‘It doesn’t matter,’ Gio dismissed, slotting a glass of red wine into her hand. ‘Have a drink and relax.’
Leah breathed again, thinking he was really quite kind and the absolute opposite of her selfish and critical ex-boyfriend, who had been utterly indifferent when her life had fallen apart. Of course, that had likely been because he had neither wanted her nor loved her and she had simply been a useful adjunct to the image he’d chosen to put out in the world. What a gullible, trusting fool she had been with Oliver!
That one glass of wine went to her head a little and she gulped down the water he handed her because she had been getting a bit giggly. ‘I’m a cheap date when it comes to alcohol,’ she muttered, wondering why on earth she felt that she should always be apologising to him as if she were failing to live up to some perfect ideal.
‘I noticed,’ Gio murmured, disconcerting her with that piece of frankness. ‘I don’t want you drinking too much.’
Leah flushed and drank more water in embarrassment rather than inform him that she already knew that one glass of wine was pretty much her limit because Oliver had often mocked her for that weakness.
Gio slid a plate across to her, a plate perfectly adorned with salmon and crisp, colourful vegetables, and she blinked. ‘This looks amazing,’ she said truthfully. ‘When did you start cooking?’
‘When I was a student. I like good fresh food and if I wanted to eat it, I had to learn how to make it,’ Gio admitted, sinking fluidly down on the stool across from hers and lifting a knife and fork.
‘I continued living with my former foster mother while I was a student,’ Leah responded. ‘And Sally rules her kitchen and would be offended if you tried to cook for yourself, so I was lazy—’
‘Fostermother?’ Gio queried.
‘I was in care from the age of eleven. Mum was dead and my father disappeared from our lives when I was a toddler.’ Leah lifted and dropped her narrow shoulders. ‘Sally became much more than just a foster parent to me. I was lucky.’
‘Most people would say you had it tough, rather than lucky,’ Gio remarked softly. ‘But I know where you’re coming from. I didn’t have a conventional secure childhood either.’
Her dark eyes widened on his when she thought for a split second that she had glimpsed a world of hurt shadowing his lean strong face and his pale gaze.‘Oh...?’
But he deflected her curiosity by turning his handsome dark head in the direction of the small dog nervously peering round the edge of the door. ‘What’shisstory?’
‘Sally runs a small animal sanctuary. Spike was brought in last year. From what we were told he was an older woman’s much adored pet until she died in the same accident that lost him his leg. Her partner tied him up in a yard afterwards and neglected him. I think the man beat him as well, maybe for barking or something,’ Leah told him in a pained undertone. ‘So now he’s terrified of men, which is why he won’t come in here.’
Gio watched those huge caramel eyes gloss over with compassion and regret on the little animal’s behalf and that softness in her, that gentleness he wasn’t at all used to seeing in women, seemed to fill him with the most extraordinary lust. As his jeans tightened and his arousal pulsed against his zip, he marvelled at the sheer novelty of her effect on him. It was because she was different, that was all, he reasoned impatiently, an unsurprising reaction when he had clearly become bored with the predictability of the women in his life.
‘That’s strange, because he followed me all the way along the beach and back. Perhaps I remind him of someone from happier times,’ he murmured huskily. ‘Would you like coffee?’
That enquiry flustered Leah. Here she was, supposedly cleaning his employer’s house, and nowheseemed to be somehow waiting on her hand and foot and that could only strike her as an uncomfortable development. In haste she slid off the stool to help in some way while he reached for the percolator. For a split second she veered closer to him than she had intended and she froze, her dark gaze utterly entrapped by the pale icy brilliance of his.
His hand settled on her shoulder to steady her as she lurched a little off balance while their eyes kindled and white volcanic heat fired in her pelvis. He lowered his dark head and she waited, full of anticipation, yearning for that connection with every fibre of her being. His wide sculpted mouth brushed hers and she trembled, engulfed in screaming awareness of his proximity. It truly felt like the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her. Her hands lifted of their own volition and closed into his forearms to hold him there and then he kissed her.
And it was every kiss she had never had but always dreamt about: a slow burn of sensation teaching her that her lips and her mouth were a much more sensitive and sensual vehicle than she had ever guessed. The circling caress of his full soft lips on her own made her knees wobble and her heart thump ridiculously fast and when he slid the tip of his tongue into the moist interior of her mouth, she ignited like a burning torch thrown on a bale of hay. She was stunned when every inch of her body responded to that unexpectedly powerful stimulus.
Gio kissed her, her breasts swelled and her nipples snapped taut and her pelvis clenched down deep inside, ensuring that she flushed and shifted her hips in heated awareness like a teenager who had never been kissed before, she acknowledged in mortification. She was shocked by his influence over her, struggling to handle it even while she was mesmerised by the physical feelings engulfing her in pleasure.
Gio lifted his head, so aroused that he almost gritted his teeth at the exuberance of his libido. He didn’t know what had come over him, but it was just sex on his terms and therefore an acceptable urge that should not require any greater examination. He stared down at her vibrant little face with intense appreciation gripping him. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he murmured quietly. ‘Will you stay here tonight with me?’
A sliver of surprise snaked through Leah at those blunt words, because she had yet to spend the night withanyman. It galled her to still be untouched at twenty-two years of age, but only a couple of years earlier she had truly believed in saving that ultimate intimacy for a more meaningful relationship. And, most ironically, she had been saving herself for the likes of Oliver, she thought sickly, a man who had never desired her in the first place, although he had tried to pretend otherwise to keep her keen in the girlfriend stakes. Crushingly, that gambit had only worked for him with herbecauseshe had been naïve and inexperienced with men, and ever since that betrayal she had despised that ignorance of hers, which had left her open and vulnerable to hurt and humiliation.
‘Leah...?’ Gio prompted in the bottomless silence, wondering what was amiss when her wonderful expressive eyes lowered below her feathery lashes and she evaded his gaze.
‘I thought you were making coffee,’ Leah reminded him daringly, playing for time, struggling to get her frantic thoughts and those unwelcome memories of her ex under control. ‘I’m thinking about your invitation... You’re very er...frank—’
‘How else would I be? You are single,aren’tyou?’ His ebony brows pleated at the sudden realisation that she might not be, that he was in a different place with her than he normally was with women. She hadn’t offered herself to him first, hadn’t sought his attention, and a bare ring finger meant nothing these days when she might already have children and a partner.
‘Yes, free as a bird,’ Leah confirmed in a rather brittle response, because Oliver’s deception had cruelly wounded her self-respect.
Gio was slightly disconcerted by the surge of relief that immediately assailed him.
Leah tilted her chin up as she slid back up onto the bar stool, deeming herself safer from being stupid with him at that distance because she still didn’t know how she had ended up in his arms, only that the temptation to get closer to him had been irresistible and incredibly strong. That she had never felt that way before had impressed her. Life was short, she told herself, and she planned to make the most of it without falling for any more males of Oliver’s ilk. ‘I’m very loyal,’ she told him with quiet pride. ‘I wouldn’t have kissed you had there been someone else in my life.’
Gio was almost amused by that pointed and pure declaration of loyalty and honesty, which only accentuated the gulf between them. After all, he had never been able to trust a woman to that extent, not even when he was a teenager. Even the mother he’d adored had lied to him as and when it had suited her to do so. His mother’s first loyalty had always been to his father, no matter how badly the older man had treated either her or her son.
‘Is that so?’