He gave a low laugh and proceeded to lather her there, everywhere. She closed her eyes as he explored and caressed her hot, wet flesh, all thought of resistance banished from her mind. She shuddered as his hand stroked back up over her stomach and on to massage the fullness of her breasts. When he had dropped the soap she had no idea. The water blinded her and her whole body pulsed with pleasure.
‘I am almost done,’ he said roughly. ‘You really do have the most delectable body.’
A helpless moan escaped her and she reached for his broad shoulders. His dark head bent and he urged her against the strong power of his thighs as his mouth took savage possession of hers. Her head was impelled back against the shower wall at the force of his kiss, but she didn’t notice as she shook with need and responded with a blind hunger of her own.
His tongue explored her mouth with a white-hot sexual force that drove her out of her mind. When he lifted her, his strong hands cupping her buttocks, she instinctively crossed her legs around his waist, frantic for him to fill her, possess her, wanting him with a passion that was almost pain.
He looked at her, his dark eyes glittering with a primitive pagan light as he thrust into her hard and deep.
She cried out, her body moving instinctively in the fast and furious rhythm he set. His mouth sought her breast and dragged hungrily on the straining nipple as he plunged harder and faster until she thought she would die from the pleasure. She dug her fingers in his neck. She felt her whole body lock in incredible tension, then shatter into excruciatingly exquisite spasms that went on and on. She dimly heard the animal growl as his great body bucked and shuddered violently, his seed spilling inside her as he joined her in an explosive climax. She buried her head in the curve of his neck as the seemingly endless tremors very slowly receded.
‘Helen, are you okay?’
Helen heard the question and lifted her head. He was watching her from beneath heavy-lidded eyes, waiting for an answer, and suddenly she was terribly self-conscious. Wrapped around him like a clinging vine, she felt the reality of the situation hit her. But her own innate honesty would not let her deny her response to him, he only had to touch her and she melted like ice on a fire.
‘I’m fine,’ she murmured.
It was the answer Leon wanted and slowly he lowered her to her feet. He turned off the water and cupped her head in his hands and gently swept back the tangled mass of her hair from her face before placing a soft kiss on her lush lips.
‘Good. Me too,’ he admitted huskily. ‘So no more arguments about sharing my bed, hmm.’ He lifted her out of the shower and, taking a towel from the rail, he wrapped it around her back.
She was everything he remembered from the very first time he’d set eyes on her years ago. Her breasts were high and firm with perfect pink tips, her waist tiny, and now he knew she was a natural blonde. She was so much more than he had expected. From the very beginning he had sensed her awareness of him, known he could have her, but he had never imagined she would be so wildly responsive to him.
‘And no more flinging cups of chocolate.’ He knotted the towel between her breasts and stepped back. ‘I am not easy to anger, but I do have a temper,’ he admitted and, taking another towel, he wrapped it around his hips.
Helen gazed at him helplessly. He was so cool, so in control it was incredible, whereas she did not know herself any more, her emotions were all over the place. Honesty forced her to admit it was her temper that had started the confrontation and his temper that had got them in here. As for what had happened afterwards, it was as much her fault as his, she thought, glancing around the small, steamy room.
‘Oh, my God! I can’t believe I did that in a bathroom.’ Not realising she was speaking the thought out loud.
‘I won’t tell anyone if you don’t,’ Leon mocked, his lips parting in a broad grin, his dark eyes sparkling with amusement colliding with hers.
‘Hardly,’ she cried, shocked, but his humour and his grin were irresistible and her own lips quirked at the corners in a reciprocating smile. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’ And she was fast losing her mind again; Leon looking relaxed and happy was a seductive sight.
‘Let me do the thinking for both of us, and in future I think we should stick to our bedroom,’ he declared, swinging her up in his arms. ‘That way we will have a long and contented marriage.’
‘That is the most chauvinistic comment I have ever heard,’ Helen stated. ‘And will you stop sweeping me off my feet all the time? I can walk,’ she almost wailed.
Held in his arms she felt helpless and vulnerable and a whole host of emotions she did not want to face. So much for her vow never to let him touch her again.
‘I love the way you walk, but it is so much quicker carrying you to bed,’ he said with a wicked grin, carrying her out of the bathroom.
‘Please put me down. I need to pick up my clothes.’ She glanced around the room and began to struggle. ‘Anna will be horrified at the mess we have made.’
‘You worry too much,’ he mocked. ‘Anna won’t mind; she has plenty of staff to help her clean up.’
He glanced around the room, and paused. He had been too angry to notice the room when he had stormed in, his whole attention on the woman in the bed, but now he looked around. Some furniture was shoved against one wall, and an easel stood in front of the window with books, paints and other stuff littering the deep window sill.
‘You paint,’ he said in astonishment, and some memory niggled at the back of his mind. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I’m an illustrator,’ she snapped, wriggling in his arms. ‘I thought it was obvious. I told you my wedding dress was Nicholas’ choice. It was the same style as the one the fairy is wearing in the picture on his bedroom wall at home, the one I did for a children’s book. I am not the useless little woman you seem to think, and will you put me down?’
