Читать книгу The Mills & Boon Stars Collection - Мишель Смарт, Cathy Williams - Страница 26
ОглавлениеLEO LAID HER down on a wide bed. ‘I want you to know that I didn’t bring you here for this,’ he breathed rawly. ‘I didn’t plan it.’
His lean, darkly handsome features were taut with hungry frustration and the strangest hint of vulnerability, and for a split second Grace almost raised her fingers to trace the compressed line of his lips. Instead she got a grip of herself and let her hand fall back from his shoulder to lie by her side. Her body was singing a very different message, all revved up like a racing car at the starting line. She was startlingly aware of every erogenous zone she possessed and his pronounced effect on her. Her breasts felt swollen while a hollow ache throbbed at the very centre of her. It was sexual need, plain sexual need, she repeated carefully to herself, as if by acknowledging that she could minimise the effects and suppress them.
‘I intended for us to sit down over a civilised dinner and talk,’ Leo grated impatiently, stepping back from the bed as if he didn’t trust himself that close to her. ‘But I can’t keep my hands off you!’
He made Grace feel totally irresistible and she marvelled at the sensation and the new buoyancy it gave to her sadly depleted ego, battered by her aunt’s abuse, her cousin’s scorn and Matt’s heartfelt and apologetic, ‘How could you be so stupid?’ There Leo stood, breathtakingly beautiful, rich and charismatic and he still wanted her when she was sure he had to have many more lovely and laid-back female options.
‘I think it cuts both ways,’ she admitted not quite steadily, just looking at him and wanting him so much it almost hurt while telling herself that was entirely and unforgivably superficial.
Leo came down on one knee on the edge of the bed. ‘You...think?’
‘Know,’ she conceded breathlessly, stinging arousal assailing her nipples as she collided with his spectacular dark golden eyes. She thought she would die if he didn’t touch her, told herself that she deserved to die if she let him, but she couldn’t lie about the overwhelming surge of hunger that lit her up like a firework.
‘I want you so much it’s driving me insane,’ Leo husked, coming down to her in one driven movement to seal her to the mattress with his weight. ‘I don’t like the feeling that I’m not in control...’
Grace didn’t like it either and was taken aback that they could be so similar in outlook. Her fingers lifted involuntarily and laced through the blue-black hair falling across his brow. Rain lashed the window across the room and a smouldering silence fell indoors. Her heart was racing and against her breast she could feel the quickened thump of his. Dense black lashes lifted on his stunning eyes and she forgot to breathe, registering that somewhere along the way, and without ever pausing to think it through, she had begun developing feelings for Leos Zikos that went way beyond what she had once envisaged.
For a split second fear grabbed her, fear of being hurt, humiliated and rejected, but she pushed the reactions away and buried them deep. Just for a few hours, she promised herself, she would live only for the moment in a little safe pool of non-judgemental peace because soon enough she would be forced to deal with the consequences of her accidental pregnancy.
Leo smoothed a stray strand of red hair behind her ear, noting how small her ear was and that at their last encounter he had miscounted the freckles on her nose. There were five, not four, tiny brown speckles that only accentuated the clarity of her luminous porcelain skin. He sank his hands beneath her, lifting her up to peel off her sweater. She was pregnant, he reminded himself in a daze, for that awareness was still so new to him that it felt unreal. He would have to be careful and that would be a challenge when his raw need for her was threatening to explode out of restraint.
‘Is it all right for us to do this?’ he murmured a tad awkwardly.
‘Good grief, Leo, I’m as healthy as a carthorse!’ Grace countered, reddening hotly as his appreciative gaze dropped down to the bountiful swell of her breasts in a lace-cupped bra.
‘But infinitely more beautiful and sensual,’ Leo purred, fighting an impractical urge to stay welded to her and finally sliding off the bed to strip off his suit. ‘So delicate...and yet voluptuous.’
A reluctant grin slanted Grace’s mouth. ‘You really do have the gift of the gab, as my Irish mother used to say. Women must drop like ninepins around you in receipt of all that flattery.’
In Leo’s experience women were infinitely more aggressive in their desire to catch his eye and share his bed. His sculpted mouth quirked at her innocence. He dropped his shirt on the floor, ropes of abdominal muscle flexing across his torso below her admiring gaze. Grace dragged her attention from him in embarrassment and shimmied out of her jeans, blushing at the schoolgirl knickers she sported beneath. She had never had the money to buy prettier underwear. That random thought took her brain off the disturbing truth that she was succumbing to Leo’s magnetism all over again. Was that wrong?
