by Tara Pammi
He should leave her, every instinct warned him. He should walk away when all she was capable of was piercing him with her acerbic words. He should be done with her, set her free and not look back.
And yet, he couldn’t have walked away if his very breath had depended on it.
Beneath his duty toward Giannis and his sense of responsibility toward her, even beneath his unnerving attraction to her, something very strange had begun to flutter in him for Leah.
He was in awe of that feeling as much as he was wary of it.
“What else do you intend to put me through in this test of yours, Stavros?”
Everything about what he had seen tonight troubled him. “Leah, was your hatred of me reason enough to keep away from Giannis?”
The wariness slowly dissipated as she held his gaze and finished her drink. Something new dawned in her glittering gaze—a satisfaction, and his breath rattled. One long leg stretching in front of her, her stance loosened. Her slender shoulders squared, her nostrils flared.
“I would let you think that if I thought it would hurt you. I would do anything right this moment if I thought it would make you bleed.”
He found himself walking toward her, found himself straddling the lounger to face her. It was as though the combination of pain and fury in her eyes tugged at him.
She looked glorious, infinitely breathtaking.
She had already somehow pierced him, the truth lingered on his lips. The thought of that vulnerability, of sharing that much with her made his gut clench.
Clasping her cheek, he lifted her to face him, his pulse pounding in his veins. The sound of her sharp breath was like a balm to him. “Are you so thirsty for my blood then, pethi mou?”
“Yes.”
Her resounding answer sent a shiver through to his very bones. It was as though seeing Giannis had peeled off that facade of hers.
“Are you satisfied, Stavros? Have I risen in my worthiness in your eyes?”
The thunderous roar of his heart, the curling heat in his muscles made it harder for him to whisper the one question that had been battering at him all day. He felt as if a huge truth was within his grasp, as if the real Leah was within his reach. And in that moment, he would do anything to have it.
To have her, to know her, to feel her...
If he had her, would the strange turmoil inside him stop?
“When has my opinion of you begun to matter, Leah?” he whispered softly, the words burning on his lips.
He felt her instant recoil in the stillness of her form, in the way the very air around her seemed to suspend and freeze.
A violent energy burst from her limbs. Lifting the hem of that heavy, voluminous dress away from her legs, she faced him. A flash of a toned thigh met his gaze and he looked away guiltily, the depth of his hunger for her shredding his control.
Her hair whipped around her face, the swish of her dress adding to the harsh exhales of her breath.
The uncaring mask back in place, she mocked him with that practiced glare in her eyes, with that biting edge to her tone. By hiding from him what he so desperately wanted to see.
“You know what, Stavros? Scratch that answer. I don’t care whether I could hurt you or not. I don’t give a damn about you. I did what you asked of me, I made sure Giannis is happy. I played the part of an heiress and his loving granddaughter to the hilt. Which means I’m one step closer to achieving my freedom. That’s what I care about.
“Tell me what will make the next month go faster so that I can see the back of you. Tell me what is next so that I never have to talk to you ever again.”
A dangerous fire burst in his belly.
How dare she put on this mask again? How dare she deny him even the merest hint of the real her? How dare she sink under his skin and yet deny him the same satisfaction?
How dare she turn him into this man teetering on the edge of his control, and walk away so blithely?
Before she could get to her feet and escape, because he had no doubt that she was about to escape, he clasped her wrist and tugged her down.
She fell onto her haunches, her shoulders knocking against his chest. For the first time in his life, Stavros gave in to every irrational urge, every desperate want. “What are you afraid of, Leah? Me or yourself?” he taunted.
Primal satisfaction pounded through him, the increasing frenzy of her movements telling him he had hit the mark. “I’m not afraid of you,” she said, twisting her upper body to get away from him. Ended up torturing him further with the slide of her body against his.
“Then face me, Leah,” he whispered, driven by some reckless urge to prove that his opinion mattered to her, that he mattered to her.
Just as she was beginning to matter to him...
* * *
She couldn’t let him touch her, she couldn’t let him kiss her.
If she let him touch her tonight, if she let him hold her tonight, something inside her would break. She would pour out the whole wretched truth, she would blurt how lonely she had been...
If she let him see the real her, she would have no shield, no armor against him. And even in the fragility of her emotions, Leah knew she couldn’t let Stavros close.
“Why are you acting like this?”
Her arms ached with the effort it took to hold herself so stiffly in the circle of his body; every inch of her hurt to stay unaffected in the warmth of his rough embrace.
“Like a man acts with his wife?”
She fought back stupidly hot tears, knowing that she didn’t stand a chance against that claim.
When she pushed against his wrists again, he grabbed her hands this time. Laced her fingers through his and pulled her forward. Her hip touched his rock-hard thigh and she bit down on her lip.
Giving up her struggle, she leaned her forehead against his shoulder. “What do you want from me?”
