Mediterranean Mavericks: Greeks

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?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

STAVROS HAD BEEN expecting something to strike at the haze in which he had been living for the past month. Something that would wake him up from the dreamlike state he had been functioning in with Leah. Something so painfully real, so achingly raw, it was bound to end.

He expected the novelty of making love to her to wear off. He expected the high of being around her, the high that came with her laughter, with her irreverent humor, with how easily she gave of herself and how possessively she demanded of him, to end at some point.

He expected the amazing light and joy that had pervaded him, even as he had tried to tether and control it, to fizzle out.

Because life didn’t work like that, did it? At least, not his.

It didn’t carry so much joy, so much laughter, so many emotions that had overthrown him the last month. It never had such gnawing hunger, such desperate need to grasp what he could, such panic-ridden drive to control it so that he didn’t become its slave.

But he didn’t think it would come in such a way. He hadn’t thought it would rip his heart out like this and leave him gasping.

That it would wreak on him an avalanche of hurt and inadequacy and pain.

He had thought Dmitri uncharacteristically foolish to even indulge Alex Ralston’s demand to talk to Stavros. Yet, he had just disconnected the call with Alex, a video call that the thug had insisted on.

Nausea whirled in his gut at the things Alex had said about Calista. It was like hearing stories about a stranger, not his sister at all.

All he had known of Calista had been a front, a lie. A lie that had been neatly supported by Leah for so many years. Because Leah had known it all.

And in the sinking morass of his grief, that betrayal cut the deepest. Leah had known and hadn’t whispered a word to him. Even when he had asked it of her.

“Stavros?” Dmitri nudged him.

“Locate him, Dmitri.” He stood up with such force that the desk rattled. “He can’t go to the media with this. Theos, this is Calista… I don’t want her name besmirched like this.”

“I will stop him. Stavros…it’s not your fault. Calista…whatever Ralston told you about her, you couldn’t have known. You did everything you could to help her.”

“I should have known. All along, she had so many problems and I…” A growl escaped his throat.

“Have you ever thought that some of us are beyond help, Stavros? Too broken to be fixed? Giannis said she was just a child when your mother walked out. Whatever Calista needed, you didn’t have it.”

“She needed to be loved, Dmitri. And I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know how. Not then, not now.”

He was the one in pain, and yet Dmitri looked pale. He kept shaking his head as if he could see into Stavros’s head. “Her behavior is not your fault.”

“I wish I could forgive myself as easily as you, Dmitri,” he said, hating himself, hating Dmitri for being so understanding.

He couldn’t numb the gnawing in his gut as the truth solidified. He had never had what it took to begin with.

Was that why he had clung so tightly to doing what was right? Because he hadn’t possessed, hadn’t ever known, his heart?

Beneath Leah’s betrayal, beneath the shock of learning his sister’s truth, only one thing remained.

You are made of stone.

How right Leah had been… If he had ever known it once, he didn’t remember. He didn’t know if he had buried it deep so that his parents’ indifference, their negligence didn’t hurt.

He had never understood Calista, never saw past the facade his sister presented because he had never understood her fears, her pain, her joy. Every time she had mentioned their parents, every time she had expressed her confusion, he had only pushed her to move on, had brushed her away believing that they were better off without them.

Because he hadn’t wanted to dwell on it, because it would mean acknowledging all the wrongs they had done to them, it would mean letting them be a part of who they were.

Again and again, he had closed himself off to her grief, her pain. Until she had decided that he would never understand? Until she had decided, like Leah, that he didn’t have the capability to understand? The capability to love?

In the end, his parents had robbed him of everything.

Even if he forgave Leah’s lies, what did he possess to give her? How long before she would realize the truth? How long before she realized that he had never known and would never understand love?

That he would never know how to give it and take it.

It was two hours before Stavros returned to their suite, two hours in which Leah had become half-crazy wondering what was going on. One look in his eyes, and her heart skidded to her gut.

“Pack your bags. You’re catching a flight to New York in a few hours.”

“What? The fashion week isn’t for another fortnight…”

He stood only a foot away, yet it could have been a thousand miles. Why wouldn’t he look at her?

“It is better for you in New York rather than here with Ralston around. Apparently, he’s very much interested in hearing how I’ve mistreated you.”

“But all my stuff is…” She stopped, his words slowly registering with her.

His cell phone rang and he looked at her finally. “I will ensure that Rosa packs up your stuff with utmost care.”

Rosa was going to pack her stuff, she was going to leave for New York…

Leah stared at the empty space he left behind for a few seconds. The shock slowly blunted, bringing in its wake utter panic.

Throat dangerously close to tears, she found him in the study that offered a breathtaking view of the Eiffel Tower.

He was on the phone, listening, but his gaze stayed on her face. And that’s when Leah noticed the white pallor to his skin.

She would have welcomed his blistering contempt, or even his lacerating fury. But the resignation in his gaze… As if he had lost something precious. As if he had finally given up.

The minute he disconnected the call, she stepped inside.

“If he comes for me, he has to get through you, doesn’t he?” she demanded, anger coming to her rescue. She wouldn’t let him treat her like this again. Not after the last month.