Kitabı oku: «Mediterranean Mavericks: Greeks», sayfa 21

CHAPTER ELEVEN

WHEN LEAH HAD woken up that morning in her sun-kissed bedroom, she had already known it was a new kind of day.

Despite her efforts to protect herself, which she saw clearly now, it seemed Stavros actually saw her, the true her.

He knew that she hadn’t ever touched drugs in her life. He knew that a career in fashion design meant the world to her. He knew that Giannis meant a lot to her.

It had been almost two in the morning when she had finished meeting with everyone she wanted to see. And all the while, Stavros had loomed large in her mind.

Both emotionally and physically tired and strung out by Helene’s positive initial reaction to her designs, she had fallen asleep within moments after he had started the powerful engine.

It had been the best night of her life.

She felt like she was standing in front of him without a shield for the first time. It was a moment of both power and fear, for he could so easily bind her to him always, he could so easily make her…

Pushing her hair away from her face, Leah walked to the window. Fueled by that growing need to see him, she showered and dressed in a sleeveless yellow blouse and a long, flowy skirt. Braided her half-wet hair into a plait, pushed her feet into comfy flip-flops and made her way down.

She was at the last few steps on the winding staircase that opened to the main foyer when the deafening silence finally registered.

His collar undone, his cuffs rolled back, Stavros still wore the same shirt as last night.

His hair was unkempt and his pallor a ghostly white under that olive skin. His nostrils flared as he saw her at the steps; something slithered across his face but he held her gaze, almost as if willing her to only see him, as if making her oblivious to the rest of the world.

And he was such a commanding figure that it almost worked.

Except she had lived half her life with moments like this, with that gut-twisting fear that something always went wrong when she found happiness.

Nausea pushed its way up her throat.

She gripped the balustrade so tight that her knuckles turned pale against the dark sheen but she forced herself to break his gaze and look beyond him.

Dmitri emerged from her grandfather’s room, his features ravaged. A half-empty bottle of scotch dangled from his hand, and his eyes were bloodshot. He looked at her, blinked, and then walked away without another glance.

He looked like he was coming apart at the seams, the complete contrast to Stavros’s frozen withdrawal, to the tight ropes with which he held himself.

“What happened?” Her words were loud, almost a scream in that dignifiedly morbid silence. She flew off the steps when he didn’t answer.

Launched herself at Stavros like a crazy dog. Like an immovable wall, he absorbed all her rage, all her blows as she pummeled at him. “What happened, Stavros? Tell me or I will—”

Pulling her into him so hard that the breath was knocked out of her, Stavros hugged her. Hugged her so tight her chest hurt with the effort to breathe, her head was dizzy…until all she could focus on was getting air into her collapsing lungs.

Only then did he loosen his hold on her. Tucking a finger under her chin he pushed it up to meet his gaze. “I’m sorry, pethi mou. Giannis is gone, Leah.”

Leah flopped onto him, the words stealing into her with a sickening thud. “No…” she whispered, futile tears filling her eyes.

“Look at me, galika mou,” he pleaded with such tenderness that she did.

Clasping her cheeks, he looked into her eyes. “He passed with a smile on his lips, Leah. He said he loved you, that he…he was so happy that you spent the past few days with him. I have never seen such peace in his eyes in all the years I have known him. You brought such joy to him.”

“Why didn’t you wake me? Why didn’t you at least let me say goodbye?” She pushed away from him, bitterness and anger and pain all roping together. “He was my grandfather. You and Dmitri…I had just as much right to be with him.”

The pads of his thumbs caught her spilled tears. “He insisted that I did not disturb you, Leah. Said you were not fond of goodbyes.”

A sob rising through her, Leah ran back upstairs without another glance at Stavros.

He had known. Her perceptive grandfather had known how scared she had been, he had known what it had cost her to reject him again and again…

In just a few weeks, Giannis had become such a huge part of her life and now, he was gone…Leaving her alone again to mourn him.

