in waves that climbed higher and higher. He slid a finger into her and toyed with the slick damp flesh between her slender thighs. Desire engulfed her in a sharp flood of impatience and frustration. She couldn’t stay still—she couldn’t stay still long enough to catch her breath and her heart was racing, perspiration breaking out on her skin as the heat mushroomed up from her pelvis and made her fingernails claw into his luxuriant hair.
‘Just do it!’ she told him fiercely. ‘I’m not expecting rainbows and unicorns!’
‘Which is why we’re doing it my way,’ Leo countered with ferocious amusement.
With difficulty, Letty overcame a mortifying sense of being out of her depth and hating that almost as much as she loved what he was doing to her. Being in bed with Leo was one of the biggest learning experiences of her life, teaching her how much she had underestimated the power of desire to seduce. In a daze and still on the crest of an almost unbearable high of physical responsiveness, she watched Leo reach for protection and roll back to thrust his jeans out of his path with something less than the cool and control she had expected from him.
And then he came back to her with a hungry demanding urgency that taught her that, regardless of his patience, he was every bit as fiercely aroused as she was. He rearranged her with deft hands, scored an expert fingertip over the throbbing bud and triggered a breath-stealing climax that blew her away seconds before he angled his lean hips and filled her in one smooth motion. The sharp stab of pain was lost in a welter of other sensations that consumed her and within seconds he was tilting her up to drive in deeper with restrained thrusts.
He groaned something in Greek but Letty was way beyond asking him to translate, far too concentrated as she was on the eddying pulse of pleasure picking up pace with his every fluid movement. She arched up with a long gasping sigh to greet the wildly sensual and satisfying slam of his body into hers and the all-consuming excitement fired her afresh. He shifted to sink into her receptive core from another angle and grind down on her and her body ignited like oil thrown on a bonfire, tightening and burning and flying into renewed release.
Afterwards she wasn’t quite sure what planet she was on, even if she was actually present with her own body because she felt weirdly insubstantial and detached from the world. She was drained, exhausted but somehow happy in a way she had never known before. For the first time ever she didn’t feel alone, and the arms she had linked round Leo stayed in place until he pulled away, rolling off the bed to stride into the bathroom. Safe sex, she reminded herself. Of course the practicalities would disrupt the aftermath.
‘Did you catch a distant glimpse of even one tiny rainbow?’ Leo murmured huskily as he strode back to the bed.
‘The whole sky was full of them,’ Letty whispered, suddenly feeling self-conscious, which struck her as ridiculous after the intimacy they had shared. She had known Leo for only a month and already he had turned her inside out and upside down, she conceded worriedly.
Leo came down on the bed beside her again and it occurred to her that everything that had transpired between them had been entirely one-sided. Her face burned with guilt and embarrassment because she had been selfish. Sex was supposed to be a two-way activity and she had barely participated.
An unholy grin slashed his wide sensual mouth as he looked down at her. ‘I could swear I saw a unicorn,’ he teased.
And Letty shook free of her insecurities and laughed, responding to the charisma Leo emitted at every turn. Certainly, he knew how to dispel an awkward moment.
‘I’d love a rerun,’ Leo confided. ‘But I know that right now that wouldn’t be very comfortable for you.’
Hot colour washed Letty’s cheeks and she turned her face into the pillow and curled up. ‘I’m exhausted,’ she agreed ruefully because she was. Not only had it been a very long day full of stresses and strains but also her relationship with Leo had shifted into dramatically new territory and she wasn’t yet sure how she felt about that.
‘Sleep,’ Leo urged lazily.
Letty would have enjoyed a bath to relax in but that would’ve entailed getting out of bed naked and crossing the room in front of Leo and she wasn’t quite ready for that amount of exposure. He had given her a great deal of pleasure and presumably had taken pleasure in her. Or was it merely a matter of gaining sexual release for Leo? It was better not to dress harsh facts up, she told herself; it would be wiser to remain realistic.
But the knowledge that that was the sensible way to behave didn’t prevent Letty from wishing that he would close an arm around her and show her some affection and discovering that need, that craving, inside her chilled her blood. There was no point seeking more from a male who had spelt out the reality that he didn’t want or need more, that indeed a bloodless convenient marriage that included sex was the current summit of his ambitions.
At the same time, she ruminated, that prenup agreement she had signed would have to be updated and changed to reflect the major alteration that had taken place in their relationship. Letty looked forward to that. Even when she had believed that she and Leo would never have a normal marriage, it had gone against the grain to sign any document that sanctioned his infidelity. On that soothing thought of what she viewed as an innate wrong being righted, she went to sleep.
When the phone beside the bed rang in the early hours, Letty, inured to wake-up calls and early rising, answered it immediately before it could disturb Leo. It was one of the nannies. Popi had had a bad dream and was inconsolable. Letty crept out of bed and rustled in her suitcase for sensible clothes before allowing herself a last glance at Leo as he slept in a lazy sprawl that had left her sleeping on the far edge of the bed. She smiled as she hurriedly brushed her hair. Even asleep Leo looked gorgeous, a rumpled sheet barely covering his bronzed and muscular length, his black hair and his stubbled jawline very dark against the pale bedding. She brushed her teeth, regretted that she dared not waste time taking a shower and padded out of the beach house to be greeted by Darius, who looked equally tired at the wheel of the beach buggy that would take her up to the villa.
Popi had got herself really worked up and it took time to calm her, and her sobs had wakened Sybella, who curled up at the foot of the bed once Letty arrived and quietly went back to sleep. Letty rocked Popi until she had recovered enough to make herself understood and then it all came flooding out: the argument she had had with her mother the night of the accident, her fear that her bad behaviour could have somehow caused the tragedy. Letty soothed her with the truth that nothing could’ve changed events that fatal night and the assurance that her loving mother would’ve understood her daughter’s disappointment at not being allowed to accompany her parents to the hospital to collect her baby brother and bring him home for the first time.
Leo woke at dawn and sat up, surprised to find himself in an empty bed and then furious, stalking into the shower to cool off before pulling on jeans and a shirt. Letty would be with the children, he knew that, but he also knew that they needed to spend alone time as a couple and if she couldn’t even go a few hours without checking in with the kids, how were they going to get to know each other? Righteously annoyed, Leo left the beach house and found Darius seated bleary-eyed with lack of sleep on a chair on the veranda.
‘Popi had a nightmare,’ Darius told him. ‘The nanny phoned before I could advise her not to.’
‘Go to bed, Darius. You don’t need to be on call twenty-four-seven here on the island,’ Leo responded ruefully.
‘I stayed up to try and prevent you from shooting yourself in the foot,’ his oldest friend admitted ruefully.
