moan parted her lips beneath his and Leo was lost in the magic of her response. In all his life Leo had never been in such a state of excitement over so little and his control broke.
Letty was in a heaven without boundaries, her body seduced and sensation seducing her. Nothing had ever felt so physically good to her before, no previous experience had ever lit her up like a star from the inside out. He was touching her and she liked it, dear heaven, she liked it, indeed loved how with every mesmerising skim of those clever fingers she shivered and shook on the edge of something she didn’t know but had somehow always secretly craved. Her hips were moving of their own accord, little sounds brimming beneath the erotic pressure of his mouth still on hers. And then suddenly the pressure tightening in her pelvis became unbearable and she was flying sky-high and inwardly screaming from the sheer glory of sexual delight that engulfed her.
Well, now you’ve done it, a snide little voice announced to Leo inside his swimming head. He shifted Letty into a more comfortable position until a faint little snore that brought a grin to his taut mouth warned him that fate had taken care of the problem for him. He would put her to bed and say nothing, make his usual dawn start at the office and thereafter act as though nothing had happened. Ignore, ignore, he urged himself firmly. She had called him a player and, in terms of what he estimated to be her level of experience, perhaps she saw that as an apt label, even if it wasn’t.
Leo was perplexed when he settled Letty down on a guest room bed and removed her shoes only, before spreading a quilt over her. What was it about her that turned him on so hard and fast? He behaved like a sex-starved teenager with Letty and, while it was true that he was currently between mistresses and without a woman in his life, no other woman had ever made him lose focus and control as he had in the car with her. Hunger and need had overwhelmed him and he didn’t like it. In retrospect, he didn’t like that at all. Leo was careful never to lose control, never to want a woman too much. He wouldn’t risk falling in love with the wrong woman, as his father had with his vindictive stepmother, who had loathed Leo purely because he truly knew what a slut she was, one who had tried to climb into her stepson’s bed when he was twenty-one…
Loving the wrong woman could blind a man to his family’s needs and make him weak and treacherous. It had happened to Leo’s father, Panos Romanos. He had married a much younger woman. Katrina had wed him only for his wealth and had never loved him back. That marriage had slowly but surely destroyed Leo’s family. As soon as she could, his sister Ana had fled that unhappy background and married far too young, desperate to create a happy family life. Leo, less vulnerable than his sibling, had merely decided that sex and marriage should always remain separate entities. He didn’t need to love a wife to be a good husband, he only needed to like and respect and care for her. But then, had it not been for Ana’s four needy children, he might never have married at all, he acknowledged grimly.
Letty wakened with a splitting headache. A hangover, she registered in dismay, sitting up in bed and noticing the glass of water and the painkiller set on the cabinet beside her. She reached for both with a groan, her brain a swirl of tangled images. She had got on that pole in public, she recalled in dismay and embarrassment, and then she recalled kissing Leo…and more.
Dear heaven, in the grip of urges stronger and more primal than she had ever dreamt existed, she had flung herself at him like a nymphomaniac, she recalled in horror. She had an image of peeling off her crop top and throwing it. And she remembered every second of what had followed with shuddering accuracy. Her sense of humiliation was so intense that she moaned out loud with self-loathing. How could she have done that? How could she have behaved like that?
He had been aroused too. She shifted in the bed, a mortifying heat warming her pelvis at the knowledge that she had had that effect on him. But she needn’t be feeling like some wildly sexy seductress, she censured herself bitterly. Just about any man would’ve been put in that state by what she had been doing. It was certainly not a compliment to her personal attractions, such as they were. She wanted to blame him for what had happened but knew it would be unfair when she had offered so much encouragement. She couldn’t imagine how she would ever look Leo in the eye again, which wasn’t good when it was their wedding day in less than twenty-four hours.
It was a huge relief to go downstairs in her embarrassing shorts and discover that Leo had left for the office hours before. Popi’s giggles at her appearance were somehow healing, the little girl’s innocence soothing, and by the time Letty had cuddled Theon, set Cosmo’s cars out in a line for him and done Sybella’s hair in a princess style adorned with the bridal tiara from the night before, Letty was well on the road to recovery and telling herself that she was too sensitive, too naïve…
Leo, however, was having a difficult morning. No matter how hard he tried to shut it out and regain his usual deep concentration, he kept on remembering the feel and look of Letty on his lap in the limo and the taste of her on his lips. He was fantasising about a woman he had sworn he would leave untouched, he acknowledged grimly. A woman who set him on fire. A woman who had broken down his disciplined barriers and subjected him to a long, hot, sleepless night craving what he couldn’t have. He had chemistry with Letty to a level that inflamed him. But he was not ready to embrace anyone’s sacred bond.
Those two words said it all to Leo. He was not and would never be a one-woman man. Look at what that obsession for Katrina, his stepmother, had done to his spineless father! It had brought his father low, blinding the older man to his beloved’s flaws.
And while Leo agonised and regretted, with a series of curses that he was rarely driven to use because sexual frustration was new to him, the solution finally came and it was stunningly simple. His brain had thrown out the obvious answer.
He blinked, the lush black lashes that enthralled Letty shooting up, a glow of satisfaction and relief warming the tawny depths of his eyes… Of course—the only answer that made sound practical sense and it would surely appeal to Letty as much as it appealed to him.
SEATED IN HER CHAIR, Gillian flipped open the jewellery box that had been delivered and gasped out loud. ‘Oh, my word, Letty… Come here and see!’
Letty rustled over in her bridal gown and was almost blinded by the flashing white fire of the diamond tiara, earrings and necklace laid out in the wide velvet-lined box. She flipped up the note enclosed in the box, in which Leo informed her that the set had belonged to his mother and he would be pleased if she wore the pieces. ‘A little extravagant for me,’ she began uncertainly.
‘Nonsense, this is going to be a big fancy wedding attended by a lot of well-heeled people,’ her mother told her roundly. ‘And when a man hands over the family heirlooms before the wedding, you say “Thank you very much indeed” and wear them!’
Letty reddened and lifted out the tiara to anchor it into the thick mass of her upswept hair. Unlike the fake one she had worn on her hen night, it fixed in with ease. Adorned in the diamonds, she studied herself in the mirror, her hands trembling a little as her fingers dropped from attaching the last earring. In truth she barely recognised herself. She had had her hair and make-up done earlier that day at a local salon but, because
