dark, knowing eyes wash over her, Leandra could feel her legs jellify. Her breath had frozen solid in her throat, making it impossible to breathe. Her heart, it seemed, slewed to a stop in her chest and her eyes were stretched so wide she must be goggling. Then, just as she started to go into complete meltdown under his blatantly sexual appraisal, she realised she could see contempt openly sitting in his eyes. It was obvious what he thought of a woman dressed as revealingly as she was.
Two impulses warred within her. One was to grab the nearest tablecloth and cover herself up. The other was to slap his face so hard it would spin the stars for him!
Of course she did neither—she could not afford to.
Instead, she behaved in the way that her role in this elaborate charade required her to behave. Badly.
‘Demos,’ she husked, pressing into his side more closely, unconsciously seeking his protection from such an arrant sexual predator, ‘who is this gorgeous, gorgeous man?’
Leandra’s voice was slightly breathy. It was not entirely put on. Her body was out of control, reacting to this man’s presence in ways she had only ever read about, never experienced. It was a mix of terrifying and exhilarating.
Demos opened his mouth to answer, but was forestalled.
‘Theo Atrides,’ murmured his cousin. His voice had dropped a register and taken on a deep, dark husk of its own, heavy with his drawling Greek accent. The raw sexiness of it made Leandra’s toes curl, accompanied as it was by a kilowatt’s worth of sexual charge blazing through eyes which were suddenly, devastatingly, heavy-lidded and half closed.
He turned to Demos.
‘And this is…?’ He paused expectantly, the purring note still deep in his voice.
His appeal to his cousin sent a frisson of waspish anger through Leandra. Doesn’t he think me capable of answering for myself? she thought indignantly.
‘Leandra,’ supplied Demos. He said her name reluctantly.
‘Ross—’ completed Leandra, with the very slightest bite to her voice.
‘Leandra,’ echoed Theo Atrides drawlingly, ignoring the irrelevance of her surname. Women like her had no need of anything other than a first name—preferably something exotic.
‘You are very lovely, Leandra.’ He paused infinitesimally. ‘Very lovely. All over.’
The heavy-lidded dark eyes washed over her. She felt they were stripping off every last vestige of clothing. Then he helped himself to her hand.
His touch was as electric as his look. To her shame, Leandra believed that she actually trembled as he made contact.
His hand was large and smooth. Warm and strong. And very powerful. Hers looked pale and fragile within its olive-tanned grasp.
Leisurely, Theo lifted her scarlet-tipped, freshly manicured fingers to his lips. But instead of grazing her knuckles in a courtly fashion, as Leandra was steeling herself to expect, he turned her hand over to expose her palm and bent his head.
As his lips touched her flesh she felt them part slightly. Then, in a caress that exploded every nerve-ending in her palm, they laved her skin softly and sensuously. She felt a prickle of arousal all over her body, delicious and enticing. Warm, liquid coils of heat pooled in her veins. Then suddenly, shockingly, she felt the tip of his tongue flicker exploringly at the junctions of her fingers.
Shock, outrage and a sizzle of raw sexual excitement electrified her, searing the breath in her fractured lungs. She couldn’t move even as he released her from his shockingly intimate caress.
She grabbed her hand back into her own possession. It felt as if every nerve-ending in it had been set on fire, humming like flame racing along her veins. For one long, overwhelming moment she felt as if the world was whirling round her, and the only still point was the flare of sensation echoing in her hand.
Her lips parted and she stared, helplessly, at Theo Atrides.
He smiled down at her. A warm, intimate smile. A knowing, indulgent smile. A dangerous, sexy smile.
Almost, almost she felt herself moving blindly towards him, to press herself up against his lean, hard body and give herself to him absolutely. He was like a powerful magnet sucking her towards him.
But she had to resist. She must! She was here to play his cousin’s mistress—nothing more. Forcibly she relaxed her muscles, and by sheer effort of will—still reeling from the sensual onslaught of Theo Atrides’s terrifyingly skilful, insolent mouth on her exposed, defenceless skin—she managed to pull her body back from leaning into his.
Thee mou, thought Theo, as she drew back with obvious reluctance, the girl couldn’t have come on stronger if she’d given him her telephone number! She’d all but gone up in flames for him! What the hell would she be like if he got her horizontal?
A sudden, overpowering image of her lying beneath him, naked and aching for him, yielding her body to him with soft moans, filled his mind with devastating, vivid clarity. He thrust it aside brutally. This was no time to get the hots for a woman who was threatening the stability of his family and its very future! All her sizzling reaction to his deliberate sexual provocation had proved was that, whatever she felt for Demos, it wasn’t anything that stopped her lighting up for any other man. The faithful type she wasn’t!
He turned back to his cousin.
As his attention snapped off Leandra wondered why she felt bereft, instead of relieved—as if a source of heat suddenly turned off had revealed how cold she had been feeling.
All her life.
In a daze she tried to make herself concentrate on what Theo was saying to his cousin. It was hard, because her brain felt like mush.
‘So,’ Theo said to Demos, his deep voice sounding amused, ‘this is what is keeping you in London so long, I see! I can’t say I’m surprised, now I’ve met this delicious morsel of female flesh—’ His eyes worked over Leandra once more, so brazenly she felt her stomach drop even as anger leapt in her throat at such a description. ‘But,’ he went on, holding up a hand peremptorily and focusing back on his cousin, ‘all good things come to an end, Demos. Sofia is waiting for you. It’s time to come home.’
Leandra could feel Demos tense.
‘I’m not ready,’ he replied tersely. His usually mild voice sounded strained.
‘Then be ready,’ said Theo unforgivingly. He reached out and closed his hand around his cousin’s shoulder, turning him slightly away from Leandra as if she were an intruder on the scene.
He switched to Greek, reinforcing her exclusion.
‘Milo’s on the way out, Demos. It’s only a matter of time. His doctors know it and he knows it. He’s old—he’s had too much to bear in his life—don’t do this to him. Come home and get engaged to Sofia. It’s all he asks. He needs to know that the next generation is assured—you can’t blame him for being anxious. He knows, Christos, he knows, just how uncertain life is! He needs to know that a great-grandson could be on the way soon—he needs an heir.’
He spoke rapidly, in a low voice.
Stiffly,
