She angled her face, casting a glance over her shoulder, a frown still on her features. “I’m sorry?”
“That’s your tenth sigh in as many minutes. Is something bothering you?”
“Oh.” She felt warmth colour her cheeks and bit down on her lip quickly. “I was…just thinking.”
“About?”
“My gilded cage,” she said with a tilt of her head.
He crossed his arms, his level gaze unwavering from her face.
“I’ve barely left the cabin since arriving. I liked its remoteness at first, but now I feel as though the beach is taunting me. I can’t tell you what I’d do to be able to walk on that sand and feel the water in my toes.” Another small sigh found its way from her lips.
“You haven’t been at all?”
“It’s only in the last couple of days my ankle has started to feel close to normal. I haven’t trusted myself to go far.”
He looked as though he were weighing something up and then, he stood, slowly, eyes heavy on her face. “Let’s go into town for dinner.”
“Dinner?” The word emerged rushed and high-pitched.
His features assumed a look of mockery. “Dinner, yes, just dinner. We can take the beach path.”
“I’m not exactly in good shape for walking,” she pointed out.
“There’s a bike in the shed.”
She vaguely recalled Benji saying something about a motorbike for emergencies—as if she’d ever take such a thing out on her own. But now, with Leonidas’ offer, her heart skipped a beat and she felt…excited.
“I don’t want to bother you,” she said, for the sake of it, already hopping closer towards her bedroom.
“There’s no food in the house. It’s a question of practicality.”
“There’s plenty of food.”
“Rabbit food.”
She couldn’t deny the truth of that. Mila’s diet tended to be very lean, with vegetables and proteins like poached eggs or fish forming the mainstay.
“Okay,” she said quietly, excitement overtaking her. “Let’s do it.”
Everythingabout the restaurant in the historic town of Stari Grad was exquisitely beautiful, but Mila was still vibrating from the closeness to Leonidas on the motorbike. Sitting at his back with her arms wrapped around his waist, head pressed between his shoulder blades, had been some form of torture. Her insides had turned to mush and all she could think about was the way he’d kissed her—as though salvation lay within her lips.
She stared out at the stunning sunset now, the sky gradually changing from golden and mauve to a dark, silvery black, as the stars came out to shimmer overhead, and she inhaled, the air tinged with sea salt and clay, and something else. Something masculine and intoxicating. Her gaze shifted, moving to Leonidas, who was focused on the view, his eyes assuming a faraway look.
Her spine trembled with awareness and unconsciously, she leaned closer, wondering, in the back of her mind, at the pull she felt to this man she barely knew. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t been around attractive men before. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been flirted with by hot guys, asked out, and yet she’d never felt anything like this temptation. If he was a drug, she’d have no choice but to proclaim herself in the beginning stages of a heady, all-over addiction.
“You look lost in thought,” she said, the words soft and, without her knowledge, sensual.
He turned to face her slowly, as if his face was being pulled to hers almost against his will. “Do I?”
She sipped her drink—a rare glass of wine, then replaced the glass on the table, nodding softly.
“I suppose I was.” He assumed a pose of relaxation, but Mila felt tension radiating from him—or perhaps that was her own emotions, getting in the way. For as much as she wanted him, she kept hearing his denial, his refusal to entertain the idea of being with her, and it just made her want him all the more.
“Anything you’d like to share?”
His lips twisted into a tight, cynical smile. “Not particularly.”