agencies,’ she said succinctly. ‘Young girls are a lot more malleable—controllable and exploitable. It’s a nasty business, modelling.’
‘And yet…’ his eyes rested on her ‘…you thrive.’
‘I survive,’ she corrected him. ‘But,’ she went on, ‘I’m not ungrateful. Modelling’s been a well-paid career for me.’
There was a shuttered look on his face suddenly.
‘Money is important to you?’
Anna looked at him. ‘I’d be pretty stupid if it weren’t! I’ve known models blowing the whole damn lot they earn—chucking it around on clothes and rich living—and they end up with nothing to show for it.’
‘But you are more shrewd?’ The heavy-lidded eyes were resting on her.
‘I hope so.’ She returned his look, keeping it level. His expression stayed shuttered.
Then suddenly, out of nowhere, it changed.
And Anna’s breath stopped.
He was looking at her. Just looking at her.
How can a look stop me breathing? Breathe—for God’s sake, breathe!
But she couldn’t. The breathlessness was absolute, endless.
And as she just sat there, the breath frozen in her lungs, her stomach seemed to be doing a very long, slow motion flip inside her.
Anna felt her hands close over the arms of her chair. Felt, as if from a long, long distance away, her muscles tense as she levered herself to her feet. But, like a mirror image, Leo Makarios was doing the same—getting to his feet.
He was coming towards her.
It was obvious why. Totally, absolutely obvious. And it had been from the moment the expression in his eyes had changed.
Changed to one of intent.
An intent that should have been making her body react the way it always did when she saw that kind of look in a man’s eyes.
But no man had ever looked like that at her before. With lust, yes; with speculation; with hot, hungry appetite; with eagerness and with expectation.
Never the way Leo Makarios was looking at her.
Anna’s legs felt weak; her heart was hammering. A voice seemed to be inside her head, shouting Danger! As if it was some kind of automated warning.
A warning she could do absolutely nothing about—was helpless to heed.
He was coming towards her.
Tall, so tall. Lean, with a clear purposefulness about him. The dark eyes never left her, the expression in them turning her insides to water.
She still couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Just stood there, like a statue, immobile, lips parted, gazing at the planes of his face, his wide, mobile mouth, the loosened tie, the open-necked shirt, with waves of weakness going through her.
Leo stopped. Reached out a hand for her. With a slow, controlled movement he drew a single forefinger down her cheek.
It melted her skin where it touched.
And went on melting.
‘You really are,’ he said, ‘exquisitely lovely.’
The eyes changed again, becoming lambent.
‘Exquisite,’ he echoed softly.
And all Anna could do was just stand there, transfixed, as those heavy-lidded eyes rested on her, draining from her all will, all resistance.
Because in their lambent depths was something she had never seen before.
It was desire.
Not lust. Not slime. Not appetite.
Just—desire.
Desire—burning with a clear, ineluctable, irresistible flame…
Again that wave of weakness drowned through her, draining from her everything she had ever felt before about men looking at her…
Because nothing, nothing she had ever felt before, was anything like this.
She waited for the anger, the biting, aggressive anger that always came when some man looked at her with only one purpose, one intent in his mind.
But it didn’t come.
Instead, a slow-dissolving honey seemed to be spreading out through her veins, warming and weakening her, making her almost sway with sudden debilitating bonelessness.
His eyes were half closed, it seemed, their heavy lids lowered in a sweep of long black lashes. Her breath caught again, another spoon of honey spilling slowly through her veins.
She felt her lips part. As if she did not even have the strength to hold her mouth closed. She felt her eyelids flicker heavily, her pupils dilate.
Her body swayed. Very, very slightly.
He was so close to her. So close. She could feel his presence in her body space, catch the scent of his musk mingled with the expensive notes of his aftershave, heady and spiced. She could see the roughened jawline, the wide, mobile mouth, the lean, tanned cheek—and those heavy, half-closed eyes with the clear, clear intent in them.
Slowly, her insides turned over again.
‘Exquisite,’ he murmured again.
One hand slid around her neck, the other to her waist, and he lowered his mouth to hers, tongue sliding effortlessly within the silken confines.
For a timeless, delicious moment Leo luxuriated in the feel of her mouth. Silky, sensual, and so very, very arousing.
Not that he needed to be aroused. True, he had taken the opportunity while he was eating to sound her out about the redhead who seemed to have captivated his cousin—in respect of which prudence alone dictated that he warn his cousin off the girl. Markos was no gullible fool—far from it—but still, who knew how stupid a man could be if he was subjected to enough adoring gazes like those Leo had been witnessing all evening? Maybe they were calculated and maybe not. But if they weren’t—and they had, he acknowledged, looked genuine—then Markos might be at greater risk than he knew. At the very least the girl would be difficult to dislodge, and would probably cause a tearful scene when the inevitable end came, which he wouldn’t wish on any man. At the worst—well, although tears and weeping wouldn’t wash with himself—Markos might just be more vulnerable, and find himself in deeper water than he was comfortable with. A naïve woman, entertaining fantasies about marriage, Leo realised, could be far more dangerous than one who knew which way the world went round.
Like the woman he was enjoying now.
Anna was exactly what he wanted. There’d been a lot of tension surrounding the launch of the Levantsky marque, and
