Passionate Playboys: The Demetrios Bridal Bargain / The Magnate's Indecent Proposal / Hot Nights with a Playboy

‘Your father said she loves you.’

‘It is a crush, nothing more,’ he said, sounding irritated. He loosed his grip on her arm and Rose got hastily to her feet.

‘I think that I’ll take that nap if you don’t mind,’ she said, backing quickly towards the door.

The interconnecting door between their rooms was ajar, Rose presumed left this way by the maid who had just brought fresh flowers into her own room.

Lips compressed, she tapped on the interconnecting door loudly. It made her feel odd to know that Mathieu could have walked in any time when she was asleep.

Not that she could imagine he would have unless he had a thing for snoring women.

‘It’s open.’

Rose stepped inside. ‘I have a slight problem with that.’

He was standing at the window gazing out to sea.

‘There is a key if you’re worried for your virtue.’ Mathieu, who had been standing at the open French doors, turned as he spoke.

Rose was conscious of her already tumultuous pulse giving several loud erratic thuds as it banged against her ribcage. Mathieu looked conspicuously sexy in a beautifully formal dark dinner jacket, and she barely noticed the stunning backdrop of the turquoise sea crashing onto the rocks below.

Her lashes came down in a protective sweep and she swallowed, ashamed of the silky heat between her thighs.

‘And don’t think I won’t use it.’ She could only hope he’d do the same because it would be good to have temptation removed.

And there was no point pretending that Mathieu wasn’t temptation. Head tilted a little to one side, Mathieu looked her up and down. Being the subject of his silent and critical perusal made Rose’s temper fizz, but she fought to control it, aware that flushed cheeks would ruin the aloof but sexy look she’d aimed for. ‘Pity.’

Her head came up. ‘I’m so sorry if I don’t meet with your approval.’ Anxious not to give him the totally false impression— she actually wanted it—she refused to ask him what was wrong with the way she looked.

‘Oh, you look fine,’ he said, his glance dropping once more to skim the pale blue silk shift dress she had taken a good deal of care to select.

She had also taken care with her hair and make-up and until he had turned up his nose she had been feeling confident that whatever else let her down it would not be her appearance.

Rose’s temper flared to the surface as she fixed him with a hostile look. ‘I look fine?’ she repeated in a dangerously quiet voice.

She didn’t want to look fine, she wanted to look outrageously gorgeous, although on a more realistic level she would have taken presentably pretty.

The dangerous note in her voice awoke a gleam of humour in his steely grey eyes, but his expression remained serious as he observed with a note of regret, ‘It’s just a pity you didn’t choose something that showed …’ His glance sank significantly to her breasts, which began to heave against their covering.

‘Show what, exactly?’

‘A little more cleavage. My father would have been too distracted to ask any awkward questions.’

‘Have you never—’ she choked ‘—heard of political correctness?’

‘Heard of it, but I don’t have an awful lot of time for it. Don’t take it personally, Rose, I’m just being practical.’

‘Practical,’ she spluttered, practically shaking with outrage.

‘I don’t think there’s anything incorrect in using what assets you’ve got, and don’t tell me you never have.’

This cynical suggestion made her temper fizz. ‘No, I haven’t.’

She knew she shouldn’t respond to his sceptical shrug because he was obviously trying to needle her, but Rose couldn’t bite her tongue.

‘As for encouraging anyone called Demetrios to leer at me,’ she said, ‘I don’t think so—just being around anyone of that name for any length of time is enough to make me want to go lie down in a quiet, darkened room.’ She would have felt a lot happier if the mental image that accompanied that hot statement had her lying alone in the quiet, darkened room.

‘I had no idea you felt that way …’ He glanced at his watch and sighed. ‘Unfortunately my father does not like tardiness. Otherwise I would be perfectly willing to oblige.’

The colour flew to her face; he had an uncanny ability to read her mind. ‘I meant alone in a darkened room with a cold compress on my head, not you …’ On top of me … inside me. What would that feel like, she wondered, to feel the weight of his hard body on top of her? His silky hardness filling and stretching her?

Glazed eyes half closed, her glance drifted to his mouth and a fractured sigh shuddered through her body. She expelled a second, deeper sigh and bit her lip. His raw masculinity and what it did to her was terrifying.

Face burning, she slammed her hand against her forehead, which even as she spoke was beginning to pound ominously.

‘If you want to distract people, Mathieu, and it’s legitimate to use what you’ve got—’ and he certainly had quite a lot, she thought, tearing her eyes from the hard, supple contours of his muscle-packed torso and feeling a bit dizzy as a consequence ‘—why,’ she suggested, sucking in a deep restorative breath ‘don’t you take off your shirt to go to dinner?’

She folded her arms across her chest, causing the silk across her hips to tauten, and fixed him with a tight-lipped smile.

‘See how you like being treated as a sex object?’

‘You would find me taking off my shirt distracting?’ He was definitely finding the way the subtly shiny fabric clung to the peachy curve of her hips and thighs more than distracting. In his mind he could hear the swish of the fabric as it fell in a silken pool around her feet. The image made his body temperature rise a notch and as his imagination lingered over the soft curves the ache in his groin became more difficult to ignore.

He was asking if she would find him performing a striptease distracting …?

Rose’s feeling of superiority vanished faster than her protest had the time he had kissed her. Now this was what was called shooting yourself in your own foot and then stamping on it for good measure.

She laughed nervously, her eyes sliding away as she attempted to treat his suggestion as the joke.

‘One naked man is much the same as another,’ she dismissed, smiling faintly.

Well, what else could she say?

She could hardly go into gratuitous detail about how she turned into a drooling, sex-starved imbecile every time she considered the hard body that filled his superbly cut clothing.

Swallowing hard, she lifted her chin and pinned a fixed smile to her face. She had heard that lust was undiscriminating, but she had not imagined how undiscriminating until she had met this man.

‘So you would be bored?’

‘For God’s sake!’ she snapped. ‘That wasn’t a challenge. You’re an incredible-looking man with a great body,’ she admitted, her attitude see-sawing between exasperation and desperation. ‘But I happen not to be one of those women who go for beefcake. A six pack does nothing for me.’ Well, not up to now it hadn’t, anyway.

Not that Mathieu could be categorised so neatly. Beefcake was just visual candy. Nice, but instantly forgettable, and he was neither.

What he had was far more complex and dangerous than simply the combined appeal of a great body and a charismatic smile. He had an earthy sexuality that evoked an almost visceral response in her. And there was nothing even faintly contrived about it; it was as much a part of him as his fingerprints and equally unique.

A dangerous smile lurking in the back of the platinum eyes still holding her gaze, he slid the unfastened tie from around his neck. ‘In that case,’ he mused, ‘it wouldn’t bother you if I …’

Rose watched, her eyes saucer-wide in horror as he began to slip the buttons of his shirt revealing in seconds a segment of golden skin sprinkled with dark body hair. Unable to tear her eyes from the erotic spectacle, Rose ran the tip of her tongue across the outline of her full upper lip and sucked in a shaky breath as illicit excitement clutched at the quivering muscles low in her pelvis and shot down to her curling toes.