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Sadie hadn’t realised, as she had been far too entranced by the house to think about the time.
‘Where would you like to eat? Inside or out?’ Leon asked her.
‘Oh, outside—if that’s okay with you?’ Sadie responded immediately.
‘By the pool?’ Leon guessed.
Sadie gave him an eloquent look of confirmation, her eyes shining with pleasure. Watching her, Leon didn’t know how the hell he was managing to stop himself from taking hold of her and kissing her until that look of shining pleasure became one of liquid desire.
‘It’s a pity we didn’t bring our swimming things,’ Sadie regretted innocently, as she looked longingly at the pool.
‘Who says we need them?’ Leon teased her softly, laughing outright as he saw her expression.
‘What? Don’t tell me you’ve never been skinny-dipping?’ He grinned in disbelief. ‘You live by the sea, don’t you?’
Sadie shook her head vehemently.
‘I certainly have not,’ she told him firmly, but the expression in her eyes was a little wistful.
The mere thought of swimming naked with Leon in the soft warm water of the pool was sending her imagination into definitely x-rated regions, and making her pulse bounce excitement though her body. Protectively, she hid her reaction from Leon. Her grandmother had been of a generation that believed that it was a man’s role to pursue a woman, most definitely not the woman’s to pursue him. And although Sadie knew such teachings were outmoded now, a little bit of her still clung to them. Perhaps it was as a consequence of that that her own sexual experience was rather limited—or at least she suspected that in Leon’s eyes it would be.
‘I was brought up by my grandmother, remember,’ she defended, when she saw his expression. ‘And besides,’ she added dryly, ‘the water off the coast of Pembroke is extremely cold.’
Ten minutes later, as they unpacked the food which Leon had brought from the kitchen where they had stored it, Sadie realised just how hungry she was.
‘No, thanks,’ she refused, shaking her head and covering the wine glass Leon had found as he reached for the wine he had bought.
He raised his eyebrows and teased her. ‘Why not? Are you afraid that it might weaken your grandmother-induced resolve enough for you to want to try skinny-dipping after all?’
He was just teasing her. Sadie knew that. After all, he couldn’t know how much she wanted him…
Refusing to rise to his bait, she firmly dismissed the tormenting erotic images from her mind and told him calmly, ‘You can’t have any wine because you’re driving, and I don’t want to drink any without you. It doesn’t seem fair.’
The look she could see in his eyes as he replaced the bottle and reached for one of water instead confused her.
As he poured them both a glass of water, Leon noted that Sadie was constantly surprising and challenging not only his original assessment of her, but also his understanding of women in general. In refusing to drink any wine because he could not share in the pleasure she had shown a genuine kindness of nature which he admitted was seriously denting the barriers he had felt he needed to put up against her. Denting it? Get real, he advised himself derisively. She had damn near demolished it wholesale!
‘Mmm… those olives look good,’ Leon commented hungrily as he watched Sadie opening the small carton containing them.
‘Want one?’ she responded immediately, picking one up without thinking about the sensual intimacy of her action as she offered to feed it to him.
The look he gave her made her suddenly conscious of the heat prickling on her back, and even more aware of the heat trickling through her body. She hadn’t meant to be provocative, but right now the way he was looking at her made her feel as though she were Eve, offering Adam that apple!
However, before she could retract either her words or the olive, Leon’s hand snaked out and his fingers curled softly around her wrist, making her heart bounce around inside her chest as though it were on a piece of elastic. How could such a small gesture, such a simple touch, have such a powerful and erotic effect upon her? She might not be sexually experienced, but she wasn’t totally naïve! Somewhere at the back of her mind the knowledge surfaced that a part of her had known from the minute she had set eyes on him that Leon was going to affect her like this.
Dizzily she noted how cool Leon’s hold was, and how potentially strong. Her wrist felt so fragile in his grip. She could feel his thumb pressing against her pulse-point and her heart gave a violently convulsive jerk.
