‘Mmm,’ she heard Leon whisper throatily, glancing up into her eyes as he did so and giving her a wicked look. ‘Very more-ish!’
Sadie’s eyes opened wide and her face turned a vivid shade of pink. He wasn’t, she suspected, referring to the olive!
His tongue laved her fingers one more time with lingering thoroughness, and then he lifted his head to look at her, whilst his hand slid down over her wrist to cover hers, folding her fingers into her palm and slowly stroking her small fist as he asked her softly, ‘Are you sure you don’t want a glass of wine?’
Emphatically Sadie shook her head and tried to repossess her hand. She was intoxicated enough as it was, without drinking wine! The sensuality of what he had done had sent her blood into a cloud of fizzy bubbles as it raced round her veins.
Watching her, Leon was instinctively and sharply aware of her sexual naïveté, and that knowledge sent a huge reactionary surge of corresponding male arousal thundering through him.
He had never been promiscuous, but naturally as a young man he had gone through the normal stages of sexual experimentation and exploration. Since hitting his late twenties, though, he had given up on sexual exploration as a means of expressing himself as a man. However, the majority of women he met were very open about the fact that they were extremely sexually experienced. They seemed to think that he would enjoy the results of that experience. Perhaps like Sadie he had been imbued with a lot of his own grandmother’s moral beliefs.
There was also, Leon acknowledged, enough Greek heritage in him to make him find such women more of a turn-off than a turn-on. His realisation that Sadie was clearly quite inexperienced was producing within him the same effect as applying a lighted match to dry tinder—very dry tinder, he recognised grimly.
Whether it was unacceptable in today’s modern climate or not, there was something within him, something in his blood, that found the knowledge that there would be much he would have the pleasure of showing her extremely attractive! Extremely attractive and insistently arousing, as his body was making very, very plain!
He was delighted that potentially they had the summer ahead of them to get to know one another. He would make it his business to be sure he spent as much time in France as he could, and he would see to it that Sadie also needed to be there, for constant ‘consultations’ regarding the new perfume she would be creating for them.
Still watching her, he discovered that he was toying with ways and means of re-vamping the Grasse house and outbuildings, and insisting that it was essential that Sadie worked from there on the perfume.
That way their relationship could grow easily and naturally, and when they came to make a full commitment to one another it would be—
A full commitment?
Leon underwent a moment of wry introspection and self-searching. He was Greek enough to feel very strongly that he only wanted to make a full commitment to one woman and for that partnership to be for ever. And he was modern-minded enough to know that that kind of commitment couldn’t be based solely on sexual and emotional desire, but had to be based on mutual trust, honesty and respect as well.
He had met too many women who were ready to say anything to get what they wanted. No way could he ever give his love and his life to a woman like that!
As he looked at Sadie he was uncomfortably aware that whilst his thoughts might be logical and under control, his feelings and his body were no such thing. The way he was feeling right now meant that the sooner they left the mas the better! The combination of Sadie, solitude and his own sexual longing for her right now were putting his self-control under far too much strain!
With that in mind, he stood up, frowning.
What was Leon thinking? Sadie wondered, watching him uncertainly. Two minutes ago he had been behaving towards her in a way that had quite definitely been very sexual. Now he was looking at her with a sternness that seemed to suggest she had done something wrong!
Perhaps he thought she had been deliberately provocative?
She quickly got to her feet herself, her pleasure in the day flattened by Leon’s expression.
‘I think it’s time we made a move,’ Leon announced grimly, adding under his breath so that Sadie couldn’t hear him, ‘Before it’s too late!’
‘You want us to leave now?’ Sadie couldn’t stop herself from questioning in disbelief. And then, when Leon made no response, she protested crossly, ‘It might have escaped your notice, but I haven’t had anything to eat yet.’
‘You can eat in the car,’ Leon told her unequivocally, bending down to pick up the bottle of wine as he did so.