Leon’s eyes flared. Of course, the drawing in the boy’s room. He looked down into her flushed face with barely concealed amusement in his. That was why he had thought she looked familiar on their wedding day, her dress had been a replica of the one the fairy wore, he realised, though on Helen it had looked sexy, but, yes, a little fey.
‘I didn’t believe you when you said Nicholas had chosen your dress.’ He shook his head in wonder. His wife was a talented artist along with her more obvious talents. She never ceased to surprise him.
He tightened his hold on her and pressed a swift kiss on top of her head. ‘You and I need to talk. I want to know what other secrets you are keeping from me. But not here.’ He strode forward.
She glanced around the messy bedroom as he headed for the door and for some reason she felt as if she owed him an explanation. ‘I asked Anna for a room for a studio. She didn’t know I was going to sleep here.’
‘I am sure she didn’t,’ Leon drawled, striding into the hall. ‘Anna is a hopeless romantic and I see no reason to disillusion her.’ He glanced down at her flushed face. ‘Luckily you and I have no such illusions, correct?’
‘I am not sure I know what you mean,’ Helen murmured as he elbowed the door open into the master suite and gently lowered her to her feet, his hands loosely clasping her waist.
His dark eyes narrowed astutely on her guarded face. ‘Anna has romantic notions of love and marriage out of all proportion to reality. Probably because she has never married,’ he said cynically. ‘Take it from one who knows: what you and I have is so much better.’
‘And what exactly do we have?’ Helen asked, her heart sinking. The passionate lover of moments ago, the man who had awakened her body in a way she had never dreamt possible, was once again looking at her with cold, mocking eyes. And it crossed her mind to wonder why he was so hard-hearted, or if he had a heart at all.
‘We have a child to care for, and we have this.’ As his mouth took hers in a kiss that left her lips tingling and her temper rising.
‘Sex,’ she spat.
‘Don’t be so quick to knock it, Helen. Great sex is a hell
of a lot more than some so-called love matches ever achieve,’ he stated decisively.
‘And however much your conservative little mind wishes it was otherwise, the physical chemistry between us is dynamite.’
For her, yes, but for Leon she wasn’t so sure. He was a sophisticated, experienced lover and he had not got that way being celibate, she thought bitterly.
‘I have to take your word for that as I have no experience except you to draw on. According to Delia, not something the Aristides men ever suffer from much past puberty. They are noted for their obedient wives and countless mistresses,’ she drawled derisively.
‘Damn Delia,’ he swore. ‘She got an idea in her head and stuck with it to the end, just like our mother.’
‘Your mother?’ she queried, momentarily diverted from her seething resentment of the man.
His mouth twisted in a cold smile. ‘Your interest in my family has been long but flawed, sweetheart. Maybe it is time you heard the truth.’ Leading her to the bed, he sat down and pulled her down beside him, a long arm sliding around her waist to keep her there.
‘You and I need to have a talk to get a few things straight. As you said I was labouring under the illusion you did nothing except look after children, and now I know different. You’re an artist in your own right. Tomorrow a proper studio will be provided for you. But by the same token your concept of me is totally coloured by Delia’s opinions of her family and not necessarily true.’
‘Says you,’ she snorted.
He ignored her jibe and continued, ‘Contrary to what you think, my father never blamed Delia for our mother’s suicide. If anyone was to blame it was probably me.’
‘You?’ His statement surprised and intrigued her.
‘Yes. After I was born she had a mental breakdown.’ A wry smile twisted his hard mouth at her shocked expression. ‘She was in and out of hospital for years. Why do you think there was a fifteen-year gap between Delia and I?’
Not waiting for her response he continued. ‘My father worshipped her. At that time postnatal depression was a relatively new concept and was suggested by the top consultant my father had hired to treat her. My father believed the diagnosis and was determined not to get her pregnant again, although later the consultant diagnosed bipolar disorder as well.’ He threw out his hands. ‘But mistakes happen. As for him having a mistress—he never looked at another woman until long after mother had died.’
‘But Delia…’ she began, and stopped as she realised Anna’s comment earlier today that his mother never cared for him gave credence to Leon’s explanation. And it went a long way to explain his hard, emotionless attitude towards women. It was hardly surprising for a young boy who was never shown love by his mother to grow up not believing in the concept.
‘Listen for a moment,’ Leon said curtly. ‘Hard as it is for me to admit, with hindsight I think maybe Delia was heading for the same problem.’
‘You really think that?’ Helen exclaimed.
‘Yes.’ He nodded with a grim look about his firm mouth. ‘Did it never occur to you that Delia gave her baby into your care remarkably easily? And from what I can gather she wasn’t around very much.’