She wanted him; she wanted him every bit as much as he seemed to want her. He was the father of the baby she carried and he was neither irresponsible nor uncaring and there was absolutely no reason why they should not be together again...was there? Did she have to be sensible Grace all the time? She recalled the end result of rebelling against her sensible self the night she had met Leo. But then that axe had already fallen, she reminded herself doggedly, quickly talking herself into staying exactly where she was.
‘You’ve got that thinking-too-hard look on your face again,’ Leo chided, pulling her into his arms. ‘It makes you look incredibly serious.’
His body was so hot against the faintly chilled coolness of her own, so hot in temperature and so deliciously different. He was rough where she was smooth, hard where she was soft. Desire snaked through her like a sharp-cutting knife, clenching low down in her pelvis. Her fingertips grazed across his muscular torso as he leant over her. The kiss he stole was explosive. He sucked and nibbled at her lower lip, all teasing and sex, stirring her up with the occasional plunge of his tongue.
Grace scored her fingers down a powerful hair-roughened thigh and circled his throbbing hardness before pushing him back against the pillows with her free hand. Startled, Leo began to raise his shoulders off the pillows while Grace zeroed in on her objective. Her soft sultry mouth closed over him like a glove and any resistance he had faded fast. Dangling strands of red hair danced across his skin with her every movement.
‘OK?’ she said, looking up at him, her face as red as a ripe apple.
‘Better than...way better,’ Leo admitted unevenly, mesmerised by the way she was touching him, craving it more with every passing second.
As she took him deep, his hand tangled in her tumbled hair and excitement filled her as he arched his hips up to her for more. A low groan sounded in his throat, an almost animalistic purr, while her fingers toyed with him and her tongue glided over him. Her pace quickened, her mouth moving over him faster and faster.
‘Bloody spectacular...’ Leo grated between clenched teeth as she took him up and over in the longest, hottest release of his life.
Grace lay back, feeling vindicated, feeling empowered, no longer the shy, ignorant virgin in need of guidance or instruction. He had really enjoyed that and she knew it. Leo turned her flushed face towards him, dark eyes still tawny gold with arousal. ‘You always surprise me.’
Her bra came adrift, his hands kneading her aching flesh while his thumbs skimmed her distended nipples. She closed her eyes, losing herself in a world of sensation while he licked his way down over her body, tugging her knickers out of his path to discover the warm, wet welcome already awaiting him because nothing had ever quite excited Grace as much as her view of Leo shedding his smooth sophistication and crying out from the pleasure she was giving him.
With a hungry growl he eased over her, his recovery rate exceeding her expectations when the heated probe of his engorged shaft pushed against her most tender flesh. A surge of excitement made her inner muscles clench tightly round him. Her heart was hammering. She wanted this, she wanted him so much she was trembling and breathless, on a high of such joyful anticipation she could hardly contain it.
‘You feel amazing,’ Leo rasped, struggling for control as he worked his way gently into the depths of her glorious body when he didn’t feel remotely gentle.
Grace tilted up her hips and locked her slim legs round him in acceptance. ‘I’m not made of eggshell,’ she whispered teasingly.
With a groan of relief, Leo surrendered to the raw need riding him, easing out of her tight channel to slam back in again with a glorious sense of satisfaction.
Grace couldn’t catch her breath as he moved with animalistic power, powering into her with a hard driven sensuality that filled her with splintering excitement. Her whole body was reaching for and craving the ultimate crest and when it reached it she soared high as heaven. The intense pleasure radiated through her in an astonishing crescendo of sensation that left her trembling with little aftershocks of delight for several minutes afterwards.
On another level, she was conscious of Leo leaving the bed, doubtless to dispose of the contraception he had employed. She waited for him to return and then heard the shower running, slowly and unhappily realising that there would be no cosy togetherness in the aftermath of intimacy. That surprised her, for Leo was very prone to affectionate touching, not stand-offish in any way. Was he afraid of giving her the wrong message? Apprehensive that a little cuddle might make her assume that he felt more for her than he actually did?
Grace shifted uneasily in the bed, her brain now clear of the overwhelming pleasure that had left her mindless. She was painfully aware that she was developing feelings for Leo Zikos, far beyond the boundaries of those she had first envisaged. Considering how insanely attractive Leo was, she supposed her reaction to him was fairly normal and naturally there was something even more attractive about his insatiable desire for her ordinary self, never mind the fact that he was the father of her baby. Obviously she didn’t want to get hurt by falling for someone who didn’t feel the same way. But then, nobody wanted to get their heart broken and this was not only a time for her to consider her future as a mother, but also a time in which they could get to know each other better and explore their feelings.
