in a car with him for the fifteen minutes or so it would take to drive her back to her apartment. Drakon had rejected her offer, and now she just wanted to get out of here—not drag this awkwardness out a moment longer. ‘Nor is it a good idea, considering you’ve been drinking wine—the licensing laws over here are pretty strict.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘Thank you for dinner—’
‘Which you were too upset to eat.’ A nerve pulsed in the tightness of his jaw.
‘And the lovely wine—which I certainly wasn’t too upset to drink,’ she added pointedly. ‘And for listening to me, at least…’
Drakon scowled his displeasure at the frown that had reappeared between those magnificent eyes. ‘There really is no reason for you to leave so soon—’
‘I’m afraid there’s every reason, Drakon.’ Gemini sighed. ‘You were my last hope, I’m afraid.’
He knew that, and inwardly railed against the fact that he had ultimately proved to be so unhelpful to her. But, apart from his immediate family, business had always come first and last with him—certainly for the ten years since he had taken over as President of Lyonedes Enterprises. The appeal of a beautiful pair of sea-green eyes and the allure of a desirable body simply were not justifiable reasons for him to give even a moment’s consideration to Gemini’s impractical offer to purchase Bartholomew House.
‘I will need to come down in the lift with you, at least, in order to let you out of the building,’ he rasped.
‘By all means come downstairs and see me off the premises,’ she accepted teasingly. ‘Having already been confined by your security man once today, I would hate for it to happen a second time—and maybe this time involve the police because all the alarms go off as I try to leave!’
As the two of them stepped into the lift together Drakon couldn’t help but admire Gemini’s cool dignity only minutes after he had dealt her what must have been a devastating blow. Many women, as he knew from experience, would have resorted to shrieking or crying—or even seduction—in order to try and get their own way, but not Gemini Bartholomew. There was no doubting she looked slightly more emotionally fragile than when she had arrived, but otherwise her calm dignity was still firmly in place.
Not that any of those things would have worked where Drakon was concerned—although the seduction would no doubt have been enjoyable. But Gemini had not even tried to exert any of her feminine wiles on him.
Was that disappointment Drakon felt? Possibly. In the circumstances, he could not in all conscience act upon his own desires, but having Gemini act upon her sexual awareness of him, which he had sensed in her such a short time ago, would have been a different matter entirely!
Gemini was very aware of Drakon standing beside her as they went down in the lift together. And of a return of that sexual tension that had occurred earlier when he had taken her in his arms. If it had ever gone away…
If she were honest with herself, she hadn’t really held out much hope of Drakon being receptive to her unusual offer to buy Bartholomew House from Lyonedes Enterprises when she’d agreed to have dinner with him this evening. She had already realised that from a business point of view it really wasn’t a very practical offer. So having Drakon turn down the offer had come as no real surprise.
The physical awareness that had sprung so readily to life between them earlier and was still so tangibly evident most definitely had…
Oh, Gemini wasn’t surprised that she found Drakon physically attractive—she had realised when she met him this morning that he was a dangerously handsome man!—but that Drakon so obviously found her physically attractive too had come as a total shock. She wouldn’t have thought she was his type at all—too determined and pushy, too impulsive, and definitely far too outspoken.
If she had thought about it at all she would have imagined that the sort of woman he found attractive would be someone undemanding and elegantly beautiful, with a social charm that acted as a foil for his own more taciturn nature. Someone that her stepmother Angela was only too capable of at least pretending to be. As Gemini knew only too well, Angela’s true nature was only revealed after a wedding!
Gemini looked at Drakon from beneath lowered lashes, aware that her breathing had become shallow and her body hot. Her breasts felt full and heavy, the nipples hard and sensitive pebbles, and a telling dampness was flooding her thighs as she wondered what it would be like to make love with such a vitally powerful and ruggedly handsome man. She had absolutely no doubt that Drakon would be a deeply satisfying and accomplished lover—that he would be as accomplished at lovemaking as she had so naively commented he probably was on the piano!
Come to think of it, there were quite a few similarities between making love and playing the piano—surely it was all a question of running your fingers over the right keys in order to achieve the most satisfying result? In fact—
‘What are you doing?’ Gemini gasped as the lights flickered and the lift came to a sudden halt between floors. Drakon had reached out and pressed one of the buttons on the panel before turning to look at her, his expression as dark and unreadable as his eyes as he looked down at her for several tension-filled seconds. ‘Drakon…?’ She looked up at him dazedly.
Drakon reached out and took Gemini in his arms. He moulded the softness of her body against his hardness, aware that she wanted this as much as he did as he heard the shallowness of her breathing, saw the swell of her breasts above her dress, the nipples hard against the softness of that material, and felt the warmth of the rest of her body instinctively curve intimately into his.
‘Drakon…?’ She sounded slightly panicked now, as he studied her intently before moving one of his hands to cup the side of her face, to gently part the softness of her lips. The soft pad of his thumb dipped into the heated moisture of her mouth before slowly spreading that moisture across her lips. ‘Drakon…!’ she gasped weakly, and she allowed her bag to slide to the floor of the lift and her arms to move about his waist beneath his jacket.
Her hands were warm against his back through the silk of his shirt. It was all the encouragement he needed to lower his head and capture the moistness of her lips with his, groaning low in his throat as those lips parted further and the kiss deepened. Their ragged breathing sounded loud in the still silence of the dimly lit lift as the two of them sucked and bit on each other’s lips as they kissed hungrily, passionately.
Drakon only lifted his lips from hers in order to taste the creaminess of her throat as he pushed her back against the wall of the lift and ground the hard and aching throb of his arousal against her. She tasted of warmth and honey, of arousal, and her skin was hot against his lips as he kissed his way down to the swell of her breasts, tasting and licking her there, muttering his dissatisfaction as the fitted bodice of her dress prevented him from going lower.
Gemini was so aroused, so lost in the pleasure of Drakon’s kisses and caresses, that she wasn’t even aware of his having lowered the zip at the back of her dress and tugged aside the material until she felt his lips against the bareness of her breasts. His tongue was a moist rasp across her nipple before he drew that sensitive peak deep into the heat of his mouth. Her hands grasped his shoulders for support as his fingers cupped her other breast and his thumb moved across it in the same rhythmic caress, causing a warm rush of moisture to pool and dampen between her thighs.
Drakon continued to grind the hardness of his arousal against her and her breath caught in her throat, her arousal tightening to fever pitch as she looked down at him, his lashes long and dark against the olive skin of his hollowed cheeks, those firm and ruthless lips parted over her nipple as he drew on her deeply,