“All I’ve ever wanted is the truth, pethi mou.” His fingers circled her nape with a possessively delicate touch. Her heart thudded as if it would thunder out of her chest as she raised her head. Molten heat filled his eyes. “But you won’t give me that. So, I will claim what I can of you.”
Somehow she shook her head, even mesmerized by how low and silky he sounded, by how astonishingly expressive his face was.
How had she always seen only one facet of Stavros?
There were so many sensations—the rough texture of his hands against hers, his bruising grip on her wrists, the sudden heaviness of her breasts as they jutted against him, the beckoning hardness of his thighs against her hips—she should have expired from so much sensory input. It was as though her body was one pealing, pulsing mass of sensation...
He was everything she ever wanted and yet she couldn’t give in. “I don’t want this. I...”
“In this, you’re not a good liar.” He placed a finger on the pulse at her neck, feral satisfaction filling his gaze. “Your pulse betrays you...your darkening eyes betray you.” With every word he said, his accent became thicker, her breaths came faster. “Even your mouth betrays you...” His long fingers framed her cheeks, pulling her closer.
Her hips nudged his thighs apart, and the hottest sensation zigzagged through her. His thighs were so hard and powerful, his touch possessive and potent.
How was she supposed to resist him when he looked at her like that?
“I will not be your wife soon. I won’t—”
He smiled then, and the sinful curve of his mouth, the dark laughter in his eyes undid the last layer of her willpower. “Now, tonight, in this moment, you’re still mine, yineka mou. One kiss for all the trouble you have caused me, Leah, one kiss for everything you deny me...”
He had turned her life upside down, and now he was doing the same to her heart.
Even as he staked his claim, he didn�
��t take the kiss. Long lashes hiding his gaze, his arm around her waist a heavy weight, he paused. But sinking under a deluge of emotions, Leah stared, transfixed, at the bow shape of his leanly sculpted mouth, felt need trump every fear.
Covering the last millimeter, she pressed her mouth to his. His savage growl shocked her as much as the incinerating texture of his lips...
His mouth was hot and hard, and a million sparks exploded under her skin.
With erotic strokes, he left her no air to breathe, gave her no room to think. Sensation exploded as he slanted his lips this way and that, his fingers in her hair holding her immobile for him. Teeth bit into her lower lip and punished. When she moaned, he softly blew at the spot before nipping again.
One hand slid over her hips, moved possessively over to her buttocks and then pulled her closer until she was straddling him. But not close enough for her to feel the part of him that she wanted to...
Even that, he controlled.
Her breasts felt full and aching as he crushed her against the wall of his chest with a palm at the base of her back. She panted, her breath balling up in her throat. Trembling, she ran her fingers over her mouth, and her cheek where his stubble had scratched her skin.
That mouth that could lacerate her with words, God, it could weave such erotic magic...those hands that had dumped cold water on her, they could evoke such heat in her; the cradle of his arms, it made her feel so alive...
He didn’t kiss softly, he didn’t seduce, he didn’t cajole.
He wrung the response out of her as he did everything else with her. Impinging his will on her senses, imprinting his hard muscles over her soft ones... The way he ruled her life, the way he decided what she needed.
She could have spent the next hundred years wedged against his hardness, lost in his kiss, delirious with the pleasure he brought her. But not let him tell her what she needed, not accept what he deigned to give her.
No!
In that, she couldn’t let him decide her fate, couldn’t let fear rule her.
Determined to give him a fight, determined to demand her due, she pulled her mouth away from his, trailed it along that hard jawline, buried it in the crook of his neck. Tasted the salty tang of his skin. An insistent pull began at her sex, and she moaned against his bristly jaw.
His grip loosened in her hair, his other hand loosely anchoring her against him as she caressed him roughly, learned every muscle and sinew.
She touched him everywhere, reveling in the tensile hardness of him. Traced up his rock-hard thighs, up toward his groin. And her palm found his erection—hard and long and so utterly arousing... Her breath jerked in her throat.
She had done this to Stavros. The harsh rhythm of his breath in her ears, that incredible stillness of him around her...
Goaded by a clamoring instinct, she shaped him with her palm, moved her finger down the length of him, a shiver spewing in her own muscles.
A guttural sound fell from his lips as he bucked against her hand. It lasted an infinitesimal breath but she knew he had almost surrendered then, that he had lost his rules, his very control then.
Only a second but it was still a victory.
He clasped her wrist in a vise-like grip. She looked up at him and smiled, feeling dazedly powerful, painfully glorious.
In this moment, with him...any pain would have been worth it.
Dark color filled his cheeks, his gaze haunted, agonized. “Why do you push me to the very edge, Leah?” His accent was coarse and uneven as he breathed the words into her temple. “Why do you fight me, deny me every step of the way?”
“Did you not like how I responded, Stavros?” she said shivering, and for a second, he clasped her in his warmth. If he had showed her tenderness...no, this was better. “You forced me to...to respond, just as you force me into everything. That kiss was about domination, not desire, not about taking tenderness.”
