Deal With The Devil: Secrets of a Ruthless Tycoon / The Most Expensive Lie of All / The Magnate's Manifesto

‘Shh,’ he whispered huskily, as though she had spoken. ‘Relax.’

‘It’s...been a long time.’ Brianna gave a half-stifled, nervous laugh. He raised his head and their eyes tangled, black clashing with apple-green.

‘When you say long...’

‘I haven’t slept with anyone since... Well, it’s been years...’ She twisted away, embarrassed by the admission. Where had the time gone? It seemed as though one minute she had been nursing heartbreak, dealing with her father’s death, caught up in a jumble of financial worries, her life thrown utterly off course, and the next minute she was here, still running the pub, though with the financial worries more or less behind her. She was hardly sinking but definitely not swimming and living a life that seemed far too responsible for someone her age.

Leo tilted her face to his, kissed her on the side of her mouth and banked down his momentary discomfort at thinking that he might be taking advantage of her.

Yet she was perfectly aware of the situation, perfectly aware that he wasn’t going to be hanging around. Naturally, she was not in possession of the true facts regulating his departure, but weren’t those just details? Looking at the bigger picture, she knew where she stood, that this was just a fling—not even that.

‘I’ll be gentle.’

‘I guess you...you’ve had a lot of girlfriends?’

‘I haven’t espoused a life of celibacy.’ He slipped his finger into the wet groove of her femininity and felt whatever further questions she wanted to ask become stifled under her heated response. She moved against his finger and groaned.

He could have played with her body all day, all night. Right now, he couldn’t get enough of her and he moved downwards. She sucked in her breath sharply and he rested the palm of his hand flat on her stomach, then he nuzzled the soft hair covering the apex between her thighs. He breathed in the musky, honeyed scent of her and dipped his tongue to taste her. How did he know that this was something she was experiencing for the first time? And why was that such a turn on?

He teased the throbbing bud of her clitoris and, when she moaned and squirmed, he flattened his hands on her thighs so that her legs were spread wide open for his delectation.

Brianna had never known anything like this before. There wasn’t a single part of her body that wasn’t consumed with an overpowering craving. She wanted him to continue doing what he was doing, yet she wanted him in her, deep inside. She weakly tugged at his hair but was powerless to pull him up. When she looked down and saw his dark head between her legs, and his strong, bronzed hands against the paleness of her thighs, she almost passed out.

Could years of living in icy isolation have made her so vulnerable to his touch? Had her body been so deprived of human contact that it was now overwhelmed? It felt like it.

When he rose, she was so close to tipping over the edge that she had to squeeze her eyes shut and grit her teeth together to maintain self-control.

‘Enjoying yourself?’ Leo raised some hair from her flushed face to whisper in her ear. He rubbed his stiff erection against her belly and felt sensation lick through his body at frightening speed.

Brianna blushed and nodded, then raised herself up so that she could kiss him on the mouth, draw him down over her so that their bodies were pressed together, fused with slick perspiration. She reached down and took him in her hand and he angled himself slightly away to accommodate her. His breathing thickened as she continued to work her movements into a deep rhythm.

He was impressively big and she shivered with heady anticipation.

‘A condom... Wait; in my wallet...’

Already he was groping in the pocket of his jeans for his wallet and fumbling to fetch a condom, his eyes still pinned to her flushed, reclining body. How on earth could he be thinking of anything at a time like this? She just couldn’t wait for him to be inside her, filling her with his bigness.

‘You’re well prepared.’ She sighed and thought that of course he would be; he was a man of the world after all.

She groaned and felt the slippery, cool sheath guarding his arousal; her hands impatiently guided him to her, longing for the moment when he would fill her completely. She flipped onto him and arched up, her hands on his broad chest, her small breasts tipping teasingly towards him. ‘I know you’re moving on and I like it that way.’ Did she? Yes, she did! ‘I need this.’ She leaned forward, bottom sticking up provocatively, and covered her mouth with his. ‘The last thing I would take a gamble on is with a pregnancy.’

‘You wouldn’t want to be stuck with a loser like me?’ Leo grinned, because those words had never passed his lips before. ‘A travelling writer hoping to make his fortune?’ He curved his hands on her rear and inserted himself into her. He drove into her and Brianna felt a surge of splintering pleasure as he moved deep inside her. Her head was flung back and he could feel the ends of her long hair on his thighs, brushing against them.

‘A guy could feel insulted.’

