‘It’s heavenly,’ Sadie told him, so caught up in the spell of the place that she had opened the car door and stepped out without even realising she had done so.
A soft breeze stroked over her skin and instinctively she held her face up to the sun, closing her eyes as she basked in its warmth.
Turning to Leon, and gesturing widely with her arms to encompass the mas, the land and the sea and sky beyond it, she told him huskily, ‘This is what perfume is all about—flowers, earth, air, sea, capturing the scents of nature. No laboratory-produced chemical can ever reproduce this!’ she finished passionately.
Sombrely Leon watched her. The breeze was moulding her clothes to her body, highlighting its curves. He was tempted to challenge her statement, to remind her that she herself had now agreed to work with man-made scents, but he was reluctant to introduce a note of conflict into their day. In her eyes he could see how intensely she felt, and irrevocably he knew that he wanted to share that passion and, dangerously, he wanted her.
‘Let’s take a look inside.’
The harshness of Leon’s voice made Sadie frown. Had he thought her foolish and over-emotional to feel the way she did about their surroundings? He was waiting for her, and so silently she fell into step beside him.
Inside, the mas was every bit as perfect as it was outside—at least in Sadie’s opinion. The large country-style kitchen opened out onto a shady secluded patio, complete with a family-sized table and chairs, the patio itself ornamented with tubs of geraniums and an old-fashioned water pump.
The long, sprawling building also housed a cosy TV room, as well as a formal dining room and a wonderfully large and elegant sitting room, which ran the full width of the house and had windows on either side.
Upstairs there were five good-sized bedroom, each with its own bathroom. Every room was furnished simply but with style. With each step she took Sadie found herself envying whoever it was who owned it—especially when Leon told her that the land attached to the mas extended right down to the sea and included its own private beach.
‘It’s absolutely wonderful,’ she told him.
‘You like it?’
‘How could anyone not?’ Sadie responded ruefully. ‘If it was mine, I don’t think I could bear to let it out to someone else.’
As soon as she had finished speaking Leon found that he was actually making mental plans to get in touch with the letting agent and find out if the owners would be prepared to sell! After all, it would make sense for him to have a permanent base in Europe—especially now that they were taking over Francine.
Come off it, he derided himself. That isn’t why you want it, and you damn well know it. No. It wasn’t himself, dressed in a business suit and working alone on his laptop, he was envisaging. It was he and Sadie, and what they were doing had nothing whatsoever to do with work or laptops!
‘Well, I don’t know about you, but I am ready for that food we bought,’ Leon told Sadie, hastily banishing his wayward thoughts. He looked at his watch and added ruefully, ‘Do you realise that it’s already half past three?’
Sadie hadn’t realised, as she had been far too entranced by the house to think about the time.
‘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 act
ion 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.