Chapter Seven #3
‘I can tell you’re confused because you can’t decide which of the many things I did today made just the right impression on Adele. You’re spoilt for choice.’
Sammy blushed and laughed because he was incredibly endearing when he was being self-deprecating.
‘You would have coped. I have a lot of experience when it comes to dealing with young children and you don’t have any. I guess it was always going to be easier for me. I also don’t have any emotional investment in the situation whereas you do.’
‘That’s a very generous take on the situation. I like that about you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You give the benefit of the doubt to people.’
‘And you don’t?’ Her heart was beating like a jackhammer because the conversation was so personal. She liked the feeling of playing with fire. She liked not caring whether she got burnt or not.
‘I really want to make love to you.’
Sammy froze. Her eyes widened and her breathing slowed to a near stop. His voice was thick with intent.
‘I mean,’ Leo continued huskily, ‘we could carry on pretending that there’s nothing between us.
I could work out here until I’m certain that you’re asleep and then I can creep into the bed and wake up before you start surfacing from your beauty sleep and we can both kid ourselves that we haven’t shared the same bed at all and that, even if we did, it doesn’t matter because we’re just two business associates on a job and that if there’s some chemistry then we can choose to ignore that.
I can make sure not to look at you for too long and only touch you when we’re in public.
I can pretend that I don’t feel you tremble when I do touch you.
I can pretend that you don’t sigh softly when I kiss you. The alternative, however...’
He allowed that to stretch out into the silence between them while he continued to pin her to the spot with his eyes.
‘This isn’t real.’ Sammy heard the desperation in her voice as she tried to cling to sanity.
‘We’re not really engaged,’ Leo agreed in a roughened undertone.
‘And we won’t really be walking up the aisle with stars in our eyes.
But this...’ he cupped the side of her face with his hand and then caressed her smooth skin, dropping his finger to her mouth and tracing the outline of her lips ‘...this is real.’
‘We shouldn’t...’
‘You’re preaching to the converted,’ Leo confessed with raw honesty.
‘I know that making love isn’t what either of us had planned.
I know I’m probably the last guy in the world you would actively hunt down.
..’ He wasn’t even aware of leaving a pause after he said that but he was piqued when she didn’t rush to fill it with a denial.
‘I’m not the kind of girl who falls in bed with someone.’
‘No.’ Her skin was so soft and silky. It was torture trying to suppress his very natural urge to take and conquer.
‘In fact,’ she said awkwardly, ‘I’m not the type of girl who has ever fallen into bed with someone.’
His hand stilled and he frowned as his brain tried to compute what she had just said. And failed. Was she admitting to being a virgin? A woman in her twenties?
‘You’re kidding.’
Sammy stared off into the distance. If her heart were to beat any faster she would be in danger of it cracking a couple of ribs.
She’d always known that she would have to have this conversation with whatever guy she eventually fell into bed with, but in her head the conversation had never been with a man like Leo.
In her head the conversation had always been with a kind, gentle guy who would clasp her hand and understand where she was coming from because he, like her, if not a virgin, would have been discriminating with his women.
Leo enjoyed women unabashedly. He took what he wanted, always drawn to the prettiest and the most tempting, and he moved on quickly from one to another.
The fact of her virginity was just something else that separated them.
Actually, there were so many things separating them that she could start counting now and probably not reach the end of the list by the time they left the country.
‘Why would I be kidding?’
‘Because...’ Leo was lost for words. ‘Because... How old are you?’
‘Twenty-six.’
‘You’re twenty-six and you’ve never slept with a man?’
Sammy flushed but she wasn’t ashamed of that and never had been.
She’d never been part of any crowd, growing up, who had giggled and ticked off the days on a calendar before they could lose their virginity and, once she had left her teens behind, the subject had never arisen with her girlfriends.
If anything, she had seen enough broken hearts from friends who had become hopelessly involved with the wrong type of guy to have known that when she did decide to sleep with a man it would be with the right man.
What a joke, as it turned out.
Because she wanted to sleep with this one and wrong didn’t begin to describe the category he fell into.
‘Why not?’ Leo asked bluntly. He still couldn’t get his head round that idea but now he was looking at her in a slightly different light. A virgin?
‘Because it just never happened,’ she muttered under her breath, red as a beetroot and furiously wishing she had never said anything. She should have just carried on keeping him at arm’s length and not softened at that glimpse of vulnerability.
‘I get it...’ Leo said slowly, his beautiful mouth curving into a smile of lazy intent. ‘You thought that sex was something you could control. You’d fall in love and sex would follow as a tidy little afterthought. You believed that love and sex came as a package deal...’
‘I never said that.’
‘But you’re attracted to me and that doesn’t compute.
’ He’d never experienced any woman fighting an attraction to him.
‘You’ve discovered that lust doesn’t necessarily go hand in hand with love, and you’ve found out that it’s powerful enough to make minced meat of common sense. Welcome to the real world.’
‘There’s nothing real about what we have.’
‘You can keep fiddling around with words, Sammy, but you still won’t be able to turn the chemistry between us into something else because it makes you feel uncomfortable.’
‘This is crazy!’ she burst out, looking at him with agitation. ‘It doesn’t make any sense. It would be madness to...to...’
She didn’t get to finish the sentence.
Because he pulled her towards him and kissed her and he kept on kissing her until all thought faded away and what was left was pure sensation.