And for once in her life, Leah didn’t want to be alone, didn’t want to be ruled by fear. For once, she wanted to reach for the man she desperately needed. She wanted to lean on his strength, she wanted to take everything he would give of himself, everything she had always been too scared to ask.

It was almost evening when Stavros entered Giannis’s house again that day. He came to a halt in the vast foyer, the image of Leah standing at that last step, her expression of such fear and pain, the first thing he saw.

He had never seen her like that. Never heard that desperation in her tone. Over the last couple of weeks, he had accepted the fact that he had been wrong about Leah on so many levels. Yet he realized tonight that he had been no closer to truly understanding her.

She had desperately wanted him to say anything other than what he had, he knew. And the force of his own need, of his own desire to offer her anything but the hard truth, it had knocked him where he stood.

He wanted to wipe away those tears, he wanted to protect her from that grief, he wanted to…and all of it, it had nothing to do with duty.

The silence tonight was so different from all the other nights. He had done everything he possibly could to do all that Giannis had asked of him. All the arrangements had been put in place for the funeral to happen in a few days.

He was about to call for his housekeeper, instruct her to check up on Leah when she emerged from his office, rubbing her eyes. The yellow top that had looked so bright this morning was rumpled. Her hair was tangled all around her and dark circles hung under her eyes.

“Leah, were you waiting for me?”

Grabbing her hair away from her face, she pulled it tightly at the back. “Yes.”

The innocent action thrust her breasts up and he swallowed his hunger.

Cristo, this was not the time for his control to shred. He was literally shivering with need.

It had been easy to offer comfort this morning. Yet now, he couldn’t move, couldn’t form a coherent thought. The shock of losing the one man who had ever tried to understand him, who had tried to care for him hit him hard in that moment. And he felt curiously weak, as if a strong gust of wind could knock him down.

He must have swayed because suddenly Leah was almost bowed back trying to support his weight. Her breasts rubbed against his side, her scent kicked him in the gut.

Her eyes were molten pools of concern and vulnerability as she held onto him. “You look like you are ready to fall apart. Have you sat down for a minute since last night?”

Putting her away from him, Stavros searched for his fragmented willpower. “I just need some sleep. What did you want?”

Would she ask to leave tonight? What would he do if she did?

The three months were almost up. After seeing her with Giannis these past two weeks, after talking to her about Calista, he had questions about himself.

He was drowning and he so desperately needed the very woman he had doubted.

“Nothing important. Come, I’ll walk you to your room.”

He smiled then, the weight on his chest lightening. “You, pethi mou?” She looked so lovely that his eyes hurt. “You will break in two if I so much as lean on you.”

Her hands on her hips, she mock-glared at him. “I’m not as weak as I look, Stavros. If your studly, macho ego rails at accepting help from me, that’s fine. But when was the last time you had something to eat? I can make something if you like.”

“You’re offering to cook for me?”

“Well, I can’t make a three-course meal but I can manage a grilled cheese sandwich.”

It was a tempting offer. Everything about her was tempting. And tonight, he was hanging on by the end of his rope.

“I’m not hungry,” he said morosely, unbuttoning his shirt. She followed the movement with such wide eyes that his fingers slipped on the damn buttons. Rubbing a hand over his gritty eyes, he gave up on it. “Go to bed, Leah.”

“I don’t think I could sleep tonight.” A shudder racked her. “I never do on such nights.” The resignation in her words brought his head up. For someone so young, she had seen too much death, he realized with a pang.

They both had, a perverse thing to have in common.

She looked so vulnerable, right then, her oval face small. The urge to take her in his arms was so strong that he had to fist his hands. “There’s nothing I can do for you tonight, Leah.”

“No, I don’t want anything, I…I didn’t see you again all day and whenever I called, I was told you were busy.”

Because he had instructed his secretary to not put her calls through. “I had too many things to take care of.”

