Mediterranean Nights: The Mistress Purchase / The Demetrios Virgin / Marco's Convenient Wife

With that in mind, he stood up, frowning.

What was Leon thinking? Sadie wondered, watching him uncertainly. Two minutes ago he had been behaving towards her in a way that had quite definitely been very sexual. Now he was looking at her with a sternness that seemed to suggest she had done something wrong!

Perhaps he thought she had been deliberately provocative?

She quickly got to her feet herself, her pleasure in the day flattened by Leon’s expression.

‘I think it’s time we made a move,’ Leon announced grimly, adding under his breath so that Sadie couldn’t hear him, ‘Before it’s too late!’

‘You want us to leave now?’ Sadie couldn’t stop herself from questioning in disbelief. And then, when Leon made no response, she protested crossly, ‘It might have escaped your notice, but I haven’t had anything to eat yet.’

‘You can eat in the car,’ Leon told her unequivocally, bending down to pick up the bottle of wine as he did so.

The sky above them was still cloudlessly blue, the sea in the distance a deeper but just as storm-free hue. The lightest of breezes stirred the flowers, and the only sound on the clear air was the lazy hum of bees. So why did Sadie suddenly feel as though a very dangerous and threatening storm was imminent? she wondered miserably. Why did she feel as though the sky had turned dark and the coldest of icy winds was piercing her heart?

Why?

Did she really need to ask herself that? she questioned herself derisively whilst she stared at Leon’s departing back as he walked towards the car. If ever a man’s back was indicative of tightly reined in anger and cold savagery, then that back was Leon’s!

Why on earth hadn’t she had the sense to think first, before stupidly, idiotically, senselessly offering him that olive? Her face burned a self-contemptuous red. Of course he was bound to have thought she was coming on to him! But if he had thought that then why hadn’t he simply rejected her immediately? Why on earth had he deliberately emphasised the sensuality of the moment in the way that he had? Had it been her own lack of experience that had put him off? Sadie wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with the type of man who valued a woman purely on her sexual experience and availability, but naïvely she had believed that Leon was far above that kind of thing!

After a brief visit to the bathroom, to prepare herself for the journey and to reinforce to herself all the reasons why she should cease to feel anything whatsoever for Leon, she was ready to join him in the car.

Pulling on her seat beat, she remained resolutely silent as Leon moved to start the car—and continued to be so during the five unsuccessful attempts that followed the first.

However, when Leon finally unlocked the bonnet and got out, lifting it up to peer into the innards of the vehicle, Sadie felt anxious enough to ask, ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘God knows,’ came back Leon’s terse response. ‘I’m no mechanic, but I suspect it’s the battery. I’m going to have to ring the car hire people and get them to sort something out for us.’

Leon snapped the bonnet closed and came back to the car to get his mobile phone.

Five minutes later Sadie held her breath as she heard Leon demand ominously into his mobile, ‘What do you mean, you can’t supply me with a substitute?’

There was a brief pause before he cut in acidly, ‘Look, I don’t give a damn how busy you are, or how impossible it is for you to get a car out here to me until tomorrow. I would have thought any organisation that considered itself as anything approaching professional would have had the common sense to make sure it had enough vehicles to cover this extra busy period. Hell!’ he swore bitterly as he held the instrument away from his ear. ‘The line’s breaking up,’ he told Sadie grimly.

They tried to contact the hire firm on three successive occasions, both with Leon’s mobile and Sadie’s, and eventually managed to get through. But once again the hire car firm insisted that they were not able to provide Leon with a substitute vehicle until the following morning.

‘Well, at least we’ve got the mas to stay in,’ Sadie pointed out.

Leon was staring grimly out to sea.

‘Yeah, great,’ he agreed nastily

The toxicity of his silence was burning Sadie’s sensitive nerve-endings.

‘Look, I can see that you don’t want to be here with me—’ she began.

‘For heaven’s sake, Sadie.’ Leon stopped her savagely. ‘Don’t you understand? It isn’t what I don’t want that’s bothering me. It’s what I do want.’

Sadie’s forehead crinkled with her lack of understanding.

