Passionate Playboys: The Demetrios Bridal Bargain / The Magnate's Indecent Proposal / Hot Nights with a Playboy

‘Not in the slightest,’ she agreed hoarsely. ‘Although if your father doesn’t like tardiness this might not be the moment to allow your exhibitionist tendencies full rein.’

‘You would not find it that distracting, then?’ he questioned with a show of silky smooth innocence that was in stark variance to the sensual, mocking glitter in his deep-set eyes as they moved from her parted lips and fastened onto her wide, dilated amber eyes.

Another button followed the first two and Rose, fighting for composure, felt the sweat break out on her forehead as he pulled the hem from the waistband of his trousers. ‘N-not in the slightest,’ she said with what she suspected was the most unconvincing show of indifference this century.

‘You should never, ever play poker, mon ange.’ His shirt hung open to the waist, revealing a large proportion of his powerful chest and a tantalising section of muscle-ridged flat stomach.

Rose was shocked and horrified by the shaft of lust that struck to the heart of her. Eyes glazed, she ran a tongue over the dry outline of her lips. The impulse to reach out and touch him, place her hands on the golden glowing skin that looked like oiled silk, was so strong she could physically taste it. She stood poised on the balls of her feet to take flight, but was unable to summon the strength to break the hypnotic hold of his smoky eyes.

Then finally she managed to turn her head sharply. Her hands clenched as she fought to calm her erratic shallow breathing and drag enough air into her lungs to stop her head spinning.

‘I prefer poker to the games you play,’ she husked, feeling the unexpected sting of emotional tears fill her eyes.which was crazy because she simply wasn’t a crying person.

‘I don’t play games, Rose.’ There was a note in his voice that she hadn’t heard before. It made her want to search his face, but she knew that would be a bad idea. Looking at him made her mind mush … actually, her mind was permanently mush at the moment.

He covered the few feet that separated them in seconds. Framing her face between his hands, he tilted her head up to his.

Rose’s knees sagged; the sexual smoulder deep in his eyes made things shift and tighten with painful intensity low down in her pelvis.

He’s going to kiss me.

This alarming realisation was almost instantly followed by one that was even more alarming—I want him to!

Wanted him to so badly she could taste it—not, of course, that she was going to let him.

It would have been easy to defuse the situation—she could have laughed in his face, pulled away or told him he was taking the role play a bit too seriously. She did none of these. Rose took an option not on the list. Shaking like someone with a fever, she gave an inarticulate little moan, wove her fingers into silky raven strands of his glossy hair and dragged his face towards her.

Her fingers stayed tangled in his hair as he covered her mouth with his. She was sucking in a tremulous breath when his tongue slid into her mouth in a slow, sensuous exploration. Tugging gently at the pink fullness of her lower lip, he lifted his head slightly.

‘I have been wondering how you would taste.’

The erotic, husky confidence sent a thrill of illicit excitement through her trembling body.

He freed a hand from her face to trace a lone finger along her cheek. ‘I thought you might taste delicious …’ He swallowed, the muscles of his throat working as he ran his tongue over the soft inner surface of her lower lip. Rose shivered and moaned softly. ‘And now I know you taste even better than that …’ he completed in a throaty husk.

Eyes dilated and glazed with passion, she lifted a hand to his cheek. As her fingers slid along the hard line of his cheek and jaw somehow she caught a glimpse of movement in the periphery of her vision.

The realisation that they had an audience swept through her aroused body like an icy chill; they were not alone. She would have pulled her hand away had Mathieu not held it there. Looking past her, he said casually, ‘Hello, Sacha.’

‘S-sorry, I didn’t know …’

The girl, who was beautiful, sounded as miserable and embarrassed as she looked. If Rose hadn’t been dealing with her own feelings of shame and humiliation she might have felt sorry for her.

‘I just came to say that dinner … your father is waiting.’

‘We’ll be right there.’

The door closed and this time he made no attempt to stop her pulling away. Well, he wouldn’t, would he? There was no one to see the tender scene of seduction.

