Page 36 of Legacy of His Revenge
‘Where is this house?’ Sophie asked because she had expected something in Chelsea or Mayfair or one of those frighteningly expensive postcodes close to where he had his own apartment.
‘I’m going to disappoint you...’ he slid his eyes sideways to glance at her and smiled ‘...by keeping it a surprise. Now, talk to me,querida. Don’t argue with me. Tell me about that client of yours...’
‘Which client?’ Because stupidly, even though she had so many defences erected when it came to Matias you could construct a small town behind them, shestillfound it frighteningly easy to talk to him when he turned on that charm of his.
‘The vegan with the wart on her face.’
‘I didn’t think I’d mentioned her to you.’
‘When we’re not fighting,’ Matias murmured softly, ‘we’re getting along a hell of a lot better than you give us credit for. There’s so much more we could be doing,querida, instead of making war...’
* * *
Sophie only realised that they had been driving for longer than she thought when the crowded streets and houses fell away to open space and parks and they pulled up outside a picture-perfect house shaped like a chocolate box with an extension to one side. Wisteria clambered over the front wall and, set right back from the lane, the front garden was dilapidated and overgrown.
‘It needs work,’ Matias told her, reaching into the pocket of his jacket, which he had flung in the back seat, and extracting some keys, which he jangled on one finger as he opened his car door. ‘And it hasn’t been lived in for several months, hence the exuberance of the weeds.’
‘I hadn’t expected anything like this.’ Sophie followed him up to the front door, head swinging left to right as she looked around her. The house stood in its own small plot, which was hedged in on three sides. He opened the door, stood aside and she brushed past him and then stood and stared.
There were rooms to the right and left of the hallway. Lovely square rooms, all perfectly proportioned. A sitting room, a more formal living room, a study, a snug and then along to the kitchen and conservatory, which opened out at the back to a garden that was full of trees and shrubs and plants that had taken advantage of absentee owners and decided to run rampant.
The paint was faded. In the sitting room, the gently flowered wallpaper seemed to speak of a different era.
‘The house was owned by an elderly lady who lived here for most of her life, it would seem,’ Matias was murmuring as he led her from room to room. ‘She didn’t have any children, or perhaps they might have persuaded her that the house was far too big as she got older, but it would seem that she was too attached to it to sell up and leave and as a consequence the latter part of her life was spent in only a handful of rooms. The rest were left in a state of gradual decline. When she died a little over a year ago, it was inherited by a distant relative abroad and the probate took some time, hence it’s only just come onto the market.’
She walked from room to room. Her silence spoke volumes. She wasn’t bristling; she wasn’t complaining. In the matter of the house, he had clearly won hands down.
Matias intended to win hands down in every other area as well.
He was waiting for her in the hallway, leaning against the wall, when she completed her third tour of the house, and he didn’t budge as she walked towards him, her eyes still wide as saucers.
‘Okay.’ Sophie smiled crookedly. ‘You win.’
‘I know.’
‘Don’t be arrogant, Matias,’ but she was still smiling and she wasn’t trying to shuffle more distance between them. The silence stretched until she licked her lips nervously.
But she hadn’t taken flight.
‘I don’t just want to win when it comes to finding a house for...you,’ he said gruffly.
‘Matias, don’t.’ But her voice was high and unsteady, and against her will her body was straining with desperate longing towards him, liquid pooling between her legs, the swollen tips of her nipples tightening into sensitive buds.
‘Why do you insist on fighting this thing that’s still here between us?’
‘Because we can’t give in to...to lust...’
‘So you finally admit it.’
‘That doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean I’m going to do anything about it.’ She looked at him and couldn’t look away. His dark eyes pinned her to the spot with ruthless efficiency. She couldn’t move, couldn’t think, could scarcely breathe.
Her head screamed that this wasjust not going to do. She couldn’t afford to lose sight of what was sensible but her body was singing from a different song sheet and when he lowered his head to hers, her hands reached out. To push him away? Maybe. Yet they didn’t. They curled into his shirt and she melted helplessly as he kissed her, softly and teasingly at first and then with a hunger that matched her own.
His tongue found hers. His hands, on her shoulders, moved to her arms then cupped the full weight of her breasts.
He played with her nipples through her top but then, frustrated, pushed open the buttons and groaned as he felt the naked skin of her chest and then, burrowing beneath the lacy bra, finally got to the silky fullness of her breasts and the ripe protrusion of a nipple.
‘You’re definitely bigger.’ His voice was shaking.
