Pride & Consequence Omnibus (16 page)

‘I wouldn’t be so sure about your reputation if I were you,’
Jeremy warned Leo nastily, glancing towards the paper as he spoke.

Giving him a dismissive look, Leo left.

* * *

Leo frowned as he walked into his suite. There was no
way in a thousand years he was going to change his plans. He had worked too hard
and for too long, building up his business from nothing...less than nothing,
slowly, painstakingly clawing his way up from his own one-man band, first
overtaking and then taking over his competition as he grew more and more
successful.

The Driscoll family company was in direct competition to Leo’s.
Since their business duplicated his own, it was only natural that he should have
to close down some of their four factories. As yet Leo had not decided which out
of the four. But as for Jeremy Driscoll’s attempt to get him to back out of the
deal...!

Tired, Leo strode into the suite without bothering to switch on
the lights. At this time on a June evening there was still enough light in the
sky for him not to need to do so, even without the additional glow of the almost
full moon.

The bedroom wasn’t quite as well-lit; someone—the maid, he
imagined—had closed the curtains, but the bathroom light was on and the door
open. Frowning over such sloppiness, he headed towards the bathroom, closing the
door behind him once he was inside.

Giving his own reflection a brief glance in the mirror, he
paused to rub a lean hand over his stubble-darkened jaw before reaching for his
razor.

Jeremy Driscoll’s bombastic arrogance had irritated him to an
extent that warned him that those amongst his family and friends who cautioned
that he was driving himself too hard might have something of a point.

Narrowing the silver-grey eyes that were an inheritance from
his father’s side, and for whose piercingly analytical and defence-stripping
qualities they were rightly feared by anyone who sought to deceive him, he
grimaced slightly. He badly needed a haircut; his dark hair curled over the
collar of his shirt. Taking time out for anything in his life that wasn’t work
right now simply wasn’t an option.

His parents professed not to understand just where he got his
single-minded determination to succeed from. They had been happy with their
small newsagent’s business.

His parents were retired now, and living in his mother’s
family’s native Italy. He had bought them a villa outside Florence as a
ruby-wedding present.

Leo had visited them, very briefly, early in May for his
mother’s birthday.

He put down his razor, remembering the look he had seen them
exchange when his mother had asked wistfully if there was yet ‘anyone special’
in his life.

He had told her with dry humour that not only did his negative
response to her maternal question relate to his present, but that it could also
be applied indefinitely to his future.

With unusual asperity she had returned that if that was the
case then it was perhaps time she paid a visit to the village’s local wise woman
and herbalist, who, according to rumour, had an absolutely foolproof recipe for
a love potion!

Leo had laughed outright at that. After all, it was not that he
couldn’t have a partner, a lover, if he so wished. Any number of stunningly
attractive young women had made it plain to him both discreetly and rather more
obviously that they would like to share his life and his bed, and, of course,
his bank account... But Leo could still remember how at the upmarket public
school he had won a scholarship to the female pupils had been scornfully
dismissive of the boy whose school uniform was so obviously bought secondhand
and whose only source of money came from helping out in his parents’ small
business.

That experience had taught Leo a lesson he was determined never
to forget. Yes, there had been women in his life, but no doubt rather
idiotically by some people’s standards, he had discovered that he possessed an
unexpected aversion to the idea of casual sex. Which meant...

Unwantedly Leo remembered his body’s sharply explicit reaction
to the woman he had seen in the hotel foyer as he had crossed it on his way to
his meeting earlier.

Small and curvy, or so he had suspected, beneath the abominable
clothes she had been wearing.

Leo’s mother did not have Italian blood for nothing, and, like
all her countrywomen, she possessed a strong sense of personal style, which made
it impossible for Leo not to recognise when a woman was dressing to maximum
effect. This woman had most certainly not been doing that at all. She had not
even really been his type. If he was prepared to admit to a preference it was
for cool, elegant blondes. Most definitely not for delectably sexy, tousled and
touchable types of women, who turned his loins to hotly savage lust and even
distracted his mind to the extent that he had almost found himself deviating
from his set course and thinking about walking towards her.

