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Ever since he’d asked her to accompany him to the wedding, she had been aware of straying into perilous waters. With each day that passed, she felt the growing danger of remaining in this relationship. It was as though she were sleepwalking her way towards the inevitable pain of rejection, by a man whose company was never intended to be anything other than temporary.
And all the warning signs were staring her in the face—signs she had been stubbornly refusing to heed. Leon had told her about his surprisingly painful past. His mother’s failure to disclose her terminal illness must have seemed like a terrible betrayal. He had witnessed other betrayals, too. His father’s infidelity and slavish devotion to a new wife, who had tried to seduce his son.
No wonder he was so set against marriage and permanence.
And if he was? So what? What on earth did that have to do with her?
Her flush deepened.
Unless she was seriously considering herself in the role of Leon Kanonidou’s wife! What had happened to the stubborn sense of determination with which she had entered into this affair? Hadn’t her number one criterion for agreeing to become his de facto mistress been that it could only succeed if she kept the physical and the emotional separate? It was supposed to be about sex. Nothing else.
Nothing else.
‘Well?’
She looked up to see Leon staring at her, his expression indicating he was awaiting her verdict, and she realised how ungrateful she must seem. He’d obviously gone to a lot of trouble to buy these gorgeous clothes, yet she was acting as if he’d committed a crime. And she had agreed to this, hadn’t she? She had agreed to let him dress her up like a doll. Rising to her feet, she walked towards him, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him on the lips. ‘I love them—every one of them,’ she said truthfully.
‘So why don’t you try on the red dress?’ he suggested.
She took a step back. ‘What, now?’
‘Don’t you want to see what it looks like on?’ His voice deepened. ‘I know I do.’
It was a tacit request to take off her dowdy work clothes and replace them with a fairy-tale dress and, although Marnie tried to convince herself that would be a lovely thing to do, she suddenly felt stricken with shyness. Leon had watched her undress countless times before, so why did this feel so different?
Beneath the burn of his gaze she self-consciously removed her jumper and skirt and laid them on the chair to join her coat. She felt like one of those snakes she’d once seen on a TV documentary. As if she were shedding her old skin and taking on a brand-new persona—someone she didn’t know or recognise.
She was down to just her underwear when Leon began to walk towards her and she knew from his expression—which was hard and hot and hungry—just what he wanted. What she wanted, too—because wouldn’t sex successfully eradicate the muddle of her thoughts?
‘On second thought,’ he said, ‘the dress can wait.’
And the crazy thing was that Marnie didn’t make a single objection to his masterful assertion. As he pulled her into his arms she shivered with anticipation, her stomach dissolving, her blood growing heated with need. Because that was the fundamental weakness which flew in the face of her certainty that she was getting in too deep—that the moment Leon touched her, she couldn’t think straight.
His kiss was urgent and she moaned beneath the seeking pressure of his lips. As he slid her panties down over her trembling thighs something told her she would never wear this old underwear again. That from now on she would be dressed in fine satin and silk and lace, like a pampered woman.
Like a mistress.
She felt him tugging urgently at his belt as vulnerability and desire washed over her. ‘I haven’t had a shower yet. I still smell of the salon,’ she whispered.
‘I like the smell of the salon, but all I can smell is you,’ he growled, kicking off the remainder of his clothes and carrying her next door into the bedroom, where he laid her down on the huge bed, and straddled her.
He took his time. He stroked her, knowing exactly how she liked to be touched—but something told her he was teasing her, too. By now she badly wanted him inside her but still he held back. As if he were hell-bent on demonstrating his steely self-control—or her lack of it—as she begged him to take her. As if it gave him a heady kick of power when he elicited her first helpless orgasm with the quick dart of his tongue. ‘Oh!’ she cried. ‘Oh!’
He entered her when she was still caught up in those powerful spasms and as he filled her a soft warmth flooded through her body. She must have gasped something appreciative because his gaze was now focussed on her intently. And when he looked at her that way at a time like this she felt closer to him than she’d ever felt to anyone. ‘Leon,’ she breathed, overcome with an unwanted emotion which threatened to rock the foundations of her world.
‘What is it, Marnie?’ he mocked.
Closing her eyes, she bit back the tender words which were threatening to spill from her lips and concentrated on the ripples of pleasure instead. Already so close to the edge, she buried her head in his neck and began to husk out another orgasm, her fingernails digging into his broad shoulders as he followed her, choking out that incomprehensible sound he always made when he was coming and which had become so familiar to her. They lay there for a while in silence, his fingers running through her hair, when his question came right out of the blue.
‘So what happened to make you so modest and shy, Marnie Porter?’
She fought her instinct to freeze, in case she looked as though she had something to hide.
Because you have.
‘I don’t know if that’s a very accurate description.’ She forced herself to smile. ‘People always say I’m very mouthy.’
‘Well, you are. Sometimes.’ He smoothed a lock of hair away from her cheek. ‘But you are also very reserved. And I’m curious why.’
