Don’t take it personally, Rose, I’m just being practical.’
‘Practical,’ she spluttered, practically shaking with outrage.
‘I don’t think there’s anything incorrect in using what assets you’ve got, and don’t tell me you never have.’
This cynical suggestion made her temper fizz. ‘No, I haven’t.’
She knew she shouldn’t respond to his sceptical shrug because he was obviously trying to needle her, but Rose couldn’t bite her tongue.
‘As for encouraging anyone called Demetrios to leer at me,’ she said, ‘I don’t think so—just being around anyone of that name for any length of time is enough to make me want to go lie down in a quiet, darkened room.’ She would have felt a lot happier if the mental image that accompanied that hot statement had her lying alone in the quiet, darkened room.
‘I had no idea you felt that way …’ He glanced at his watch and sighed. ‘Unfortunately my father does not like tardiness. Otherwise I would be perfectly willing to oblige.’
The colour flew to her face; he had an uncanny ability to read her mind. ‘I meant alone in a darkened room with a cold compress on my head, not you …’ On top of me … inside me. What would that feel like, she wondered, to feel the weight of his hard body on top of her? His silky hardness filling and stretching her?
Glazed eyes half closed, her glance drifted to his mouth and a fractured sigh shuddered through her body. She expelled a second, deeper sigh and bit her lip. His raw masculinity and what it did to her was terrifying.
Face burning, she slammed her hand against her forehead, which even as she spoke was beginning to pound ominously.
‘If you want to distract people, Mathieu, and it’s legitimate to use what you’ve got—’ and he certainly had quite a lot, she thought, tearing her eyes from the hard, supple contours of his muscle-packed torso and feeling a bit dizzy as a consequence ‘—why,’ she suggested, sucking in a deep restorative breath ‘don’t you take off your shirt to go to dinner?’
She folded her arms across her chest, causing the silk across her hips to tauten, and fixed him with a tight-lipped smile.
‘See how you like being treated as a sex object?’
‘You would find me taking off my shirt distracting?’ He was definitely finding the way the subtly shiny fabric clung to the peachy curve of her hips and thighs more than distracting. In his mind he could hear the swish of the fabric as it fell in a silken pool around her feet. The image made his body temperature rise a notch and as his imagination lingered over the soft curves the ache in his groin became more difficult to ignore.
He was asking if she would find him performing a striptease distracting …?
Rose’s feeling of superiority vanished faster than her protest had the time he had kissed her. Now this was what was called shooting yourself in your own foot and then stamping on it for good measure.
She laughed nervously, her eyes sliding away as she attempted to treat his suggestion as the joke.
‘One naked man is much the same as another,’ she dismissed, smiling faintly.
Well, what else could she say?
She could hardly go into gratuitous detail about how she turned into a drooling, sex-starved imbecile every time she considered the hard body that filled his superbly cut clothing.
Swallowing hard, she lifted her chin and pinned a fixed smile to her face. She had heard that lust was undiscriminating, but she had not imagined how undiscriminating until she had met this man.
‘So you would be bored?’
‘For God’s sake!’ she snapped. ‘That wasn’t a challenge. You’re an incredible-looking man with a great body,’ she admitted, her attitude see-sawing between exasperation and desperation. ‘But I happen not to be one of those women who go for beefcake. A six pack does nothing for me.’ Well, not up to now it hadn’t, anyway.
Not that Mathieu could be categorised so neatly. Beefcake was just visual candy. Nice, but instantly forgettable, and he was neither.
What he had was far more complex and dangerous than simply the combined appeal of a great body and a charismatic smile. He had an earthy sexuality that evoked an almost visceral response in her. And there was nothing even faintly contrived about it; it was as much a part of him as his fingerprints and equally unique.
A dangerous smile lurking in the back of the platinum eyes still holding her gaze, he slid the unfastened tie from around his neck. ‘In that case,’ he mused, ‘it wouldn’t bother you if I …’
Rose watched, her eyes saucer-wide in horror as he began to slip the buttons of his shirt revealing in seconds a segment of golden skin sprinkled with dark body hair. Unable to tear her eyes from the erotic spectacle, Rose ran the tip of her tongue across the outline of her full upper lip and sucked in a shaky breath as illicit excitement clutched at the quivering muscles low in her pelvis and shot down to her curling toes.
‘Not in the slightest,’ she agreed hoarsely. ‘Although if your father doesn’t like tardiness this might not be the moment to allow your exhibitionist tendencies full rein.’
‘You would not find it that distracting, then?’ he questioned with a show of silky smooth innocence that was in stark variance to the sensual, mocking glitter in his deep-set eyes as they moved from her parted lips and fastened onto her wide, dilated amber eyes.
Another button followed the first two and Rose, fighting for composure, felt the sweat break out on her forehead as he pulled the hem from the waistband of his trousers. ‘N-not in the slightest,’ she said with what she suspected was the most unconvincing show of indifference this century.
‘You should never, ever play poker, mon ange.’ His shirt hung open to the waist, revealing a large proportion of his powerful chest and a tantalising section of muscle-ridged flat stomach.
Rose was shocked and horrified by the shaft of lust that struck to the heart of her. Eyes glazed, she ran a tongue over the dry outline of her lips. The impulse to reach out and touch him, place her hands on the golden glowing skin that looked like oiled silk, was so strong she could physically taste it. She stood poised on the balls of her feet to take flight, but was unable to summon the strength to break the hypnotic hold of his smoky eyes.
Then finally she managed to turn her head sharply. Her hands clenched as she fought to calm her erratic shallow breathing and drag enough air into her lungs to stop her head spinning.
‘I prefer poker to the games you play,’ she husked, feeling the unexpected sting of emotional tears fill her eyes.which was crazy because she simply wasn’t a crying person.
‘I don’t play games, Rose.’ There was a note in his voice that she hadn’t heard before. It made her want to search his face, but she knew that would be a bad idea. Looking at him made her mind mush … actually, her mind was permanently mush at the moment.
He covered the few feet that separated them in seconds. Framing her face between his hands, he tilted her head up to his.
Rose’s knees sagged; the sexual smoulder deep in his eyes made things shift and tighten with painful intensity
