authority in his voice would have stopped a lesser mortal, but she ignored it as she moved around the bed, frowning, tugging at the draping folds of the bedlinen.
‘Are you looking for something?’ he asked, knowing he had to act quickly.
Kayla made a grab for the red briefs he was holding up, which only succeeded in bringing her across the bed and against his disturbingly masculine body as he withheld them, effectively securing what he wanted.
‘You haven’t offended me. You were wonderful,’ he murmured, his warm breath a delicious sensuality against her hairline. ‘Now, come back to bed. I want to talk to you,’ he said, and just as an incentive slipped his hand under the tantalising little skirt and let his fingers play along the outer curve of one taut, silky buttock.
Kayla groaned, weakening beneath his mind-boggling powers of persuasion. She felt vulnerable and incredibly sexy with no panties on, but she despaired at herself too, at how easily and effortlessly he could bend her to his will.
Whatever he had to say, she had the strongest suspicion that she wasn’t going to like it. He didn’t want commitment. Of course he didn’t. And anyway she wasn’t ready for another serious relationship yet. Yet neither was she ready to let him have it all his own way.
Catching him in an unguarded moment, reaching round to adjust the pillows behind them, she managed to wriggle out of his arms and snatch her underwear from his grasp, saying, ‘I can talk better over a cup of coffee,’ as she ran giggling out of the room.
‘Kayla, come here!’
She was in the hall, pulling her panties back on, when he raced down the stairs, still fastening his robe, but darted off again laughingly as soon as she saw him coming.
‘Will you just stand still and let me talk to you?’ he called after her as she grabbed the carrier bag she’d left on the chest and headed for the kitchen. He had to break it to her gently. She’d be angry, it was true, but not as angry as she would be finding it out for herself.
‘Go and sit down,’ he commanded softly when she turned around. He was pointing to the sitting room. ‘I will make the coffee.’
‘Fine,’ she agreed airily, pivoting away again, ‘but I’ll keep you company while you’re doing it.’
‘In the sitting room,’ he breathed, in one last attempt to prevent her from seeing all his papers.
She turned in the kitchen doorway, her chin lifting in playful challenge. ‘And since when did you suddenly start issuing so many orders?’
‘Since I thought you were running out on me without finishing what you started.’ One purposeful stride brought him over to her, his mouth a sensuous curve. But inside he was a heaving mass of turmoil.
He had to keep her out of the kitchen—stop her going in there before he had a chance to explain. He cast a surreptitious glance over her shoulder at the table in the centre of the room, heaving with incriminating evidence. He should have told her before. Should have kept her in bed...
‘Kayla...’
The way he spoke her name never failed to turn Kayla’s bones to jelly.
‘Say it again,’ she murmured huskily.
‘What?’ He looked tense, she thought, and mystified too.
‘The way you say my name.’
‘Kay-lah.’
She groaned her satisfaction and nestled against his chest above the gaping V of his dark satin robe. His skin smelled of the lingering traces of shower gel overlaid with a sensual musk.
‘It should be censored—or at least X-rated,’ she purred, with her tongue coming out in a provocative caress of that bared skin. It felt silky and tasted slightly salty...
Dear heaven!
Leonidas dragged in a breath, at a loss for the words he needed to say. He didn’t know what powers this girl used to bewitch him, but even as he struggled to engage his normally incisive brain his body was responding with an urgent message of its own. It was taking all the mental strength he possessed not to rip down her panties, lay her down right here on the marble floor and enjoy the pleasure of having her beneath him, with himself in the driving seat this time. But he had to get her out of this room!
Swiftly his mouth swooped down over hers in a bid to distract her enough to manoeuvre her back into the hall. But he hadn’t reckoned on how distracting her soft mouth would be to him.
Feeling her warm body against his, he could only respond to it in a kiss that went on and on, until they both came up for air and her head dropped back against his shoulder.
A few moments later, lifting her head, she murmured, ‘What is that?’
Leonidas’s spine pulled into a tight, tense rod. All he had succeeded in doing was turning her round, so that their positions were reversed, and she was now looking at the plans he’d set up on an easel. Allowing her to pull out of his arms, he felt the slaying blow of defeat.
Stepping down into the kitchen and dumping the bread bag on the table, bewildered, Kayla couldn’t take it in. There were papers. Lots of papers. A laptop and a memo pad. And what she had thought were sketches looked like some sort of plan...
‘What is it?’ Her eyes skittered from the easel to the table and then the briefcase standing open on the floor. ‘Is it something you’re working on? Some building work...?’
Leonidas took a step towards her. ‘Kayla, I can explain.’
‘Explain?’ She looked at him with confusion in her questioning blue eyes. ‘Explain what?’
What was he doing with what looked like a whole set of plans for some development scheme? And a big, big development scheme by the look of it, she realised, when her gaze swept back over the table. Something proposed by the Vassalio Group—a big, big developer. She knew that much as her eyes took in the recognisable black and gold logo at the top of the plan she was staring at.
‘I don’t understand...’ Why had his cosy farmhouse kitchen taken on the look of some executive’s pad? Why was he looking so serious?
At that moment his cell phone rang from somewhere, shrilling across the sudden pregnant silence.
He pulled it out of the pocket of his robe, his eyes never leaving hers as he intoned incisively, ‘Vassalio.’ And then the penny dropped.
It was like an unashamed declaration directed specifically at her, Kayla thought, realising she had started to tremble.
Vassalio. Leon. Leonidas Vassalio. She knew the name. Of course she did! She’d heard it often enough in the media, seen the company logo on billboards and advertising for commercial developments, but she’d never taken much notice of it until now.
‘You lied to me,’ she accused in a virtual whisper when he cut the call short, feeling so shocked and betrayed that it was almost painful to breathe. ‘You’ve lied to me ever since I got here!’
‘Misled,’ he corrected as he dropped his phone back into his pocket.
As
