‘I knew that you wouldn’t lie to me,’ he intoned with approval.
But Maribel felt very much as though she had failed. She knew that decent standards were a weakness in his vicinity. She knew his flaws. Yet she was still ensnared by the stunning gold of his eyes glinting below the dense black fringe of his lashes. He could still take her breath away with one scorching glance.
In a lithe movement Leonidas abandoned his misleadingly casual stance against the desk and straightened his lean, powerful body to his full imposing height. He reached for her taut, clenched fingers, straightening them out with confidence to draw her closer. ‘You’ve done the right thing,’ he murmured lazily. ‘I respect you for telling me the truth.’
‘That’s good, because I think that telling you the truth was one of the most pointless things I’ve ever done.’ Her slender fingers trembled in the hold of his as she fought the insidious force of his sensual charisma. Once bitten, for ever shy, she reminded herself frantically. He had almost destroyed her self-esteem more than two years earlier. Imogen and a whole host of other women had somehow managed to do casual with Leonidas, but Maribel had felt as though her heart were being ripped out slowly while she was still alive. And the horror of it had lasted for weeks, months, afterwards.
‘How so?’ Leonidas could feel the trepidation she was struggling to hide and marvelled at it, for he could think of no reason for her continuing apprehension. His thumb massaging her narrow wrist in a soothing motion, he gazed down at her, his attention lingering on the ripe pink fullness of her mouth. As the rich tide of sexual arousal grasped him he made no attempt to quell it. In fact he was enjoying the astonishing strength of his reaction to her. Seducing Maribel, he was recalling, had been unexpectedly sweet, and it would certainly take care of all the arguments now. ‘I’m not angry with you.’
‘Not at the moment…no,’ Maribel agreed, dry-mouthed, in response to the perceptible change in the atmosphere. Her heart was thumping as fast as a car being revved up on a race track. It was as if time had slowed down, while her every physical sense went on hyper-alert. Her breath catching in her throat, she fought to stay in control.
‘We were careless,’ Leonidas commented in a husky undertone, wondering if he should lock the door and take full advantage of the moment.
‘I wasn’t…you were,’ Maribel muttered, unable even with her brain in a state of sensual freefall to let him get away with making such an unfair claim.
‘I left my wallet in the limo and you wouldn’t let me phone for it to be brought in, so I had no contraception—’
‘I didn’t want your chauffeur and your wretched security team to know what you were doing!’ Maribel protested, her cheeks burning at the memory of her embarrassment.
Leonidas gave her a smile of unholy amusement. ‘I stayed the night with you. So what?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ Maribel recognised the treacherous intimacy of the discussion. Fighting the wicked draw of his dark animal magnetism, she turned her head away.
He lifted a lean brown hand up to flick a straying strand of amber-coloured hair back from her pale brow. Incredibly aware of his proximity, Maribel quivered. She could feel her whole body leaning towards him. It was as if he had pressed a button and her spine had crumbled. There was a craving in her that overpowered common sense. There was a wild longing for the forbidden and, try as she might, she could not stamp it out.
‘You make this complicated,’ Leonidas muttered thickly, a big hand splaying to the feminine curve of her hip to ease her up against him before she could step out of reach. ‘But for me it’s simple.’
She knew it was not simple, she knew it was complicated. She even knew that it was a hideous mistake and that she was going to hate herself later. But when he bent his handsome dark head, she still found herself stretching up on tiptoe so that she wouldn’t have to wait a split-second longer than necessary to make physical contact. And whatever else Leonidas was, he was an overpoweringly physical male. His lips claimed hers with a red-hot hunger and demand that she felt right down to her toes. His tongue tasted her and she shivered. He pushed against her, banding her closer with strong hands, unashamedly letting her feel the hard thrust of his erection. Answering heat flared low in her belly and she gasped beneath his marauding mouth. Her fingers dug into his broad shoulders. With no recollection of how they had got there, she yanked her hands guiltily off him again. Forcing herself to break free of his arms hurt as much as losing a layer of skin.
Violet-blue eyes blazing with resentment at his nerve, Maribel launched herself clumsily back out of reach. Her shoulders and hips met the filing cabinet behind her and provided merciful support, because her legs felt as sturdy as quaking jelly. ‘What the hell are you playing at?’ she snapped at him in furious condemnation, angry over her weakness and the hateful inevitability of his having taken advantage of it. ‘Is this because I showed you the door at my home yesterday? Did I insult your ego? You have just found out that you’re the father of my son! And what do you do? You make a pass at me!’