‘No, certainly not,’ Helen shot back. She didn’t want to think Delia could have been wrong in her assessment of her own family, because if she did it made her own actions indefensible. ‘She asked me to care for Nicholas before he was born. She told me—’
‘I know what she told you,’ he cut her off. ‘And you’re probably right—forget I said anything and let’s get back to us.’
For Leon to agree with her was a shock to her system, and paradoxically not one she could fully accept, but what happened next was an even bigger shock.
He placed his hand on her cheek and tilted her head towards him. ‘As for me—’ his dark eyes locked on hers with piercing intensity ‘—I am older than you, and naturally there have been a number of women in my life. But I can assure you I have always been monogamous for as long as a relationship lasted, and I was never unfaithful to my wife as long as she was faithful to me.’
‘I see,’ Helen murmured, quietened by the thought of his first wife. Tina had been very beautiful and had died tragically along with her baby. Maybe that was another reason why Leon did not believe in love any more. Because maybe, contrary to what Helen had been led to believe, he had loved Tina and she had been cruelly taken from him.
‘Do you, I wonder?’ He raised his black brows over his deep-set dark eyes and caught her hand in his and lifted it to his lips, kissing the gold band on her finger. ‘Ours may have been a convenient marriage, Helen, but there is no reason why it can’t be mutually beneficial. You and I have a lot more in common than you seem to think.’
That she didn’t believe. ‘You are joking—a wealthy world banker and a stay-at-home illustrator. I don’t see the connection somehow,’ she observed dryly.
‘We both adore Nicholas and want what is best for him—agreed?’ She nodded her head. ‘We both do work we enjoy?’ She nodded again. ‘The sex is great, and so long as you remember I am the only man you are going to sleep with there should be no problem.’
‘What about you?’ Helen shot back. ‘You as good as told me you could not count the number of women you have known and in true chauvinist fashion you have the nerve to demand my fidelity.’
‘Yes, absolutely.’ He looked at her with amusement and something else in his black eyes. ‘But you can demand the same from me, and I will happily comply.’
His firm lips quirked at the corners and he smiled down at her. ‘Is that what you want?’
Twenty-four hours ago she would have told him she didn’t give a damn what or who he did. But now, with his hand still clasping hers, and held in the strong, protective curve of his arm with the warmth of his naked thigh pressed against her own, she knew it would be a lie.
She did care. Because right or wrong she wanted him, and the very thought of him taking another woman to his bed made her sick to her stomach.
‘Yes, fidelity cuts both ways,’ she said flatly and, determined not to let him know she cared, she qualified her response sanctimoniously with, ‘We need to set a good example for Nicholas.’
‘You’re right, of course. I bow to your superior wisdom,’ he drawled with mock solemnity.
‘Very funny.’ She tried to pull her hand from his but he tightened his grip.
‘I am deadly serious, Helen. I am a hundred per cent in favour of a mutually exclusive relationship. I don’t need any other woman with you in my bed. So let’s call a truce. You stop resenting the fact that you enjoy sex. Relax and stop trying to fight me. And I will stop, what was it you said?’ He grinned. ‘I will stop sweeping you off your feet all the time. Agreed?’
His dark eyes smiled confidently into hers. The conceited devil knew he only had to look at her to figuratively sweep her off her feet, never mind physically, she thought wryly, but she could not help smiling at his audacious deal, and nodded her head in agreement.
She did not have a choice, because, whether it was just sex as Leon believed or something more as she feared, he had aroused a hunger in her, a need that she wasn’t ready to give up just yet. If ever, she thought as he tipped her back on the bed.
CHAPTER NINE
HELEN STIRRED,LAZILY conscious of the warmth of a hard male body pressed against her back, and the gentle caress of a hand at her breast. Her eyes flickered open and dreamily she registered the firm lips nuzzling her neck and instinctively turned towards the source of pleasure.
Her eyes widened. ‘Leon.’
His broad chest was angled towards her, a question gleaming in his dark smouldering eyes. A swift tug of desire plucked at her heart strings and she could no more deny him or herself as the events of last night flashed through her brain and, equally quickly, a blush covered her whole body.
‘I should hope so, Helen,’ he mocked, and his lips brushed lightly against her mouth sending a shiver through her. ‘I am your husband.’ He chuckled
softly.
As if programmed to his touch her lips parted, her eyes drifted shut and she helplessly surrendered to the exquisite temptation of his kiss.
‘What the hell?’
She groaned at the abrupt withdrawal of his mouth from hers. She heard the roar and opened her eyes to see Nicholas scrambling up over Leon’s thighs towards her.
‘Helen.’ Chubby arms reached out to her, his little face all smiles. Immediately she raised her arms to cuddle him, but Leon sat up and took a firm hold on the boy.
‘Good morning, Nicholas,’ he greeted dryly, pressing a swift kiss on his small head. ‘You and I, young man, have to have a talk. First rule of the house is you do not barge into our bedroom at the crack of dawn. Understand?’
‘What are you doing in my Helen’s bed?’ Nicholas demanded.
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