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‘Er...’ Mortified to find herself almost reclining across Sev, wondering how the heck that had happened and if she had thrown herself at him in the midst of that kiss, Amy snaked back hurriedly into her corner, agonisingly conscious that her enthusiasm could have been misleading. She didn’t like to give a man the wrong signals when she wasn’t planning to follow through, and the conviction that he was probably now expecting her to go to bed with him that night forced her to tilt back her head and say stiffly, ‘I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression but I’m not sleeping with you tonight.’
In receipt of that frank assurance, Sev stared back at her with wondering amusement firing his spectacular golden eyes. ‘I don’t know what sort of a man you think I am but I never put out on a first date.’
CHAPTER THREE
THEHELPLESSGIGGLEthat forced its way up through Amy’s tight throat erupted and she gasped for a breath of air before grabbing her drink and taking a hard swallow. Sev patted her gently on the back.
‘Relax,’ he murmured smoothly. ‘No expectations here.’
Instead of being irritated by her warning, he had chosen to defuse her tension, had taken it in good part without embarrassing her. She smiled at him, her fears and insecurities laid to rest.
‘So now you know all about me, why don’t you tell me about you?’ Amy dared, feeling surer of her ground.
His tangled background was a can of worms Sev had no intention of revealing, but he parted with the basic facts of his parentage in that his mother was Italian and his father Greek but that his parents had broken up before he was born and had married other people.
‘That must’ve been challenging,’ Amy commented, studying him with earnest violet eyes, and the luminous colour of them in the dim light only seemed to enhance her flawless creamy skin. ‘I mean, havingtwofathers...’
‘I didn’t have two. My stepfather wasn’t interested in taking on that role,’ Sev divulged grudgingly. ‘And I didn’t meet my birth father until I had grown up.’
‘Oh...’ she breathed, glorious eyes rounding. ‘I didn’t have a father at all. He didn’t want anything to do with me. Where did you go to school?’
‘A northern boarding school when I was five.’
‘Five’s awfully young to leave home,’ Amy chipped in, her surprise unhidden.
‘I managed,’ Sev told her, reflecting that was when he had first begun learning the power of self-sufficiency. As the only one of three children sent to boarding school, he had appreciated early on that he was the cuckoo in the family nest and he had stopped trying to change things, accepting the status quo until he was old enough to choose his own path.
‘I can’t imagine how,’ Amy admitted with a faint shiver. ‘I mean, my mum wasn’t the milk-and-cookies sort but she was there for me when I was little.’
For a split second, Sev strove to picture his mother doing anything as maternal as offering comfort food to a child and he almost laughed at the concept, for Lady Aiken had never been a hands-on parent. At the same time, he was marvelling at how soft-hearted Amy could be and belatedly recognised that her chosen career looking after injured and homeless animals should have forewarned him, because that was in no way a glamorous role.
Keen to lighten the mood, he added, ‘When I was older I was sent to an Italian school and I enjoyed those years. My mother had cousins in the area, and I got to know some Italian relatives. I was able to go home to them at weekends and I was always made welcome.’
‘It still sounds rather bleak and lonely to me,’ Amy told him softly, studying him with troubled eyes.
And all of a sudden, Sev was wondering why he was even having such a conversation with her when he never talked about himself. Why on earth did she keep on asking such curious questions? He could not recall ever having similar chats on a first date. Women asked what age he had been when he made his first million or when he had lost his virginity and with whom, seeking information about his exploits and achievements rather than concentrating on the more personal stuff. Her curiosity about his childhood was oddly touching. He reached for her hand, strangely entranced by her small, slim fingers. ‘I still don’t have your phone number,’ he told her, signalling the bar for fresh drinks. ‘And you’re not drinking your cocktail. Don’t you like it?’
Amy dug out her phone and asked for his number and then sent him a text. ‘I’ve had enough to drink for one evening,’ she said ruefully. ‘I don’t have that strong a head for alcohol and I don’t want to get drunk.’
She was so direct, and he wasn’t accustomed to women who just said it as it was. He found it an endearing trait, but he definitely preferred more sophisticated women, who knew better than to ask awkward personal questions, he assured himself staunchly.
Fresh drinks arrived. She lifted the first one, which she hadn’t finished, and sipped at it. She went to the cloakroom, reappeared with her pouty pink mouth freshly glossed and the instant he noticed he knew that he had to taste that strawberry flavour again. She sank down beside him and he tugged her closer with a relaxed grip and kissed her for the second time.
Instantaneously that fierce sense of excitement reclaimed her again and Amy quivered, struggling to keep her head clear, immediately blaming the alcohol she had imbibed for the way she was feeling. When he kissed her, the world stopped dead and flung her off giddily into an alternative universe where only the moment and the sensation mattered. Her fingers splayed across his shirt front, drawing in the heat of his virile chest beneath the fine fabric, the flexing of muscle as he bent over her and meshed long possessive fingers into the fall of her hair. Breathless and with her whole body humming like an engine, she was unnerved by the sneaking suspicion that she lost all control with Sev, a guy she barely knew, from a totally different walk of life. And because she never did anything without thinking in depth about it, she jerked back from him with an abruptness that sent his eyes flaring gold in surprise.
‘I think we should dance,’ she said tautly, needing to get a grip on herself, needing to know what she was doing, finally recognising that what was different was that, for the very first time,shewanted a man. But because she had never experienced anything that intense before the strength of her own response unnerved her.
‘I don’t really dance,’ Sev muttered raggedly, lifting his drink and downing it in one gulp, grimly conscious of the erection tenting his neat-fitting trousers, a level of arousal he seemed not to be able to control around her.
‘Then you can watch me,’ Amy said cheerfully, entirely concentrated on gaining a necessary breathing space from him.
Taken aback, Sev watched her descend the stairs at full tilt without him. Amusement crossed the faces of his security team seated at a nearby table and the faintest colour scored Sev’s exotic high cheekbones. As a rule, he didn’t do PDAs. As a rule, he didn’t kiss or indeed do much of anything with a woman in public. Why would he when they always took him home with them? No woman had yet said no; no woman had pulled away from him before. Even so, it definitely wasn’t cool to be sitting in a club snogging Amy like a teenager, but then he had never found it so hard to keep his hands off a woman! He gritted his teeth and slowly stood up, the shock of her retreat and his bewildered incredulity having mercifully diminished his visible arousal. He strode down the stairs, located her at the edge of the floor and joined her with unmistakable reluctance.
Amy’s breath caught in her throat as Sev appeared and her heart hammered at the sight of his tall, muscular body and wickedly beautiful features. She smiled at him because she had been afraid that he would be annoyed with her, had even feared that he might just walk out and leave her to find her own way home, because it wouldn’t be the first time that her rejection of a man’s advances had led to that unpleasant conclusion. In retrospect, she was embarrassed by her sudden departure from the table. For goodness’ sake, he had only been kissing her! What was she that she had had to run away? Still fourteen years old and never been kissed before?
Well, never kissed likethat, she conceded as they returned to the table and Sev acted as though nothing had happened and talked about working in Asia, where he had apparently spent most of the summer. He dropped her back at the shelter, climbed out of the limousine, towered over her and stared down at her.
‘We’ll do this again next week...if you like,’ Sev tacked on belatedly, his self-assurance meteoric in comparison to hers.
