Harlequin Presents--July 2021--Box Set 1 of 2 Page 13
None of her concerns mattered any more. The fight to resist him faded. The decisions of their future were forgotten. Because he was here and he was touching her and there was only now. Lost in his kiss, she reached for him, sliding his tee up his flat abs, exposing his body to her hungry eyes, her ravenous touch.
‘Not so fast. Last time was fast. This time...’ he breathed out ‘...slow.’
But she needed him now. She needed this awful ache to be eased. She needed that hit of pleasure unlike anything she’d known. Now she’d decided—surrendered—there could be no slowing down, no stopping.
He laughed beneath his breath and stopped her by simply picking her up and carrying her to the bed where he slowly but deftly peeled back her bikini.
‘Your skin is so freaking amazing,’ he growled.
She smiled, marvelling in the pleasure of him finding her so attractive. It might only be chemistry, but it was fierce and strong and so very real. And he took delight in tormenting her—so slowly, until she was literally screaming with her need for completion. She cried out as he thrust home. Finally she felt the fullness she’d craved for weeks. His hands tightened, beneath her, holding her closer as he pushed harder and deeper. And that sweet relief was underpinned by the ache of need. Every layer peeled away to reveal the only thing that really mattered. He didn’t need to gloat. He was more serious than that. She saw the determination anew in his eyes.
‘I’ve missed you.’ He gazed into her eyes, triumph blazing in his own.
It mirrored the satisfaction flowing through her.
Slowly he moved and kissed her again as he did. A soul-destroying kiss that broke down any defence she’d thought she might be able to rebuild, leaving her raw and vulnerable to him—an open book of emotion for him to devour.
So it was far too late when she realised that he was going to take it all.
CHAPTER TWELVE
LEO SAT ON the deck, appreciating the view in a way that was wholly new to him. Rosanna was paddling in the shallows, investigating little fish, noticing the smallest of things as she took those few extra seconds to truly observe. She silently saw so much—feeling deeply, appreciating. He found himself more aware as a result, keen to spot something ahead of her so he could draw her attention to it. In that way, she’d opened up his world. So now he noticed the little lizard sunning itself near his foot. Bright eyes, alert, watching him. He couldn’t resist smiling at it and broke off a bit of his bacon sandwich to toss to it.
He ought to be satisfied yet it felt as if a blade were still pressed upon his throat. A sense of threat remained, pushing him to secure more. Physical—sexual—intimacy was easy to achieve. He liked discovering what made her sigh or cry for relief, what make her shake, what made her laugh. But he felt driven to discover more. What she’d told him about her life—he wanted to know more of what she wanted. How she felt. It was weird to be so curious about someone. He tossed another piece of the meat to the lizard.
‘You’ve found a friend?’ She waded towards him.
‘Maybe.’
‘Do you have many others?’ she asked lightly.
It soothed him that she was curious about him too.
He nodded. ‘Ash.’
His half-brother was the closest he had to any kind of best friend. But now, even though he knew his half-brother had chased off to another country after some woman...the thought of him having history with Rosanna burned. It shouldn’t matter at all. For a while it hadn’t. Yet now he couldn’t stop himself asking. ‘What really happened between you two?’
Colour washed over her skin. He didn’t read anything into her blush. It was almost standard when he asked her something. ‘You said you’d kissed him...’
‘You really want to know?’
Leo glanced away and then back at her. ‘It’s just that it’s not like him to walk away from a woman without...’
Rosanna sat beside him. ‘I was hardly a woman at the time.’
Leo frowned. ‘When was it?’
‘After my surgery.’ She swallowed. ‘I didn’t just have to return to school, but move to a new one miles away from my home. I’d been in hospital, then had several months alone in recovery and, honestly, I just wanted to stay at home for a while and be in one that wasn’t being redecorated yet again. But my parents were ready to move onto their next project and decided it was “better” if I was away at boarding school. They said it would give me the stability I’d been asking them for. Plus now I was all fixed up, it was time for me to acquire the social skills they said I needed.’
‘Social skills?’
‘To cultivate beneficial relationships. It’s how they operate, remember?’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Because they’d talked me up academically, the school did as they asked and put me in a higher grade so I was by far the youngest student in the class. I didn’t know anyone, I felt awkward and a huge amount of pressure to maintain my scores.’ She bent her head. ‘I didn’t know it at the time, but my mother had asked Ash’s mother to get him to keep an eye out for me.’
‘And did he?’
She nodded. ‘He hung out with me more than most, and we went out a couple of times. Then he asked me to be his date to the senior dance. It made me instantly popular and, fool that I was, I thought I could do what my parents wanted. Learn how to use a relationship to get ahead in life.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Ash had an awful lot of sway over people, so it was ideal, right?’
Leo had a bad feeling hearing the bitterness in her tone. ‘What happened?’
‘The dance didn’t go so well,’ she muttered. ‘He had a...moment with a couple of other girls and it was videoed.’
‘A moment?’ Leo groaned; he could well imagine the sort of ‘moment’ she meant. ‘He humiliated you.’
