Kitabı oku: «Mediterranean Mavericks: Greeks», sayfa 22

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE PAIN THAT streaked through Leah’s eyes, the jagged whimper that fell from her swollen mouth arrested Stavros when he would have thrust deeper inside her. The walls of her sex were so tight around his rigid shaft, the friction so unbearably good that he had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop.

The taste of his own blood finally punctured that haze.

Slowly, as if he was waking through a fog that owned his senses, he tried to shake off the fever that clung to his skin and muscles. The dawn of truth on his lust-riddled brain was slow, excruciating.

Cristos, she was as untried in body, as innocent as she had been of all the wrongs he had attributed to her.

Another horribly wrong misstep on his part.

He had taken her so roughly, on his bloody desk of all places! For five years, he had lived like a monk and now, pushed inside her like an animal…

Shame and fury roped together inside. He wanted to pound his fist into the desk. The only thing that stopped him was the thought of scaring her.

Sweat beaded on his brow. Marshaling his thoughts by the skin of his teeth, he looked down at her. Her pinched lips, the white pallor of her cheeks…it was like a lash against his skin.

“Looks like more lies, little wife,” he snarled.

Color returned to her cheeks and with it, that reckless defiance that had given him sleepless nights. Like a bloody switch, he hardened even more inside her. “You assumed everything about me,” she replied, her fingers digging into his shoulders.

Every inch of him felt the heat of her fingers, of her breath feathering over his skin.

He was so aroused, his body so out of his control that he closed his eyes and willed his breath to calm down. Holding her hips, he slowly pulled out, the slick slide of her walls too much temptation to resist.

She stole her hand under his shirt, searching, caressing, possessive. Like she owned him. Like he hadn’t just breached her virginity like a marauding animal. Like she knew her way around a man’s body.

No, his body, he corrected himself, as the feathered strokes of her fingers wreaked hell on his better intentions.

She had and she would only ever know his body, came the utterly useless and distracting thought.

Her soft fingers reached his buttocks and she dug her nails in. Sharp and hard. She pushed closer with her bottom until her breasts rasped against his chest. Pleasure burst forth in his belly and the back of his thighs and he pushed into her wet heat, despite himself.

He pulled at her hair roughly, trying to grab her attention. “Stop it,” he whispered, fighting the heat building inside, the need clamoring at him to just let go. “I don’t want to hurt you. Theos, Leah, I just…” He felt something in him clench tight against her, as if she could wreak infinite hurt on him. “I could not bear it if I hurt you anymore.”

“Stavros…won’t you look at me, please.”

The pleading, persuasive tone would have pulled him into hell.

He opened his eyes and was lost instantly.

Her eyes glittered with raw emotion, and once again, he found himself stunned at how much she could feel, how much Leah risked despite all her lies.

In a sensuous movement that was born more of need than finesse, she brought her mouth to his. Slowly, softly, seduced him with long kisses and lingering strokes. Set her tongue to his mouth and made love to him like he had never experienced before.

Her breath was a harsh whisper against his mouth. “You will hurt me if you stop now. I started this knowing what I wanted, I started this because you finally saw me as your equal. Not a thing to be protected and controlled. Right?” When he remained silent, she buried her face in his neck, a catch in her throat. “From the moment you stood there at the airport to pick me up, all haughty, forbidding, so contemptuous—”

He groaned. “You tried to run away to Paris while Giannis waited on tenterhooks for you in Athens.”

“—I had such a crush on you. I have had dreams that you would look at me like you did tonight. Please, Stavros. Tell me that I didn’t imagine that look in your eyes. Tell me that you’re doing this because you want me and not because you feel sorry for me or because it’s your duty.”

Tenderness joined fiery desire now. Tilting her chin up, he caught the tear that ran down one soft cheek. The sight of that lone tear undid him as nothing ever had. A fist could be squeezing his chest for the tightness there. “My want…for you, my need knows no reason, Leah… That I do this when I should be…” He searched for the words to say it right, searched his own feelings, as raw and strange as they were. “You make me selfish, Leah. You make me angry, and sad, and laugh and…just so unbalanced. You sink under my skin, pethi mou, and I can’t breathe for wanting you.”

Such a smile dawned on her lips that the beauty and joy in it made his breath catch.

Her shoulders tense, she slowly thrust her hips forward. “It doesn’t hurt…” When he glared, she added, “…that much.” Wrapping her hand around his nape possessively, she leaned in. “Give me this tonight, Stavros. Please. Give us both what we want.”

That raw, unabashed request coming from that perfect little mouth was enough to shred his will.

He thrust his tongue into her mouth, falling deeper and deeper into her spell. “Tell me if it becomes too much,” he commanded. “I will stop, Leah.” Even if it killed him.

