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  The feel of him against her sent the pulsing ache into hungry overdrive. Helplessly her hand went to his chest, then his waist before moving lower, unable to wait for the feel of the erection she could already see pushing against his jeans.

  ‘Sadie,’ she heard him growl protestingly, but she was beyond listening—had been beyond anything but satisfying her need for him from the moment she had seen him walking towards her.

  She felt him tense and then shudder as she touched him, his reaction making her bolder—bold enough, in fact, to hold his gaze with her own as he groaned and covered her hand with his.

  Now it was his gaze that was imprisoning her, just as it was her turn to shudder in mute response to the need they were both feeling.

  ‘What you’re doing right now, Sadie, is just about enough to push me over the edge,’ Leon warned her huskily, bending his head to brush her lips with his own as he added, ‘So if that isn’t what you want…’

  Purposefully he lifted his hand from hers, and just as purposefully Sadie left hers where it was, covering the bulge under his jeans.

  He had stopped kissing her and was simply looking at her with those dizzying green eyes. She started to tremble, and then flicked her tongue-tip nervously against her lips. As she did so for some reason her gaze dropped to Leon’s crotch.

  A raw sound like a cross between a roar and a groan warned her that she had tripped the danger switch, but before she could do anything Leon had grabbed hold of her, picking her up and swinging her into his arms.

  ‘Which way is the bedroom?’ he demanded thickly. ‘And you’d better tell me damned quick, Sadie, otherwise it’s going to have to be that kitchen table I can see right through there.’

  As Sadie nodded numbly in the direction of the hallway leading to the stairs Leon acknowledged that he no longer gave a single damn about Francine or even Myrrh, and that right now the only thing…the only person that mattered to him was the woman he was holding in his arms. And he fully intended telling her so. There weren’t going to be any more misunderstandings, no more misinformation! From now on he was planning to tell her every day of their lives how much he loved her.

  How could he ever have risked losing her?

  ‘You can’t carry me all the way upstairs, Leon!’ Sadie protested, but she still clung to him, revelling in the close contact she was enjoying.

  ‘You just watch me!’ he told her. ‘On second thoughts, the kitchen table it is. There isn’t any way I’m about to let you go! Not now, Sadie, and not ever.’

  When he laid her down on her long pine table Sadie managed to find the conscience to remind him, ‘About Francine, Leon…’

  ‘Francine, nothing,’ Leon growled. ‘Right now the only perfume that’s on my mind, Sadie, is yours!’ he emphasised in a muffled voice, and he buried his face against her throat and started to kiss his way along it, unfastening the buttons on her shirt as he did so.

  When she felt him slip his hand inside it and peel back the fabric of her bra to reveal the hard point of her nipple Sadie shuddered in wanton delight.

  ‘You like this?’ Leon demanded, watching her reaction as he rubbed his thumb against the aching crest of flesh.

  ‘Like it?’

  Sadie wondered hazily if Leon could translate the whimpered sound of pleasure she made, but patently he could, because he made a deep satisfied response in his own throat and then bent his lips to her breast, urging her thickly, ‘And this? Do you like this too, Sadie?’

  As Sadie’s body arched, she frantically pulled open Leon’s shirt. Her hands clung to his shoulders, her nails digging helplessly into his flesh, and Sadie could only give an incoherent moan. But Leon didn’t need to hear any words. The way she was responding to him told him everything he needed to know.

  The instant Leon’s free hand stroked between her legs Sadie parted them. Inside her head she was already anticipating what was to come, her mind full of remembered images of intense sensuality.

  Leon was tugging her jeans free of her legs, kneeling up on the table, his torso exposed where his shirt had been ripped open, Sadie recognised, her eyes widening as she stared at the torn fabric. Had she done that? And those scratches she could just see on his shoulder…had she inflicted those?

  Leon had finished removing her jeans. He bent to remove her thin lace low-rise briefs.

  Sadie closed her eyes in wanton pleasure as she felt the heat of his breath against her skin. Leon was sliding his hands beneath the lace. Her breath caught in her throat on a sob of pleasure.

  ‘What is it, Sadie?’ Leon was demanding huskily.

  She could feel the heat of his breath on the soft triangle of curls beneath the lace. And then she could feel the light brush of his lips, teasing her, tantalising her with their promise of what she was already aching for…

  ‘You want this?’ he whispered, as his hands tugged away the lace and she was free to spread her legs in a wide vee of liquid female longing, inviting him to part the swollen lips of her sex and taste the sweet juice of her love.

  The touch of Leon’s tongue against the eager ridge of flesh that was her sensual centre sent Sadie wild. The firm lap of his tongue was taking her to heaven—beyond heaven, she acknowledged, as her body twisted and convulsed and the pleasure built up inside her to the point where she knew she was not going to be able to control it.

  Leon’s tongue lapped and stroked until Sadie could bear no more. Her whole body clenched, the muscles in her thighs tightening against Leon’s hands as he held her.

  As the first spasm of her orgasm began Leon raised his head and looked at her, watching her pleasure, making her focus wide-eyed on his gaze as it held her and demanded that she expose herself to him totally and completely.

  As the quivers finally eased out of her body Sadie remembered there was something she had to tell him. Something important. Looking at him, she whispered with love-drugged urgency, ‘Leon, the Myrrh formula—’

  ‘Not now.’ He stopped her, shaking his head and lowering his body to rest alongside her own. Tenderly he cupped her chin and started to kiss her, little gentle kisses that melted her insides.

  ‘There’s something I want to tell you first. I love you, and I need you, and if it means giving up the whole damn conglomerate to have you in my life then that is what I intend to do!’

