Andrea Laurence - Seduced At Sea

She turned back to consider him and tried to ignore sensations she would rather not feel shimmy down her spine as he looked back at her with lazy insolence. ‘I’ll do it if you take Ty with you.’

His eyelids lowered and when he raised them his eyes were no longer lazy or insolent, but hard and flat. ‘Never been to Greece, angel?’

‘Your list just got longer.’

Knowing the type of man he was she hadn’t expected to win this point without a fight but, instead of arguing with her, he slowly rose to his feet, his eyes on her the whole time. Then he smiled, a killer’s smile, and Lexi felt the cold plate-glass window through her clothing and realised she’d backed up a step. ‘Careful, angel, you might fall.’

Lexi stiffened her spine and gave him a look that had been known to stay the rowdiest of children. ‘I’m not afraid of you Mr Aleksandrov.’ Or the way he called her angel, with the tiniest hint of sexual promise behind it.

Much, anyway .

She lifted her chin just a fraction as he continued to stare at her and then finally—thankfully—he nodded his head and gestured towards the door.

‘Let me show you to your room.’

Lexi nearly threw her hands up in the air as she realised that she’d just inadvertently agreed to go to Greece with him. The last thing she wanted to do. But how could she say no, now? ‘I must be mad,’ she muttered under her breath, trailing him up the long corridor towards the bedrooms.

He stopped in front of the room next to the one Ty occupied.

Lexi folded her arms across her chest. ‘Why do I have to stay here tonight if you’re not leaving until the morning?’

‘Insurance.’

‘If I give my word then I keep it.’

‘But you haven’t given me your word.’

She very nearly stamped her foot at that. ‘Are you always this argumentative?’

He leant against the door frame regarding her lazily. ‘Funny, I was going to ask the same thing about you.’ His voice held a husky quality she knew he’d probably used on a hundred other women and she hardened her resolve not to be affected by him.

Lexi took a deep breath. ‘I give you my word I will return first thing in the morning.’

He shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter. I need you here tonight in case Ty wakes up.’

Lexi wanted to argue with him but again he had a point. ‘I don’t have anything to wear to bed,’ she mumbled, feeling utterly defeated and uncharacteristically irritable.

He held out his hand. ‘Give me your address and keys and I’ll send my driver to pick up whatever you need.’

‘Why can’t I go myself?’

‘Because Ty might wake up.’

‘I’ll be an hour,’ she said, completely exasperated.

‘No.’

‘Well, I’m not having someone I don’t know go through my things.’

And she knew Aimee would be at Todd’s by now so she couldn’t very well call and get her to send her things over in a cab.

He looked down at her, his blue eyes twin pools of open sensuality. ‘There’s always your birthday suit.’

Lexi chose to ignore the dangerous gleam in his gaze and instead focused on the fact that this man was the worst type of playboy around. Then she remembered his suggestive comment in her office earlier. The man would probably have sex with a lamp post if it offered.

‘I don’t suppose one of your many girlfriends left a nightie I could borrow, did they?’ she asked sweetly.

She was hoping he’d be a little embarrassed by her sarcasm, but instead the smile that curled the corners of his mouth was lethally sexy. ‘I don’t have girlfriends . But if you’re referring to my many bed partners, I’ll check.’

Lexi blew out a tank-load of air after he walked out and placed her bag on the embroidered silk bedspread and stood with her hands on her hips, wondering what she had got herself into. Then the hairs on the back of her neck rose and she didn’t need to glance in the full-length mirror opposite to know he was back. She turned just in time to catch a wad of grey fabric he tossed at her. Holding it up, she saw it was a well-worn T-shirt someone might wear to the gym. ‘This is yours,’ she said huskily.

He looked at her through heavy-lidded eyes. ‘And I’ll dream about you in it all night, angel.’

‘I don’t find comments like that funny,’ she reprimanded.

He smiled again and grabbed the door handle. ‘Goodnight, Miss Somers. Oh—’ he paused and Lexi felt her nerves, already jangling on a knife edge split down the middle ‘—in case I forget to tell you. I appreciate you staying. And tell lover boy I’m sorry for ruining his plans .’ That last was spoken with not even a shred of sincerity. The louse.

She had fallen in with the devil and he was every bit as ruthless as myth suggested.

LEXI didn’t know what had woken her. The room was pitch-black so it wasn’t yet morning and then she heard it again. A low, deep moaning sound.

‘Ty.’

She stumbled out of bed and down the hall into his room, only to pull up short when she found him sound asleep, his face relaxed and peaceful in the soft glow of the bedside lamp.

Wondering if she had been so on edge with the whole ‘sleeping at a billionaire’s apartment’ thing she had dreamt it, she was about to go back to bed when she heard it again.

‘Leo.’ She exhaled the word into the still night.

It was Leo, not Ty.

Lexi was momentarily paralysed in the middle of the darkened hallway, her heart thumping in her chest, indecision turning her into a statue. Then she heard him moan something that sounded like ‘No, Sasha’ and her legs carried her forward. She had always been a sucker for anyone in need. Stopping by roadsides to tend to hurt animals, collecting birds and trying to nurse them back to health. Once she had even demanded her mother stop the car and had rescued a lamb from a tangle of barbed wire. That lamb had been the love of her eight-year-old life, following her around in the garden every day as if it had imprinted on her.

Lexi forgot all about the lamb as she cautiously pushed open the door to Leo’s room and peered into the gloom. As her eyes adjusted, she could make out the richly furnished room, the curtains slightly parted, letting in a finger of light that fell across the end of an enormous bed.

The man in it moved restlessly and Lexi’s eyes were drawn to the dark sheet that was tangled around his lower body. He lay on his back, one arm flung over his head, the other outstretched as if he was reaching for something. His chest was bare and utterly magnificent. Broad and lean with densely packed muscles beneath a light covering of chest hair that arrowed all the way down over his shadowed abdomen and beyond. And yes, it looked like he had a six-pack, she thought resentfully.

Lexi couldn’t tear her eyes away as he shifted restlessly and remembered his question about whether she wanted to know what he slept in, hoping it was more than it looked like right now. He moaned again and rolled onto his side, fingers flexing and such a look of anguished despair on his face that Lexi’s heart leapt and she automatically went to him. Whatever he was dreaming about, she felt sure he’d be better off awake than asleep.

Without even thinking, she reached down and placed her hand gently against the rounded ball of his shoulder.

Leo’s reaction was instantaneous and, before she could draw breath, Lexi felt all the air whoosh out of her lungs as she found herself flat on her back beneath him. The expression on his face was so intense real fear rippled through her body.

‘Mr Aleksandrov … Leo!’ Lexi raised her hands to his naked chest and shoved against solid muscle that didn’t give an inch. Heat spiked through her as her fingers slipped to the firm muscles of his shoulders, her lower body instantly clenching in reaction to the pressure of his hard, hair-roughened thighs pressed so intimately against her own. She tried to shift against him but she was literally pinned down and then she gasped, going stock-still as she felt the hardness of his erection pressed intimately between her thighs.