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

Wanting you like I do right now… Hell, Sadie, all it would take would be just for me to smell the scent of you, never mind touch you! And if I did touch you—’

      The look of male hunger he was giving her made Sadie quiver from head to foot!

      Grimly he continued, ‘Well, let’s just say I can’t pretend that I am going to be able to stop at a few kisses this time.’

      Sadie took a deep breath. Life was offering her an opportunity, and she realised she wanted to seize it with both hands. Right now she couldn’t think of anything she wanted more than to make love with Leon. To touch him! Breathe him! Know him in every way that there was! What she was thinking… feeling… wanting… shocked her—but it excited her as well, she admitted.

      Leon didn’t look excited, though; far from it! The green glacier look was back in his eyes, sending her heart to a thudding drumbeat of a standstill.

      How could he speak to her in the way he just had? How could he say the things he just had? How could he make her feel the way he just had and then look at her with that cold iciness in his eyes?

      ‘Look, let’s not mince matters,’ Leon told her harshly. ‘I don’t go in for immediate sexual gratification, or casual sex, and before you try to tell me anything different I’m damn sure you don’t either!’

      Casual sex! Sadie could feel the raw acid taste of her own shocked pain. It swamped her in a savage wave that tensed her whole body and washed the colour from her face.

      Instinctively she wanted to hide what she was feeling from Leon, but somehow she just couldn’t find the strength to turn away from him. She could feel her skin prickling with awareness as he looked at her.

      When Leon saw Sadie’s revealing expression he cursed under his breath and pushed his hand through his hair.

      ‘We’ve both got one hell of a lot going on in our lives right now,’ he told her brusquely. ‘I want you, Sadie. Make no mistake about that. But, hell, Sadie,’ he swore, when she continued to look at him with an open expression of anguished pain in her eyes, ‘can’t you see that I’m trying my hardest to protect you? Can’t you see that I’m struggling to do the decent thing? Feeling the way I do right now… wanting you the way I do right now…’ He groaned. ‘Having to spend the night alone here with you is the last thing I need.’

      Sadie told herself that she wouldn’t have been a woman if she hadn’t felt a very satisfying spurt of sensual pleasure at Leon’s admission. Far more dangerous, though, was the even stronger surge of excitement that speared through her, and the knowledge that, high-minded though Leon’s intentions were, an unexpectedly wicked part of her was strongly tempted to put them to the test. In the hope that they failed!

      Hastily she looked away from him, in case that all-seeing gaze of his might somehow guess what she was thinking. Thoroughly bemused by what she was feeling, Sadie shrugged her shoulders and told Leon huskily, ‘Well, no matter what either of us feels about it, we don’t have any alternative. We are going to have to spend the night here!’

      There—that should hopefully convince him that she wasn’t secretly pleased that they were going to be here together alone…

      ‘Sadie, I give you my word that you’ll be perfectly safe,’ Leon told her rawly.

      As she turned away from him and started to walk back towards the mas, Sadie admitted to herself that she wasn’t at all sure that ‘safe’ was what she wanted to be. In fact she knew that it wasn’t! Not when the alternative was a blissful night spent in Leon’s arms, enjoying and exploring Leon’s body, having him explore hers… all of hers, with his hands and his mouth and…

      Guiltily Sadie quickened her step as her whole body melted on a wave of unstoppable longing. Leon would be a wonderful lover. Somehow she already knew that. And her body wanted him to be its lover—wanted him to be! She had to stand still as her body reacted to her thoughts with a shocking surge of need.

      Watching her, Leon discovered to his chagrin that he was actually grinding his teeth in frustration as a surge of hot male hunger gripped him. Fiercely he tried to resist the impulse to remember how she had felt in his arms last night when he had kissed her. He had given Sadie his word that he wouldn’t touch her, and he fully intended to keep it!

      Briefly he looked away from her, battling against himself when he discovered that his body was telling him very determinedly and openly just how much it opposed what he had decided.

      Already it was tormenting him with dangerous thoughts and even more dangerous images of what it would feel like to share the pleasure of love with Sadie, of what it would be like to share the heat of desire with her, and the intimacy of knowing one another’s bodies!

      God, but he wanted her, Leon realised savagely—which was exactly why he would have given anything, paid anything, not to have to spend the night here at the mas with her.

      He was a man of honour, and seducing her…

      Seducing her. Leon leaned against the car and gave in to the fierce tide of heat that ripped through him.

      He would undress her slowly, uncovering her inch by inch, touching her, stroking her, reassuring her as he kissed the soft sweetness of her skin, her throat, and that delicate delicious spot just behind her ear, her jaw, her eyelids and then her mouth.

      Leon closed his eyes and tried to fight the surge of arousal engulfing him. But it was impossible. He could feel the immediate stiffening of his body and cursed himself beneath his breath, relieved that Sadie was too far away from him to be aware of his reaction.

      But even knowing what his thoughts were doing wasn’t enough to stop them. Not now…

      He would kiss Sadie slowly and chastely, waiting until she was ready for the intimate exploration of his tongue. Somehow he would find a way to control his need to thrust it hotly into the sweetness of her mouth. And then, once she had accepted him there, he would start to explore her body, the delicate curve of her arm just above her elbow, the inside of her wrist, the soft slope of her neck where it met her shoulder. And her breasts…

      Leon felt the fierce thrusting reaction of his own body, saw when he looked down where his erection strained against the cloth of his jeans. Inside them he was hard and aching, so tumescent that it hurt.

      Sadie had already reached the mas. He knew he ought to follow her, but his need for her was devouring him—and if he did… if he even got within breathing distance of her right now, never mind close enough to touch her, Leon knew that he wouldn’t be able to trust himself to keep the promise he had made to her.

      Just the thought of cupping the soft weight of her breasts in his hands, of exploring them, running his fingertip around that place where the creamy paleness gave way to the deeper pinkness of her aureole before rising up to the nipple itself, was sending him crazy with longing.

      His erection throbbed and pulsed. Inside his head, his hand was already travelling down her body, stroking her thighs, easing them apart, exploring the soft warmth of the full swollen lips protecting her sex with gentle reassurance before sliding between them to probe the moist excitement of her, and then…

      Leon groaned out aloud and sliced a mental guillotine down across his thoughts. If he continued like this he wouldn’t be able to walk as far as the house, never mind do anything else, he told himself grittily.

      He didn’t just want Sadie, he admitted angrily. He damn well loved her as well!

      And loving her meant that he wanted to protect her. Not just from any other man who might dare to take advantage of her, but from himself!

      He was in this so deep he might as well give up right now, Leon admitted. But he couldn’t afford to. Not until he had got the takeover sorted.

      He was glad that Sadie had seen sense with regard to his plans for Francine. His board would not have been too pleased, to say the least, had he had to institute potentially expensive and—even worse—long drawn-out legal proceedings against Sadie to prove that