in his embrace?
Evidently, yes.
He stared at her balefully. Hell, she should be purring by now! Her body languorous and sensual from its sating last night. She should have undulated towards him wearing something skimpy, like a bikini with a chiffon sarong caressing her hips, wafting up to him, hair cascading down her back, mouth beestung. She should have leant down, draping her arms around his shoulders, murmuring amorously to him, lowering her mouth to his to greet him…
Instead she was sitting ramrod-straight, answering in terse, caustic monosyllables or totally ignoring him.
Christos, who the hell was she to ignore him? Did she really think she’d prefer a police cell to his bed? Obviously not, or she wouldn’t have accepted the bargain he’d offered her. She wanted to save her precious skin, all right, and she hadn’t been fussy about how she was going to do that. Well—he glared at her—she could damn well earn her parole, just the way he’d told her when he’d caught her red-handed with his rubies.
By working very, very hard to please him.
He took a mouthful of coffee and then pushed the cup away.
‘Anna—’
The edge was back in his voice.
She looked up.
‘Yes?’
He rested his eyes on her. For a moment he said nothing. He thought he saw something flicker in her face, then it was gone.
‘Lose the attitude,’ he said softly. ‘If you’d rather go back to a police cell in Austria, you only have to say. But if you don’t, then I suggest you remember what you are here to do, hmm?’
Something changed in her face then, all right. It seemed to blanch even whiter than its usual paleness. Then it was gone again. She set her book down.
‘You want sex again?’
The question was delivered in such a deadpan voice that Leo just stared. Distaste knifed through him.
‘Spare me your crudities,’ he said coldly.
The look came in her face again, then disappeared.
‘Well, what do you want, then?’ she demanded.
There was belligerence in her voice. It set Leo’s back up.
‘You can start,’ he said tersely, ‘with some civility.’
A choke sounded from her.
‘Civility?’ She echoed the word as if he’d said DIY brain surgery.
Leo’s mouth tightened.
‘We will be here together for at least three weeks—I have no intention of putting up with your ill-humour for that duration.’
She seemed to have gone pale again.
‘Three weeks?’ she echoed faintly. ‘I can’t stay here that long!’
Anger shot through him again.
‘You think your time in jail would be less?’ he riposted sarcastically.
‘I’ve got assignments booked.’
‘I will have them cancelled.’
She leant forward.
‘No, you will not. I will not have my professional reputation compromised by you high-handedly cancelling my assignments!’
Once more Leo was reduced to just staring at her.
‘Your…professional…reputation…?’ he echoed. ‘I don’t believe I just heard you say that! You, Anna Delane, are a thief! You have committed a criminal act. I could have you slung in jail. And you dare, dare to talk to me of your “professional reputation”?’
Leo pushed his chair back and stood up, his hand slashing through the air.
‘Enough! I don’t want to hear one more insolent word from you.’ He relapsed into Greek, and vented his feelings in several choice expletives. Then he stalked away, his mood as black as thunder.
Behind him, Anna Delane sat very, very still.
She wouldn’t crack. She wouldn’t. She would not give him that satisfaction.
Satisfaction.
The word jibed at her with cruel taunting. She could still see it now, etched on her memory, the triumphant satisfaction on his face as she’d opened her eyes to look down at the man who had just done what he had to her.
Self-hatred lacerated through her. How could she have betrayed herself like that? How could she have responded to him, been stroked and caressed and kissed into arousal as she had let herself be?
Until she was helpless, mindless, beyond all control, all salvation.
Beyond anything except the fire that had swept through her body, flamed it to an ecstasy that she had never known existed.
Nothing had ever been like this—nothing.
It had been incredible, ecstatic, exquisite—a stormfire of sensation that had burnt her flesh to the core in a sensual pleasure so intense she had not known it was possible to exist.
I never knew—I never knew it could be like this…
And in that same moment of exultant realisation she had known exactly why she so feared Leo Makarios—just why he was so dangerous to her. She had opened her eyes and realised, with a sickening, ravening horror, what she had done, what she had let him do. What she had wanted him to do!
And he had known it. Wanted her to want it, and what he could make her feel. She had seen the triumph in his eyes.
Self-hatred lashed through her again.
Oh, God, she’d walked to his bed like an ignorant, arrogant fool! Thinking she could stay detached, controlled. Uninvolved with what was going to happen to her. She had prayed for strength, but she had been weak—devastatingly, sickeningly weak.
So pathetically weak she hadn’t been able to resist. Not a single touch or caress; not even a single kiss! Leo had melted her into his arms and she had been able to do nothing, nothing, to hold back from him!
A shaft of fear went through her.
Three weeks, he’d said. Oh, God, she couldn’t last three days here!
Or three nights…
She sat staring out over the beautiful vista of sea and sand as if she were staring at a desert of thorns.
He would do to her again tonight what he had done last night. She knew it. Knew it with a sick, dull certainty. He would take her to bed and stroke, caress and kiss her body until she could fight it no longer. Until
