What has changed? What has really changed over the last twenty-four hours other than you’ve witnessed a more ruthless side to his character and have been made painfully aware that he is capable of going to any lengths to win?
And what else would you expect of a man like him? He’s strong. So strong that even his father leans on him. You lean on him! You barely exist when he isn’t near
you—last night proved that, when you sat here on this yacht, pining for him even while you were hating him.
As she turned back to look at him, her heart gave a painful squeeze when she saw he was sitting there with his wide shoulders hunched, dark head lowered in grim contemplation of his hands again. He looked oddly vulnerable sitting there like that—cut off and alone, as perhaps, she realised, strong men had to be if they were to maintain that air of strength.
Yet she didn’t like it. It hurt something precious inside her to see him like that. It wasn’t the man she had come to know so well, that other warm, caring and crushingly gentle man he had always been when alone with her.
The man who claimed he loved her.
Dared she believe him? Dared she take the ultimate risk and let herself trust in that love?
She swallowed thickly, her heart beginning to drum with need and fear and a host of other emotions she could not begin to separate as, warily, she let her defences come tumbling down.
‘Leon?’ she asked, her tense throat working as she watched his head come up, expression carefully guarded as it focused on her. Lips dry and unsteady, she ran her tongue over them then whispered thickly, ‘If I tell you I love you, will you break my heart?’
His eyes closed—on what she didn’t know, but she felt the power of it wash right over her. Then he was on his feet and coming towards her. ‘They say beauty is only skin-deep,’ he responded huskily as he reached for her. ‘But with you it glows from every living cell. Thank you. And no,’ he answered her question, ‘I will never break your beautiful heart. How can I, when it is so precious to me?’
‘Then just hold me,’ she begged. ‘I need to feel you holding me.’
His body became the rock she clung to as he drew her into his arms. She wound her arms around his body, fingers splaying across the muscled blades of his shoulders, and, sighing shakily, she lifted her mouth for his kiss. He took it passionately, stirring her into bright, vibrant life as no other man had ever managed to do.
And there it was, she acknowledged from somewhere within the deep abiding warmth of his embrace. The reason why she was here at all. This man, his touch. Her catalyst. She could deny him nothing.
‘It frightens me, what you do to me,’ she told him breathlessly when at last he eased the hungry pressure. ‘You tear my senses to shreds. I can’t resist you!’
‘You think it is any different for me? Feel me!’ he commanded. ‘I am trembling.’ And as he pressed himself against her she could feel the tremors shaking him—even his hands as he ran them beneath her shirt, up over her hips then caressingly across the child before cupping her breasts. ‘I love you, Jemma,’ he declared. ‘Please, whatever else you doubt about me, do not doubt my love.’
She looked up at him, blue eyes searching impassioned black ones for a hint—the slightest sign—that he was being anything but sincere. But it was all there. The man she had come to admire and respect for the strong, powerful personality he was. The man she had come to love deeply and depend upon so totally that she knew she couldn’t live without him now, even if she wanted to, which she didn’t. And the man she knew—had always known, no matter what else got in their way—cared for her. A care he was now insisting had turned to love. A love she did not have the strength to turn her back on, especially now when she could see it glowing warmly in his eyes.
‘I do believe you,’ she said at last. And she did. At last she dared to let herself believe.
‘And forgive?’ he asked. ‘Can you do that too?’
‘Oh, yes.’ She smiled a wryly rueful smile. ‘I can forgive you anything when you hold me like this!’ she confessed.
‘Then I have a better idea,’ he said. ‘Bed,’ he decided, black eyes gleaming as he bent to swing her into his arms. ‘There I can hold you much closer and for much longer and therefore receive a deeper forgiveness!’
‘But—what about my appointment with the doctor?’ she protested as he began striding towards the door.
‘Blow the doctor!’ he grunted. ‘I need you right now more than you need him!’
‘But—!’
He kissed her, his mouth covering her own to muffle out any other protest she might have been considering. And the next time she came up for air he was lowering her on to her own bed, still rumpled from last night’s sleep.
He left her to go and close and lock the cabin door. When he back back she was smiling ruefully. ‘Who has the pass key?’ she asked.
‘I do, of course,’ he grinned, and came to lie beside her.
Strangely, the fever of passion had passed, leaving them without its raging flame to hide behind. A silence settled around them. Leon seemed suddenly extraordinarily concerned in smoothing her long hair out behind her. And she found a similar interest in the absent combing of the silk dark hair at his chest.
‘Where would you like to live?’ he asked suddenly. ‘London? Athens? New York?’
She glanced at him from beneath her lashes. ‘You choose,’ she offered. ‘I have no personal preference so long as we are together.’
‘Mmm, my sentiments exactly,’ he agreed, brushing a kiss across her cheek. ‘But we have to make our base somewhere, if only until the baby is born. After that, you both travel with me wherever I go,’ he decreed, adding grimly, ‘I do not ever want to go through another separation like the age I spent in New York without you.’