Mediterranean Mavericks: Greeks

“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.

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.”