Claimed For His Duty (Greek Tycoons Tamed Book 1)(22)

No, he wouldn’t, she realized. Whatever he decided her fate to be in the end, she would always have his support in this too.

God, how had she always been the one with such tunnel vision? How easily she had chosen to hate him, had chosen to see only the surface of him?

“How can you be so sure that I will succeed?”

“All these years, you have hidden so many things from me, and even from yourself, maybe? But when I enter your workroom, I feel all your energy, your passion. I see all of you, Leah. Such pure passion—” his gaze flicked to her mouth “—people can’t help but fall in love with it.”

Throwing her arms around him, Leah kissed his cheek on an impulse. The fact that a man of such willpower and discipline as Stavros believed in her dream just made her day perfect. That a man like him belonged to her, at least for tonight, it made her blood pound.

* * *

Stavros handed over Leah to Helene and accepted a glass of champagne from a waiter. The expression on Leah’s face when they had entered the huge, buzzing auditorium, her exclamations as she noticed and pointed out one fashion icon after another, it had been a delight to see.

The soft touch of her lips on his cheek, he could still feel it. Her mouth had been such heaven under his and knowing that all he had to do was push his hands under that hem, that he could bare her and feast his eyes on her...it had taken him everything to bite down the urge to make love to her right there in the car.

The banquet hall where they were serving pre-show drinks and hors d’oeuvres was overflowing with designers and actresses and fashion icons, one more gorgeous than the next. And yet it was Leah his gaze followed hungrily as she flitted through the long hall, her dress sinuously draping her lithe curves.

After a while, he walked through the crowd, found her and introduced her to some more people he knew. A bittersweet feeling filled him as she introduced herself as Leah Huntington with a wary glance at him.

But, whatever his own seesawing feelings when it came to her, he found he couldn’t begrudge her the need to be herself, tonight of all times.

She returned to his side in the auditorium a quarter of an hour before the runway show was about to begin.

Her brown eyes glittered with a joy he had rarely, if ever, seen. “Now that it’s too late, I’m so beginning to see the benefits of being your wife.” Her words were rushed, falling over each other. “Damn, you have some pull, man.”

He was as committed to his vows as he had ever been, if not more. He arrested the words, remembering how hurt she had been when he had mocked their marriage once.

And that he was utterly serious didn’t bear thinking about.

He grabbed a plate from a passing waiter. “Would you like to eat something?”

She didn’t wait for his reply. Reaching him, she grabbed his hand and directed the little flaky pastry into her mouth. Licked the tips of his fingers, her pink mouth closing around one. Lust hit him so quickly that he was achingly hard within seconds.

It was like a haze fell over his senses and all he could see, all he could hear was Leah. Grabbing her wrist, he pulled her behind a long column. Took her mouth in a feral kiss. Cupped her breast, covering her possessively as he had wanted to do all evening.

The rasp of her rigid nipple against his palm made him growl in the back of his throat. He dug his teeth into her lower lip. Her whimper of pain even as she clung to him stopped him. Breathing raggedly, he wondered how easily she undid him.

She glared at him. “You didn’t ask a question.”

He smiled, her confusion making her even lovelier. “Do not lick a man’s fingers, sucking them into your mouth and then expect rationality, Leah.”

Cristo, what was he doing with her?

He would, he could stop at a kiss, he had thought when he had come up with this game. Now, he didn’t know anymore.

“Oh...” she licked her swollen mouth, and the innocent gesture sent his blood flowing south. “I will remember that when I’m tempted to lick a man’s fingers next time.”

The molten fury that flashed in his gaze before he willed it away made Leah want to scream in joy.

He didn’t have all the power. They both had it over each other, she slowly realized.

There was something between them that denied rational explanation, that devoured self-control.

“I’ll ask the question now.”

Brows raised, he nodded. “Ask soon, or you will miss the show.”

