Chapter Eleven
‘I can’t decide if you’re stupid or stubborn!’
Amy screamed and spun around, fists raised, to face the owner of the voice, who seemed to materialise out of the undergrowth, a dark, sinister shadow looming over her.
Then the darkness was broken by a powerful beam of light that made her blink, and the dark figure took form and shape.
Feeling stupid, she hit out with a querulous, ‘What are you doing? You gave me the fright of my life!’
‘What am I doing?’ he barked.
‘Get that thing out of my eyes!’
Not just out of her eyes but out of the way full stop, and the darkness descended again. Other senses compensated when you couldn’t see. And her well-developed sense of smell was busy compensating. Amy tried and failed not to breathe in the clean male scent Leo exuded.
The dark was dangerous, but the danger that lurked in the shadows wasn’t ghouls or ghosts. People did things in the dark that they wouldn’t do in daylight; it freed up inhibitions, not that she’d ever had any of those where Leo was concerned.
‘Can we skip the part where you work yourself up into a foot-stamping temper tantrum, because it isn’t going to alter the fact you are in the wrong. I explained that this area was off-limits at night until the electricity supply is—’
She made a scornful noise in her throat. ‘There is no light issue; the place is lit up like a Christmas tree.’ She was making a pointy-fingered gesture to the brightly lit castle when the lights went out, along with the moon.
‘You were saying?’ drawled the dark shadow.
‘Someone switched off the lights.’
She could hear the hissing sound of exasperation escape his lips. ‘It is automated, our contribution to the elimination of light pollution.’
‘But you are almost self-sustaining; the hydro and—’
‘My, you have been busy educating yourself. Light pollution isn’t just about energy; it’s about the adverse effects on the natural environment—animals, birds, insects.’
‘Oh, well, I wasn’t in the dark. I have my phone.’
He gave a disgusted snort. ‘You call that a torch?’ He waved a high beam light in her face again, and it was an assault on her retinas.
‘Stop that!’ she squealed, covering her face and turning away. ‘Now look what you’ve made me do,’ she added as the contents of her bag spilled out. She dropped down to her knees.
Leo retrieved the paperback that had fallen under some foliage, glanced at the title by torchlight and dropped it into the open bag. ‘So you like happy ever afters,’ he observed, sounding amused. ‘And it’s a clever trick, reading in the dark.’
‘It wasn’t dark when I left the castle,’ she retorted.
‘I fell asleep in the daytime and when I woke up it was night.’ She shrugged and reached out for something to retain her balance as she rose to her feet and realised it was the stone seat of the gazebo erected in his mother’s memory.
Her eyes flew to his face. ‘Oh, you were…’ She traced the engraved name with a finger and felt her throat thicken with emotion.
‘I disturbed you, I’m sorry,’ she said softly.
‘Disturbed me?’
His tone sounded strange, and his face, just a blur in the dark, gave no added information.
‘Come on, I’ll see you back up to your room.’
‘Oh, no, I’m fine. I’ll…’
‘For once in your life, don’t argue!’
‘All right, all right, there’s no need to bellow.’
Above her head he swore, and after a pause she followed the uneven path ahead, which was lit by his powerful torch.
‘We were not all Boy Scouts,’ she grumbled.
He laughed. ‘I wasn’t a Boy Scout either. I have never been a team player. Though the local gang took quite a lot of convincing of that fact.’
‘Gang?’
‘Young men are pack animals, and I wasn’t raised in a leafy suburb.’
The matter-of-fact description of his childhood chilled Amy’s blood.
She had zero idea of what his life had been like in the years before they’d met, and he had rarely mentioned anything beyond the basics.
She knew he had lived in several foster homes and had left school with little or no qualifications, which had seemed strange to her at the time, because it was very obvious he was super smart.
They had reached the lawned area.
‘I can manage the rest and I’m sorry, I really didn’t intend to be out in the dark.’
‘I’m going your way.’
‘Weren’t you going to swim?’
‘I might use the pool later, and the next time you feel the need for a midnight skinny-dip you might think of using it yourself.’
Accustomed to the dark now, she could make out the outline of his classical features and it didn’t take much imagination to envisage the mocking gleam in his dark eyes as he taunted her.
‘I wasn’t skinny-dipping; I have a swimsuit on and—’ She hesitated.
‘What?’
‘People might see me in the pool.’
‘And that is an issue, why, exactly?’
