He sat down opposite. Candlelight flickered over lean, dark features completely stripped of his thoughts. He w
as beautiful. It wasn’t fair. The black of his jacket and the white of his shirt and the slender bow-tie gave sophistication a whole new slant. He reached for a napkin, shook it out then took a bottle of champagne out of its bucket of ice. The napkin was folded around the bottle. Long brown fingers deftly eased out the cork. It popped softly but did not dare to explode—not for this man who had learned how to open a bottle of champagne in his crib. Frothy gold liquid arrived in the crystal goblet in front of her without him so much as spilling a drop. He filled his own glass. She considered picking up hers and tossing the contents at him.
But the suspicion that he was already expecting her to do that held her hands tightly clenched on her lap. If he didn’t say something to ease this tension, she was going to be the one to explode…like the champagne cork should have done.
‘You can come with me, if you want.’
She sat there staring at him, unable to believe he had just said that—and as casually as he had done!
‘Thank you,’ she said coolly. ‘But I am watching a film with my mother.’
His grimace said—fair enough. He picked up his fizzing crystal goblet and tipped it in a suave toast to her. ‘Welcome home,’ he said, then drank.
If Allise hadn’t arrived with the food at that point, maybe—just maybe—Isobel would have reacted. But wars like this required nerves of steel and she had them, she told herself.
They ate in near silence. When she couldn’t push her food around her plate any longer, Isobel drank some of the champagne, which instantly rushed to her head. Her mouth suddenly felt numb and slightly quivery. She put the goblet down. Leandros refilled it. Allise arrived with the second course. When the last course arrived, Isobel refused the delicious-looking honey-soaked pudding and asked for a cup of black coffee instead. She’d drunk two glasses of champagne like a woman with a death wish because she knew as well as Leandros knew that she had no head for the stuff.
When the dreadful meal was finally over, she got up on legs that weren’t quite steady. Leandros didn’t get up but lazed back in his chair, studying her without expression.
‘Goodnight, then,’ she said.
He gave a nod in acknowledgement. She walked out of the room. She suffered watching the film with her mother out of grim cussedness, then escaped to her self-allotted bedroom, got ready for bed, crawled beneath the crisp white sheets, pulled them over her head and cried her eyes out.
He was with her, she was sure of it. He was standing in some quiet corner of his mother’s house, gently explaining the new situation. Would she beg, would she cry? Would he surrender to the liquid appeal in her dark eyes and stay with her tonight instead of coming home?
She drifted into sleep, only to be consumed by visions she did not want to see. It wasn’t fair. She hated him. He was tying her in emotional knots just like the last time. A pair of arms scooped her off the bed and jolted her out of sleep.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘GET off me, you two-timing brute!’ she spat at him.
‘Well, that isn’t very nice,’ he drawled.
‘Where do you think you are taking me?’
‘You did not really think that I was going to let you sleep in any other bed than our own, did you? Foolish Isobel,’ he mocked as he lifted up a knee then swung her down onto another bed.
The knee stayed where it was, the rest of him straightened so he could remove his robe, his eyes glinted dark promises down at her, and because she was too busy trying to cover her dignity by tugging her ridden nightshirt over the shadowy cluster of golden curls at her thighs she missed her only chance to escape. He came down beside her in a long, lithe stretch of male determination. One hand slid beneath the fall of her hair while the other made a gliding stroke down her side from breast to slender thigh. Then it came back up, bringing her nightshirt with it.
He stripped it from her with an ease that left her gasping. She aimed a clenched fist at him, he caught it in his own hand, then his mouth was coming down to cover her mouth. She groaned out some kind of protest but it wasn’t enough to bring this to a halt. It was dark, it was warm and, as he subdued her, her senses were already beginning to fly. Seconds later she was lost in the hungry, driving intensity of the kiss.
Her fingers unclenched out of his grip on them, lifted then buried themselves in his hair. The kiss deepened. She could feel his heart pounding, felt the thick saturation of his laboured breath. Her body, her limbs, every sinew moved and stretched on wave after wave of desperate delight. He dragged his mouth away and looked down at her, no smile, no mockery, just heart-stunningly serious desire.
‘Did you go to her?’ she whispered painfully.
‘No,’ he replied.
‘Was she there?’
His eyes darkened. ‘Yes.’
Her fingers tugged at his hair until he winced. ‘Did you speak to her—touch her?’
‘No,’ he grated. ‘I had no reason to.’
The black ferocity of his gaze insisted that she had to believe that. Her mouth slackened into a wretched quiver. ‘I imagined all sorts,’ she shakily confessed to him.
‘I am with the only woman who has ever done this for me,’ he answered harshly. ‘Why would I lust after less?’