‘I can see that you want to get back,’ she began warily, ‘but I don’t—’

Leon groaned.

‘No, Sadie!’ he interrupted bluntly. ‘What I want isn’t to get back—although hell knows it damn well ought to be. What I want is you!’

His angry words seemed to hang in the enclosed space of the car, reverberating in her ears.

Her? He wanted her?

Sadie tried to say something, but her throat was too dry and the words stuck there. She swallowed and managed to squeak, ‘You want me? But—’

‘Yes. I want you!’ Leon confirmed thickly. ‘Every damned intoxicating, aggravating, delicious, sensual inch of you,’ he ground out in fierce despair.

Head spinning, Sadie wondered at the strength of the feeling gripping her. What would Leon say if she told him that she fully reciprocated? What would he do?

‘Have you any idea just what kind of hell it’s going to be for me, having to spend the night here with you—alone. Just the two of us!’ Leon emphasised tightly. ‘Just the two of us!’

When she didn’t say anything, he demanded harshly, ‘Didn’t last night tell you anything? Show you? Warn you. I could hardly keep my hands off you then!’

Sadie had had enough.

‘Would it be such a terrible thing if you didn’t?’ she asked him bravely.

Leon stared at her, expression on his face hardening his eyes glittering green fire.

‘I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,’ he told her grittily.

Sadie wasn’t going to give in—no way, not now!

‘Why?’ she challenged him softly

‘Why?’

She could hear raw anger in his voice, threaded with disbelief.

‘I can’t believe you’re asking me that,’ he told her flatly. ‘I mean, you do know what I’m talking about, don’t you? I’m a man, Sadie, and to put it in its bluntest terms, if I come anywhere near you feeling like I do right now… Wanting you like I do right now… Hell, Sadie, all it would take would be just for me to smell the scent of you, never mind touch you! And if I did touch you—’

The look of male hunger he was giving her made Sadie quiver from head to foot!

Grimly he continued, ‘Well, let’s just say I can’t pretend that I am going to be able to stop at a few kisses this time.’

Sadie took a deep breath. Life was offering her an opportunity, and she realised she wanted to seize it with both hands. Right now she couldn’t think of anything she wanted more than to make love with Leon. To touch him! Breathe him! Know him in every way that there was! What she was thinking… feeling… wanting… shocked her—but it excited her as well, she admitted.

Leon didn’t look excited, though; far from it! The green glacier look was back in his eyes, sending her heart to a thudding drumbeat of a standstill.

How could he speak to her in the way he just had? How could he say the things he just had? How could he make her feel the way he just had and then look at her with that cold iciness in his eyes?

‘Look, let’s not mince matters,’ Leon told her harshly. ‘I don’t go in for immediate sexual gratification, or casual sex, and before you try to tell me anything different I’m damn sure you don’t either!’

Casual sex! Sadie could feel the raw acid taste of her own shocked pain. It swamped her in a savage wave that tensed her whole body and washed the colour from her face.

Instinctively she wanted to hide what she was feeling from Leon, but somehow she just couldn’t find the strength to turn away from him. She could feel her skin prickling with awareness as he looked at her.

When Leon saw Sadie’s revealing expression he cursed under his breath and pushed his hand through his hair.

‘We’ve both got one hell of a lot going on in our lives right now,’ he told her brusquely. ‘I want you, Sadie. Make no mistake about that. But, hell, Sadie,’ he swore, when she continued to look at him with an open expression of anguished pain in her eyes, ‘can’t you see that I’m trying my hardest to protect you? Can’t you see that I’m struggling to do the decent thing? Feeling the way I do right now… wanting you the way I do right now…’ He groaned. ‘Having to spend the night alone here with you is the last thing I need.’

Sadie told herself that she wouldn’t have been a woman if she hadn’t felt a very satisfying spurt of sensual pleasure at Leon’s admission. Far more dangerous, though, was the even stronger surge of excitement that speared through her, and the knowledge that, high-minded though Leon’s intentions were, an unexpectedly wicked part of her was strongly tempted to put them to the test. In the hope that they failed!