Leo never deviated from any course he set
himself—ever—especially not on account of a woman.

With an indrawn breath of self-disgust, Leo stripped off his
clothes and stepped into the shower.

As a teenager he had played sports for his school, which,
ironically, had done wonders to increase his ‘pulling power’ with his female
schoolmates, and he still had the powerful muscle structure of a natural
athlete. Impatiently he lathered his body and then rinsed off the foam before
reaching for a towel.

Once dry, he opened the bathroom door and headed for the bed.
It was darker now, but still light enough, thanks to the moonlight glinting
through the curtains, for him not to need to switch on the light.

Flipping back the bedclothes, Leo got into the bed, reaching
automatically for the duvet, and then froze as he realised that the bed—
his
bed—was already occupied.

Switching on the bedside lamp, he stared in angry disbelief at
the tousled head of curly hair on the pillow next to his own—a decidedly female
head, he recognised, just like the slender naked arm and softly rounded shoulder
he could now see in the lamplight.

The nostrils of the proudly aquiline nose he had inherited from
his mother’s Italian forebears flared fastidiously as they picked up the smell
of alcohol on the softly exhaled breath of the oblivious sleeping form.

Another scent—a mixture of warm fresh air, lavender and a
certain shockingly earthy sensuality that was Jodi’s alone—his senses reacted to
in a very different way.

It was the girl from the foyer. Leo would have recognised her
anywhere, or, rather, his body would.

Automatically his brain passed him another piece of
information. Jeremy Driscoll’s oily-voiced suggestiveness as he had tried to
persuade Leo to go back on their contract. Was this...this girl the inducement
he’d had in mind? She had to be. Leo could not think of any other reason for her
presence here in his bed!

Well, if Jeremy Driscoll dared to think that he, Leo, was the
kind of man who...

Angrily he reached out to grasp Jodi’s bare arm in strong
fingers as he leaned across her to shake her into wakefulness.

Jodi was fathoms-deep asleep, sleeping the sleep of the pure of
heart—and the alcohol-assisted—and she was having the most delicious dream in
which she was, by some means her sleeping state wasn’t inclined to question,
wrapped in the embrace of the most gorgeous, sexy man. He was tall, dark-haired
and silver-eyed, with features reassuringly familiar to Jodi, but his body, his
touch, were wonderfully and excitingly new.

They were lying together, body to body, on a huge bed in a room
with a panoramic view of a private tropical beach, and as he leaned towards her
and stroked strong fingers along her forearm he whispered to her, ‘What the hell
are you doing in my bed?’

Her brain still under the influence of her ‘fruit cocktail’
Jodi opened bemused, adoring eyes.

Why was her wonderful lover looking so angry? Smiling sleepily
up at him, she was about to ask him, but somehow her attention became focused on
how downright desirable he actually was.

That wonderful naked golden-brown body. Naked. Yummy! More than
yummy! Jodi closed her eyes on a sigh of female appreciation and then quickly
opened them again, anxious not to miss anything. She watched the way the muscles
in his neck corded as he leaned over her, and the sinewy strength of his solid
forearms, so very male that she just had to reach out and run an explorative
fingertip down the one nearest to her, marvelling at the difference between it
and her own so much softer female flesh.

Leo couldn’t believe his eyes—or his body. She, the uninvited
interloper in his bed, was brazenly ignoring his angry question and was actually
daring to touch him. No, not just touch, he acknowledged as his body reacted to
her with a teeth-clenching jerk that gave an immediate lie to his previous
mental use of the word ‘unwanted’. What she was doing—dammit—was outright
stroking him, caressing him!

Torn between a cerebral desire to reject what was happening and
a visceral surge of agonisingly intense desire to embrace it, and with it the
woman who was tormenting him with such devastating effectiveness, Leo made a
valiant struggle to cling to the tenets of discipline and self-control that were
the twin bastions of his life. To his shock, he lost. And not just the campaign
but the whole war!