By the time Leo came back to bed, Grace was sound asleep. Around dawn she shifted up against Leo and the sheer novelty value of being in bed with another person was probably what awakened him. In the darkness, he lay still, listening to Grace’s even breathing. He frowned and very gently removed the arm he had inexplicably draped round Grace before quietly easing out of the bed to pull on jeans and a shirt. He padded through to the vast expanse of the main reception room and checked his phone for messages.
There was a text from his father: Anatole would be in London on Saturday and wanted to know if Leo would still be around. Leo almost groaned out loud. He would be on the other side of the world by then but he now needed to move Grace to another location because the London apartment was used by both his father and his brother. Leaving Grace in residence would entail explanations that Leo was not yet ready to make.
He raked impatient fingers through his tousled black hair. What was he playing at? What the hell had he been playing at when he took Grace back to bed again? That was no answer to the mess they were both in and had probably only complicated everything more. He was maddened by his sudden unprecedented loss of restraint and discipline the night before and exasperated by what he saw as his own irrational behaviour.
Sex had always been a purely physical exercise for Leo. Anything even one step beyond simple sex was dangerous in his view because it could open him up to the risk of destructive attachments and desires. He had not had to worry about that before because he had never connected in any more lasting way with a woman he had been intimate with.
He swore under his breath, grasping that it was a little late in the day to acknowledge that he was getting in too deep with Grace Donovan. Hadn’t they enough of a connection in the child she had conceived? Getting involved in an affair with Grace would be foolish because when it finished relations would inevitably sour between them and potentially damage his future relationship with his child. Why hadn’t he thought about that reality? Why hadn’t he thought about what he would be encouraging if he had sex with her again? Most probably raising expectations he was highly unlikely to fulfil?
As Leo poured himself a whiskey from a crystal decanter it seemed to him that his libido had been doing all his thinking for him. That shook him inside out. In fact he broke out in a cold sweat at that knowledge while he paced the pale limestone floor. He drained his glass and set it down with a definitive snap. Was he more like his father than he had ever suspected? Too weak and selfish to behave honourably? More likely than most men to succumb to a sexual obsession? After all, Anatole Zikos had promised repeatedly to end his relationship with Bastien’s mother but somehow he had always ended up drifting back to Athene while coming up with one excuse after another. In truth Anatole had been too obsessed with Athene to ever give her up and her death had devastated him.
Leo was all too well aware that he was the son of almost neurotically volatile parents, who had remained locked in an emotional triangle of high drama throughout their marriage. His home life had been a nightmare and when he had visited his friends’ homes he had marvelled at the quiet normality that they took for granted. When it came to what he viewed as his dodgy genes, Leo had always been relieved that he appeared to have skipped that over-emotional inheritance and was far too cold-blooded and logical to become obsessed with any woman. Indeed since his troubled childhood had taught him to mask his feelings and rigorously suppress or avoid any more intense reactions he had struggled to deal with any strong emotion.
But that approach wasn’t likely to work for a male who had conceived a child with another woman in the run-up to his own wedding, Leo conceded bleakly. Everyone concerned had a right to strong emotions in a scenario like that. He had made the same mistake his father had—he had got the wrong woman pregnant. Wilfully or accidentally—did it matter which? Unlike his father, however, he would not compound his error by marrying a different woman and dragging her into the same shameful chaos. He had some tough decisions to make, he acknowledged grimly. It was no longer a matter of something as self-indulgent as what he wanted, but more a matter of honour. Such an old-fashioned word, that, Leo conceded ruefully, but if it meant that he accepted the need to put logic and fairness at the top of his list, it perfectly encapsulated his duty. And unlike his father, Leo planned to put his child first and foremost.
Around seven that same morning, Grace emerged from the shower, wrapped a fleecy towel round her nakedness and wondered ruefully where her cases were. Their frantic charge to the bedroom the night before had left no time for such niceties as unpacking. Her face burned and she glanced in one of the many mirrors, angry and ashamed of herself because she was still acting out of character and letting her life go off the rails. One mistake did not need to lead to another, so why had she slept with Leo again last night? Waking up in bed alone in the silent apartment with her brain awash with unfamiliar thoughts of self-loathing had unnerved her. Leo, she had decided miserably, Leo was bad for her.
She crept out to the hall where her luggage still awaited her and she was about to lift a case when she heard a sound from another room and stiffened uncertainly.
‘Grace...is that you?’