Wrapping her arms around herself, she nodded. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay, Stavros. And to apologize.”

“Why?”

“I’m sorry for going off at you like that this morning. I’m sorry for always attacking you.”

He forced a smile. “I can take it, Leah.”

“It’s just that…I forgot how much Giannis meant to you too.”

Raising his hand, he stopped her. “Leah, it’s not needed.”

“Yeah?” she said with a depth of sadness. “Okay. Anyway, once I stopped crying and managed a shower, I went looking for you. Dmitri came back and wouldn’t leave even though I promised I was okay. You sent him, didn’t you?”

Today of all days, he didn’t trust himself to be near her. That pain of hers, it had unlocked something inside him. And until he understood what, she was better left alone.

When he shrugged, she continued. “Dmitri said you hadn’t said a word all night. And that you probably won’t over the next few days or maybe even months. That your silence…it was the most nauseating thing in the world. That for months after Calista died, the only words he had heard from your mouth were the vows you made to me that day.”

Anger roared out of him. “Bloody Dmitri needs to learn to keep his mouth shut.”

“You’d rather I continue to think you as unfeeling as you make out to be, Stavros?”

“This is not your burden to bear, Leah. I have no expectations of you—”

Hurt etched into her mouth. “You will turn my life upside down because I need to be protected, but I can’t even wonder what’s going on with you?”

“I do not need to be protected, Leah.”

“You have never wished you could unburden yourself with someone, that you could share your joy or pain or…”

“No. For as long as I can remember, I never had the indulgence to do so. If I hadn’t shoved all that pain and grief away and handled things, life would have stopped for me and Calista. The way forward was the only thing left.” All his life he had been alone in moments like this…and there had been far too many of them.

Had he reached his edge now?

“Well, I don’t accept that. Today, of all days, when we have both lost the man who did everything he could to bind me to you, I won’t accept it. This relationship he forced on you—”

“For the millionth time, he didn’t force it on me.” In the roiling confusion he felt, perversely, that he couldn’t bear to hurt her. Not anymore. He couldn’t bear for her to think he resented her in his life anymore.

Right now, she felt like the only thing that was anchoring him to his sanity. Right now, all he wanted was to take what she was offering. Right now, he wanted to lose himself. In her.

“It was not just for my benefit. He told me that, Stavros. He said you needed me just as much as he thought I needed you.”

Stavros closed his eyes and dealt the blow that he knew would hurt. “But we found out that he was wrong, didn’t we, Leah? It turns out you didn’t need me to lock you up in a cage, you didn’t need me to steal away any joy from you for five years, turns out that I was wrong about you every way… And by that same token—” he had to say it, he had to believe it, because the alternative was just unthinkable for a man who possessed no capability for emotion, knew nothing but duty “—I don’t need you in my life either. It was just an old man’s dream, Leah.”

“Don’t you dare say that!” she screamed at him, her body vibrating with rage. “Don’t you dare…not tonight, Stavros.”

“Leah, walk away, pethi mou,” he warned her, past the hard lump in his throat.

It felt like he wouldn’t be able to breathe for the tightness in his chest if she came any closer. It felt like the grief running through him would consume him, and her, if she came any closer. It felt like he wouldn’t stop when he should if she came any closer.

But his stubborn, reckless wife didn’t heed his warning. She never did.

“But what he said to me won’t leave me alone, Stavros.” Reaching him, she clasped his cheeks, stared into his eyes as if she could read into his soul.

There was nothing for her to see, nothing for her to learn. The chill that had been curling around the edges all last night and today pervaded through.

“He…loved you so much…” She ran her fingers over his mouth, her touch reverent and possessive at the same time. “When I first came to Greece, he told me so much about you that I hated you for what you had with him…and then there you were, wherever I turned, so austere, arrogant, hating me back… Any time he talked about you, his eyes lit up and this fierce pride came into his eyes, he said you only gave—” she leaned her forehead against his lips now, a long exhale racking through her “—that you…never ask anything for yourself.”

