Penny Jordan - Mediterranean Nights

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.

‘Mmm,’ she heard Leon whisper throatily, glancing up into her eyes as he did so and giving her a wicked look. ‘Very more-ish!’

Sadie’s eyes opened wide and her face turned a vivid shade of pink. He wasn’t, she suspected, referring to the olive!

His tongue laved her fingers one more time with lingering thoroughness, and then he lifted his head to look at her, whilst his hand slid down over her wrist to cover hers, folding her fingers into her palm and slowly stroking her small fist as he asked her softly, ‘Are you sure you don’t want a glass of wine?’

Emphatically Sadie shook her head and tried to repossess her hand. She was intoxicated enough as it was, without drinking wine! The sensuality of what he had done had sent her blood into a cloud of fizzy bubbles as it raced round her veins.

Watching her, Leon was instinctively and sharply aware of her sexual naïveté, and that knowledge sent a huge reactionary surge of corresponding male arousal thundering through him.

He had never been promiscuous, but naturally as a young man he had gone through the normal stages of sexual experimentation and exploration. Since hitting his late twenties, though, he had given up on sexual exploration as a means of expressing himself as a man. However, the majority of women he met were very open about the fact that they were extremely sexually experienced. They seemed to think that he would enjoy the results of that experience. Perhaps like Sadie he had been imbued with a lot of his own grandmother’s moral beliefs.

There was also, Leon acknowledged, enough Greek heritage in him to make him find such women more of a turn-off than a turn-on. His realisation that Sadie was clearly quite inexperienced was producing within him the same effect as applying a lighted match to dry tinder—very dry tinder, he recognised grimly.

Whether it was unacceptable in today’s modern climate or not, there was something within him, something in his blood, that found the knowledge that there would be much he would have the pleasure of showing her extremely attractive! Extremely attractive and insistently arousing, as his body was making very, very plain!

He was delighted that potentially they had the summer ahead of them to get to know one another. He would make it his business to be sure he spent as much time in France as he could, and he would see to it that Sadie also needed to be there, for constant ‘consultations’ regarding the new perfume she would be creating for them.

Still watching her, he discovered that he was toying with ways and means of re-vamping the Grasse house and outbuildings, and insisting that it was essential that Sadie worked from there on the perfume.

That way their relationship could grow easily and naturally, and when they came to make a full commitment to one another it would be—

A full commitment?

Leon underwent a moment of wry introspection and self-searching. He was Greek enough to feel very strongly that he only wanted to make a full commitment to one woman and for that partnership to be for ever. And he was modern-minded enough to know that that kind of commitment couldn’t be based solely on sexual and emotional desire, but had to be based on mutual trust, honesty and respect as well.

He had met too many women who were ready to say anything to get what they wanted. No way could he ever give his love and his life to a woman like that!

As he looked at Sadie he was uncomfortably aware that whilst his thoughts might be logical and under control, his feelings and his body were no such thing. The way he was feeling right now meant that the sooner they left the mas the better! The combination of Sadie, solitude and his own sexual longing for her right now were putting his self-control under far too much strain!

With that in mind, he stood up, frowning.

What was Leon thinking? Sadie wondered, watching him uncertainly. Two minutes ago he had been behaving towards her in a way that had quite definitely been very sexual. Now he was looking at her with a sternness that seemed to suggest she had done something wrong!

Perhaps he thought she had been deliberately provocative?

She quickly got to her feet herself, her pleasure in the day flattened by Leon’s expression.

‘I think it’s time we made a move,’ Leon announced grimly, adding under his breath so that Sadie couldn’t hear him, ‘Before it’s too late!’

‘You want us to leave now?’ Sadie couldn’t stop herself from questioning in disbelief. And then, when Leon made no response, she protested crossly, ‘It might have escaped your notice, but I haven’t had anything to eat yet.’

‘You can eat in the car,’ Leon told her unequivocally, bending down to pick up the bottle of wine as he did so.

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.