading a path that had made him tough, hard-nosed and uncompromising, and he had no intention of wavering from that path. Of allowing himself or anyone else to imagine for one moment that he was going soft. Not even this infernally beautiful girl...
Hearing her breath coming shallowly some way behind him, he stopped and waited for her to catch up. She was clutching her bottle of sunscreen lotion, the bulky camera dangled around her neck, and with her white leggings, her tunic top and that huge floppy hat she looked like an overgrown child who had just raided her great-grandmother’s attic. He was happy to notice—for his own sake—that her top had nearly dried.
‘Here. Let me carry that.’ He could see her cheeks were flushed and that she was finding it a struggle keeping up with him, and he held out his hand for the camera, which she happily relinquished. Silently he extended his other hand.
Realising his intention, Kayla hesitated briefly, and saw a mocking smile touch his sensational mouth.
‘It’s all right. It doesn’t constitute a tacit agreement to let me into your bed,’ he advised her dryly.
Of course it didn’t, she thought. But an impulse of something so powerfully electric seemed to pass between them when she took his hand that it certainly felt like it.
‘Thanks,’ she uttered tremulously, hoping that he would think it was the uphill climb in the heat over the rough ground that was making her sound so breathless. Not that every cell was leaping in response to her physical awareness of him just as it had when he had kissed her down there on the beach.
‘Where did you learn to speak English so proficiently?’ she asked, needing to say something—although she was genuinely interested to know.
‘When I work, I work mainly in the UK,’ he informed her. ‘And my grandmother was English, so I had a head start while I was still knee-high to a cricket.’
‘Grasshopper.’
‘What?’ The way he was looking down at her, with such charismatically dark eyes, sent a sensually charged little tingle along Kayla’s spine.
‘It’s knee-high to a grasshopper,’ she corrected him, contemplating how well the backdrop of the rugged coast and the meandering hillsides served to strengthen the ruggedness of this man who had been born part of them. But she’d picked up on what he’d just said about when he worked. So his employment definitely wasn’t regular, she thought, reminded of the recent slump in the building trade and how difficult it had made things for a lot of its workers. Perhaps that was why he’d chosen to ‘opt out’, as he’d put it, for a while.
‘How old were you when you left the island?’ She found herself wanting to know much more about him.
‘Fifteen.’
She remembered him saying that he’d left to find a better life. ‘On your own?’ she queried. ‘Did you leave to go to college?’ she asked, when he didn’t answer her question. What else could possibly have taken him away at such a young age?
He laughed at that—a sound without humour. ‘No college. No university. I did have hopes of furthering my education, but my father wouldn’t hear of it.’
‘Why not?’ Kayla asked, amazed.
‘He wanted me to get out into the world, like he had, and “do an honest job” as he called it.’
‘Really?’ Kayla sympathised. ‘And what did he do?’
‘He eked a living out of this land,’ he told her, with an edge to his voice that had her looking at her curiously.
‘And where are they now? Your parents?’ She couldn’t believe they could still be living on the island, otherwise why would he be staying here alone in some absentee owner’s sadly neglected house?
‘My parents are dead,’ he told her as he walked half a stride ahead of her. There was no emotion now beside that surprisingly hard cast to his mouth.
‘I’m sorry,’ Kayla murmured. She had discovered during a conversation in the villa with him the other day that he, like Kayla, was an only child.
‘One learns to get over these things,’ he replied.
From the harshness of his tone, however, she wondered if he had. Or was there some other reason, she pondered, for that inexorable grimness to his features?
‘Still...you have Philomena,’ she said brightly, hoping to lighten the mood. She couldn’t understand why down there on the beach he had behaved like an exciting lover and yet now seemed as uncommunicative as ever.
Was it by chance that he had just happened to come across her down there? Or had he come looking for her especially?
A sharp little thrill ran through her at the possibility that he had.
‘Did she tell you where I was?’
His disconcerting glance at her took in what she knew was her thoroughly dishevelled appearance, and a lazy smile curved his mouth, instantly transforming his features.
‘Are you suggesting I asked her?’
Mortified that he would even think she might have wanted him to, Kayla tried to tug her hand out of his, and sucked in a breath when he refused to let it go.
‘Yes, I did,’ he admitted easily, without any of the embarrassment that was burning Kayla’s cheeks. ‘I came down to Philomena’s to check on you. You’ve had a bad experience. I didn’t like to think of it ruining your holiday.’
He actually cared?
Well, of course he was concerned for her, she thought, mindful of the lengths he had gone to in rescuing her the other night, and then not only helping her to clean up the villa afterwards but also bringing her to Philomena’s as well.
‘It hasn’t. Thanks,’ she offered, grateful to him, and was warmed by a flash of something closely resembling admiration in his eyes.
She wondered if he had a girlfriend or a partner. It certainly seemed he’d had a stormy affair, judging by the way he had referred to her when he had been generalising about her sex the other day.
‘Why were you so unfriendly to me when we met those first couple of times?’ she queried, suddenly needing to know. ‘You still haven’t told me.’
She started as he suddenly stopped dead, pulling her round to face him on the path.
‘Do you never stop asking questions?’ he demanded, his face a curious blend of impatience and amusement.
‘No.’ She gave him a sheepish little look and shrugged her shoulders. ‘I’m afraid it’s a fault of mine. Apparently, according to my star sign, I was born on “the Day of Curiosity”,’ she quoted with a little giggle.
‘And do you really believe all that stuff?’
Seeing the scepticism marking the strong and perfectly sculpted features, she laughed and said, ‘No. But they’ve got that part of me right!’
‘You can say that again,’ he remarked dryly. ‘And as a matter of interest exactly when is this illustrious day?’ He made a half-amused sound down his nostrils when she told him. ‘So you’ve just had a birthday?’ he observed. ‘And how old are you, Kayla?’
‘Twenty-three.’
‘Old enough to know when a man doesn’t welcome any more probing into his private life.’
And that told her, Kayla thought, feeling suitably chastised. This time when she tried to pull her hand away she was even more disconcerted when he allowed her to do so.
They had reached the top of the path that ran up alongside Philomena’s cottage. There was an area at the back, with a lime tree and a couple of orange trees, where Philomena also grew aubergines and sweet peppers, and where chickens foraged freely in the open scrub.
‘How’s the car going?’ Leon asked, noticing it parked against the side wall of the cottage.
Still feeling put down, but relieved to be speaking on a much less personal level with him, Kayla murmured, ‘Fine.’ And suddenly, with tension causing a little bubble of laughter to burst from her, she proclaimed, ‘Which is more than can be said for yours!’
His truck was parked on the edge of the dirt road just behind the little hatchback, and she could see that one of its tyres was completely flat.
‘Oh, dear!’ She tried not to giggle again as he thrust the camera at her and, swearing quietly under his breath in his own language, went to deal with changing the wheel.
Leaving him to it, Kayla wandered into the garden, where Philomena was pegging out some washing, sending a couple of chickens scrambling, clucking noisily.
‘A flat tyre.’ Kayla made a gesture to indicate what she meant and Philomena nodded, rolling her eyes.
