‘Come. And sit. Down.’
She was startled by his commanding manner, just as she had been on the previous evening. It allowed her to stop resisting, to be docile and to do what he said – which was what she wanted anyway.
‘Bossy bastard,’ she grumped, but she was half-smiling as she gave him the corner of her eye.
‘When I have to be,’ he said. ‘Which is quite a lot, with you, I think.’
She laughed at his pure effrontery.
‘I’ll have you know that nobody bosses me about, mister! Not if they want to keep their careers.’
‘Yeah, well, that’s your problem, isn’t it? Used to being in control. Can’t let go.’
‘What are you on about?’
‘Jen, you want to let go. You want to let the sexual woman out from behind the sharp business player. But you’re scared. You’ve kept her behind bars for too long and you might find something out about yourself, something that might break up your perfect little image of yourself.’
‘Oh, shut up! Are you some kind of bogus counsellor?’
‘No, but I can offer you sex therapy.’
‘Leo! This isn’t funny.’
‘I’m serious. Deadly fucking serious. You want space, you want peace, you want quiet, yeah, I can dig all that. But if you try telling me you don’t also fancy a bloody good shag, you’re a liar.’
His words, together with the lazy, low-toned, arrogant way in which he spoke them, were a shot right between the thighs.
He was uncannily right. She wanted nothing more than to get him on top of her and have him ride her into the night until the sun came up and her body fell to pieces.
But if she was going to involve herself in his career, it couldn’t work, could it?
‘Think of it as a holiday fling,’ he said, closer to her now. ‘You’ve been lying in the sun all day and a sexy Spanish hombre has just turned up to slap on the suncream and show you what a good time really is, señorita.’
She laughed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ But his gravelly tones, combined with the heavy hand on her thigh weakened her conviction.
‘Be honest, then,’ he said. ‘Admit you could do with it. Why is it so hard for you to be honest?’
‘I am. I’m honest …’ She floundered, all at sea, and every wave was Leonardo, coming for her, tilting her this way and that, capsizing her. ‘I do want to. I just don’t know if I should …’
‘If you want to,’ he said, ‘you should.’
And that was that. Her token resistance was shot to shrapnel.
She let him wind her up in wiry arms and lay her down on the mattress while he planted his pelvis on top of hers and stopped up her mouth. It was something she couldn’t resist, and that knowledge gave her mind permission not to fret or couch objections through the writhing and grabbing, the biting and sucking.
Sex could be this way – hungry, urgent, needy. Her hands got tangled in his clothes and she parted her thighs to let the unyielding rock of his erection sit comfortably in her apex. Elsewhere, their bodies bumped and crashed into each other, graceless in their lusty rush to have what they must.
Leonardo let her flail for a few minutes before taking both wrists and pinning them above her head, looking down at her from the greatest height he could achieve in a horizontal position.
‘You’re fighting me,’ he said. ‘Keep still. We don’t need to tear each other to pieces.’
Jenna tried to catch her breath and work out what had come over her. She had been like a polecat, wild with need.
‘You’re stronger than me,’ she said. ‘It makes me want to try and overpower you.’
‘Well, you can’t. So don’t try. Have you always been in control in bed?’
‘Mostly.’