Anna’s legs felt weak; her heart was hammering. A voice seemed to be inside her head, shouting Danger! As if it was some kind of automated warning.
A warning she could do absolutely nothing about—was helpless to heed.
He was coming towards her.
Tall, so tall. Lean, with a clear purposefulness about him. The dark eyes never left her, the expression in them turning her insides to water.
She still couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Just stood there, like a statue, immobile, lips parted, gazing at the planes of his face, his wide, mobile mouth, the loosened tie, the open-necked shirt, with waves of weakness going through her.
Leo stopped. Reached out a hand for her. With a slow, controlled movement he drew a single forefinger down her cheek.
It melted her skin where it touched.
And went on melting.
‘You really are,’ he said, ‘exquisitely lovely.’
The eyes changed again, becoming lambent.
‘Exquisite,’ he echoed softly.
And all Anna could do was just stand there, transfixed, as those heavy-lidded eyes rested on her, draining from her all will, all resistance.
Because in their lambent depths was something she had never seen before.
It was desire.
Not lust. Not slime. Not appetite.
Just—desire.
Desire—burning with a clear, ineluctable, irresistible flame…
Again that wave of weakness drowned through her, draining from her everything she had ever felt before about men looking at her…
Because nothing, nothing she had ever felt before, was anything like this.
She waited for the anger, the biting, aggressive anger that always came when some man looked at her with only one purpose, one intent in his mind.
But it didn’t come.
Instead, a slow-dissolving honey seemed to be spreading out through her veins, warming and weakening her, making her almost sway with sudden debilitating bonelessness.
His eyes were half closed, it seemed, their heavy lids lowered in a sweep of long black lashes. Her breath caught again, another spoon of honey spilling slowly through her veins.
She felt her lips part. As if she did not even have the strength to hold her mouth closed. She felt her eyelids flicker heavily, her pupils dilate.
Her body swayed. Very, very slightly.
He was so close to her. So close. She could feel his presence in her body space, catch the scent of his musk mingled with the expensive notes of his aftershave, heady and spiced. She could see the roughened jawline, the wide, mobile mouth, the lean, tanned cheek—and those heavy, half-closed eyes with the clear, clear intent in them.
Slowly, her insides turned over again.
‘Exquisite,’ he murmured again.
One hand slid around her neck, the other to her waist, and he lowered his mouth to hers, tongue sliding effortlessly within the silken confines.
For a timeless, delicious moment Leo luxuriated in the feel of her mouth. Silky, sensual, and so very, very arousing.
Not that he needed to be aroused. True, he had taken the opportunity while he was eating to sound her out about the redhead who seemed to have captivated his cousin—in respect of which prudence alone dictated that he warn his cousin off the girl. Markos was no gullible fool—far from it—but still, who knew how stupid a man could be if he was subjected to enough adoring gazes like those Leo had been witnessing all evening? Maybe they were calculated and maybe not. But if they weren’t—and they had, he acknowledged, looked genuine—then Markos might be at greater risk than he knew. At the very least the girl would be difficult to dislodge, and would probably cause a tearful scene when the inevitable end came, which he wouldn’t wish on any man. At the worst—well, although tears and weeping wouldn’t wash with himself—Markos might just be more vulnerable, and find himself in deeper water than he was comfortable with. A naïve woman, entertaining fantasies about marriage, Leo realised, could be far more dangerous than one who knew which way the world went round.
Like the woman he was enjoying now.
Anna was exactly what he wanted. There’d been a lot of tension surrounding the launch of the Levantsky marque, and he’d put a lot of personal effort into ensuring that tonight and tomorrow were being organised the way he wanted them to be. That, of course, was on top of his normal non-stop business schedule. It might annoy him, but it didn’t surprise him, that something had had to give—and that something was his sex life. It had been nearly a month since he had parted company with the Italian divorcee with whom he had been more than happy to celebrate her new sexual freedom, and there had been no time to choose her successor.
So the sable-haired beauty in his arms had caught his attention at a timely moment. She was just what he needed. A sophisticated, independent, unattached woman who had made it more than clear that she was receptive to his attentions. The world she moved in was known for its liberal sexual habits, and she doubtless had her pick of lovers in her time. Her caustic tongue and attitude might well put some men off, but it didn’t bother him. It could just be put on for effect, anyway, to make herself stand out from the competition—deliberately assumed to catch the attention of men like him, jaded by fawning women.