And he knew it. She could see that smug, male satisfaction in his dark gaze, the faint smile that toyed with the corner of his mouth.
She did not know what to do. She knew how she might have handled this moment even two hours ago, but that had been before they’d walked through fields of green and gold and he’d told her things that still made her feel raw. Unsettled.
That had been before her traitorous heart had let itself yearn for him so fully, as completely as if he had never broken it in the first place. What was she supposed to do now?
“How did your meetings in Sydney go?” she asked, because it seemed so innocuous a question and because it could not possibly make this tension between them any worse. And perhaps because she was every bit the coward he had called her.
Leo’s smile deepened, and he reached down to capture a piece of hard cheese with his long fingers. He took a bite, considering her, and she could not have said why she found all of it unbearably erotic.
The lake was so quiet, the breeze so sweet against her skin. The sun above them was so warm, caressing. Her breasts felt heavy, aching behind her thin shirt. She felt a faint sheen of moisture break out across her upper lip.
She knew he missed nothing. His head cocked to the side. “I do not often lose the things I want, Bethany. But perhaps you knew this already.”
“I know you take your business very seriously, if that is what you mean,” she said, unable to look away from the dark seduction of his gaze, unable to keep herself from imagining what might happen if she tilted forward and let herself fall across that hard, rangy body spread out before her like a buffet of sensual delights.
But of course she already knew what would happen. She could already taste the salt and musk of his skin against her tongue. She could already feel his long, smooth muscles hard beneath her palms. She could hardly breathe for the images that chased through her head, memory and imagination fused into one great wave of ache and want and need.
She knew that he knew it, too.
“I take everything seriously,” he said, his voice a low rumble she could feel as well as hear, moving through her, leaving heat and fire in its wake. “I am known for my attention to detail. Renowned for it, you might even say.”
“Leo …” She did not know what she meant to say, but she felt so snared, so captured, as if he’d trapped her here. The truly terrifying part of that was how little she cared. What was happening to her? How could she let him cast this spell over her just by lying there?
But she had the lowering thought that she’d left the fight somewhere back at the castello. That he had finally disarmed her and she was more vulnerable now than she had ever been before. Mostly because she could not bring herself to care as she knew she had even this morning. As she knew she would again when this dangerous moment was past.
Still, here—now—there was only his hot gaze and her helpless melting deep within.
“I can see the way you look at me, Bethany,” he whispered, his eyes intent on hers, his voice a seduction, a caress. “You are eating me alive with all that blue heat, all of your desires written like poetry across your face. I can see that your breathing has gone shallow and your hands tremble.”
“Perhaps this is disgust,” she breathed. “After all.”
He smiled, but it was a predator’s smile, and it connected hard with her core, sending heat searing through her. Electric. Shattering. Leo.
“You are the student of psychology,” he said. “You tell me what it means, these physical signs and your continued denials that they mean what we both know they must mean.”
Bethany looked away then, the word ‘psychology’ managing to break through the haze. You have another life, a different life, she told herself fiercely, trying to breathe through the tightness inside of her that mounted with every beat of her heart. This is just a dream by a lake that should not exist in the first place.
“I do not need to be a psychologist to know that touching you would be a monumentally stupid thing to do,” she said in a low voice, her attention trained on the lake’s clear waters as they lapped against the shore.
“If you say so,” he murmured, sounding neither offended nor put off. Hyper-aware of him, she could practically hear every shift of his body.
She knew when he reached for the succulent cuts of salami and prosciutto crudo, when he tore off a piece of fresh-baked bread and slathered it with an olive tapenade. She knew when he relaxed back on his elbows, when he licked his fingers, when he let that hungry gaze of his eat her up instead.
“Why did you never bring me here?” she asked finally when she could no longer stare at the lake without driving herself insane.