Greek Bachelors: Tempted To A Fling. Jackie Braun

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СКАЧАТЬ no intention of taking advantage of a woman on the rebound,’ he reminded her, even though his breathing was still laboured and his strong face racked from the passion he was struggling to keep in check.

      ‘And—as I told you before—I’m not on the rebound,’ Kayla protested adamantly, shamed by her response when he was showing such self-control, and when she seemed to have relinquished all of hers in one experimental kiss!

      ‘Aren’t you?’ he disputed, although there was a wry smile tugging at one corner of his mouth that softened his challenging remark, before he went on to add, ‘You had a relationship with him, didn’t you?’

      ‘Well, of course I did,’ Kayla returned. ‘Of sorts.’

      ‘Of sorts?’ He tilted his head, his brows drawing quizzically together. ‘How am I supposed to interpret that?’

      ‘Any way you like!’ Kayla tossed back at him, too embarrassed to tell him that Craig’s enthusiasm for her had seemed to go off the boil for several weeks before their break-up, and that she was ashamed of herself now for not suspecting the truth. She had believed him when he had blamed work overload for his not showing enough interest in her. When he’d assured her that things would be different when they were married. When he had got the precious promotion he’d spent all his time working for.

      ‘Were you living with him?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Why not? If I ever set my mind on a woman I want to become my wife, then she will be firmly in my life—and my bed—before I even ask her.’

      ‘I didn’t want us to move in together. Not until we were married,’ Kayla emphasised. ‘And Craig was in full agreement with that.’

      ‘Really?’ Mocking scepticism marked that hard masculine face. ‘You could do without each other that much?’

      ‘Not that it’s any concern of yours,’ Kayla pointed out, hating having her relationship with her ex scrutinised so closely by this man she scarcely knew, ‘but we wanted to start married life properly. In a place that was our own. I didn’t want to just move into his flat. Anyway, there’s more to a relationship than jumping into bed with each other at every given opportunity,’ she stressed, unconsciously wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her lips still felt bruised and swollen and, like her susceptible body, burning from Leon’s wholly primal, earth-shattering kiss.

      ‘Is there?’ he asked, and she could feel those perspicacious eyes following her involuntary action, mocking her, disconcertingly aware.

      ‘Yes!’ She was trembling, knowing that the way she had just behaved with him made nonsense of everything she was saying. And the worst thing was he knew it too. ‘The type of man I let myself get involved with doesn’t just give in to basic animal lust.’

      He chuckled under his breath. ‘Is that what I was doing? Then you must forgive me if I fail to live up to the constraints of the type of man you are obviously used to. Although I could hazard a guess that your relationship was sadly lacking in what was required to make a lifetime commitment, and that the lack of passion between you could have been why he was getting his satisfaction elsewhere.’

      The reminder hurt, stinging her pride and giving rise to that same feeling of inadequacy she had felt after she’d got over the initial blow of Craig’s betrayal—especially coming from someone who oozed the sort of sexual potency that this man did.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured, surprising her suddenly. ‘I didn’t mean to rub it in.’

      ‘Didn’t you?’ she accused, hiding her hurt pride and dignity beneath the burnished gold of her lowered lashes.

      ‘Well, all right.’ A self-effacing smile touched that mouth that had the power to drug her. ‘I did. But until it stops hurting, Kayla, you aren’t ready for an involvement with any other man. And even if you were, the last thing a sensitive girl like you would want is an involvement with a man like me.’

      Why not? Crazily, she heard the mortifying question spring to her lips and was half-afraid that she had actually spoken it. Wasn’t he just the type of man she needed right now to drive the bitter after-taste of Craig and all his shallow-minded smart set out of her mind?

      ‘Believe it or not, I’m not looking for one,’ she responded, to assure herself as much as Leon. Well, she wasn’t, was she? Wasn’t she better off—as her mother had always claimed to be—on her own?

      ‘Sensible girl,’ Leonidas drawled and, stooping to pick up her hat, deposited it gently and unceremoniously on her head.

      ‘Thanks.’ Kayla pulled a wry face. ‘Perhaps you’d like to sketch me like this?’ she challenged broodingly, relieved, nevertheless, that the disconcerting subject of her love-life had finally been swept aside.

      What wasn’t so easy to sweep aside, however, was the memory of what had transpired between them a few moments ago.

      Why had she responded to him so shamelessly if, as he’d suggested, she was still affected by what Craig had done? Was she so wanton? So desperate for a man? Any man? she wondered. Might she have let this virtual stranger take her here on the shingle without a thought for how it might leave her feeling afterwards?

      ‘I won’t be sketching you at all,’ he said dismissively. ‘For the simple reason that you are wrong. I’m no artist. But if I were, and if I had to keep looking at you looking like this...’ His gaze slid over her tantalisingly wet top, making her quiver inside from the powerful impulses generated by the naked need in his eyes, ‘then—old boyfriend or no old boyfriend—I definitely would wind up taking you to bed.’

      * * *

      The climb up through the scrub to Philomena’s cottage was hot and hilly, and Leonidas walked ahead of Kayla, protecting her from the dense and thorny vegetation that was encroaching on the narrow path, thriving in the rough terrain.

      He had had an exacting morning, sorting out a problem that had arisen back in his London office—a case of divided opinion between a couple of members of his board, which his second-in-command had apologised for bringing to his attention.

      They said it was tough at the top, he reminded himself with a grimace. And they could say it again, because no matter how much he needed to escape the rigours of the office for a while, he still needed to keep his finger on the pulsing heart of his business.

      Shopping malls, leisure complexes and housing developments didn’t build themselves, and after the flak he had taken from the press over the neglect of local residents with last year’s bitter fiasco he needed to ensure that no loopholes were left for mercenary lawyers and unprincipled members of his team to make unscrupulous deals over.

      Being labelled ‘ruthless’, ‘unscrupulous’ and ‘a profiteer’ by the media wasn’t something he wanted repeated any more than he wanted further episodes like the one with his publicity-hungry bed-partner Esmeralda Leigh. He had a reputation to uphold—one that he valued—both in his corporate and his private life, and he would protect and defend it with every shred of his power and his unwavering principles. But he hadn’t got where he was today without treading a path that had made him tough, hard-nosed and uncompromising, and he had no intention of wavering from that path. Of allowing himself or anyone else to imagine for one moment that he was going soft. Not even this infernally beautiful girl...

      Hearing her breath coming СКАЧАТЬ