And you thought he genuinely found you irresistible? Self-disgust churned in her stomach as she backed away glaring at him with loathing.

She could not, she would not, fall for Mathieu. This was just chemistry and chemistry she could deal with, she told herself. Who better? Twenty-six-year-old virgins were not renowned for their uncontrolled sexual appetites; she had reached the conclusion a long time ago that hers was underdeveloped. Any chemistry she could ignore. ‘Now where were we?’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ROSE backed away so fast she almost tripped over a low table. Hastily righting it and the porcelain figurine that she had just saved, she straightened up and hitched up the neckline of her dress a protective inch before smoothing it down.

A distracted expression filtered into her wide wary eyes as her hand remained flat on the gentle curve of her stomach. She could feel the heat of her skin through the thin fabric. Mathieu’s body had felt hot when she had been crushed up against him—scorchingly hot. Hot enough to melt her.

Closing her eyes, she counted to ten—slowly. When she opened them he was staring at her.

‘Was that really necessary?’ she asked.

As he carried on studying her flushed face with an unsettling intensity she began to panic. What was he seeing? If he knew how and what she was feeling it would give him an unfair advantage because she as sure as hell didn’t. She had never felt so confused in her life.

There was a noise outside the windows on the patio and his attention shifted briefly. Rose, who had been unconsciously holding her breath, released it on a shuddering sigh of relief.

‘They are forecasting a storm tonight. It looks as if for once they are right,’ he observed, walking across to close the window.

He turned as Rose was sinking into a chair. ‘It felt like it at the time.’ He was genuinely shocked to recognise how necessary it had felt. He was no stranger to lust, but not since his teens had he allowed it to rule him. A man could take pleasure from his appetites without becoming a slave to them.

‘What?’

She looked so prim perched on the edge of the seat with her hands folded neatly in her lap. Her lips did not look prim— they looked swollen from his kisses. ‘Kissing you felt necessary.’ It still did.

Her eyes slid from the hunger in his; a man had never looked at her that way before.

‘I’m wearing your ring.’ She held out the hand in question where the square-cut emerald in its bed of diamonds caught the light. ‘I think she’s already got the message. That was just plain cruel,’ she observed, thinking of Sacha. ‘Or I suppose you’d call it being cruel to be kind … tough love …?’ she ended on a sneer.

‘You’re shaking.’

The soft interruption cut short her heated diatribe. His voice made her shiver but not as much as his touch. As she stared at his long fingers, very dark against her pale skin, encircling her wrist, a febrile shudder worked its way along her spine, followed by a second and third as her throat dried. She closed her eyes, bit her lip and dragged herself from the fog of sexual inertia that wrapped itself around her.

‘Of course I’m shaking,’ she snapped, lifting her chin in an attitude of angry defiance. ‘I don’t appreciate being mauled for the benefit of your girlfriend.’

‘You seemed to appreciate it pretty well at the time.’

Her fingers itched to slap the smugly complacent smirk off his face, they itched to do other things, but she wouldn’t let herself think about those shameful impulses.

She was unable to deny the observation without looking like a total idiot—his normally sleek dark hair was still mussed from where her fingers had pushed into the rich, lush thatch. After a painful pause she played safe and ignored his comment.

‘What is it about me?’ she asked bitterly. ‘Do I have a sign across my forehead?’ she wondered, drawing a vicious imaginary line with her finger. ‘Use me because I’m so stupid I’ll probably just say thank you.’

The guy with the troubled sexual identity who had dumped her at the altar, Mathieu thought, a flash of contempt appearing in his narrowed eyes as he contemplated the faceless loser who was responsible for the defensive hard-faced pose, which frankly was pretty shaky.

Rose could talk the talk but he had met hard-faced, and she was not even close to it.

Whatever his faults, he had never made any promises he couldn’t keep. What sort of weak idiot, he asked himself, backed away at the last minute after making someone believe you wanted to share the rest of your life with them?