Mia moistened her lips and felt them tingle when he lowered his eyes to watch the careful little gesture.
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘You are not going anywhere near Tia Giulia.’
He took his time bringing his eyes back up to hers. ‘Why not?’ he asked softly.
A sizzling fizz of heat began to fire deep down in her body. That there was something else going on here as well as the conversation they were involved in, made her flicker a wary scan of his face. He was leading her somewhere and she did not want to look at where that might be.
How did a man so famous for his cool self-control manage to transmit so much sexual tension without seeming to try—?
‘I would be too ashamed to present you to her,’ she said.
And hit a raw nerve. Mia watched that warm possessive golden light turn off like a switch. He leant back on the stool. It was like watching a dangerous animal take a serious blow it had not been prepared for, and she suddenly felt really bad for saying what she did.
‘Tia is going to be ashamed of me too,’ she added in what was a huskily spoken soother to the wounded beast. ‘And—and anyway, there is no reason why the two of you should m-meet.’
‘No,’ she thought she heard him utter from the deep dark recesses of his taut throat.
The atmosphere in the kitchen had suddenly gone somewhere Mia knew she did not want to follow. In fact, she decided without rhyme or reason as to why it hit her at this particular moment, she just knew she did not want to be here with him any longer.
Her slender fingers gripping the glass, she downed the rest of her orange, then put the glass down and slid off the stool. Nikos still was not moving and she was feeling distinctly threatened as she took a wary step towards the kitchen door.
‘Going somewhere?’ his deep voice questioned.
‘T-to my own apartment…’ She took another step.
‘We still have a lot to talk about,’ Nikos drawled.
Not if she could avoid it. ‘I’m—too tired to talk to you any more today,’ she said coolly. ‘We—we can talk again tomorrow.’
‘Too late then. We have plans to make before tomorrow.’
Mia nipped in a taut breath, then spun around. He’d recovered quickly enough from his wounds, was the first observation that leapt out at her, though he did still look strained around his mouth.
‘I don’t know what is the matter with you,’ she said, adding a flick of a hand to convey her helpless bewilderment. ‘What is the planning you speak about? We don’t have to plan anything! And you should be drowning your sorrows somewhere in a bottle of whisky instead of playing this silly game with me!’
‘No game,’ he denied.
‘Then where exactly do you think you are going with this?’ she burst out, asking the question she had been trying to run away from.
‘I know exactly where I’m going with it, cara,’ Nikos responded grimly. ‘Even with the crushing knock-back,’ he added with a twist of his taut mouth, ‘I am simply waiting for you to catch up with me.’
He was still seated on the stool with his long legs stretched out in fr
ont of him, looking for the world now like he was set to stay there like that for the rest of the day. But it was all just a big deception. Mia could still see that telling gleam in his eyes, a burn which reminded her of—
She took a step backwards. ‘S-stop looking at me like that—’
He arched one of his flat black eyebrows. ‘Like what?’
‘Like you…’ Running out of words she dragged in a tense breath of air and looked away.
‘Like I’m considering—other options to help you to catch up with me?’
He was thinking sex, Mia saw, though she did not want to. In the space of a few short minutes he’d gone from domestic animal to wounded animal, and now he was displaying the sexual animal.
‘This is an—improper conversation to be having in—in the middle of a crisis,’ Mia said primly.
‘I’m having improper urges,’ he came back quick as a flash.