two pieces of fabric were wrenched apart to reveal a white top made of some stretchy fabric that crossed over and moulded the thrusting fullness of her two tight breasts.
Leo looked down at them, then up into her fever-bright eyes, and wanted to bite out a filthy black curse. As she wrenched the jacket off altogether, he reached out to try and stop her, only to freeze when he read the helpless plea that had etched itself on her paper-white face.
If he turned her down now, the rejection was going to shatter her.
Her smooth white throat moved as she swallowed, those kiss-warmed lips parting so she could whisper out a husky little, ‘Please…’
And he was lost, Leo knew it. Even as she took the initiative away from him by winding her arms around his neck again, he knew he was not going to stop this. Lifting his hands up to mould her ribcage, he stroked them down the tight white fabric to the sexy indentation of her waist in an exploring act that rolled back the denials still beating an urgent tattoo in his head.
Her mouth was a hungry invite. Leo raked his hands back up her body again and this time covered the full perfect globes of her breasts. She fell apart on a series of gasps and quivers that sent her body into an acute sensual arch, fingernails digging into his neck again, hair suddenly tumbling free in a glorious roll of fine silken waves down her back. She was amazing, a stunningly complicated mix of prim, straight-lace and pure untrammelled passion with her lily-white skin and her lush parted mouth, and her breasts two sensational mounds that filled his hands and…
The front door slammed.
Rico had gone.
If Natasha recognised what the sound meant she did not make a response. Her eyes still burned into him with the fevered invitation she was offering.
Time to make a decision, Leo accepted grimly. Continue this or put a stop to it?
Then her fingernails dug deeper to pull his mouth back down onto hers and the decision was made for him.
Natasha felt his surrender and took it with a leap of triumph that bordered on the mad. She became aware of the power of his erection pressing against her again, instinct made her move against it. He muttered a low, throaty response and he was suddenly tightening his hold of her and drawing her to her feet. Next he was swinging her up into his arms and carrying her, the kiss still a seething hot fuse that frazzled her brain and had her heart pounding to the beat of his footsteps echoing on oak flooring as he headed across the hall and began climbing the stairs.
It was the moment that Natasha saw a small chink of sanity. Her head went back, rending the kiss apart as she opened her eyes to look deep into Leo Christakis’s heavily lidded dark eyes before she glanced around her as if she’d been woken up suddenly from a dream.
It was only then that she realised that the hallway was empty. No one was there. No Rico witnessing his betrayed fiancée being carried to bed by her soon-to-be new lover. No housekeeper containing her disapproval and shock.
‘Changed your mind now you don’t have a witness?’ Leo’s hard voice swung her eyes back to him again.
He’d gone still on one of the stairs and the look of cold cynicism was back, lashing his skin to the bones in his face.
‘No,’ Natasha breathed, and she discovered that she meant it. She wanted to do this. She wanted to be carried to bed and made love to by a man who genuinely wanted her—she wanted to lose every single old-fashioned and disgustingly outmoded inhibition she possessed!
‘Please,’ she breathed softly as she leant in to brush a kiss across the hard line of his mouth. ‘Make love to me, Leo.’
There was another moment of hesitation, a glimpse of fury in the depths of his eyes. Then he was moving again, allowing her to breathe again though she had not been aware of holding her breath. He finished the climb up the stairs and carried her into a sultry summer-warmed bedroom with pale walls and big dark pieces of furniture. A red Persian rug covered most of the polished oak floor.
Then he really shocked her by dumping her unceremoniously on the top of a huge soft bed.
As Natasha lay there blinking up at him Leo stood looking down at her, his expression as hard and cynical as hell. ‘Stay there and pull yourself together,’ was all he uttered before he turned around to walk back to the door.
‘Why?’ Natasha shook out.
‘I will not play substitute to any man,’ the cold brute answered.
Natasha sat up. ‘Y-you said you wanted me.’
‘Strange—’ he turned, his kiss-heated mouth taking on a scornful twist ‘—but seeing you getting off on the possibility of Rico witnessing us together was a real turn off for me.’
Natasha sat up with a jolt. ‘I was not getting off on it—!’
‘Liar,’ he lashed back, then really startled her by striding back to the bed to come and lean over her—close enough to make her blink warily because she just didn’t know what was going to come next.
‘To keep things clear between us, Natasha,’ he murmured silkily, ‘if you loved what we were doing downstairs so much you forgot all about Rico, then ask yourself what that tells me about Miss Betrayed and Broken-hearted, hmm—?’
It was as good as a cold, hard slap in the face. Natasha just stared up at him because the worst thing of all was that he had only told it how it was! She had been thinking about Rico when she’d invited what she had downstairs. And she had no excuse for the way she had begged him to bring her up here!
But had he behaved any better? ‘You cruel, h-hateful swine,’ she breathed, and pulled up her knees so she could bury her face.
Leo agreed. He was behaving like an absolute beast feeding her all the blame for whatever had erupted in both of them downstairs. It was still erupting inside him, he admitted as he turned away again and strode back to the door, wishing that he had stayed in Athens this morning instead of…
Telephones started ringing again, piercing through the high-octane atmosphere—his phone in his jacket pocket and another phone ringing somewhere else in the house. Retrieving his mobile, Leo glared at the display screen, expecting it to show Rico’s name.
But it was Juno, his PA. Leo sanctioned the connection. ‘This had better be important,’ he warned as he stepped out of the bedroom and pulled the door shut.
Natasha lifted her head at the sound of the door snapping into its housing. He’d gone. He’d left her sitting here in a huddle on his bed and just walked away from her—because he could.
On a sudden pummelling punch of self-hatred she scrambled up off the bed, hurt beyond sense that yet another man had humiliated her in the space of one horrible day.
Oh, she had to get out of here! Natasha almost screeched that need at herself as she looked around the floor for her shoes and couldn’t find them. Then she remembered the vague echo of them falling off her feet and hitting the floor when Leo had picked her up. Her hair fell forward, tumbling in long waves around her face as if to taunt how she’d been so wrapped up in what she’d been doing with him that she hadn’t even noticed before now how her hair had sprung free of its restraints!
Like herself. She shuddered, turning like a drunk not knowing where
