he repeated softly, but he managed to fill the word with a sultry promise. ‘Maybe we had better go to bed.’
Sabrina swallowed. ‘What, right now?’
He smiled. ‘Mmm. Right now.’ And he pulled her to her feet, shaking his head as he saw her look around the room for her underwear. ‘Leave that,’ he instructed softly. ‘You won’t be needing any clothes tonight.’ And saw her shivered response.
He took her by the hand and led her to his bedroom, in a section of the large flat she usually avoided, throwing the door open to reveal an airy room dominated by an enormous bed. Huge windows looked down onto the flower-filled square.
‘I don’t think you’ve ever been in here before, have you, princess?’ he murmured. ‘Do you like it?’
‘Well, I have seen it,’ admitted Sabrina, and saw the question in his eyes. ‘I sneaked a look when I first moved in. I was…curious.’ More than curious.
She had wanted to see whether the room could tell her more about the man, but it had thrown up few clues. The paintings were superb, the furniture modern and luxurious—but it was an oddly dispassionate room. As though he was wary about expressing too much of his personality through mere fixtures and fittings. Again, there was that distinctive air of containment.
Guy should have been riled at what could definitely have been termed as an intrusion, but found himself smiling instead. He thought that few people would have admitted it. But then wasn’t Sabrina’s innate innocence one of her sweetest and most appealing features? Well, that and her stubborn insistence and the way she could make him mad and then make him smile an instant later. Even the way she nagged him about working too hard—which his mother had long given up on.
‘Do you mind?’ she asked. ‘That I sneaked a look?’
He saw the uncertainty which had clouded the ice-blue eyes, and a wave of an emotion he didn’t recognise washed over him. He forced himself instead to watch the pert thrust of her breasts.
‘I’m rather turned on by the thought of you prowling around in here like a pussy-cat,’ he said roughly. ‘Come on, let’s go to bed.’
SABRINA opened her eyes to the morning light and closed them again as images of the previous night came flickering back.
What had she done? Placed herself in the most precariously vulnerable position in the world—that was what she’d done. Given herself to Guy, heart, body and soul.
‘Good morning, princess,’ came a murmured greeting, and her eyes snapped open to see Guy standing, towering above her, already shaved and dressed for work in another exquisitely cut dark suit, and she felt a great wrench of longing.
‘Hello,’ she whispered, her heart thundering at the sight of him.
He smiled. ‘You were sleeping so beautifully that I couldn’t bear to wake you.’
She sat up and saw his eyes darken as her bare breasts were exposed, and some protective instinct made her gather the sheet around her.
‘You’re going already?’ she asked him.
‘Wish I didn’t have to, but I have an early meeting,’ he said softly, and sat down on the bed beside her.
Of course he did. Guy the workaholic. Guy the driven. He might have spent most of the night making exquisite love to her, but that didn’t change his priorities, did it? And work came first. It always would.
Well, she might have been compliant in his arms last night, but that didn’t mean that she had to exist in a passive state of insecurity now.
‘This changes things, doesn’t it?’ she said slowly.
There was an imperceptible pause as the grey eyes narrowed. He’d hoped to avoid any kind of analysis. ‘How come?’
‘Oh, don’t be obtuse, Guy, you’re much too intelligent for that,’ she told him crossly. ‘If I’m living with you…’ She saw the wariness on his face and wished she’d phrased it better. ‘If I’m living here and we’re having—’
‘Sex?’ he put in, with a wicked grin.
Thank goodness he’d interrupted her. She’d been about to say ‘a relationship’, but his drawled one-word question had brought what had just happened between them down to the lowest common denominator. And shown her more clearly than anything else could have done just how different their agendas were. She might love Guy—but that didn’t mean he felt the same way about her. Men didn’t need to be in love to make love the way he had done.
‘Yes, sex.’ She swallowed.
‘Good sex.’ He trickled a finger slowly from shoulder to breast, and she let the sheet fall. ‘The very best,’ he added slowly.
It should have been a compliment, so why did it sound little short of an insult? ‘Thank you,’ she said stiffly.
He flicked softly at one rosy nipple, feeling it surge into instant life beneath his finger. God, he felt like just getting back into bed with her and forgetting the damned meeting. His face hardened. He hadn’t got where he was today by letting a woman trap him with her honeyed sweetness.
‘Why should it change anything, except for the better?’ he questioned softly. ‘We carry on as we were, only now you share my bed at night. I can’t think of anything I’d rather have.’
‘No,’ she said sadly. Of course he couldn’t. He didn’t want commitment, or even a relationship. He wanted sex, pure and simple—and obviously he thought that was all she wanted, too. And who could blame him? Hadn’t she always demonstrated the sensual side of her nature around him?
He reluctantly moved his hand from her breast and cupped her face instead. ‘What’s the problem, Sabrina?’ he asked gently. ‘Why the long face? Let’s just enjoy it, huh?’
And when she came to the end of her stay with him, what then? But consenting adults didn’t make unnecessary emotional demands, did they? Guy didn’t love her—and wouldn’t he doubt her feelings if he had any idea what they were? Wouldn’t he consider her fickle if she told him she’d fallen in love with him—only months after the death of the man she’d been due to spend the rest of her life with?
But love could strike without warning. It wasn’t exclusive. Just because she’d been in love once before, that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen again. What she’d felt for Michael hadn’t been what she felt for Guy. Her feelings were different, but that didn’t make them any less valid. And they were all-consuming.
She wanted him, she realised, on whatever terms he was prepared to take her.
But he wouldn’t know that. She would keep her dignity and play at being a modern woman, not a lovesick fool who would settle for anything—just as long as it included him.
‘OK, let’s just enjoy it,’ she echoed, and slanted him a smile.
Her look was one of pure provocation,