She was on her back before she knew it and he was rearing up over her, big, powerful and oh, so breathtakingly beautiful, one-hundred per cent alpha male.

She came with such intensity that she had to squeeze her eyes shut on the gathering tears. She knew her fingers were digging in to the small of his back and they dug harder as she felt him swell and reach his orgasm inside her.

God, nothing had ever felt that good. Years of celibacy, running the pub and coping with all the day-to-day worries had obviously had the effect of making her respond like a wanton to being touched. She had never been like that before. But then, she had been so much younger when she had met Danny. Had the years and the tough times released some sort of pent-up capacity for passion that she had never known about?

‘So...’ Leo drawled, rolling onto his side then pulling her to face him so that their naked bodies were front to front and still touching, almost as though neither of them wanted to break the physical contact. ‘You were telling me all about how you were using me to get you out of a dry patch.’ He inserted his thigh between her legs and felt her wetness slippery against his skin.

‘I never said that,’ Brianna murmured.

‘You didn’t have to. The word “need” gave it away.’

‘Maybe you’re right. It’s been a slog for the past few years. Don’t get me wrong, there have been times when I’ve enjoyed running this place. It’s just not how I expected my life to turn out.’

‘What had you expected?’

‘I expected to be married with a couple of kids, pursuing the art career that never took off, as it happens.’

‘Ah. And the couple of kids and the wedding ring would have been courtesy of the heartbreaker?’

‘He dumped me.’ It had haunted her, had been responsible for all the precautions she had taken to protect herself. Yet lying here, with his thigh doing wonderful things between her legs, stirring up all the excitement that had only just faded, she could barely remember Danny’s face. He had stopped being a human being and had become just a vague, disturbing recollection of a past mistake. She couldn’t care less what had become of him, so how on earth had he carried on having such an influence on her behaviour?

‘I wasn’t good enough,’ she said, anger replacing the humiliation that usually accompanied this thought. ‘We went out for ages; when I thought that we really were destined to be together, he broke it to me that I had just been a good time at university. Dad was ill and I had discovered that the guy I thought I was in love with had been using me all along for a bit of fun. At least you’ve been honest and up-front.’

‘Honest and up-front?’

‘You’re moving on. You’re not here to stay. No illusions. I like that.’

‘Before you start putting me on a pedestal and getting out the feather brush to dust my halo, I should tell you that you know very little about me.’

‘I know enough.’

‘You have little to compare me with. I’m a pretty ruthless bastard, if you want the truth.’

Brianna laughed, a clear, tinkling sound of pure amusement. She sifted her fingers through his dark hair and curled up closer to him which kick-started a whole lot of very pleasurable sensations that had him hardening in record time.

He edged her back from him and looked at her, unsmiling. ‘You’ve been hurt once. You’ve spent years buried here, working beyond the call of duty to keep the wolves from the door. You’ve had no boyfriends, no distractions to occupy your time. Hell, you haven’t even been able to wring out an hour or two to do your painting. And then along I come. I’m not your knight in shining armour.’

‘I never said that you were!’ Brianna pulled back, hurt and confused at a sudden glimpse of ruthlessness she wouldn’t have imagined possible.

‘It’s been my experience that what women say is often at variance to what they think. I won’t be hanging around—and even if I lived next door to you, Brianna, I don’t do long-term relationships.’

‘What do you mean, you don’t do long-term relationships?’

‘Just what I say, so be warned. Don’t make the mistake of investing anything in me. What we have is sexual attraction, pure and simple.’ He softened and gentled his voice. ‘We have something that works at this precise moment in time.’

But it was more than that. What about the conversations they had had; the moments of sharing generated by close proximity? Some sixth sense stopped her from pointing that out. She was finding it difficult to recognise the cool, dark eyes of this stranger looking at her.

‘And stop treating me as though I’m a stupid kid,’ she bit out tightly, disentangling herself from him. ‘I was one of those once.’ Her voice was equally cool. ‘I don’t intend to repeat the same mistake twice. And, if you think that I would ever let myself get emotionally wrapped up with someone who doesn’t want to spend his life in one place, then you’re crazy. I value security. When I fall for someone, it will be someone who wants to settle down and isn’t scared of commitment. I’m thankful that you’ve been honest enough to tell me as it is, but you have nothing to fear. Your precious independence isn’t at risk.’

‘If that’s the case, why are you pulling away from me?’

‘I don’t like your tone of voice.’