Her hands vined around his midriff. “I don’t want to be alone tonight. And I definitely won’t leave you alone, even if you don’t say a word to me.”

And Stavros lost the battle against himself.

Had he even stood a chance against her from the moment he had seen her on Dmitri’s yacht, he wondered.

He grabbed her wrists to push her away, to reject her embrace as every finely honed instinct warned him to. Raking her fingers over his skin, she pushed at him, until he relented. Laced their fingers together. Pulled at him until their joined hands bound her to him.

And then she took his mouth with hers, like a wave he couldn’t beat down, engulfing him.

The taste of her filled him with pleasure, infused him with electricity, flew into all the open, aching places inside him.

“I’m so sorry for your loss, Stavros. You…meant so much to him. You looked after him better than his own family did.”

Those words destroyed the last bit of his will, her slender body pressed to his was his undoing.

Jerking her up against his body, he covered her mouth with his. Such hunger emanated within, such need knocked at him that he devoured her soft mouth. Digging his hands into her hair, he nipped and licked, he bit and stroked, he let himself drown in her.

She gave in with a soft gasp, opened her honeyed warmth to him. The taste of her, the sound of her breathless gasps filled him up.

After five years of celibacy, he didn’t have the remotest control over himself. After a lifetime of not needing anyone, the need she brought out in him, the pain she brought out in him, he had no defense against it.

His kisses were drugged, his caresses setting her on fire, his touch tearing open a chasm of longing inside her. Surrounded by his warmth, drowning in the masculine scent of him, Leah felt like she would never be alone again.

As long as Stavros continued to kiss her like this, there was no fear in her life.

There were no lies or games or duty or even the bonds of marriage between them now.

All there was was this desire in all its eviscerating and humbling honesty. In this, finally, they were equals. In this, finally, he was a man she couldn’t breathe without knowing in the most intimate way and she, she was the woman who had ripped the civilized facade from him.

A sobbing protest rose through her when he tugged his mouth away from hers. The sound of his harsh breathing was little comfort. But he lifted her up until she wrapped her legs around him.

“Hold tight, thee mou,” he commanded, his eyes so lust-glazed, his voice so rumbly that a shiver snaked up her spine.

She buried her mouth in his neck, hiding the sudden shyness that rose through her. She didn’t want him to see it and stop, she couldn’t bear it if he walked away because he thought she was afraid.

She was not afraid. At least not of what he would do to her. Only of the intensity of her want for him. She was afraid that whatever he did would only be the beginning of an intense yearning.

He returned to her mouth with a blistering passion that she had wanted for so long. Buried his mouth in her neck and sunk his teeth into her skin. Her legs wrapped around him, her skirt riding up to her thighs, she jerked against him, when he sucked at the soft flesh. Then he found her mouth again, nipped her lower lip this time.

Throwing her head back, she moaned loudly, pain and pleasure infusing in her very blood. And then he licked that very spot.

He carried her as if she weighed nothing, his long fingers cupping her bottom.

Heart thundering in her chest, Leah opened her eyes as she heard the thud of a door closing.

He had brought them to his office. The moment her bottom touched the oak desk, his hands reached for the hem of her blouse.

Her breathing coming so hard that it should have been a loud rattle in the room, Leah looked down. His hands disappeared under the yellow silk of her blouse. Those hair roughened wrists against her midriff, the bulge in his trousers…it was the most decadent sight she had ever seen.

“Theos, you’re gorgeous,” he groaned just as his fingers tugged her bra down with frenzied movements. And then his abrasive palm covered her breast.

“Oh…” Leah slid a little on the desk as he rubbed her aching nipples. Every time he pulled it between his fingers, her sex pulsed.

