“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.