His magnificent chest was bare, tailored black trousers hung low on his hips. His jet-black hair, thick and wavy, was damp from the shower.
Neha couldn’t even pretend to look away. Every inch of him was chiseled to perfection like one of the life-size statues littered throughout the estate. She knew he worked out with that same ruthless discipline he applied to everything else in life, but dear God, she could spend hours just looking at his body, imagining all the things she would love to do to it.
Miles and miles of tautly stretched skin beckoned her touch. The broad sweep of his shoulders, the jut of his collarbones, the solid musculature of his chest, the slab of rock-hard abdomen...he was intensely male, an utter contrast to her soft curves.
His chest was liberally sprinkled with hair, and she imagined the sensation of that rough hair abrading her silky skin, over her sensitive nipples... An ache filled her breasts, narrowing down into her lower belly.
Every inch of him was defined and all she wanted to do was test the give of all that toned muscle with her teeth.
A single drop of water plunked onto his chest from his wet hair and she followed its trail from one neatly defined pectoral to the dip, through the tight planes of his abdomen and into the line of hair below his navel and into the band of his trousers.
“Should I wait a little longer before I put on the shirt?”
His voice—ringing with a husky wickedness—jerked Neha out of her greedy feasting. Heat rushed up her neck and into her cheeks.
Blue eyes danced with a roguish glint she’d never seen in him before. His sculpted mouth was turned up at the corners, his smile—a rare, genuine flash of teeth digging a groove in one cheek—a beautiful thing that could pull her out of the darkest of pits any day.
She looked away and then back, utterly incapable of coming up with a reply that wasn’t a yes, please. He was flirting with her and how she wanted to retort in kind. But it could lead everywhere and nowhere...
“Massimo said you’re leaving for Milan again. That you’re off to Paris from there. I didn’t want to miss seeing you,” she babbled, trying to gather a little sense. “We hadn’t talked again and I thought I should...”
He waited silently. And that bubble of intimacy pulled her, deeper and deeper.
“I’ll wait outside. Can we talk while you walk to the helicopter?”
He leaned against the big bed, his shirt thrown casually onto it. His glorious chest still bare. “I wasn’t going to leave without talking to you.”
“Oh, okay,” she said, suddenly feeling superconscious of her own attire. The see-through cover-up she’d pulled on in a hurry stuck to her damp skin while barely skimming the tops of her thighs. She pulled the sheer fabric away from her skin and his attention, arrested on every breath and movement of hers, made her shaky all over.
“I just wanted to reiterate that—”
“I have made a decision.”
She swayed, her knees refusing to prop her up. He reached for her immediately, his long fingers grasping her elbow in a firm grip.
“I’m fine,” she said, snatching back her arm. Forcing herself to breathe in long, deep gulps. “I’ll let you finish dressing.” She’d barged into his room and now she couldn’t wait to escape. If he said no...
“I’d prefer to talk here,” he said, pushing off from the bed. “And I’ll put on the shirt if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“Not uncomfortable, no. After all, it’s your bedroom. Just distracting,” she said in a half-snorting, high voice, panic letting her thoughts out in a rush.
His laughter was delicious, sexy, rubbing against her skin, winding her up. Heat washed over every inch of her, the very idea of licking up that hard chest sending a rush of desire through her.
“As you wish,” he said with a devilish smile, and reached for his white shirt.
Neha watched, shameless and bold and greedy, as he raised his arms and let the shirtsleeves slide down his corded arms. A mole on the underside of his right bicep, a small scar under his left pectoral—details she didn’t need to know about him and would never forget.
She followed him into the seating area, too agitated to sit.
He took mercy on her and said, “We need to set expectations.”
She nodded. “I’ll sign any document you put in front of me that I’ll never seek financial assistance. I’ll never hint, twist or manipulate you for marriage. Or demand that you be involved in the child’s life. I—”
He leaned forward in the sofa, all the humor gone from his face. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I just want to make it clear that I won’t be a headache for you, Leo.”
He pressed a finger to his forehead, as if he was exercising patience he didn’t have. “In doing so, you’re insulting me.”
“What? How?”
“You want me to father a child, face off Mario, all the while offering no emotional or financial or even moral support?” His taut expression highlighted the rugged beauty of his features. “That makes me such a shining example of what a man should be, sì?”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
He sighed. “It’s a little...disturbing to be thought a man who thinks nothing of fathering a child as a favor and moves on.”
Shock rendered Neha silent for long minutes. That was the last objection she’d expected. “You told me once that you innately don’t trust women, and when I said that that was horribly sexist, you said you didn’t have the slightest inclination to examine it, much less fix it.
“You said...love was for fools who willingly bought into a bunch of compromises and then glorified it. You told that reporter you were ecstatic to let Massimo propagate the great Brunetti line further.
“I assumed from our long association that being tied down isn’t in your future plans.”
He ran a hand over his jaw. “Being tied down to a woman is one thing, a child, completely another.”
“What does that mean?”
“If I father a child, I will damn well be involved in that child’s life. Our long association should have told you that.”
His softly spoken words packed a punch. Neha swallowed the defense that rose to her lips, slowly realizing that this wasn’t about her.
It was about him, his...feelings. And he was right—in all the myriad scenarios she’d foreseen she hadn’t considered his feelings at all. “It wasn’t meant as a statement on what kind of a man you are.
“I chose you because you’re the one man I know who’d do anything to protect an innocent in your sphere.”
His gaze held hers, as if to see through to the truth of that.
After a long time, he nodded and she let a breath out. “What does this mean, then?”
“The child and its well-being is the most important thing in all of this, sì?”
“I’ll love my child more than anything in the world. I’d do anything for her or him.”
The hardness edged away from his eyes. “That’s the only reason I’ve come this far, bella. But you need to accept that I will never be an absent parent or a stranger.
“I know what goes through a child’s mind when a parent abandons him or her. I can imagine what this child will hear from friends, well-wishers, every cruel, hard word and taunt. I will not willingly put any child of mine through that.”
He had every scenario their child would face covered