Mediterranean Nights: The Mistress Purchase / The Demetrios Virgin / Marco's Convenient Wife. PENNY JORDAN

      ‘Where would you like to eat? Inside or out?’ Leon asked her.

      ‘Oh, outside—if that’s okay with you?’ Sadie responded immediately.

      ‘By the pool?’ Leon guessed.

      Sadie gave him an eloquent look of confirmation, her eyes shining with pleasure. Watching her, Leon didn’t know how the hell he was managing to stop himself from taking hold of her and kissing her until that look of shining pleasure became one of liquid desire.

      ‘It’s a pity we didn’t bring our swimming things,’ Sadie regretted innocently, as she looked longingly at the pool.

      ‘Who says we need them?’ Leon teased her softly, laughing outright as he saw her expression.

      ‘What? Don’t tell me you’ve never been skinny-dipping?’ He grinned in disbelief. ‘You live by the sea, don’t you?’

      Sadie shook her head vehemently.

      ‘I certainly have not,’ she told him firmly, but the expression in her eyes was a little wistful.

      The mere thought of swimming naked with Leon in the soft warm water of the pool was sending her imagination into definitely x-rated regions, and making her pulse bounce excitement though her body. Protectively, she hid her reaction from Leon. Her grandmother had been of a generation that believed that it was a man’s role to pursue a woman, most definitely not the woman’s to pursue him. And although Sadie knew such teachings were outmoded now, a little bit of her still clung to them. Perhaps it was as a consequence of that that her own sexual experience was rather limited—or at least she suspected that in Leon’s eyes it would be.

      ‘I was brought up by my grandmother, remember,’ she defended, when she saw his expression. ‘And besides,’ she added dryly, ‘the water off the coast of Pembroke is extremely cold.’

      Ten minutes later, as they unpacked the food which Leon had brought from the kitchen where they had stored it, Sadie realised just how hungry she was.

      ‘No, thanks,’ she refused, shaking her head and covering the wine glass Leon had found as he reached for the wine he had bought.

      He raised his eyebrows and teased her. ‘Why not? Are you afraid that it might weaken your grandmother-induced resolve enough for you to want to try skinny-dipping after all?’

      He was just teasing her. Sadie knew that. After all, he couldn’t know how much she wanted him…

      Refusing to rise to his bait, she firmly dismissed the tormenting erotic images from her mind and told him calmly, ‘You can’t have any wine because you’re driving, and I don’t want to drink any without you. It doesn’t seem fair.’

      The look she could see in his eyes as he replaced the bottle and reached for one of water instead confused her.

      As he poured them both a glass of water, Leon noted that Sadie was constantly surprising and challenging not only his original assessment of her, but also his understanding of women in general. In refusing to drink any wine because he could not share in the pleasure she had shown a genuine kindness of nature which he admitted was seriously denting the barriers he had felt he needed to put up against her. Denting it? Get real, he advised himself derisively. She had damn near demolished it wholesale!

      ‘Mmm… those olives look good,’ Leon commented hungrily as he watched Sadie opening the small carton containing them.

      ‘Want one?’ she responded immediately, picking one up without thinking about the sensual intimacy of her action as she offered to feed it to him.

      The look he gave her made her suddenly conscious of the heat prickling on her back, and even more aware of the heat trickling through her body. She hadn’t meant to be provocative, but right now the way he was looking at her made her feel as though she were Eve, offering Adam that apple!

      However, before she could retract either her words or the olive, Leon’s hand snaked out and his fingers curled softly around her wrist, making her heart bounce around inside her chest as though it were on a piece of elastic. How could such a small gesture, such a simple touch, have such a powerful and erotic effect upon her? She might not be sexually experienced, but she wasn’t totally naïve! Somewhere at the back of her mind the knowledge surfaced that a part of her had known from the minute she had set eyes on him that Leon was going to affect her like this.

      Dizzily she noted how cool Leon’s hold was, and how potentially strong. Her wrist felt so fragile in his grip. She could feel his thumb pressing against her pulse-point and her heart gave a violently convulsive jerk.

      Without her even wanting it, never mind being able to do a thing to stop him, Leon had lifted her hand to his mouth. Her eyes rounded, their colour darkening as her gaze followed his every movement. Helplessly, she watched as his lips parted, encompassing not just the juicy pitted black olive but her fingertips as well.

      Her own lips parted involuntarily, her mouth going dry as a fierce ache burst into life inside her.

      The sensation of Leon’s tongue curling over her fingers and then thrusting between to remove the olive made her go light-headed with desire. Her heart was pumping as ferociously as though she had just run up a steep mountainside. Shockingly explicit images were forming inside her head, and waves of liquid desire were shafting through her body like bolts of lightning. The thumb pressed so close to her pulse must surely be registering its erratic beat.

      The olive had gone from her fingers, but Leon’s tongue had not! It was lapping slowly and surely, with deliberate sensuality, at her flesh, removing the satin covering of olive oil.

      ‘Mmm,’ she heard Leon whisper throatily, glancing up into her eyes as he did so and giving her a wicked look. ‘Very more-ish!’

      Sadie’s eyes opened wide and her face turned a vivid shade of pink. He wasn’t, she suspected, referring to the olive!

      His tongue laved her fingers one more time with lingering thoroughness, and then he lifted his head to look at her, whilst his hand slid down over her wrist to cover hers, folding her fingers into her palm and slowly stroking her small fist as he asked her softly, ‘Are you sure you don’t want a glass of wine?’

      Emphatically Sadie shook her head and tried to repossess her hand. She was intoxicated enough as it was, without drinking wine! The sensuality of what he had done had sent her blood into a cloud of fizzy bubbles as it raced round her veins.

      Watching her, Leon was instinctively and sharply aware of her sexual naïveté, and that knowledge sent a huge reactionary surge of corresponding male arousal thundering through him.

      He had never been promiscuous, but naturally as a young man he had gone through the normal stages of sexual experimentation and exploration. Since hitting his late twenties, though, he had given up on sexual exploration as a means of expressing himself as a man. However, the majority of women he met were very open about the fact that they were extremely sexually experienced. They seemed to think that he would enjoy the results of that experience. Perhaps like Sadie he had been imbued with a lot of his own grandmother’s moral beliefs.

      There was also, Leon acknowledged, enough Greek heritage in him to make him find such women more of a turn-off than a turn-on. His realisation that Sadie was clearly quite inexperienced was producing within him the same effect as applying a lighted match to dry tinder—very dry tinder, he recognised grimly.

      Whether it was unacceptable in today’s modern climate or not, there was something within him, something in his blood, that found the knowledge that there would be much he would have the pleasure of showing her extremely attractive! Extremely attractive and insistently arousing, as his body was making very, very plain!

      He was delighted that potentially they had the summer ahead of them to get to know one another. He would make it his business to be sure he spent as much time in France as he could, and he would see to it that Sadie also needed to be there, for constant ‘consultations’ regarding the new perfume she would be creating for them.

      Still