Hastily she looked away from him, in case that all-seeing gaze of his might somehow guess what she was thinking. Thoroughly bemused by what she was feeling, Sadie shrugged her shoulders and told Leon huskily, ‘Well, no matter what either of us feels about it, we don’t have any alternative. We are going to have to spend the night here!’

There—that should hopefully convince him that she wasn’t secretly pleased that they were going to be here together alone…

‘Sadie, I give you my word that you’ll be perfectly safe,’ Leon told her rawly.

As she turned away from him and started to walk back towards the mas, Sadie admitted to herself that she wasn’t at all sure that ‘safe’ was what she wanted to be. In fact she knew that it wasn’t! Not when the alternative was a blissful night spent in Leon’s arms, enjoying and exploring Leon’s body, having him explore hers… all of hers, with his hands and his mouth and…

Guiltily Sadie quickened her step as her whole body melted on a wave of unstoppable longing. Leon would be a wonderful lover. Somehow she already knew that. And her body wanted him to be its lover—wanted him to be! She had to stand still as her body reacted to her thoughts with a shocking surge of need.

Watching her, Leon discovered to his chagrin that he was actually grinding his teeth in frustration as a surge of hot male hunger gripped him. Fiercely he tried to resist the impulse to remember how she had felt in his arms last night when he had kissed her. He had given Sadie his word that he wouldn’t touch her, and he fully intended to keep it!

Briefly he looked away from her, battling against himself when he discovered that his body was telling him very determinedly and openly just how much it opposed what he had decided.

Already it was tormenting him with dangerous thoughts and even more dangerous images of what it would feel like to share the pleasure of love with Sadie, of what it would be like to share the heat of desire with her, and the intimacy of knowing one another’s bodies!

God, but he wanted her, Leon realised savagely—which was exactly why he would have given anything, paid anything, not to have to spend the night here at the mas with her.

He was a man of honour, and seducing her…

Seducing her. Leon leaned against the car and gave in to the fierce tide of heat that ripped through him.

He would undress her slowly, uncovering her inch by inch, touching her, stroking her, reassuring her as he kissed the soft sweetness of her skin, her throat, and that delicate delicious spot just behind her ear, her jaw, her eyelids and then her mouth.

Leon closed his eyes and tried to fight the surge of arousal engulfing him. But it was impossible. He could feel the immediate stiffening of his body and cursed himself beneath his breath, relieved that Sadie was too far away from him to be aware of his reaction.

But even knowing what his thoughts were doing wasn’t enough to stop them. Not now…

He would kiss Sadie slowly and chastely, waiting until she was ready for the intimate exploration of his tongue. Somehow he would find a way to control his need to thrust it hotly into the sweetness of her mouth. And then, once she had accepted him there, he would start to explore her body, the delicate curve of her arm just above her elbow, the inside of her wrist, the soft slope of her neck where it met her shoulder. And her breasts…

Leon felt the fierce thrusting reaction of his own body, saw when he looked down where his erection strained against the cloth of his jeans. Inside them he was hard and aching, so tumescent that it hurt.

Sadie had already reached the mas. He knew he ought to follow her, but his need for her was devouring him—and if he did… if he even got within breathing distance of her right now, never mind close enough to touch her, Leon knew that he wouldn’t be able to trust himself to keep the promise he had made to her.

Just the thought of cupping the soft weight of her breasts in his hands, of exploring them, running his fingertip around that place where the creamy paleness gave way to the deeper pinkness of her aureole before rising up to the nipple itself, was sending him crazy with longing.

His erection throbbed and pulsed. Inside his head, his hand was already travelling down her body, stroking her thighs, easing them apart, exploring the soft warmth of the full swollen lips protecting her sex with gentle reassurance before sliding between them to probe the moist excitement of her, and then…

Leon groaned out aloud and sliced a mental guillotine down across his thoughts. If he continued like this he wouldn’t be able to walk as far as the house, never mind do anything else, he told himself grittily.

He didn’t just want Sadie, he admitted angrily. He damn well loved her as well!

And loving her meant that he wanted to protect her. Not just from any other man who might dare to take advantage of her, but from himself!

He was in this so deep he might as well give up right now, Leon admitted. But he couldn’t afford to. Not until he had got the takeover sorted.

