Page 23 of Bound By Her Baby Revelation (Hot Winter Escapes)

He just wasn’t that sort of guy.

‘I—I,’ she stuttered, blushing. ‘I apologise if I sound a little harsh. I guess I didn’t hear you knocking. But you didn’t knock on the bathroom door. You just pushed it open and stormed inside!’

‘I pushed it open because I heard something that sounded like a grunt of pain.’

‘I was trying to get out of the bath.’ The water had gone cold, which showed just how long she’d been in it. Was it so surprising that he’d wondered what the hell had happened to her?

‘I didn’t stop to think, Kaya, and I should have—but what if something had happened to you? What if you were lying on the ground in pain?’

Kaya had an uncomfortable image of herself on the tiles in nothing but her birthday suit, being discovered by Leo and carried to the bed, exposed in all her glory.

She blanched at the vividness of the picture in her head and then breathed in sharply as their eyes met. She felt exposed, as if he could read her mind.

‘I may have overreacted,’ she said stiffly. ‘It was the shock, I suppose, of having you...someone, anyone... I didn’t expect it. You caught me...’

‘I know how I caught you.’

Leo wanted to groan aloud. Did she have any idea what this conversation was doing to his head, never mind his body?

He couldn’t help himself. His eyes flickered over her, from her beautiful face to the shape of her under the layers of clothes. In his mind’s eye, he could still see those small, high breasts, the brown discs of her nipples, the curve of her spine, the slenderness of her ankles and the dark shadow of her pubic hair...

His breathing slowed and his eyes darkened.

‘You’re beautiful, Kaya,’ he heard himself say, his voice low and husky, and he sat back and pressed his thumbs to his eyes. ‘God, I have no idea what possessed me to say that and I apologise.’

He leapt up, prowled through the kitchen, restless in his own body, and then returned to the kitchen table. But he pulled the chair back, close enough so he wouldn’t have to shout but not so close that his nervous system would begin misbehaving.

‘I’ve made you feel uncomfortable and for that I can’t apologise enough. I...’ He sighed, half-closed his eyes and flung his head back for a few seconds, a man in the grip of something strong and elemental. ‘I’m going to leave you...head to one of the other rooms to work. Internet’s back on. Kaya, I would offer to carry you upstairs, but I’m guessing you’d probably tell me to get lost.’

‘I can make my own way up.’

Had he just told her that she was beautiful?It had sounded like a confession ripped from him, and the sincerity of it had gone to the very core of her and opened the lid of a box she’d been struggling to keep tightly locked. It was a box that contained wild ideas and reckless yearnings...things she’d only seen and felt since this man had appeared on the scene.

This was the very thing she had always sworn she would never do. She’d noted the example her mother had set and made a pact with herself that she would never let some guy rule her head, never mind her heart. She would steer clear of the temptation to let anyone dominate her thoughts. She was never going to be the woman sitting by the phone, biting her nails and desperately waiting for it to ring.

She wanted him to carry her up. She wanted to feel his hardness against her. She wanted him to carry on telling her stuff she knew was out of bounds. She wanted to hear him say more—that he fancied her, that he wanted to touch her, kiss her...make love to her.

‘Look at me like that,’ Leo warned in a driven undertone, ‘And you might get a little more than you bargained for.’

‘Like what?’

‘Right now, I want to kiss you so much it’s a physical pain. More than just kiss you, Kaya.’

‘What? What more?’

‘I’m going to go. This is...’

‘C-crazy,’ she confirmed shakily.

‘So you feel it too.’

‘It doesn’t matter what I feel. Nothing...nothing...is going to happen. It would be madness. I... I could never... You don’t make sense, not to me. Not for someone like me.’ And she meant it. She didn’t understand how this powerful thing had ignited between them—how it had ignited insideher, as though she’d just been a bundle of dry tinder waiting for the wrong guy to come along one day with a box of matches to set her alight—but it had.

Which didn’t mean she would do anything about it. No way. She wasn’t her mother. She wasn’t going to get lost in some bad-news guy. She had her head screwed on even if, right now, her body was doing its best to dictate the state of play.

‘I get it,’ Leo returned roughly.

He looked away but he could feel her eyes on him and he was held captive by something he couldn’t identify, something that was doing a damn good job of making him lose all his legendary cool.

---