by Penny Jordan
‘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!’
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 a
bove 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.