Pushing into his hand, she forgot what she had been about to say. Just his touch was sending her over the edge. Both his hands covered her breasts now. Pulling and kneading, while he murmured words she didn’t understand in Greek.

“Please, Stavros…” she said, mindless in her search for release already.

All of a sudden, his curse ripped through the air and he pulled away from her.

Frustrated desire wreaking havoc on her, Leah struggled for her breath. Her breasts left alone, felt heavy, her nipples knotting with need.

“Why would you stop,” she said, pushing back tears. He was so hard and warm and she was already afraid she would never want to leave. But how did she walk away from this hot magic he weaved? From how wanted and needed he had made her feel?

“Is this punishment too, Stavros?”

“Leah, look at me, pethi mou.”

She raised a dazed gaze to him, ready to beg him to not stop. But he didn’t stop. His mouth took hers in a ravishing kiss… Their tongues dueled and sucked with a frantic desperation, teeth scraped against each other until they were both panting.

“I have no protection, Leah,” he murmured against her mouth finally. “I dare not risk—”

“I’m on the pill,” she said in a small voice. “You dragged me to the gynecologist and stood outside her door, remember?” A flush overtook his cheeks and she milked the moment for all its worth. “It was the most humiliating moment of my life but—”

His hand covered her mouth. “No more words, ne?”

She pressed a kiss to the center of his palm and nodded. Continued tracing the hard mound of it to the thick veins in his wrists while her other hand explored his body.

Pushing her hands higher, he pulled her top off. Leah could hardly take in the sensations piling over her when he muttered a hoarse “Take off your bra.”

In another blink, he tugged her skirt down her legs.

She sat in front of him, her breasts heavy and aching, her nipples turning into painful knots and a thong that showed more than it covered.

“Theos, you’re going to be the death of me, Leah.”

For long seconds that felt like an eternity, he only looked at her. Pulled her calf up until her foot was resting over the table, exposing the heart of her in such an indecent way that she resisted.

The hunger in his face was possessive, all-consuming, his grip over her calf unrelenting. “No, don’t hide. Leah, never hide yourself from me.”

Palm down, he touched her everywhere, from her shoulders bones to the valley between her breasts, from her abdomen to finally the one spot that ached for his attention.

When he covered her mound with his hand and pressed with the pad of his finger, Leah jerked, a spasm of spiraling pleasure gripping her belly.

His dark hand covering her wet warmth…fire flew in her veins. “I can smell your arousal, Leah,” he whispered at her ear and she hid her face in his chest even as she reveled in his raspy voice. “That I make you feel like this…it drives me crazy in my own skin.”

With a hand in her hair, he tugged her back, his grip just a little short of bruising. Dragged his mouth over her neck, leaving a trail of heat. “Every gasp you make, every moan that escapes you…tonight, they are mine. You, pethi mou, are all mine.”

Staring into his eyes, Leah dragged him down for another kiss. “As you’re mine,” she whispered against his mouth.

She had never seen that blistering need in his eyes, never seen those commanding eyes darken like that.

Two fingers moved arrogantly over her nipple, plucking and rubbing while his gaze stayed on her face.

The heat with which he watched her made her feel even more exposed than her nakedness. That she would know what it felt to be possessed by him, that he would know her like no other man ever had, it filled her blood with thrill.

“Touch me,” he commanded.

Still being plundered mercilessly by his mouth, Leah obeyed. If this was how alive she felt in his arms, she would be his willing slave, she thought, tucking her hand under his shirt.

He was so hot, the washboard stomach instantly clenching under her fingers, the shuddering exhale of his breath drenching her…he was as far gone in this madness as she was.

When she moved her hand down, and traced his arousal with shaking fingers outside his trousers, he thrust his hips into her hand.

Such carnal need touched his arrogant features that Leah felt like a victor.

Leaving her breasts, he traced her rib cage, drew sensuous circles around her navel, impatiently pulled her thong off.