She nodded, like a good little dutiful wife when the cunning minx was anything but.

Palming her breasts, he rubbed her nipples, and the tight points curling his muscles into a new frenzy.

“You like it when I do that.” She moaned into his mouth, a smile curving her lush mouth. “I could do it all day, pethi mou, caress your breasts, suck your nipples until you…come just from that.”

With every word he said, he started moving again. And her heat welcomed him, sending a current of need through his nerve endings. “Tell me what you feel,” he said, continuing to kiss her, tease her nipples with his fingers.

“No more pain,” she said against his shoulder.

He thrust in again, slowly but forcefully. Reminded himself to speak again through the delirious heat enveloping him. “Now?”

“It feels achy…full…incredibly hot…” she half sobbed.

“Hold on tight to me, thee mou,” he whispered, and pulled all the way out.

She whimpered, like a kitten denied her treat. “I feel empty now,” she said, meeting his gaze, unbuttoning his shirt.

He thrust back in again, heat curling through his muscles as she slapped those long fingers over his chest. Scraped a flat nipple with her nail. “Now?”

“Oh God, Stavros…” a guttural groan escaped her.

Grabbing her hips, he locked her against him as he built up a rhythm. His climax was rushing at him, hard, explosive. Spots were beginning to dance behind his eyes. His pulse raced, his lungs burst. Every thrust brought him closer to the edge and he couldn’t contain the momentum, couldn’t control his pace.

Desperation took the place of finesse, animal lust destroyed concern for her.

“Leah…I can’t slow down now, pethi mou.”

“Don’t.” She opened her mouth against his chest, and he jerked. Pleasure hung around on a serrated edge as she dug her teeth in, harder. “I want all of you, Stavros. I want everything you give.”

Clutching her bottom, he tilted her and thrust again.

“I want to die, now. It’s so much,” she moaned.

“Look down,” he commanded, raking through the sheer lust to find an iota of control, determined to push her to the edge one more time.

She did. A raw groan fell from her mouth.

“Touch yourself, galika mou.” The desk shook with his thrusts, blood whooshed in his ears.

Shock flashed in her eyes. “No. I…can’t. That’s…just…” Her innocence tugged at him even as she undid every one of his rules with her innate sensuality.

Christos, this need for her would not stop here, would never stop consuming him.

He licked the rim of her ear, and pleaded, as he had never done before. “Imagine that it is me touching your wet heat, imagine it is me licking you there… Do it for me, Leah. Please.”

Color streaking her cheeks, she met his gaze. “You would like it?”

“It would be the most erotic sight I would ever see.”

Her mouth trembling, she snuck her hand between their bodies. Her long finger reached between them slowly. “Go on…”

Her head went back, her back arched as she stroked herself.

Stavros groaned, pumped into her, hard and fast, pleasure drenching him in sweat, robbing his breath from him.

“Come for me, Leah.”

For once, in his life, the firecracker that his wife was, complied.

Pleasure burst in his veins, in his blood, in his muscles as Leah came with a long, drawn-out groan and her contracting muscles pulled at him.

His climax knocked his breath out, and his mind blanked out as he broke apart into a thousand pieces and got back together again.

Theos, he had waited because it had been the right thing to do, because his honor wouldn’t let him cheat on his wife even if he didn’t live with her. But, he had never expected it to be this life-changing, mind-numbing experience with her.

Leah was in his blood now, a craving in his gut. He would never have enough of her. Of her lithe body, of her glorious smile, of her sometimes infuriating words.

He had never known this exhilaration as he did with Leah, he had never felt so alive. He had never felt so needy as he did with her. He had never wanted to change, never wanted to risk his emotions as he did with her.

He had never wondered what else he had been missing out on as he did with her.

Running his hands over her shaking form, he hugged her to him. She was so fragile. And yet he felt like he was the one who was risking everything. “Leah, say something,” he whispered into her scalp.

“Hmmm?” she said, lazily snuggling into him.

“You are all right?”

Her mouth opened against his chest. “I want more of you, more of this.”

Laughter burst out of him. The tightness in his chest relented as she vined her arms around his waist, opened her hot mouth against his shivering muscles and kissed him. He let out a long breath, unmanned by her tenderness.

“We’re only getting started, pethi mou,” he said, enfolding her in his arms.

Over the next few weeks, Leah was so busy that she didn’t have a moment to sift through the storm building through her. The night that Stavros had made such explosive love to her, she had asked if they could return home to his estate while they had been in the shower.

It was an intimacy Leah had cherished as much as the sex itself. Every little moment with Stavros, she realized, taught her more about herself.

He had stopped midway, his hands incredibly gentle as they washed her. After he had carried her to the en suite bathroom of his bedroom, turned on the shower and demanded to know if she was hurting anywhere. Had looked so vulnerable when he had said he didn’t usually behave like a rutting animal.