It was too late to retreat with any dignity but the discovery that Leo was still in the apartment and had not yet gone off to work as she had dimly assumed was unwelcome. She moved to the doorway of a large ultra-modern room flooded with light from a wall of windows and saw Leo. Her breath hitched in her throat. Barefoot, clad in only a pair of jeans unfastened at the waist and an unbuttoned shirt, Leo looked heartbreakingly gorgeous with his messy black hair, stubbled jawline and stunningly unreadable dark eyes gleaming in the sunlight.
‘I thought you were out,’ she confided. ‘I need to get dressed.’
‘No hurry... Housekeeping doesn’t get here until nine.’ Leo stared at her, his eyes eating her alive in the pounding silence. With her red hair rippling damply round her narrow shoulders, her triangular face warm with colour and her sea-glass eyes bright and evasive, she reminded him of a pixie. She was tiny and her curves were gloriously feminine. He wanted to tell her to drop the towel. The swelling at his groin was more than willing to bridge an awkward moment with sex.
‘I have things to do.’
‘Come here...I want to show you some properties,’ Leo urged.
Grace moved reluctantly forward, one hand clutching the towel to her breasts lest it slip. She was wasting her time with the modesty, Leo thought helplessly. It only made him want to rip it off her more. ‘Properties?’ she questioned, dry-mouthed.
Leo sank down on the sofa he had abandoned and swung out the laptop he had been using. ‘I’ve been looking for somewhere suitable for you to live.’
‘But I’m here...er...I thought...’
‘This is a company apartment, used by my father and my brother as well. It’s serviced, convenient for me,’ Leo explained. ‘Until now I haven’t spent enough time in London to warrant the purchase of separate accommodation.’
‘And that’s changing?’ Grace took a seat uneasily by his side and the faint but awesomely familiar scent of him assailed her nostrils, an intoxicating hint of sandalwood and citrus fruit with a foundation note of warm, musky masculinity. Below the towel her breasts beaded into straining points and warmth pooled in her pelvis.
‘Obviously it will. If my child’s going to be here, I will be too,’ Leo countered carelessly, as if that truth was so obvious he shouldn’t have to say it out loud. ‘But fortunately I do own quite a few investment properties here and I’ve made up a small selection of the ones that are currently available for you.’
Grace was frowning in bewilderment. ‘For...me?’
‘You’re homeless. My most basic responsibility should be ensuring that you have a comfortable and secure base.’
‘I wasn’t homeless until you persuaded me to move out of Matt’s spare room,’ Grace said shortly, disliking the label as much as his take-charge attitude that suggested she was a problem to be tackled and solved. ‘And I assumed I was staying here.’
‘You need your own space.’
No, Leo wanted his space back, Grace suspected. Just then she recalled that he hadn’t still been in bed with her the morning after their first night together on the yacht either. ‘You should’ve left me where I was.’
‘I’m not going to argue about this with you. It’s futile,’ Leo spelt out, flipping up the first of three luxury properties, chosen for proximity to her university campus.
Her lungs inflated while she listened to his spiel and watched the screen flip up properties that only someone wealthy could have afforded to rent. Her hands curled into fists and her soft mouth flattened over grinding teeth long before he reached the end of his running commentary and turned the laptop over to her for further perusal. It was the last straw. Grace sprang up and settled the laptop squarely back down on the coffee table. ‘Thanks but no, thanks,’ she said curtly.
Leo leapt up, his shirt flying back from his corrugated abdomen, his unsnapped waistband giving her a glimpse of the little black furrow of silky hair that arrowed down to his crotch. As she remembered how intimate she had been with him the night before the bottom seemed to fall out of her stomach and she felt positively ill with mortification.
‘What the hell is that supposed to mean? That’s my baby you’re carrying and from now on until the finish line you’re both my responsibility!’ Leo shot back at her impatiently.
‘No, I’m my own responsibility and I don’t need a domineering, controlling man telling me what to do!’ Grace flared instantly back at him, light green eyes glittering with the blistering anger she had been holding back. ‘I understand that you want to stand by me to show me that you’re a good guy but you’re handing out very mixed messages and I prefer to know exactly where I stand.’
One look at her and Leo wanted her so badly at that moment that he physically hurt. Her passion called out to him on the deepest level of his psyche even though he had deliberately avoided that kind of passion all his life. She was having an emotional meltdown and that was all right, only to be expected, he told himself soothingly. ‘If you were to stay with me, we’d end up in bed again and that’s not a good idea when you don’t yet know what your plans are.’