The simply elegant Helene’s polite face had stayed with her. His friend or lover or whatever the hell she was, the woman hadn’t betrayed surprise or shock or any emotion even by the flicker of a perfectly drawn eyebrow. Had talked to Leah as if it was any other fashion designer trying to break into the industry.

His kiss still stinging her lips, her will pretty much nonexistent, falling into bed with Stavros was like a fate rushing at her like an express train. If he hadn’t stopped any of the times, if he willed it, she couldn’t resist him, she knew.

And she refused to let him make all the rules.

“How do you...how does this work with you kissing me like this and with Helene? Are you guys taking a breather while you sort me out? What happens if you decide you want to...?”

“Yes?”

Her meager grasp on her own emotions slipping bit by bit, she shivered. Damn it, she had been so happy today and she knew it was largely because it featured him. “Don’t make me say it, Stavros.”

“Say it, Leah.”

“Does she not mind if you...if you have sex with me?”

“Do you want to, Leah...have sex with me?”

Her spine tingled at just hearing that. “That’s not the point.”

“Then isn’t the question moot, too?”

Frustration pumping through her, she pushed into his space. “You promised me truth, Stavros. If something happens between us before I leave, if...will you make one set of rules for me and a different set for yourself?”

His hands climbed up over her back, cradling her against him. “You hide from your own truth every day, Leah... Can you handle mine?”

“Yes.”

“I told you that day aboard Dmitri’s yacht that I meant my wedding vows. I have never broken them. I have not touched Helene or another woman since I married you. And I won’t. Not as long as I wear your ring, as long as I’m your husband.”

Her ring, her husband...

Her grip slacking, Leah fell back, and would have hit the ground if he hadn’t caught her. The entire axis of her life shook, shifted and she could do nothing to stop it. “You’re lying, you have to be...”

His silence jarred against her nerves.

Stavros never lied. Stavros always kept his word. Stavros lived by a code of duty and honor that was everything to him.

And she...she didn’t want to lose her will to a man like that. She didn’t want to be measured against him and fall short. Because, her fear would always trump everything else about her.

“It has been five years, Stavros. No man can—”

There was no nuance in his expression. “But I’m not any man, Leah.” He didn’t proclaim it like an achievement, he didn’t dismiss it like it hadn’t cost him anything. He stated it like a foregone fact.

“My word to Giannis means something to me. My vows to you mean something to me. It’s true that I neglected you, did not treat you like a wife, but our marriage, it was a commitment I made intending to keep. So I waited. I waited for you to grow up. I waited for you to change. I thought I had to...”

“Fix me to be worthy of you?” she said, anger coming to her defense.

“No, I thought I should give us both time...” Something gripped his features and Leah knew that he knew it. “But then you didn’t need to be changed, ne?”

So many years, she had wished she had had the courage to tell him the truth. That he would, for one second, see the real her. And yet now that he did, she felt naked, terrified.

The sudden silence in the long hall made her heart thud so much louder in her ears. The show had begun.

“I’ll miss the show,” she said, moving away. But he pulled her back. Trapped her between the pillar and his body.

“Tell me about Calista.”

Her gaze flew to him. “Stavros, I—”

His hand under her chin tilted her up. “I deserve to know the truth, Leah. If you have never used drugs, that means you didn’t introduce her to them.”

She closed her eyes, holding back tears. “No.” His silence drove her to open them again. “I went to every party you forbade me from, I drank even though most of the time I couldn’t even keep it in, I flirted with boys who didn’t care an iota about me because it would enrage you, I spent money only because you said not to, but I...I never touched drugs. I didn’t even know that crowd...” She stopped, once again, skating the line of lies. “I didn’t know where she even got it...God, if I had...”

The confusion, the guilt in Leah’s eyes far too real, Stavros didn’t need to ask her why she had never told him the truth before.

Because he wouldn’t have believed it. He had been so blind, he had been in so much pain that he had shut everyone out. Only his failure had mattered, not the why of it.

He had so conveniently blamed Leah for it, absolving Calista of any fault.

“Then why do you carry such guilt in your eyes?”