‘No, Leandro,’ she said coolly. ‘I didn’t rush back to London and immediately get involved with your replacement. I’ve been busy trying to get my career going.’
‘And no time left to jump back into the dating scene?’ Leandro murmured.
‘Unlike you.’ Abigail couldn’t resist the dig. Not only had he jumped right back into the dating scene but he had become so involved with a woman that she had actually been led to believe that marriage was on the cards. She turned away, angry with herself for feeling hurt and jealous.
‘But it didn’t work,’ Leandro said softly. He reached out and circled her wrist with his hand. He stroked her skin with his thumb and Abigail wanted to moan and drag her hand away but she didn’t do either. Instead, she froze.
‘Want to know something?’ he asked as his thumb continued to do its damage. ‘I understood why when I saw you today, Abby.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she croaked, and he smiled crookedly at her.
‘Yes, you do,’ he corrected gently. ‘I can feel the way you’re trembling right now. You’re still in my system. It doesn’t make any sense, because you’re the last woman I should still be interested in taking to bed, but against all odds you are. Do you think it’s because what we had ended under such...bizarre circumstances?’
He sounded genuinely curious and his voice was calm, neutral and conversational. In fact, she had to sift through what he had just said and replay it in her head just to establish that she hadn’t misheard it.
That he still wanted to take her to bed!
She tugged her hand and he tightened his grip on it and focused on her, his fabulous eyes lazy with intent. ‘Now you’re going to tell me that you have no idea what I’m talking about, aren’t you? Maybe you’ll express horror that I could even suggest such a thing. Am I on the right track?’
Spot on, Abigail thought. She licked her lips and tried to still her racing pulse. He was still the sexiest man she had ever laid eyes on in her life, but she was not attracted to him. Because you couldn’t possibly be attracted to a man who had insulted, offended and disbelieved you. That just didn’t make sense.
But her skin was prickling and dampness had pooled between her legs. Fascinated and mesmerised, she stared at him, sucked in by the low, honeyed seductiveness of his voice.
Leandro could feel the racing of her pulse under his thumb. Her skin was so soft and his recall of her so clear. Just touching her like this made him remember how it had felt to touch her all over, to hear the little cries and whimpers she’d made as she climbed towards an orgasm, the way she’d moved and wriggled under him. He was so turned on he had to adjust his stance to try and subdue the discomfort of his arousal.
His eyes drifted downwards to her parted lips.
Abigail knew that he was going to kiss her before his mouth covered hers and her body strained towards his, as natural an instinct as a flower leaning towards a source of light. His lips, when they touched hers, detonated a series of little thrilling explosions inside her. She wanted him. She’d never stopped wanting him. She hated him and was terrified of being here, in his company, carrying a secret she knew could be as devastating as dynamite, yet she couldn’t get enough of his kiss.
With a helpless little groan, her fingers curled into his jumper and she angrily pulled him towards her even as he propelled her towards the wall without breaking physical contact.
His hands were hot and hungry on her, reaching to tug the prissy white shirt free from her trousers, then pushing underneath the shirt to cup her breasts and massage them until her nipples were pushing against the lace in a desperate bid to be caressed.
Leandro was shocked at how fabulously familiar her body was and even more shocked at how novel he still found the experience. Familiarity, in this instance, was showing no signs of breeding contempt.
He wanted, he needed more than just some schoolboy groping through a bra, and he discovered that his hands were shaking as he undid the tiny pearl buttons of her blouse. Given the option, he would have ripped the thing open, so desperate was he to suckle what his hands were touching, but taking his time at least had the advantage of imposing some control on his runaway libido.
Buttons finally undone, he delicately peeled aside her blouse and lifted her bra, pushing it up so that her generous breasts were on show.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said in a ragged undertone. He held her breasts in his big hands and rubbed his thumbs over her nipples, watching as they promptly stood to attention, the pink tips hardening and peaking under the caress. He looked at her. ‘I want you so much it hurts,’ he confessed, and Abigail shuddered because this couldn’t be more wrong and yet it felt so right. ‘Tell me right now that you don’t want me back...’
CHAPTER THREE
‘WANT YOU BACK? Want you back?’ Abigail fought the heat suffusing her body and pushed him away but her hands were shaking as she busied herself trying to rearrange her clothing.
In response, Leandro planted both hands on either side of her, caging her in, and he looked at her without batting an eyelid. ‘Shameful admission, I know,’ he murmured. ‘But the truth, nevertheless. I know you’re not acquainted with the fine art of truth telling, but personally I find it rarely pays to ignore it. And the truth is that we’re still where we were a year and a half ago—burning up for one another.’
This time Abigail did laugh. ‘How can you call me a liar in one breath and then tell me that I’m still stupid enough to fancy you in the other?’ Backed against the wall, and trapped by the sheer steel wall of his body inches away from her, she folded her arms defiantly and stared at him.
‘Because lust has nothing to do with whether you like someone or not.’