How he believed that she could think that of him when he had honored the vows he had made to her, she didn’t know. But his concern had touched her on a fundamental level.

The first thing the next morning, they had returned here. Once the servants had unpacked for her, and he had carried her from her bedroom to his, declaring in that arrogant tone that she wouldn’t sleep anywhere else but his bed, only then had she realized that she had called it home.

But that’s what his estate felt like to her.

Home.

She had been accepted to present at the Independent Fashion Week in New York in September. When she had told him after Helene had called her personally, he had smiled at her, fierce pride glinting in his eyes, and told her that he wasn’t the least bit surprised.

After a few meetings with Helene and another fashion director, the scale and the scope of her collection was even more than she had dreamed. She had added four more designs to it.

She was on such a constant high, on a ride that only kept going higher and higher that she didn’t want to stop even for a moment to see where it was that she was going or how long she would be able to sustain that momentum.

She worked twelve, fourteen hours to finish her first collection, which was turning out to be better than she had ever imagined. Models came in almost every day now for trials, she had two assistants helping her with the final touches, gowns that were being resized and resewn, and then pressed once finalized…

At the end of the day, she fell into bed exhausted. She put off questions about the future. She ran around the estate, she worked with such feverish compulsion that Stavros had one day locked her in his bedroom after she had almost collapsed in her workroom.

But even through the frenzy of the creative drive that gripped her through the day, the best parts were at night.

Intense, hot, turning-her-inside-out nights with Stavros.

It was as if they were both determined to assuage a hunger of a lifetime every single night. It didn’t matter what time he flew back from Athens, it didn’t matter that sometimes her own work kept her past midnight, he brought her to his bed at all manner of times.

Sometimes, they would both be too exhausted to do nothing but sleep wrapped up in each other, and he would wake her after the edge of sleep was gone. Sometimes, he woke her up in the early morning and was moving inside her before she was completely awake.

He was insatiable, possessive, his touch incredibly addictive.

The one time he had stayed overnight in Athens, a strange panic had gripped her. Suddenly, it was as though she had lost her anchor. She had woken up to the sounds of rotor blades the next morning, her breath painfully hovering in her throat. Had waited for him to come to her.

Morning had given way to noon, and then to a gorgeous sunset. He was busy, he had sent a message when she had inquired.

Even loathing that she was losing some unknown battle of wills, she had gone looking for him once the estate had settled down for the night. She had found him in his office, in the middle of a conference call, his gaze settling on her with a possessive hunger. Yet, he hadn’t moved.

She had had the strangest feeling that he had kept away on purpose. As if it was a test he was conducting. As if he wanted to prove something to himself.

An experiment she had no interest in, she had realized, a test she had lost even before it had begun. How dare he deny her after he had made her addicted to him?

So she had teased him when he had made no move to interrupt the call.

Brazen and bold, she had slowly stripped every single piece of clothing from her body even as he was still on the video call. He had looked at her with darkening eyes, daring her to continue.

Of course, she had never been able to resist a dare, especially when it came to riling, or in this case, arousing Stavros.

He had even held out for a few minutes.

Her skin on fire, her body craving him, she had refused to back down. She had touched herself, her breasts first, rolling her aching nipples between her fingers, imagined it was those rough fingers of his. Like he had begged her to do that first night.

Dark color streaked his cheeks, and the pen he had been holding to make notes had clattered to the ground. But still, he hadn’t given in.

Her throat had felt like parched paper, her grasp on her emotions tenuous at best. She had become a slave to his will. Even worse, she had become a slave to her own need for him.

Throwing her hair back, as she had seen one of the models wearing her own creation do, she had strutted farther into the room. He had lasted another two seconds before he had minimized the screen, marched to her, picked her up, called her his doom, and taken her against the wall, even as the call was going on.

All the while his mouth had covered hers, swallowing her moans and finally the sound of her climax. There had been no finesse to his raw thrusts, there had been nothing of his will left by the time he had climaxed, his skin damp to her touch.

She had won that day. But the fear that she wouldn’t another day, another moment, gathered like a black cloud. Because as invested as he was in their madness, she knew he was retreating. As if she and his desire for her, they were a rope that was slowly binding him and he…he was struggling against it.

He refused to discuss the state of their little deal. Every time she tried to talk of the past or the future, he evaded her or worse, seduced her. And the coward that she was, Leah let him be. Settled for the warmth of his arms, for the heat of his caresses, for the fiery intensity of his passion.

“Are you happy?” she had asked him one morning when he had brought her breakfast in bed.

He had covered her body with his, taken her mouth in such a tender kiss that it had brought tears to her eyes. “I don’t know about happy,” he had said against her mouth with that trademark honesty. The question seemed to have thrown him, but lost in the magic his mouth weaved, Leah hadn’t cared. “But I’ve never felt more alive, agape mou.”