The sky above them was still cloudlessly blue, the sea in the distance a deeper but just as storm-free hue. The lightest of breezes stirred the flowers, and the only sound on the clear air was the lazy hum of bees. So why did Sadie suddenly feel as though a very dangerous and threatening storm was imminent? she wondered miserably. Why did she feel as though the sky had turned dark and the coldest of icy winds was piercing her heart? Why?
Did she really need to ask herself that? she questioned herself derisively whilst she stared at Leon’s departing back as he walked towards the car. If ever a man’s back was indicative of tightly reined in anger and cold savagery, then that back was Leon’s!
Why on earth hadn’t she had the sense to think first, before stupidly, idiotically, senselessly offering him that olive? Her face burned a self-contemptuous red. Of course he was bound to have thought she was coming on to him! But if he had thought that then why hadn’t he simply rejected her immediately? Why on earth had he deliberately emphasised the sensuality of the moment in the way that he had? Had it been her own lack of experience that had put him off? Sadie wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with the type of man who valued a woman purely on her sexual experience and availability, but naïvely she had believed that Leon was far above that kind of thing!
After a brief visit to the bathroom, to prepare herself for the journey and to reinforce to herself all the reasons why she should cease to feel anything whatsoever for Leon, she was ready to join him in the car.
Pulling on her seat beat, she remained resolutely silent as Leon moved to start the car—and continued to be so during the five unsuccessful attempts that followed the first.
However, when Leon finally unlocked the bonnet and got out, lifting it up to peer into the innards of the vehicle, Sadie felt anxious enough to ask, ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
‘God knows,’ came back Leon’s terse response. ‘I’m no mechanic, but I suspect it’s the battery. I’m going to have to ring the car hire people and get them to sort something out for us.’
Leon snapped the bonnet closed and came back to the car to get his mobile phone.
Five minutes later Sadie held her breath as she heard Leon demand ominously into his mobile, ‘What do you mean, you can’t supply me with a substitute?’
There was a brief pause before he cut in acidly, ‘Look, I don’t give a damn how busy you are, or how impossible it is for you to get a car out here to me until tomorrow. I would have thought any organisation that considered itself as anything approaching professional would have had the common sense to make sure it had enough vehicles to cover this extra busy period. Hell!’ he swore bitterly as he held the instrument away from his ear. ‘The line’s breaking up,’ he told Sadie grimly.
They tried to contact the hire firm on three successive occasions, both with Leon’s mobile and Sadie’s, and eventually managed to get through. But once again the hire car firm insisted that they were not able to provide Leon with a substitute vehicle until the following morning.
‘Well, at least we’ve got the mas to stay in,’ Sadie pointed out.
Leon was staring grimly out to sea.
‘Yeah, great,’ he agreed nastily
The toxicity of his silence was burning Sadie’s sensitive nerve-endings.
‘Look, I can see that you don’t want to be here with me—’ she began.
‘For heaven’s sake, Sadie.’
Leon stopped her savagely. ‘Don’t you understand? It isn’t what I don’t want that’s bothering me. It’s what I do want.’
Sadie’s forehead crinkled with her lack of understanding.
‘I can see that you want to get back,’ she began warily, ‘but I don’t—’
Leon groaned.
‘No, Sadie!’ he interrupted bluntly. ‘What I want isn’t to get back—although hell knows it damn well ought to be. What I want is you!’
His angry words seemed to hang in the enclosed space of the car, reverberating in her ears.
Her? He wanted her?
Sadie tried to say something, but her throat was too dry and the words stuck there. She swallowed and managed to squeak, ‘You want me? But—’
‘Yes. I want you!’ Leon confirmed thickly. ‘Every damned intoxicating, aggravating, delicious, sensual inch of you,’ he ground out in fierce despair.
Head spinning, Sadie wondered at the strength of the feeling gripping her. What would Leon say if she told him that she fully reciprocated? What would he do?