Without her even wanting it, never mind being able to do a thing to stop him, Leon had lifted her hand to his mouth. Her eyes rounded, their colour darkening as her gaze followed his every movement. Helplessly, she watched as his lips parted, encompassing not just the juicy pitted black olive but her fingertips as well.
Her own lips parted involuntarily, her mouth going dry as a fierce ache burst into life inside her.
The sensation of Leon’s tongue curling over her fingers and then thrusting between to remove the olive made her go light-headed with desire. Her heart was pumping as ferociously as though she had just run up a steep mountainside. Shockingly explicit images were forming inside her head, and waves of liquid desire were shafting through her body like bolts of lightning. The thumb pressed so close to her pulse must surely be registering its erratic beat.
The olive had gone from her fingers, but Leon’s tongue had not! It was lapping slowly and surely, with deliberate sensuality, at her flesh, removing the satin covering of olive oil.
‘Mmm,’ she heard Leon whisper throatily, glancing up into her eyes as he did so and giving her a wicked look. ‘Very more-ish!’
Sadie’s eyes opened wide and her face turned a vivid shade of pink. He wasn’t, she suspected, referring to the olive!
His tongue laved her fingers one more time with lingering thoroughness, and then he lifted his head to look at her, whilst his hand slid down over her wrist to cover hers, folding her fingers into her palm and slowly stroking her small fist as he asked her softly, ‘Are you sure you don’t want a glass of wine?’
Emphatically Sadie shook her head and tried to repossess her hand. She was intoxicated enough as it was, without drinking wine! The sensuality of what he had done had sent her blood into a cloud of fizzy bubbles as it raced round her veins.
Watching her, Leon was instinctively and sharply aware of her sexual naïveté, and that knowledge sent a huge reactionary surge of corresponding male arousal thundering through him.
He had never been promiscuous, but naturally as a young man he had gone through the normal stages of sexual experimentation and exploration. Since hitting his late twenties, though, he had given up on sexual exploration as a means of expressing himself as a man. However, the majority of women he met were very open about the fact that they were extremely sexually experienced. They seemed to think that he would enjoy the results of that experience. Perhaps like Sadie he had been imbued with a lot of his own grandmother’s moral beliefs.
There was also, Leon acknowledged, enough Greek heritage in him to make him find such women more of a turn-off than a turn-on. His realisation that Sadie was clearly quite inexperienced was producing within him the same effect as applying a lighted match to dry tinder—very dry tinder, he recognised grimly.
Whether it was unacceptable in today’s modern climate or not, there was something within him, something in his blood, that found the knowledge that there would be much he would have the pleasure of showing her extremely attractive! Extremely attractive and insistently arousing, as his body was making very, very plain!
He was delighted that potentially they had the summer ahead of them to get to know one another. He would make it his business to be sure he spent as much time in France as he could, and he would see to it that Sadie also needed to be there, for constant ‘consultations’ regarding the new perfume she would be creating for them.
Still watching her, he discovered that he was toying with ways and means of re-vamping the Grasse house and outbuildings, and insisting that it was essential that Sadie worked from there on the perfume.
That way their relationship could grow easily and naturally, and when they came to make a full commitment to one another it would be—
A full commitment?
Leon underwent a moment of wry introspection and self-searching. He was Greek enough to feel very strongly that he only wanted to make a full commitment to one woman and for that partnership to be for ever. And he was modern-minded enough to know that that kind of commitment couldn’t be based solely on sexual and emotional desire, but had to be based on mutual trust, honesty and respect as well.
He had met too many women who were ready to say anything to get what they wanted. No way could he ever give his love and his life to a woman like that!
As he looked at Sadie he was uncomfortably aware that whilst his thoughts might be logical and under control, his feelings and his body were no such thing. The way he was feeling right now meant that the sooner they left the mas the better! The combination of Sadie, solitude and his own sexual longing for her right now were putting his self-control under far too much strain!
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!’