He was glad that Sadie had seen sense with regard to his plans for Francine. His board would not have been too pleased, to say the least, had he had to institute potentially expensive and—even worse—long drawn-out legal proceedings against Sadie to prove that the Myrrh perfume formula belonged legally to Francine. He needed that formula, Leon admitted, and he needed it badly—because he wanted to make good the vow he had made in his grandmother’s name and memory: that women the world over would be able to enjoy and afford the perfume she had so longed for as a young woman.

When that had been done he could give himself time to court Sadie, and to love her. Not until then. And right now he had the night to get through!

At least they weren’t going to starve whilst they waited for their replacement vehicle. Thanks to Sadie. Leon closed his eyes, reliving that moment when she had handed him the olive. An innocent Eve, indeed!

His erection stiffened and once again he muttered an imprecation under his breath. He was thirty-four years old, for heaven’s sake, and well past the age when he ought to be getting a hard-on just thinking about sex.

But he wasn’t just thinking about sex. He was thinking about Sadie! And he was thinking about love! Thinking about it. Aching for it—and for Sadie!

CHAPTER SEVEN

IT WAS gone eleven o’clock. In the kitchen of the mas, Sadie suppressed a small yawn and cast a wary look at Leon.

They had eaten a meal together earlier in the evening, and Leon had once again refused any of the wine—although why he should have done so Sadie had no idea, since he was not going to be driving after all.

She had had some, though! To give her the resilience to get through the evening? To help her to block out the savage and aching longing driving through her, urging her to take the kind of provocative sexual action she would normally not just have totally deplored but refused to even consider? Her? Seduce Leon? Her brain said no way, but her emotions and her body ached. If only…

Luckily, all the beds in the mas possessed bedclothes, and Leon had managed to turn on the hot water, so at least she would be able to have a shower before she went to bed.

A shelf of books in the TV room should have provided her with some means of passing the time and removing herself from Leon’s presence, but stubbornly, and with alcohol-underpinned courage, she had refused to do so, remaining instead in the kitchen even though it was now over two hours since they had finished eating.

‘You’re tired,’ Leon announced in a clipped voice. ‘Why don’t you go to bed?’

Why didn’t she remove her unwanted company from his presence was more like it, Sadie reflected bitterly, but she kept her thoughts to herself as she smothered another yawn. She was tired, she admitted, but strangely she was reluctant to leave the kitchen.

Strangely? Since when had it been remotely strange for a woman in love to want to leave the company of the man she loved? Sadie derided herself mentally.

A woman in love? She was in love with Leon? Well, wasn’t she? Wasn’t she?

All right, she admitted angrily. All right! But that didn’t mean…

That didn’t mean what? she questioned herself mercilessly. That didn’t mean that right now she just ached to leave her chair and go over to him and wrap her arms around him? To kiss her way all along his jaw and tease her fingers through his hair? She wanted to taste the texture of his skin and explore the deliciously tempting outline of his mouth, whilst her free hand tugged his tee shirt out of his jeans and slid beneath it to feel the male strength of his chest, and then—

Frantically Sadie fought to reign in her rioting thoughts! Her face was burning, she knew, and no wonder. Perhaps it might be wiser if she did go to bed!

‘You’re right,’ she told Leon huskily. ‘I am tired. I will go to bed.’

Yes, she needed to get away from him before her body went totally out of control with longing and she ended up making a grab for him and putting her wanton thoughts into action!

Defiantly, she poured herself another glass of wine and picked it up. She had lied about being tired. She was far too wound up emotionally for sleep, but perhaps the wine would help her to do so.

Leon exhaled his pent-up breath in a savage sigh as he watched Sadie walk away from him. Morning couldn’t come fast enough for him. How the hell was he supposed to do anything so mundane as sleep when he knew that Sadie was lying there in the next room?

No way was he tired yet. He decided he would walk round the gardens of the mas and try and get his feelings under control.

Gathering up the underwear she had rinsed out, Sadie padded naked from the bathroom to the bedroom. The mas was certainly well equipped, and she was enjoying the luxury it provided. She envied Leon his stay here.