  ‘Oh, Leon!’ Sadie protested mistily.

  The look in his eyes as he bent over her and kissed her made her own prick with tears.

  Slowly he released her mouth, his attention distracted by the sudden tightening of the nipple closest to him. Leon rewarded its demand with the lazy brush of his lips and the not so lazy lap of his tongue.

  Immediately Sadie curled her toes, a small gasp of shocked pleasure parting her lips. Surely not again? Not so…so…immediately and intensely?

  She made another small sound and reached for Leon.

  The feel of him inside her filled her with a pleasure which went way beyond anything physical. Just holding him there was surely the most intense emotional experience she had ever had, Sadie acknowledged.

  ‘More, Leon,’ she demanded with female hunger. ‘More…yes…just like that. Just like that…’ she moaned as she urged him deeper and deeper within her, wrapping him tightly with the wet warmth of her flesh.

  ‘Sadie!’ Leon warned her, but her body was already eager for his climax, matching it and capturing him as he pulsed thickly inside her.

  She was almost asleep when Leon pulled her up and they made their way up to bed. He tucked her into his side and pulled the bedclothes over them. But even in her sleep Sadie was not prepared to let him go.

  Curled into his body, she rested one of her hand on him. Not that she needed to hold him. Before he had fallen asleep Leon had thrown a possessive male leg over Sadie’s body, imprisoning her where he intended to keep her. At his side. For ever.

  When Sadie woke up she was on her own, the side of the bed next to her empty and cold—but nowhere near as cold as her heart.

&nb
sp; Frantically she threw back the bedclothes and rushed to the window. The Mercedes was still outside!

  Then she heard a sound from downstairs. Quickly she looked for something to put on. The first thing that caught her eye was Leon’s discarded shirt. Pulling it on, she paused to breathe in the smell of him.

  As she tried to fasten it up she realised that one of the buttons was missing and that one of the buttonholes was torn. Guiltily she remembered how that had happened! She had done it last night, in her eagerness to get to Leon’s body!

  Padding downstairs, she went into the kitchen, where she could smell coffee brewing. But Leon wasn’t there. And then she saw him across the hallway in her sitting room. Holding her grandmother’s photograph.

  Even though she could have sworn she had not made a sound, he turned and looked at her.

  ‘Your grandmother?’ he asked.

  Silently Sadie nodded her head.

  Putting the photograph back, Leon came towards her.

  ‘Where were you going yesterday?’ he asked.

  Sadie looked at him

  ‘To find you,’ she admitted. And, turning away from him, she went to where she had left her bag the previous evening. Opening it, she removed the bubble-wrapped packet. ‘And to give you this,’ she added, handing the package to him.

  ‘What is it?’ Frowning, Leon unwrapped it and stared at the small glass phial in his hand.

  ‘I…’ Sadie took a deep breath. ‘You weren’t the only one looking for…for a compromise. It’s a new Myrrh perfume,’ she told him huskily. ‘I…I made it here in my workshop. It’s a…’ She stopped and discovered that her whole body was shaking. Lifting her head, she looked at him. ‘It’s a blend of raw material and…and synthetics.’ She bit her lip.

  For a long time she thought he simply wasn’t going to speak. His whole attention was concentrated on the small bottle he was holding. But then suddenly he raised his head, and in the green eyes and on the black lashes Sadie could see quite openly the glitter of strong male tears.

  ‘You did this for me?’ Leon demanded.

  ‘For us,’ Sadie corrected him, her own gaze blurring.

  ‘Oh, Sadie.’ Leon groaned, kissing her softly and then saying against her lips, ‘Sadie, I love you. Will you marry me? You’d better,’ he advised when she looked at him.

  ‘For one thing I just couldn’t bear it if you don’t, and for another…’ He bent his head and whispered in her ear, ‘After last night, I feel in nine months’ time there could be a very good reason why you and I should be man and wife!’

  ‘A baby?’ Sadie blinked away her tears.

  ‘Mmm…we could try for twins if you like,’ Leon teased her.

  It took several seconds for his meaning to sink through Sadie’s euphoric happiness. When it did she gave him an old-fashioned look.

  ‘Certainly not,’ she told him primly. ‘Well, at least not until I’ve had a cup of coffee…’

  ‘You can have a cup of coffee…when I’ve had you…’ Leon promised sexily.

  EPILOGUE

  ‘AND SO what have you called the new baby?’ the excited reporter asked Sadie eagerly.

  Bright-eyed, she looked at Leon, who was standing by her side.

  ‘Well, I think we’ve decided on Petit Bébé.’ Sadie answered her, straight-faced.

  She and Leon had worked hard to come up with an original name for the range of baby products they were launching under the Francine name. The range had gone into production just about the same time as Sadie herself, and the results of both efforts were on display in the Grasse house now. The Petit Bébé range of babycare products in their attractive modern packaging, and the equally modern and attractively packaged identical twin daughters Sadie had given birth to six weeks before.

  ‘See, I told you it could be twins,’ Leon had murmured when Sadie had gone for the scan which had revealed the fact that she was carrying two babies.

  And despite the fact that she was a recently married woman and a mother-to-be Sadie had blushed deeply at the look in his eyes, remembering just how and where those babies had been conceived.

  ‘I wonder which of them is the kitchen table baby,’ Leon whispered teasingly to her when the press conference was over.

  ‘Neither or both,’ Sadie responded firmly. ‘After all, they are identical twins.’

  Still smiling at her, Leon bent his head to kiss her.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-4213-9

  THE MISTRESS PURCHASE

  First North American Publication 2004.

  Copyright © 2004 by Penny Jordan.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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