Jodi, though, fuelled now by something far more subtle than
alcohol, and far stronger, was totally oblivious to everything but the delicious
dream she had found her way into.

Imagine. When she touched him, like so, the most extraordinary
tremors ran right through his whole body—and not just his, she acknowledged as
she considered the awesome fact that her own body was so highly responsive, so
reactive to every movement of his.

She was so lucky to be here with him on this wonderful private
island of love and pleasure. Tenderly she leaned forward and flicked her
tongue-tip delicately against the hollow at the base of his throat, revelling in
the sensation of his damp skin against her tongue, its texture, its taste, the
way that fierce male pulse thudded to life at her touch.

Leo couldn’t believe what was happening. What she was doing;
what he was letting her do. He found himself lying back against the pillow as
she was the one to arch provocatively over him, whilst her tongue busily and far
too erotically laved his skin.

Even in the less than half-light of the shadowy bedroom he
could see the naked outline of her body with its narrow waist and softly flaring
hips; her legs were delectably shaped, her ankles tiny and delicate, the shadowy
triangle of hair between her thighs so soft and tempting that...

His throat dry with angry tension and gut-wrenching longing,
Leo felt his whole body shudder.

He could see her breasts, soft, rounded, creamy-skinned, with
darkly tender crests and tormentingly erect nipples.

Unable to stop himself, he lifted his hands carefully, cupping
them. He could feel their warm weight, and he could feel, too, the tight
hardness of those wanton peaks, tauntingly challenging him to...

Jodi gasped and then shivered in delight as she felt the rough
pressure of her lover’s tongue against her nipple.

‘Oh, it feels so good,’ she whispered to him, closing her eyes
as she gave herself up to the sensations he was arousing. Her hand slipped
distractedly from his arm to her own body, flattening betrayingly against her
belly as she drew in a juddering breath of delirious pleasure.

Leo could scarcely believe the sheer wantonness of her reaction
to his touch. He tried to remind himself that she was there for a purpose, doing
the job she had been hired for, but his senses were too drugged to allow him to
think rationally.

He had known then, in that fleeting second he had seen her in
the hotel foyer, that she could affect him like this; that he would want her
like this, no matter what the stern voice of his conscience was trying to tell
him.

His hand slid to the curve of her waist and flared possessively
over her hip, which fitted as perfectly into his grip as though they had been
made for each other.

Her hands were on his body, their touch somehow innocently
explorative, as though he was the first man she had ever been so intimate
with—which was a ludicrous thought!

The soft whispers of female praise she was giving him had to be
deliberately calculated to have the maximum effect on a man’s ego—any man’s
ego—he tried to remind himself. But somehow he couldn’t stop touching
her—couldn’t stop
wanting
her!

Jodi sighed blissfully in a sensual heaven. He seemed to know
instinctively just how and where to caress her, how to arouse and please her.
Her body soared and melted with each wonderful wave of erotic pleasure.
Voluptuously she snuggled closer to him shivering in heady excitement as she let
her hands wander at will over his body—so excitingly different from her own.

The bedclothes, which she had pushed away an aeon ago so that
she could look at the powerful nakedness of the male body she was now so hungry
for, lay in a tangled heap at the bottom of the bed. Moonlight silvered her own
body, whilst it turned the larger and more muscular shape of her lover’s into a
dark-hued steel.

She ached so much for him. Her hands moved downwards over him,
her gaze drawn to his taut, powerful magnificence.

Deliberately she drew her fingertips along the hard length of
his erection, closing her eyes and shuddering as a deep thrill twisted through
her.

Leo couldn’t understand how he was letting this happen! It went
totally against everything he believed in! Never before in his life had he
experienced such intense and overwhelmingly mindless desire, nor been so driven
by the fierce pulse of it to take what he was being so openly offered.

Every single one of his senses was responding to her with an
uncheckable urgency that left his brain floundering.