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‘I spent more time in school and my grandmother’s home than here.’

For him, this was a massive information input. Should she tell him she knew why? She was torn, but if he had wanted her to know he would have told her.

She watched as his dark glance shifted to the open arch and the sea beyond…was he thinking about his own children enjoying the freedom? Elsie felt the guilt burrow a little deeper into her before she firmed her jaw. He would find another much more suitable wife.

Another mother for his children.

The thought and the images dancing in her head of dark-haired babies with Leandro’s eyes did not offer the comfort it should have.

‘What did my mother tell you?’

Her eyes fluttered as surprise banished the baby images she was torturing herself with. ‘She told me why she left.’

He felt pride tighten in his chest then reflexes built up over the years cut in—his vulnerabilities were locked away tight.

‘She must trust you…quite something, considering she has only known you a few hours.’

‘But you don’t trust me?’

* * *

Leaning across the space between them, he hooked a hand across the back of her head and pulled her towards him. Their eyes connected and in that moment Elsie felt the world had stopped spinning.

‘I want you. Does that count?’

She sucked in a tremulous breath. If this was his way of changing the subject she wasn’t going to object. ‘Yes.’

‘I just really want…no, need to kiss you, Elsie.’

Heat broke out across her skin as her body began to shake, a deep tremor that went all the way down to her core.

The hungry rasp in his voice was edged with tenderness as he dragged her in close, sealing their bodies from the waist up. ‘And considering why we are here, I think we should get some practice in.’ His grin was more desperation than humour.

Desperation she more than identified with!

Elsie felt lightheaded and dizzy, unlike herself, unlike anything she had ever imagined as the boom of her heartbeat thudded like a soundtrack on repeat in her ears. She didn’t recognise the low feral sound coming from her lips as she leaned in, dragging her breasts across the broad expanse of his iron-hard chest, never breaking eye contact as she framed his face with her hands.

She couldn’t bear the intensity of the feelings that swept over her, she felt all smouldering nerve-endings and a deep, aching, long-buried need rose up to make each breath feel like it was her last as she fitted her lips to his incredible mouth. She saw his eyes darken to pitch before her own eyes closed.

He stayed passive for a few sensual seconds while her lips moved across his, her exploration becoming more intimate. At the first incursion of her tongue his control broke and he at least became an equal partner in the hot collision of tongues, noses, panting breaths, all blending into one explosion of blind, starving passion.

They broke apart, gasping for air then flopping back against the seat.

They turned their heads in unison.

‘That was—’ Shaken, she shook her head.

‘Informative.’

Elsie didn’t respond, but she was thinking more along the lines of mind-blowing. A rapid replay of the past few moments made it clear she had pretty much blown acting cool.

But then, so had he.

During all his years of playing the indolent pleasure-seeking fool, discipline had been Leandro’s non-erasable bottom line. The irony was that the more indulgent and reckless he seemed, the more controlled he was. Nothing he did was spontaneous, it was thought through, calculated.

Cold-blooded.

Just then, he had not been in control—it had been raw, painful and pleasurable simultaneously. He had felt liberated… He dismissed the word before it had taken hold in his head.