‘Maybe not for you!’
‘Shall we put that to the test? Oh, we already did. You failed.’
Abigail could feel the little nerve jumping in her neck. She should really hate all this cave man, macho stuff but the truth was that Leandro did it all so well. He’d always had that intensely masculine air of cool self-assurance and a careless assumption that the world would jump when he told it to. She’d found it novel, strange and a massive turn on all at the same time and she hadn’t even been able to work out why. She just had.
Now, he was exercising that self-assurance again and she could feel herself getting addled.
‘Leandro, this is crazy,’ she muttered. ‘If it hadn’t been for your ex-fiancée, I wouldn’t even be here. We wouldn’t have met again.’
‘I wish you’d stop calling her my ex-fiancée,’ Leandro said irritably. ‘That was all wishful thinking on her part.’
‘You were very well suited.’
‘Really? I had no idea you knew her.’
‘Oh, stop being so sarcastic, Leandro. You know what I mean.’
Leandro flushed darkly. In the space of only a handful of weeks, she had become the only woman who had never shied away from saying exactly what she thought. She hadn’t been impressed into obedience and he had liked that. ‘We’re moving off topic here,’ he drawled. ‘We were talking about this thing that’s still here between us. You were busy trying to pretend that there was nothing and I was on the brink of proving to you that there is.’
‘I didn’t say that there was...that there was nothing,’ Abigail denied in a harried undertone. ‘But whatever there is, it’s inappropriate.’
‘I don’t care about what happened in the past,’ Leandro lied smoothly. He cared all right but, in the end, this was an even better situation in a way. Shorn of emotion, this became a sating of their physical appetites and the most natural thing in the world. It was unthinkable that she would dig her heels in and deny what was obvious and, if she did, then he had every intention of using every bit of ammunition to hand to batter down her defences.
She was probably right. If she ha
dn’t shown up on his doorstep, their paths would never have crossed again.
But she had shown up and he had seen in a blinding flash that she was still in his system and would always be in his system unless he did something about it.
‘But I do,’ Abigail said stubbornly. ‘I didn’t have the greatest of backgrounds, and I was a coward for not admitting that to you from the beginning, but I didn’t deserve...’ She looked away, bright red, teetering between calling him out for the blind loyalty to his sister which had made him judge her without giving her a fair hearing, and just running as fast as she could away from him and the crazy feelings he had stirred up in her. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she muttered, staring down at her feet. Her heart was beating like a drum inside her chest and her fingers were digging into her forearms as she continued to focus on the ground while his dark gold eyes raked over her.
‘Look at me, Abigail.’ He stood back and tilted her chin with one finger so that their eyes met. ‘I wouldn’t be standing here if I didn’t think that there was something inevitable about this accidental meeting.’ Eyes still on her, he carefully traced her collarbone, and she was helpless to do anything about it. ‘What happened to end things happened, and the truth is that they would have ended at some point anyway.’ Something stirred uneasily inside him and he frowned briefly. ‘If it’s any consolation,’ he confessed gruffly, ‘it did make me realise how possessive my sister had become over the years without my realising.’
‘Really?’ Abigail’s eyes widened because this was some admission, coming from a guy who would sooner have all his teeth yanked out with pliers than admit to any form of weakness, and admitting that he had allowed his sister to take control—and had misjudged the situation—was a form of weakness.
Not that it made a blind bit of difference because, as he said, things would have ended anyway. She had fallen in love with a man for whom things were always going to end. She was always going to reach a sell-by date.
‘Family dynamics.’ He shrugged as he realised how easy it still would be to be lulled into thinking that she was someone she wasn’t. ‘Will you let me see you?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Now that she wasn’t caged in, Abigail knew that she could terminate this conversation and briskly walk towards the door, head for her bedroom, lock herself in and make sure that she left the following day without laying eyes on him. Instead, she heard herself saying, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Take off your shirt. I loathe that shirt anyway. Very prim and proper and we both know that you can be the opposite of prim and proper.’
‘Leandro...’
‘I’ve always loved it when you said my name like that—in that breathy, husky voice of yours.’ His words were like a physical caress, pulling memories from where they had been hidden and wreaking havoc with her prized common sense.
‘There’s nothing wrong with my shirt.’
‘There’s everything wrong with it. All those infernal buttons. Very starched and white.’
‘It’s my work outfit.’
‘I hate it and I’d really like you to take it off.’
‘I can’t believe you’re saying that, Leandro.’ But she wondered why she was surprised when he had always been the king of the outrageous demand.
His voice was as smooth as caramel and he made everything sound so easy. Two people, no strings attached, no thorny past to contend with, thrown together for a purpose. He almost made it sound as though it would be an insult to fate were they not to take the opportunity to jump right back into bed with one another simply because they happened to be unexpectedly sharing the same space.
Her mouth was still tingling from his hungry kiss, and her whole body was on fire, and the worst of it was that he knew it. He knew it because he knew her. She might have kept stuff from him—not through design but by default, almost—but really she had opened up to him in ways she’d never dreamed she would.