When he fingered her folds after what seemed like an eternity of waiting, Leah shivered violently. When he said, “Widen your legs,” with such possessive intent, a feverish tremble claimed her.

When he pushed a finger, then two into her wet heat followed by a string of curses, she whimpered and dug her teeth into his shoulder.

The slick glide of his fingers was intrusive, yet addictive, his touch was alien and it felt as if she had been waiting for it, her entire life.

All of her being pulsed at her sex, on the erotic movements of his fingers as they disappeared into her aching folds, on the way he pulled her into the heat of his body…

“You are so responsive, Leah, I could do this all day long,” he uttered, his other hand moving up to cover her breast again.

“I couldn’t, Stavros, please…” she begged, the ever-spiraling tension too much to bear.

His fingers slicked in and out of her on a relentless tempo, stroking the fire along her nerve endings into an inferno.

She was gasping, sinking and sobbing, and she wanted more.

His hot mouth, trailing wet heat over her skin, reached her breast. With a groan that aroused her as much as his touch, he licked the aching nipple. Stroked it and played with it and did everything except what she wanted.

“Stop torturing me,” she said in a voice that sounded alien to her own ears.

She felt his smile against her mouth. “Say ‘please, Stavros,’” he whispered against her skin. He sounded drunk, guttural.

Joining in his game, she let go of the last layer of inhibition. She refused to beg however. Refused to bend to his will when she could demand what was hers… “Put your mouth where I want and I will put my mouth where you want it,” she dared.

His curse reverberated in the dead silence, seconds before his mouth closed on her nipple.

Sensation upon sensation beat over her. Her fingers sinking into his hair, she held him at her breast. Every time he closed his mouth over her nipple and sucked, a thousand little tremors began in her lower belly.

He raked the highly sensitized point with his teeth slowly, as if he was savoring every second of it and Leah came with a scream that shattered the hot silence.

Everything inside her splintered into a thousand shards as the tremors piled on and on in mind-numbing pleasure.

Even as her voice turned hoarse with her continued gasps and screams, even as her breath left her lungs entirely, he didn’t let go. His fingers continued their assault, wringing every last pull of her muscles, turning her into a mass of shuddering sensation.

When he let go of her, she flopped onto him, damp and hot and shivering, her limbs incapable of independent motion.

She heard the rasp of his zipper, followed by the quiet swish of his trousers falling and somehow, managed to look up.

The streak of color in his tight cheeks, that muscular chest falling and rising, the washboard abs, and his erection, thick and corded, lying against his belly… He was a vision, a sight she thought she would never see.

A new friction began to build between her thighs. “Wow,” she said, reaching out to touch him.

The velvety weight of him was nothing like she had imagined.

Tawny irises dilated to dark pools as she wrapped her hand around it.

Tiny tremors pulsed through her sex as she rubbed the soft tip, and she marveled at her own body’s reaction to him. He hissed out a breath as she tested the weight and feel of it. Cursed as she fisted him and moved up and down in a movement as instinctual as breathing.

“I’m ready to keep my word now,” she said boldly, intent on tasting him, intent on driving him as mad as he had done her.

A dark smile warmed his gaze. “Yes?”

She nodded.

“I have not tasted you either, ne?” he said with such carnal intent that she instinctively clutched her thighs together.

But he jammed a rock-hard thigh in between. Her sensitive core rubbed against that hard thigh and a whimper escaped her.

Tugging her head back, he ravished her mouth until her lips stung. Every inch of her vibrated. “This madness, it is only beginning, pethi mou. Another night, we will taste each other.”

He was so velvety hard in her hand and the need to know how he would feel inside her, the need to know Stavros in this raw moment…

“Do not look away, Leah. I want to see every expression on your face, I want to hear every sound you make.”

One hand moved over her body in long, lingering strokes, over her breasts, over her stomach, and then, in one thrust that breached her virginity, in one movement that changed her forever, he entered her.