There was something disconcerting about that answer, she remembered thinking.

Almost a month passed by like that. And from the dreamy, drugged state, something else emerged. A tiny sliver of fear for the future. Of what she was letting happen, of what it was going to hold for her and Stavros.

For a few weeks, she had been hinting about going to Paris for a small fashion event that Helene had mentioned. It was like puncturing the bubble they seemed to exist in, but she pushed the matter anyway. Sooner or later, they would have to emerge from it and for her part, she wanted him to acknowledge their relationship outside of his estate.

Finally, the night before the event, he had given in. Surprised her by joining her the next evening. And any thoughts she had that their relationship would change evaporated in the week they had been in Paris.

Leah dragged him on a tour of the beautiful city and shopping while he dragged her back to their luxurious hotel suite on the Champs-Elysées every time the mood struck him. Which was much too often, she had complained once laughingly.

But she hadn’t denied him, not once. She was just as addicted to him as he seemed to be with her.

They had been in Paris a week when, one evening, someone knocked quite rudely on the outer door of their suite.

Leah laughed, and hid her face in Stavros’s chest while he continued to lick and kiss her breasts with no thought to the caller. Soon, she was as lost as he was when he lazily pushed into her and struck a slow, mind-numbing pace toward release. The elegant side table, whose design she had only remarked on earlier, bumped against the wall as his thrusts became harder and faster.

“What you do to me, Leah,” he whispered, leaning into her.

She kissed his sweat-beaded brow when he suddenly stilled.

And Leah heard it—the sound of footsteps coming closer toward their bedroom.

In a movement that was both blurry and genius— because she couldn’t even move a finger, Stavros was off her and pulling on his sweatpants. Had just covered her naked form with a sheet when the double doors burst open.

Arrogantly leaning against the wall, Dmitri surveyed them, the wickedest grin curving his sinful mouth. Heat bloomed over every inch of her as that dark, slumberous gaze took in the state of their undress and their still uneven breaths.

Stavros’s curse, filthy and loud, should have colored the room blue before he dragged her behind him. “Forgotten your manners again, Dmitri?”

Such blistering scorn filled his voice, yet Leah, peeking from behind his shoulder, only saw it bounce off Dmitri’s amused smile. Being the complete opposites they were, Leah had never understood their friendship. Only that it was inviolate.

“Of all your dresses, I think this suits you best, pethi mou,” Dmitri offered with an outrageous wink and Leah couldn’t help but smile.

A growl emanated from Stavros and her gaze flew to him. It was a savage sound she would never associate with him of all the men in the world. His passion was insatiable, never-ending but he hid it under such a civilized facade that she couldn’t believe it the first few days.

He did, and made her do, the wickedest things in bed—which she did with the same spiraling hunger as he did, but outside of bed, outside of sex, he was still far too private.

She knew that, in the past month, Dmitri had wanted to see them, more than once. Wanted to join them either for a dinner, or even for a lazy afternoon at Stavros’s estate. But he had said no every time in that arrogant tone of his. Hadn’t even bothered to make an excuse.

It was almost as though he didn’t want Dmitri to see them as a couple.

Was he still ashamed of her, she wondered now, trying to stave off the hurt it caused. Or did he think it a temporary madness that he didn’t want to share with his closest friend?

“I wouldn’t have had to disturb your connubial bliss,” Dmitri drawled completely unaffected by Stavros’s rising temper, “if you had not done the disappearing act on me. I had to half seduce your location out of your poor secretary. Very uncharacteristic of you, Stavros. Your staff is petrified that you might be dying.”

Stavros turned to her. “Do you want to get dressed, Leah?”

“She should hear this. I wouldn’t have barged in just for anything, Stavros.”

“What is it, Dmitri?”

“Alex Ralston showed up on my yacht today. My security tried to grab him but they weren’t successful.”

Suddenly cold, Leah shivered. Throwing his arm around her, Stavros pulled her into his warm body.

Alex had been Calista’s on-and-off boyfriend. “Alex…you sent him to jail after Calista…”

“We found that he was the one selling drugs that day. He had a long record of possession and substance abuse,” Dmitri replied while Stavros remained stubbornly silent.

“I thought you did that because…” The words trailed off Leah’s lips as she realized how absurd she sounded.

Alex had been the one who had given them to Calista? Charming, easygoing Alex? And in contrast, Stavros had seemed such a monster in her head.

“Get dressed, Leah. Let me talk to Dmitri alone.”

She was so much in panic that she didn’t even say a word. Something flickering in his eyes, Dmitri hugged her, sheet and nakedness and all.

After all these years, what did Alex want now?