‘I am not going to end up in bed with you again. I am never going to go to bed with you again!’ Grace swore vehemently.
Far from comforted by that news, Leo groaned. ‘Grace, you’re a nice girl and I don’t get involved with nice girls. I don’t do love and romance. I can’t be what you want if you want more.’
‘I’m not going to be some kept woman in some house you own either, living off you like a leech because we had a stupid contraceptive accident!’ Grace raked back at him furiously, infuriated to be called a ‘nice girl’ because that tag only suggested dreary, conservative and needy to her. In addition, although she refused to allow herself to dwell on her sense of rejection, she was horribly crushed by his cool, cynical disclaimer of any deeper feelings where she was concerned. ‘I may be poor but I have my pride. You’re interfering in my life far too much, Leo.’
Leo shocked himself by wanting to shout back at her. He wanted her to do what he told her to do, which was, after all, what ninety-nine per cent of the people in his life invariably did. Consequently, he very rarely, if ever, raised his voice. He was proud of his self-control but then he had always avoided emotional scenes, swiftly ditching women who specialised in them. Of course he had been raised by the ultimate of scene-throwers: his mother, whom he recalled staging dramatic walkouts, outrageous suicide threats and sobbing herself into hysterics.
‘You have to have peace and quiet to continue your studies and decide what to do next. I’m trying not to interfere with that. If you weren’t pregnant, you wouldn’t be in this situation now. I only want what’s best for you and the baby.’
‘And the easiest thing for you to give is money,’ Grace completed with reluctant comprehension, her troubled green eyes scanning the opulence of the furnishings and a view of the City of London that had to be next door to priceless. ‘Isn’t it?’
His lean, darkly handsome face tensed. ‘Yes, so will you view the property you like the best? I’ll have you moved in by the weekend. I think we should have dinner tonight and talk future options.’
‘No, I have a student thing to attend,’ Grace lied, freshly determined to dull her intense attraction to Leo by seeing less of him.
‘Tomorrow night, then.’
‘No, sorry.’
‘Grace, I’m trying hard here,’ Leo growled in warning.
‘I have a check-up with the doctor booked.’
‘I’ll come with you and we’ll eat afterwards,’ Leo pronounced with satisfaction.
That wasn’t what Grace wanted at all. She felt like a ball being rolled down a steep hill in a direction she didn’t want to go. Leo was getting much too involved in her life but by sleeping with him again hadn’t she encouraged that? Torn in two by inner conflict, Grace lifted her chin. ‘When do you want me to see this property?’ she prompted.
‘I have a board meeting this morning but late afternoon around four would suit me. I’ll pick you up then.’
Grace wanted to tell him that she didn’t need his escort either but it was his property and she could hardly object. All too frequently in life, Grace had discovered that necessity and practicality overruled any personal preference. Barring a return to Matt’s guest room, she was technically homeless and in no position to dismiss an offer made by the father of her unborn child. She didn’t like that truth but she had to live with it, she told herself unhappily.
When she emerged from the unused bedroom she had taken her case into, fully dressed and composed, Leo had left and Sheila, the friendly older woman washing the kitchen floor, asked her what she would like for breakfast. ‘Housekeeping’ Leo had labelled Sheila with the casual indifference that spoke volumes about his privileged status in life. Grace ate cereal and toast at the kitchen table and learned all there was to know about Sheila’s four adult children, grateful for the pleasant chatter that took her mind off her problems.
There was a tight, hard knot inside Grace’s chest and it ached like mad. Over and over again she was still hearing Leo say, I don’t do love and romance...you’re a nice girl. Last night Leo had sung a very different tune, making her sound irresistible, giving her the heady impression that she meant more to him than she did while he smoothly talked her into an act of monumental stupidity. Of course, he had said all those things, demonstrated all that thrilling impatience before he got her into bed, and that told her all she really needed to know, didn’t it? she scolded herself with newly learned cynicism. He had fooled her, manipulated her, got what he evidently wanted and then withdrawn behind boundaries again. There was a lesson to be learned there and she had learned it well.
A light knock sounded on the bedroom door while she was repacking her case. ‘Grace...you have a visitor,’ Sheila told her.
Bemused by the announcement when even Matt didn’t have her address, Grace followed Sheila down to the hall to see a tall, very attractive brunette with a wealth of mahogany hair and dressed in a very fashionable outfit, who frowned at Grace in apparent astonishment. ‘My goodness, you’re not at all what I expected!’ she exclaimed, extending a slim beringed hand. ‘I’m Marina Kouros...and you can only be...Grace?’