She found she couldn’t get Leon out of her head as she restlessly prowled around the bedroom, the glass of wine forgotten. And besides, a mere glass of wine wasn’t capable of subduing her longing… her love…

Leon stared back towards the mas. Sadie would be in bed by now. The savagery of the need that gripped him tensed his jaw. He could see the swimming pool, the water shimmering in the moonlight. His body needed cooling down and his thoughts needed exorcising!

He reached the side of the pool in a few strides, stripping off his clothes by the edge, and launching himself into a neat dive that sliced the water almost silently.

A fierce front crawl took him the length of the pool and back.

Still wide awake, Sadie went to her bedroom window. It looked out onto the pool area of the garden, and her whole body stiffened as she saw Leon in the water.

She watched him for several seconds before going into her bathroom and pulling on the bathrobe she had found there.

Like a sleepwalker she opened her bedroom door and made her way quietly and purposefully through the mas.

When she reached the pool, Leon was swimming towards the opposite side. Calmly she took off the robe and left it beside the pool. Unlike Leon, she did not dive into the pool, preferring instead to slide her body into its deliciously warm water.

She was a good swimmer. Her stroke was perhaps not as powerful as Leon’s, but still very accomplished and sleek, and it carried her speedily through the water to where Leon was just executing his turn.

She could see the look in his eyes as she reached him and put her feet down on the tiled floor of the pool. Here at the shallow end the water was just lapping the lower curves of her breasts, nudging erotically at her nipples before retreating to expose them fully, its touch a sensually warm caress that heightened her already aroused senses.

‘Sadie—’

She could hear the harsh warning in his voice but she ignored it. Up above them the sky was a midnight-blue cover sprinkled with brilliant white diamond stars. Sea and pool merged into a shimmering infinity, reflecting the brilliance of the moon. Nightscape lighting had turned the gardens of the mas into a place of mystery and fantasy.

The only sound to disturb the warm silence were the lap of the water and their own breathing. Leon’s was measured, but harsh, as though he was fighting to control it, and her own was so rapid with excitement that it was making her feel almost faint. Leon was standing up in the water, with his back against the tiles, and Sadie could see his expression quite clearly. He looked, she thought giddily, like some Greek god come to life, with his dark hair and strong chiselled features. And his body… Her heart did a dangerous slalom from what felt like a great height, and then skidded to a thudding halt against her ribs.

Leon’s body, she admitted, gulping in air, was just the most sexy male body she had ever seen in her life! She had thought that bodies like Leon’s only came courtesy of a Michaelangelo or a Leonardo. His torso was a perfect V shape, his shoulders impressively broad, his chest solid but not overly muscled, tapering into his waist. She itched to spread her fingers across his chest and to savour the silky warmth of the soft darkness of his body hair. Her heated gaze dropped helplessly to where the narrow line of hair disappeared beneath the water. Like her, he was naked…

Sadie could feel her breasts swelling and her nipples tightening. Her body quivered, agitating the water around her. Unable to stop herself, she moved closer to Leon and silently raised one trembling hand to his body.

‘Sadie.’ Leon’s low-voiced growl warned her of her danger, but she refused to stop. The pleasure of touching him was going to her head like champagne.

She took another step closer and then pressed both her hands flat against his chest. Lifting her head, she touched her tongue-tip to the hollow at the base of his throat, savouring the hot, salt male taste of him.

Lost in what she was doing, she didn’t see the storm signals or smell the dangerous scent of brimstone in the air. One minute she was standing in front of Leon, shivering with the knowledge that all that was keeping them apart was the soft surge of the water whilst her lips closed on the fierce pulse in his throat, and the next she was literally being imprisoned by Leon’s arms as they wrapped themselves punishingly around her and his curses rang savagely in her ears.

‘Are you crazy?’ she heard him demanding furiously. ‘Do you know what you’re doing? Do you think I’m made of stone?’

Stone… No, of course not. Leon was all wonderful gorgeous, sexy, woman-arousing, hunky maleness, all hard muscles and solid flesh, excitingly scored with that enticing line of hair that her fingers just ached to explore, Sadie decided feverishly.