‘Anything else?’ His voice was clipped and her heart sank a little when she realised that he wasn’t going to answer her question.
‘You won’t tell me, will you?’
He let out an exasperated breath and released her chin. ‘Sasha is not relevant to you and me.’
No, whoever Sasha was, she was relevant to him, otherwise he wouldn’t mind talking about her.
Lexi folded her arms and looked down at the tiny space between their bodies. She felt raw and exposed and she could feel the tension coming off him in waves. She glanced up at him and almost raised her hand to smooth the frown line marring his perfect brow. ‘And what is you and me, Leo?’ she asked the other question that had been milling around the outskirts of her mind all day, holding her breath as she waited for his answer, remembering too late her new-found intent to live in the moment.
He rubbed the back of his neck in that telltale sign that said he was stressed. Lexi wondered if her question was the death knell of whatever it was that was going on between them, the thought making her stomach clench painfully.
‘I don’t know.’ He reached out and his hands curved around her hips, the familiar warmth of his touch flooding her lower body. ‘But I want you more than I’ve ever wanted any other woman. Is that enough for you?’
Lexi held her breath. Was it? She knew that if she said no he would walk away from her without a backward glance and deep down in her heart she knew she didn’t want that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
Swallowing hard against that thought, she raised her arms and ran her hands over the taut muscles and sinews of his arms until she reached his shoulders. She felt his body quiver under her touch and heard the whistle of air as he released a pent-up breath between his teeth.
He held himself absolutely still as he waited for her to continue and Lexi made up her mind. She didn’t know if his answer was enough but she wouldn’t worry about the future. And what was there to worry about, anyway, if she made sure her heart stayed clearly out of whatever this thing was between them?
An affair?
A fling?
‘I don’t know.’ She gave him the same answer he had given her because it was the most honest. ‘But I know I’ve never felt like this with any other man and I’m not ready to let it go,’ she breathed, raising herself onto her tiptoes and kissing him at the same time as he wrapped his arms around her body and crushed her to him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BUT old habits died hard and three days later, as she sat in Leo’s library and hit the send button to email her revamped business proposal to her bank manager, Lexi knew she was getting in too deep.
Apart from one afternoon when Leo had flown to Athens to finalise the business deals that had instigated this trip, he had kept his word and spent almost every minute of each day with her and Ty and it had been lovely. Too lovely. But too often Lexi had caught her runaway heart drumming up stories of a future between them that her practical side had scoffed at.
It was like having a split personality. Or having the puppets Punch and Judy in her head. Punch would start daydreaming and going off on a completely inappropriate tangent and Judy would return and bop him on the head.
Lexi pushed her computer aside and stretched the kinks in her neck and tried to go easy on herself. Because who wouldn’t dream of a future with a man like Leo Aleksandrov?
Yes, he was arrogant and demanding and always wanted things his way, but he was also gentle and tender and never ran roughshod over her wishes. In fact, this week, he had almost gone out of his way to fulfil her wishes. And not just in the bedroom.
And he had completely eradicated her feelings of insecurity, at least with him. She couldn’t imagine ever making love with another man with such joyful abandon and was now gladder than ever that she had been honest with Simon about how she felt. It just pained her that she couldn’t be as honest with Leo.
But then how did she feel about him?
She liked him, of course, but … that was all she could ever let it be. Because, as tender as he had been with her, as insatiable as he was in bed, he didn’t let himself do emotion. And of course there was still the mysterious Sasha floating around in the background.
‘There you are, moya milaya.’ Lexi looked up, startled by the sound of Leo’s voice. ‘Come—’ he held out his hand to her ‘—I have a surprise for you.’
‘What is it?’
‘If I tell you, it won’t be a surprise.’
Lexi smiled and pushed her gloomy thoughts aside. They were leaving in two days. Plenty of time to feel gloomy after that. ‘Okay.’
He dropped a searing kiss on her lips and almost dragged her out of the library and down to her bedroom. There, in front of her full-length mirror, was a metal rack stacked with what looked like couture evening dresses.
She turned to him, slightly bemused. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘It’s very simple. I tore your dress the other night and now I’m replacing it.’
Lexi raised her eyebrows. ‘With fifty new ones!’