‘Of course, I felt hurt when I first saw the clip. And that my classmates took such delight in publicly playing it to me. It went viral and became the school’s most notorious event.’
‘I bet,’ Leo murmured.
That would’ve been enough to send any sensitive young woman into a cave for a while. And Rosanna was sensitive.
‘But honestly?’ She straightened a little to look at him. ‘With the benefit of a few years, I can look back on it now and realise a part of me felt relieved. I knew he wasn’t into me in that way. And I wasn’t into him. It ended all that pressure. Not that he put that on me at all. When I think about it now, he was actually lovely.’
‘Ash Castle, lovely?’ Leo joked dryly but his chest had tightened—what pressure? Did she mean from her parents?
‘Back then he had so much going on and we didn’t know the extent. He was trying to be kind but he just couldn’t resist, I guess. He was having an awful time and I suppose he needed an escape. I was embarrassed, but I wasn’t devastated by him getting off with two other girls when he was supposed to be on a date with me. Later I found out he’d only asked me because his mother had told him to. She was so unwell, he’d have done anything for her. Honestly, it was more mortifying that my mother had tried to sort out my social life for me by talking to his mother in the first place.’
‘Oh.’ Leo nodded, his suspicions confirmed. ‘Your parents again, huh?’
‘They were furious with me.’
‘You? He was the one who got filmed.’
‘And he was disciplined and never returned to school. Then his mother died. It must have been horrendous.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘Meanwhile my parents said I obviously hadn’t been a good girlfriend if I hadn’t kept his interest. I hadn’t done my job or whatever...’
‘They blamed you?’ Outrage built in his chest. ‘What did they want you to do, exactly?’
‘Better,’ she said simply. ‘But I don’t think it’s in me. Not to “work” relationships like that.’
His curiosity bit—she’d been so abandoned with him that night, yet he knew she’d been inexperienc
ed. Maybe not just sexually. ‘And you haven’t dated anyone since?’
Her lashes lifted, revealing shy amusement in her pale blue eyes. ‘You think I’m some sort of exotic species?’
‘Like some of those creatures on the reef?’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’
Honestly, he didn’t know what to make of her. She was shy yet warm once he’d got past her quiet barrier. She could be clinically detached, yet compassionate and loyal. Maybe she was too shy to ask someone, but he couldn’t believe no other guys had ever asked her out.
‘After the incident with Ash I suppose I was put off for a bit,’ she admitted. ‘I certainly wasn’t about to date anyone at school again. Nor in my class at uni. And I’m never going to date anyone I work with.’
Leo half smiled. So now she had a bunch of rules as to who she could or couldn’t date? ‘Sounds like you know what you don’t want.’
‘Not some society stud like Ash, that’s for sure.’
Right—which also might rule him out. ‘No colleagues, no one your parents would approve of?’ He worked it through. ‘Which makes it hard to find anyone you could say yes to.’
She glanced away and then back at him. His skin tightened. It had taken only seconds for her to say yes to him.
‘You thought I was a security guard,’ he mused. Not a colleague. Not a threat. ‘Would your parents disapprove?’ Had it been rebellion?
‘No, it wasn’t that...’ She trailed off and that colour swept into her cheeks again.
‘Then what?’
‘I just... You were...’
‘I was just what?’ Something hot and fierce swirled in his blood. A ridiculous preening inside pushed him to ask why. ‘What was different about me?’
‘Chemistry, I guess?’
For a second he was ridiculously pleased. Then it was as if the tide of satisfaction receded and left emptiness. Because she hadn’t wanted more at the time. She’d not asked for his name or number. She’d not wanted to seek him out again. He gazed at her and for the first time in his life wished that he could read minds. Never had it mattered what anyone thought of him before. But he wanted to understand why she’d walked away so easily. Because it niggled. Was it because she’d been afraid of his reaction if they’d seen each other fully naked? If he’d seen her scar and reacted in a way that made her think she wasn’t good enough for him or anyone? He hated that her parents had put that on her. She was amazing—strong and brave. She’d been so that night with him.
That colour built in her cheeks as the silence grew.
Yet he knew she wanted him now. That he’d pleased her. He was about to do it again—was suddenly determined to do it even more.
‘I didn’t know who you were or anything about you,’ she said softly, her colour high. ‘You just...swept me away.’
‘Maybe that meant that with me you could relax enough to let go,’ he said gruffly. ‘There was no expectation. No perfect performance required for once. In your mind it didn’t matter at all. And so...you could relax.’
‘You think?’ An expression he couldn’t quite read flashed on her face. ‘Damn, I should have hooked up with a total stranger sooner.’
No. No other strangers. No other guys. He almost roared it as a fierce bolt of possessiveness tore through him before he recognised the teasing note in her voice.
He scooped her up and carried her back to the big bed they’d left only an hour ago and set about sweeping her away again and again. He kissed every inch, taking care to caress her spine. Not just to tease, but to worship every sweet inch of her until neither of them could move. Even then he watched her, still wishing he could read her mind.