He had known what she thought about everything under the sun, and he’d certainly known how she’d felt when he touched her, when he’d whispered into her ear. That was why he knew exactly what was going on inside her and was certainly part of the reason why her feet seemed to be nailed to the floor and her wilful body was determined not to listen to calm reason and get the heck out of the kitchen and away from him.
‘Or...’
His voice lingered seductively on that one syllable, stretching it out till her nerves were on the point of shredding.
‘I could always do the taking off for you... Will you let me?’
Rendered speechless, Abigail just stared and he grinned and tilted his handsome head to one side. ‘You’re not saying anything. Either you’ve decided to consent through silence or else I take your breath away. Maybe both.’
‘You are so full of yourself, Leandro Sanchez.’
‘I know,’ he said ruefully, ‘and, believe me, it’s something I’m trying to cure.’
‘How can you flirt with me when you don’t even like me?’
‘I don’t know,’ Leandro replied with a lot more honesty than he’d intended. ‘Let’s stop talking.’ He began to undo the buttons she had fastidiously done up only moments before and she felt her knees buckling as she let him.
His hands were very gentle on her, barely brushing her skin as he eased the shirt off and then unhooked the bra from the back and removed it. He’d moved closer to her and the only indication that he was turned on was his unsteady breathing and the hot, drowsy look in his eyes.
Abigail knew that if she touched him through his jeans she would feel the rock-hard length of his arousal, and just thinking that chipped away even more at her non-existent defences. Hard on the heels of that thought came another memory, the memory of how he filled her up, the surge of sensation as he thrust inside her, moving and building a rhythm that had never failed to take her over the top.
Pressed against the kitchen door, she arched back and her eyelids fluttered as he lowered himself down in front of her. It had been so long and, yes, she had missed this so much. It was a bitter pill to swallow because it defied all logic, but he was right. She could still want him, want this, even though their relationship had collapsed, even though there was no affection left between them, but instead the biggest secret of all that had the power to blow his world apart.
That secret should have stopped her but by the time his mouth was sucking on her nipple she was already too far gone into a world of heightened sensation where nothing mattered but what he was doing to her.
She plunged her hands into his hair and then half-groaned and sagged back as his questing mouth travelled lower, tracing her stomach then pausing as he reached her no-nonsense grey trousers, which doubtless he also loathed.
All those muddled thoughts were zooming around in her head as he began to unzip them, tugging them gently down until they pooled at her feet.
Her fingers were still entwined in his dark, springy hair, her eyes were shut and she could barely breathe as he pressed his face against her underwear, breathing her in.
He’d introduced her body to the art of making love and she could remember the way she had jerked back when he had first gone down there. She hadn’t been able to imagine such an intimacy, but she had quickly become a fan, and her body now quivered in anticipation of his mouth and tongue delving into her. She was so turned on.
He nuzzled for a while, breathing her in, then delicately he pulled down her panties and she shimmied obligingly out of them. Her body was incredibly familiar even though Leandro dimly registered that she was slightly more rounded than he remembered. If possible, that made her even sexier. Her hips were fuller and her belly was still flat but slightly softer.
Same musky scent, though, that had always been able to work on him like a drug.
He placed his hands on her inner thighs and gently eased them apart and then he flicked
his tongue into her, finding the tight, throbbing bud and tickling it until she was melting.
He wanted to pleasure her so badly it hurt. He craved the feeling of her coming against his mouth and he continued to lick and suck while her stifled whimpers turned into low, barely audible groans, and then she was coming, her spine arching, her whole body stiffening and flailing as she couldn’t hold on any longer.
Abigail practically collapsed against him. Her climax was so explosive that it blew her legs from under her. Hot, naked and shaking, she clung to him and Lord knew what would have happened next in that scenario if the shrill sound of the landline hadn’t interrupted what had been, as she came to realise faster than a bolt of lightning, a moment of complete and utter madness.
Leandro swore under his breath and stalked across to snatch the receiver of the kitchen phone up, at which point he had a brusque and intensely irritated conversation with someone who seemed to be calling from a catering company.
By the time he turned round, Abigail had managed to shove her hot, disobedient body back into its suit of armour, even though she knew that she looked a mess—hair all over the place, lips swollen from where she’d been thoroughly kissed and her whole body still flushed in the aftermath of her orgasm.
Just thinking about what she’d done made her feel sick.
‘I am not,’ Leandro grated, ‘seeing this!’
Abigail flinched. ‘This should never have happened!’ She knew just how that sounded, and she hated herself for the picture she was painting of a woman who was happy to lead a man on and then slam the doors firmly shut in his face once she’d got what she wanted. But she wasn’t going to fall into his arms again. She couldn’t. Now that sanity had been restored, there was so much at risk here that her blood ran cold just thinking about it.
The Secret Sanchez Heir Page 4