She hesitated and then admitted, ‘Well, there have been a couple of comments, nothing nasty or anything, but staff aren’t normally housed where I am and they…
we don’t have access to the pool and tennis courts or the leisure facilities.
I don’t want anyone to jump to the wrong conclusions,’ she finished, glad the darkness concealed her burning cheeks.
‘The wrong conclusions?’
Her jaw clamped in response to this display of feigned ignorance. ‘You know exactly what I mean.’ His torch had been trained into the distance but, as he spoke, he brought it up on her face again like a spotlight. ‘And it was only once.’
‘Oh, is that why you’re so cranky? I’ve never been anyone’s dirty little secret before. Oh, well, a bit of creeping around can be quite stimulating, so I’ve been told. Or are you talking about a discovery fantasy?’
She batted wildly at his hand, panicked by the insidious tug of desire she felt at his taunts. She heard the sound of the torch hitting something hard a second before they were enclosed in a velvet blackness, as the moon had been swallowed up by a cloud.
The smothering darkness created a dangerous illusion of intimacy and she could feel it like a spider spinning its silken cords around her.
‘I don’t have anything to keep secret. I know I’m not here long, but it’s hard to work as a team if… I just don’t want any awkward questions, that’s all.’
‘Stay still.’
She froze and felt a hand land on her shoulder. ‘You were about to step into a pond.’
‘How do you know?’ she asked, puzzled. She couldn’t even see the outline of the castle. She could still feel its presence, though not as intensely as she was aware of Leo’s. All her senses were attuned to him.
‘I have excellent night vision.’
‘Of course you do.’
He laughed at her dry tone. ‘That’s it,’ he added when, encouraged by his guiding hand, she took a step towards him. ‘Do you want to have one?’
‘Want to have what?’
‘Do you want a secret?’
Her throat was dry, her heart beating fast. ‘Is that code for something?’
‘You know what I’m saying, but I’ll spell it out for you so there is no misunderstanding. Fantasies are not enough. Once is not enough, not nearly enough. I stayed away yesterday because of your migraine but I am asking you now. Amy, do you want to have sex with me?’
‘Yes.’ She was a mess of screaming hormones, but he didn’t have to make beautifully indecent propositions to do that to her. He just had to exist.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His calm was illusionary and it was in danger of shattering at any moment. He was in the grip of a lust that showed no sign of diminishing and the only logical cure was to satiate it.
‘You have no idea how glad I am that you said that. We need to finish what we started nearly ten years ago. It doesn’t need to be complicated; it’s actually very simple.’
She couldn’t see his eyes but she was hypnotised—hypnotised by his deep voice, which was like smoke that seemed to wrap around her and vibrate deep inside her like a pulse. The pulse was everywhere, but especially focused between her legs.
‘It’s not that simple,’ she whispered, her protest feeble as she thought, It’s dangerous because I’m falling in love with you again. It’s possible I never stopped loving you.
He leaned in then and she pressed into his hardness as his hands swept down her spine before settling on her bottom, drawing her in even closer.
A sibilant sigh left her lips. ‘But you make me ache, Leo.’
‘I think we can do something about that ache, don’t you?’ he rasped against her mouth, and as his tongue flicked along the outline his thumbs were on the corners of her jaw, positioning her lips perfectly for him to plunder.
‘I…’ The rest of her words were lost inside his mouth as his tongue plunged between her parted lips.
Resistance didn’t even cross her mind as she kissed him back with a raw, almost feral desperation, her fingers sliding under his tee-shirt to feel his smooth skin.
Revelling in the strength of his hard body and the ridges of muscle that contracted under her touch, she experienced a slug of power as she both heard and felt his groan.
‘Is this real?’ she wondered, not even realising she had voiced her thoughts out loud until he took her hand and curved it over the rock-hard, pulsing outline in his shorts.
‘Does that feel real to you, cara?’
‘Very, very real…’ she mumbled thickly, tightening her grip until he groaned out a protest.
They were stumbling but she didn’t know where to until she registered a light… Maybe she was dying and this was the end of a tunnel?
She wasn’t dying; it was the swimming pool, with its underwater lighting creating a stunning rippling illuminated effect that was reminiscent of the northern lights.
‘I’m never going to make it to a bed,’ he bit out.
‘Don’t apologise,’ she mumbled.
Still kissing and half carrying her, he dragged the cushions off one of the recliners on the terrace and threw them on the floor before sinking onto them with her clutched in his arms.
Kneeling face to face, he ripped off his tee-shirt, pulling it over his head in one fluid motion.