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

The sky above them was still cloudlessly blue, the sea in the distance a deeper but just as storm-free hue. The lightest of breezes stirred the flowers, and the only sound on the clear air was the lazy hum of bees. So why did Sadie suddenly feel as though a very dangerous and threatening storm was imminent? she wondered miserably. Why did she feel as though the sky had turned dark and the coldest of icy winds was piercing her heart?

Why?

Did she really need to ask herself that? she questioned herself derisively whilst she stared at Leon’s departing back as he walked towards the car. If ever a man’s back was indicative of tightly reined in anger and cold savagery, then that back was Leon’s!

Why on earth hadn’t she had the sense to think first, before stupidly, idiotically, senselessly offering him that olive? Her face burned a self-contemptuous red. Of course he was bound to have thought she was coming on to him! But if he had thought that then why hadn’t he simply rejected her immediately? Why on earth had he deliberately emphasised the sensuality of the moment in the way that he had? Had it been her own lack of experience that had put him off? Sadie wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with the type of man who valued a woman purely on her sexual experience and availability, but naïvely she had believed that Leon was far above that kind of thing!

After a brief visit to the bathroom, to prepare herself for the journey and to reinforce to herself all the reasons why she should cease to feel anything whatsoever for Leon, she was ready to join him in the car.

Pulling on her seat beat, she remained resolutely silent as Leon moved to start the car—and continued to be so during the five unsuccessful attempts that followed the first.

However, when Leon finally unlocked the bonnet and got out, lifting it up to peer into the innards of the vehicle, Sadie felt anxious enough to ask, ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘God knows,’ came back Leon’s terse response. ‘I’m no mechanic, but I suspect it’s the battery. I’m going to have to ring the car hire people and get them to sort something out for us.’

Leon snapped the bonnet closed and came back to the car to get his mobile phone.

Five minutes later Sadie held her breath as she heard Leon demand ominously into his mobile, ‘What do you mean, you can’t supply me with a substitute?’

There was a brief pause before he cut in acidly, ‘Look, I don’t give a damn how busy you are, or how impossible it is for you to get a car out here to me until tomorrow. I would have thought any organisation that considered itself as anything approaching professional would have had the common sense to make sure it had enough vehicles to cover this extra busy period. Hell!’ he swore bitterly as he held the instrument away from his ear. ‘The line’s breaking up,’ he told Sadie grimly.

They tried to contact the hire firm on three successive occasions, both with Leon’s mobile and Sadie’s, and eventually managed to get through. But once again the hire car firm insisted that they were not able to provide Leon with a substitute vehicle until the following morning.

‘Well, at least we’ve got the mas to stay in,’ Sadie pointed out.

Leon was staring grimly out to sea.

‘Yeah, great,’ he agreed nastily

The toxicity of his silence was burning Sadie’s sensitive nerve-endings.

‘Look, I can see that you don’t want to be here with me—’ she began.

‘For heaven’s sake, Sadie.’ Leon stopped her savagely. ‘Don’t you understand? It isn’t what I don’t want that’s bothering me. It’s what I do want.’

Sadie’s forehead crinkled with her lack of understanding.

‘I can see that you want to get back,’ she began warily, ‘but I don’t—’

Leon groaned.

‘No, Sadie!’ he interrupted bluntly. ‘What I want isn’t to get back—although hell knows it damn well ought to be. What I want is you!’

His angry words seemed to hang in the enclosed space of the car, reverberating in her ears.

Her? He wanted her?

Sadie tried to say something, but her throat was too dry and the words stuck there. She swallowed and managed to squeak, ‘You want me? But—’

‘Yes. I want you!’ Leon confirmed thickly. ‘Every damned intoxicating, aggravating, delicious, sensual inch of you,’ he ground out in fierce despair.

Head spinning, Sadie wondered at the strength of the feeling gripping her. What would Leon say if she told him that she fully reciprocated? What would he do?

‘Have you any idea just what kind of hell it’s going to be for me, having to spend the night here with you—alone. Just the two of us!’ Leon emphasised tightly. ‘Just the two of us!’

When she didn’t say anything, he demanded harshly, ‘Didn’t last night tell you anything? Show you? Warn you. I could hardly keep my hands off you then!’

Sadie had had enough.

‘Would it be such a terrible thing if you didn’t?’ she asked him bravely.

Leon stared at her, expression on his face hardening his eyes glittering green fire.

‘I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,’ he told her grittily.

Sadie wasn’t going to give in—no way, not now!

‘Why?’ she challenged him softly

‘Why?’

She could hear raw anger in his voice, threaded with disbelief.

‘I can’t believe you’re asking me that,’ he told her flatly. ‘I mean, you do know what I’m talking about, don’t you? I’m a man, Sadie, and to put it in its bluntest terms, if I come anywhere near you feeling like I do right now… 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!’