Page 17 of Legacy of His Revenge
She wasn’t this person! She was level-headed and practical and she knew when and where to draw lines. Not that she had had to draw any since her break-up with Alan. Since then, and that had been over three years ago, men had been put firmly on the back burner and she hadn’t once been tempted to dip her toes back into the dating pool. Not once. So why was her body on fire now? Because a guy with too much money, too much charm and too much in the looks department was coming on to her?
‘Don’t you feel the chemistry between us as well?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Sophie whispered and Matias raised his eyebrows in an expression of frank incredulity.
‘Of course you do,’ he corrected her casually. ‘Although,’ he continued, ‘I understand that you might want to deny it. After all, it’s not exactly something either of us bargained on, is it?’ No truer words spoken, Matias thought wryly. All things considered, he would have placed greater odds on him catching a rocket to the red planet.
He shrugged eloquently. ‘But there you are. These things happen.’
So he fancied her and wanted to have sex with her. Sophie’s brain finally cranked into gear and anger began building inside her with the force of suppressed molten lava. He was a rich, powerful man who had her on the run and, because of that, he figured he could come onto her because he happened to find her attractive.
And the worst thing was that he had picked up vibes from her, vibes that had informed him that the pull was mutual. But if he thought that she was now going to fall into bed with him then he had another think coming!
‘I’m sorry,’ she said coldly, ‘but I’m not interested.’
Matias laughed as though she’d cracked a hilarious joke. ‘Telling me that you don’t feel that electric charge between us?’ He noted the blush that crept into her cheeks. ‘Ah, yes. Of course you do. You’re feeling it now. Why deny it?’
‘I won’t be...doing anything with you.’ She wanted to walk through that door, head held high with contempt and hauteur, because he could buy her services but hecouldn’t buy her, but her feet were nailed to the ground and she found herself standing up but going nowhere. ‘You’re mistaking me for one of those women whoplant themselves in your line of vision,’ she continued, voice shaking with anger and mortification, ‘but I’m not. Yes, I’m here because there’s no other way I can pay off the money I owe you, and I can’t let my colleague down because she would stand to lose out financially, just as I would if you called the debt in, but that doesn’t give you the right to sit there and make a pass at me!’
Her feet finally remembered what they were there for and she stalked towards the door.
The sound of his voice saying her name brought her to an immediate stop. As noiseless as a predator stalking prey, he was right behind her when she spun round and she stumbled backwards a couple of steps, heart beating wildly behind her ribcage, her every sense alert to his commanding presence.
Her nostrils flared, an automatic reaction to the clean, woody scent of whatever aftershave he was wearing.
‘Do you honestly think,’ Matias asked in a voice that managed to be measured and yet icily condemnatory at the same time, ‘that I might actually believe your body comes as part of the repayment schedule for the damage you did to my car?’
Sophie went bright red. Put like that, she could see what an idiot she’d been because when it came to women he certainly didn’t need to use any unnecessary leverage. The guy could have whomever he wanted, whenever he wanted.
And he’d wanted her.
That treacherous thought slithered into her head, firing her up against her will.
‘I suppose not,’ she grudgingly conceded, ‘but I feel vulnerable being here, singing for my supper.’ She looked away and then raised her bright blue eyes to his. ‘I’m not anything like those women who were here this weekend...’
Matias’s eyebrows shot up. ‘I didn’t think you’d noticed who was here and who wasn’t.’
‘I saw them coming and going through the kitchen window and some of the guests came on kitchen inspection a few times over the weekend.’
‘And?’
‘And what? They were all clones of one another. Tall and skinny and glamorous. I assumed that one of them might have been your...er...girlfriend.’
‘If I had a girlfriend, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.’
‘We don’t even like one another,’ Sophie breathed, ‘andthat’swhy we shouldn’t be having this conversation!’
‘Do you have a boyfriend?’
‘What if I had? Would it make a difference?’
‘Possibly.’ He tilted his head to one side. ‘Possibly not. Why do you compare yourself to other women?’
‘I’m just saying that I’d imagine those women you asked to your house here were exactly the sort of women you normally dated...and so what would you see in someone like me excepteasy availability?’ She was playing with fire but the sizzling danger of this treading-on-thin-ice conversation was weirdly and intensely seductive. It was the sort of conversation she had never in her life had before with any man.
‘Want me to spell it out for you?’ Matias husked. ‘Because I will, although I’d rather do that when you’re lying naked in my bed.’ He vaguely recalled when he had originally played with the notion of getting her between the sheets because pillow talk might reveal secrets he could use to his advantage. Standing here now, with a fierce erection that was demanding release, the only talking he wanted to do in bed was of the dirty variety. In fact, just thinking about it was driving him completely nuts.
He didn’t know what it was about this woman but she made him lose his cool.