He studied her, his own gaze curiously empty. “And if I had asked?” Shaking his head, he stepped away from her. As if he didn’t want her answer. When he met her gaze again, his expression was shuttered. “You’re not wearing your ring.”
“It’s somewhere in my jewelry.”
“As long as you’re still bound to me, you will wear it.”
She stared in stunned silence.
“It would please Giannis too. And that matters to you, doesn’t it, Leah? So I don’t have to worry that you would talk about our little deal with him.”
“And when I’m...when I win our deal?” she forced the words out through the knot in her throat. That she would never see him again was like a lead weight in her chest.
“You will not abandon him, I know that.” Retribution, if she did, rang in his tone. “And I will continue to take care of the one man who means the world to me.”
* * *
Stavros left Leah without looking back, the image of her swollen mouth and dazed eyes burned into his brain forever. If he stayed another minute, he didn’t know what he would do.
He was unknown to himself the way he had reached for her, the way he craved her. In that moment, he had so desperately needed to claim something of her. Shuddering with frustrated desire, he wondered if she had given him anything that he hadn’t taken, wondered why it mattered so much, now.
One of these days, he would be releasing her from their marriage. He knew it as surely as the taste of her still floated on his lips.
Yet, instead of anticipating his freedom, all he suddenly knew was a keen urgency.
To understand Leah, to steal a part of her for himself even as she denied him.
CHAPTER NINE
WHY HAD HE kissed her?
The question haunted Leah endlessly.
What had driven her into giving in so easily?
If she closed her eyes, she could still hear his harsh breath, his softly spoken words...
Her fingers shook and her scissors slipped on the fabric. With a frustrated cry, Leah threw the scissors across the room and fingered the silk gently.
The sheer tulle she was cutting for the underskirt of the wedding gown was the most expensive fabric that she had ordered for her collection. At least, the amount of cloth she had ruined was minimal.
Carefully, she folded the fabric and tucked the tissue wrapping around it. She wasn’t going to get anything that needed focus done today.
More than a week had passed since the night of the party. The next evening, Stavros had left. She had had a feeling he had left because of the kiss.
There was something new—an intensity to his gaze now when he looked at her.
Walking to the rack, she took a cocktail dress in deep red. Threading the needle, she sat down on the couch and began piping the hem.
She was glad she had persuaded Stavros to have most of her materials packed and sent to her grandfather’s estate. Her grandfather tired easily and without her work to keep her busy, she would have driven herself mad thinking of Stavros the whole time.
The sheer arrogance of the man, the clinical coldness with which he had made her respond—she had whimpered like a dog, for God’s sake... Even that couldn’t stop her from trembling every time she remembered the feel of his rough mouth, the bite of his teeth into her lower lip, the way his large hands skimmed and molded her body...
It had been her first kiss and it had been an exercise in... What? A war of wills? A balm to his ego? Or had he been as powerless as her?
Frustration carved through her.
She wanted to hate him, she did hate him for that cold resolve...but he also made her feel so alive. Lost in his kiss, drowning in his arms, there had been no place for fear, no place for hiding.
Nothing but living...
When he looked at her with such glittering desire in his tawny eyes, when he looked at her as if she c
ould unlock something inside him...it was so easy to believe that he saw her as an equal.
Which was the stupidest thing ever given that he was with his lover in Athens attending a charity event right now... He was probably back in her bed too, she thought nastily and gasped as she pricked her finger with the needle.
The good thing was how much work she had gotten done and the time she had spent with Giannis.
After an excruciating couple of days, Giannis had finally taken pity on her and asked her to show him a dress from her collection. He had pronounced her dress beautiful and her, an extremely talented designer who would take the fashion industry by storm. Making dresses was in their blood, he had said with pride. While his praise had been extravagantly effusive, it had still filled her with warmth.
So every day, she took breakfast and lunch with him, then accompanied him on a short walk around the house. Sometimes, they played a board game that he taught her, and sometimes, they discussed her designs. They carefully kept away from talking about Stavros and the state of her marriage.
After being afraid for so long, after training herself to not get attached to him, forming such a strong emotional bond should have been hard to do in just a few days. But spending one of those yawningly long Greek afternoons chatting with Giannis, or just sitting together in comfortable silence, or the times he would nap and she would sit with her sketchpad on the back terrace, had become incredibly precious to her.
Her grandfather was irreverent, naughty, and kind.
As the sweltering days gave way to cooler nights, her fears melted away and like the leaves slowly changing color, an incredible sense of joy pervaded her. It was so alien that she had taken to staring at herself in the mirror, wondering if it made her look different.
As her cell phone chirped, she realized it was time for lunch with Giannis.
The time that Stavros had stipulated she spend with Giannis was rapidly coming to an end, and suddenly, saying goodbye to her grandfather, even temporarily, was the last thing Leah wanted to do.
Stavros was avoiding her, she knew as surely as her heart thumped when he called every evening and asked about Giannis.