She studied the edge of the cotton sheet that lightly covered her, obviously trying not to blush. Failing as usual. ‘Why don’t you sleep with the billions of women who fling themselves at you on a daily basis?’
He laughed at her exaggeration. ‘There aren’t billions.’
Her kiss-crushed lips pouted. ‘Oh, come on, there’s at least five a day. I saw three at the airport on our way here. You can’t have failed to see how they looked at you.’
He hadn’t noticed any. ‘I was too busy watching you.’
She bit her lip but the little laugh escaped regardless. ‘Smooth. But not necessary. I’m already back in your bed and you’ve had your way with me twice this morning already.’
It hadn’t been a line. It had been simple truth.
She gazed right into his eyes. ‘I’m serious. Why aren’t you a player? You could be if you wanted to.’
‘Most of the time I’m so consumed by work I don’t realise where the day has gone,’ he answered as honestly as he could. ‘I’m absorbed in it.’
‘That’s the thing that matters to you most?’
‘It always has been.’ At least since his mother had passed.
‘You’re that disciplined?’
He saw it not as discipline, but necessity. Since his mother had died it had been the only thing that mattered—work was the one way to make himself a success, to force Hugh Castle to face him, and the impetus behind his need to make something more of that man’s empire than Hugh himself had ever made of it That had been everything until recently, when he’d been consumed by thoughts of Rosanna—which in itself was shockingly unnerving. The sooner they agreed their future, the sooner he would return to his usual focused state. Surely now she’d see how much sense it made for them to marry. They had chemistry, they were building a friendship. This didn’t need to be that complicated.
But now she studied him in the way she did those unusual plants she was interested in—with that focused curiosity. ‘You don’t wake in the small hours of the morning and overthink all your most personal things?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Not ever?’
At that he smiled. ‘I wake in the small hours and overthink work.’ But that wasn’t entirely true. There were things that came to him then that he hated. ‘I never wanted to be like him. Like Hugh.’
‘In what way?’
‘In his greed. In his cheating.’ He sighed. ‘I know Ash used to play the field, but he was upfront about it,’ Leo said. ‘Women knew where they stood with him. But I didn’t want any of that complication in my life. I never wanted to make promises I couldn’t keep.’ He gazed at her sombrely.
‘So why did you play that night with me?’
He still didn’t rightly know. ‘That night had been the culmination of a hard year’s work. Stepping in to take over Castle Holdings. There were times I didn’t think I was going to make it and I wanted to nail it.’
‘To prove to the world you could be as successful as Hugh?’
There was a shadow in her expression that he didn’t understand. ‘You think that’s stupid?’
‘No.’ She sat up and wrapped herself in the sheet. ‘I don’t blame you for wanting to better him. I would too. So you were in a celebratory mood.’
Oddly he hadn’t been. He’d been tired and a bit deflated. ‘It wasn’t normal for me to do that either.’
She glanced at him again. ‘You wanted an escape.’
‘I was stunned, to be honest. I couldn’t believe what had possessed me. I suddenly realised I had a roomful of people downstairs waiting on me.’ He laughed a little. ‘Maybe it’s as you said, just chemistry. We’re a perfect compound, compatible in the most fundamental of ways.’
‘Is that enough for you?’ She looked back at the edge of the sheet. ‘You truly don’t believe in love?’
He didn’t know how to answer without offending her.
She lifted her head and gazed at him, her eyes soft with an emotion he didn’t want to analyse. ‘You don’t think that one day you might meet someone and there’ll be something so much more? I wouldn’t want to be in the way of that happening for you.’
More?
‘That’s not going to happen, Rosanna.’
Or maybe she didn’t think it was? Maybe she didn’t realise that sex didn’t get any better than it was between them... Or maybe, he realised with a hit of discomfort, she wouldn’t want him being in the way of that happening for her either. She wasn’t a cool-headed scientist. She had a romantic streak.
He couldn’t deliver on that. But for what it was worth, he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted a woman and that hunger wasn’t easing any. His anger built. So did his determination to get her to agree. It seemed more imperative than ever that he secure this damn deal. He could give her things no other man in her life could.
* * *
‘No?’ Rosanna was lost in the gleaming passion in his eyes. In the growing fervour she’d not seen in him before.
She knew he didn’t have random one-night stands, but he didn’t understand that for her it hadn’t been about the occasion, but the person. It had been about him. And she’d felt a little hit to her heart that it hadn’t been she who had overwhelmed his control, it had been circumstance causing him to act the way he had that night with her. Of course, that was right. She supposed any woman who’d appeared on the terrace at that time could’ve ended up in his embrace, the recipient of his attentions.
‘Then how lucky for me to have been the one to stumble across your path that night, huh?’ she couldn’t resist pointing out a little bitterly.
Something snapped in his expression. ‘That night you turned up and you were the one I couldn’t resist. I wanted to forget everything. Who I was. Where I was. What I should or shouldn’t have been doing. I just watched you and I wanted you. Just as I want you again now.’
He wasn’t slow that time. But the time after? That was when her last little flicker of doubt and disappointment melted. His touch was an achingly sweet relief.