ran up below Tally’s creamy skin in a flying banner of embarrassment. She had boxed herself into a corner with her declaration, made it clear that while he might want only her body, she was in the market for something deeper and more meaningful, but that had not been her intention. ‘I just don’t like the way you make assumptions,’ she breathed in a taut undertone.
‘You have the right to say no.’ Sander voiced that reminder in a tone as smooth as silk.
‘Don’t patronise me!’ Tally fired back at him, throwing down her knife and fork and pushing her plate away in an angry gesture.
‘You’re very quick-tempered,’ Sander remarked.
Discomfiture attacking her in receipt of that opinion, Tally tugged her plate back and began doggedly to eat, barely tasting the delicious dish in her determination to appear calm and composed.
‘Always ready and willing to have a fight with me,’ Sander continued.
‘I don’t even know what I’m doing here with you!’ Tally exclaimed helplessly.
‘Oh, that’s easy,’ Sander quipped, filling her wine glass. ‘You’re with me for the exact same reason I’m with you. You can’t stay away.’
The truth of that statement hit Tally as hard as a head-on collision. She looked at him and it was as if he had cast a spell on her, for it was a challenge even to look away, never mind walk away. Desire had dug greedy claws into her body, awakening the hormones that inspired craving and stealing her freedom of choice. He infuriated her and he had insulted her, yet she had still agreed to dinner. Suddenly even madder with herself than she was with him, Tally pushed back her chair and stood up. ‘I shouldn’t be here. Don’t worry, I’ll make my own way home.’
Sander slowly rose upright, keen dark golden eyes locked to her hectically flushed face. ‘Are you always as impetuous as this?’
Tally paled, wondering if she shared more with her mother than she had ever appreciated because he seemed to draw out a side of her nature that she was unfamiliar with: an ardent, capricious, insecure side, which made her feel incredibly vulnerable. Suddenly she was acting a world away from the stable, sensible and fairly unemotional young woman she had always assumed that she was. He made her want things she had never wanted, like long straight blonde hair, a body the shape of a pencil and endless legs. He made her want to be irresistible, the sort of woman men fought over and loved to the brink of insanity.
‘You make me impulsive,’ she admitted grudgingly.
‘You have a weird effect on me too,’ Sander confided with an eloquent shift of two lean brown hands. ‘I was convinced that I wanted nothing more to do with you, but the minute I saw you leaving Westgrave Manor I drove after you and asked you out to dinner.’
And Tally’s barrier of apprehension and insecurity tumbled down there and then because those revealing, almost bemused words of his soothed her concern and eased her distrust. It didn’t sound like a male pickup line and she had heard most of them from the smarmy, ‘Did it hurt when you fell out of heaven?’ to the coarse, ‘Fancy a shag?’ It sounded as though he was telling the truth and that he was equally mystified by the way he reacted to her.
Once again she sat down and the main course was served. Finally starting to relax, she ate and asked questions about the flat, for the strikingly effective combination of contemporary décor married to Georgian classic elegance appealed to her creative instincts. Sander told her that he had renovated the entire building before converting it into apartments, keeping the most spacious for his own use. She chattered about her college course and let down her guard to the extent that she had to swallow back an unwise reference to her father, before confiding that one day she wanted to open her own design company.
In the lounge Sander sat back and enjoyed her bubbling animation. He found her surprisingly good company; she had none of the conceit and superficiality he was accustomed to meeting with in women. Tally met his stunning dark golden eyes and felt the intensity there to the extent that her mouth ran dry and her heartbeat accelerated. He reached out a graceful hand and removed her wine glass from her grasp to set it aside. And, without the smallest hesitation, she shifted closer, wanting, needing to connect. Long fingers curving to her slim shoulder, he bent his head to toy with her soft full lips until the heat of anticipation was tingling and burning between her thighs. What shocked her was how very quickly and powerfully she felt the pull of his sexual magnetism.
He kissed her softly and then he kissed her hard, his lips urgent and demanding around the skilled plunge of his tongue into the sensitive interior of her mouth. She clung to him as if he were the only rock in a storm and gasped in startled response when he burrowed below her top to close a hungry hand over the fullness of her breasts. As he massaged the pouting swells and the tender prominence of her nipples with skilled fingers excitement began to hurtle through her in an unstoppable wave.
‘Let’s move this to the bedroom,’ Sander urged thickly, hauling her upright and pausing to kiss her with a passionate dominance that lit up every skin cell in her quivering body.
The yearning hit a high and she wound her arms round him and kissed him back with the same passion, loving the taste of his strong sensual mouth and the scent of his skin. With a gruff sound of satisfaction he lifted her up into his arms and strode into the bedroom across the landing.
He settled her down on the bed and suddenly tensed. ‘Something I forgot to say,’ he breathed, beautiful eyes welded to her flushed face. ‘I don’t do exclusivity …’
‘Okay,’ Tally fielded without even having to think about it. ‘You don’t do exclusivity. I don’t do sex.’
Sander froze and slowly dragged his hands from her. ‘You can’t be serious.’
Bright green eyes focused on him. ‘Do other women settle for that, “I don’t do exclusivity” malarkey?’
‘With all the options out there, who wants to be tied down? They settle for it,’ Sander asserted.
Tally sighed and shook her head. ‘I won’t,’ she said almost apologetically, her gaze clinging ruefully to his lean, darkly handsome features.
Sander groaned out loud and fell back a step. She could not have missed the pronounced bulge of his erection below his jeans. ‘You have me over a … barrel …’
‘Or, in this case … a bed?’ Tally suggested, struggling to cool the tingling heat at the centre of her body with will power alone but stubbornly unprepared to compromise. ‘It’s your choice.’
‘This is ridiculous.’ Seething frustration filled Sander when she fired back the same reminder he had used with her only minutes earlier. ‘It’s not as though you’re still a virgin, either.’
‘I am not sharing a bed with you while you continue to sleep with other women.’ Tally planted each word like a solid foot settling into newly poured concrete and then she slid her own feet off the bedspread he had placed her on and began to search for her discarded shoes.
‘That’s like blackmail,’ Sander launched at her grittily, something akin to sheer disbelief momentarily clouding his stunning dark eyes as he stared at her. ‘You are so bloody demanding!’
‘You’re a good teacher.’ Tally almost laughed at his expression, but she had no softness in her on the score of fidelity and it would be a long time before she forgot the ruthless expertise of his seduction of her at Westgrave. Then she had got so carried away that she hadn’t known what she was doing, but this time around she was trying to look out for herself and spot the pitfalls in advance. And the pitfalls of getting involved with Sander Volakis, she sensed ruefully, could be huge if she wasn’t careful.
Sander watched her reach the door and it seemed like a battle of wits between them then because he was constitutionally incapable of surrender. His body rigid with the ache of fierce self-control, his eyes fiery, he watched her gather up her bag and emerge from the lounge to depart.
‘I’ll