by Tara Pammi
Was she so completely and irrevocably only a responsibility that he didn’t think he was cheating on her?
Standing up from his chair, he extended a hand to her. “I’m sure I can convince her to give us ten minutes before the show begins.” He stood tall and broad and incredibly handsome in front of her. His gaze was on her mouth; he was thinking about their kiss, she knew. Because it was impossible not to think about it. “But I need something from you in return, Leah.”
The soft intonation of her name stole her breath.
He had changed toward her if he was asking and not commanding. And whatever the reason, he was even more irresistible and dangerous now.
The judging, dominating Stavros, she could hate. This insightful, approachable Stavros...she didn’t stand a chance.
Spending a few days with Giannis and amassing a lifetime of memories was one thing. But tangling with Stavros, who would demand everything she had to give and more, who would bare her body and soul...she couldn’t risk the pain of knowing him and then losing him.
“What,” she finally managed.
“I will ask you some questions before the event. If I get a truthful answer, I will introduce you to Helene.”
“Anything else I can do instead?” The moment the words were out of her mouth, she wanted to snatch them back.
He only stared at her with that intensity again. “If you won’t tell me the truth, then how about a kiss?”
“You’ve already proved that I...I can’t resist you. There is no reason for you to kiss me anymore.”
He pushed a stray tendril of hair back from her forehead. And she stood very still in the wake of sensations that small touch aroused. “There is a reason.”
“What?”
“That I wish to. It is only when I kiss you that I know you, Leah.”
Warmth pooled in her belly, every word out of his sensuous mouth a caress and a promise. “What happened to that phenomenal willpower of yours that had the rest of us quaking in our boots?”
Laughter—hearty, gorgeous, and spine-tingling, enveloped her. “In this case, I have decided not to employ it.
“You can see Helene, Leah, but you shall have to give me your truths or your kisses. The choice is yours.”
How very neatly he had trapped her, how very stupid she had been in challenging fate when she had said Stavros knew nothing but duty. His words now were honeyed, so damn seductive that her heart thudded. “What if I asked you questions?”
“But I have never lied to you. However, if you ask me a question and I do not tell the truth, you are free to kiss me, as much as you want to.”
“Thanks but no thanks,” Leah managed to say, past the whooshing of her heart.
Turning away from him, she ran back to the sanctuary of her workroom, wondering what had suddenly unleashed this facet of Stavros.
Her wedding gown wasn’t done, but she had three other dresses she could take with her for tomorrow. Swiftly, she removed the dresses from their plastic bags and looked them over for anything to fix.
Countless hours later, she wrapped them back in the hanging bags and zipped them up.
Her heart thudded as she pulled another dress, a dress she had made for herself almost a year ago. The design had literally begged to be borne onto paper, and she had finished it in less than a week.
It was simply cut yet daring, a dress that would say all the right things about its designer. In the end, she decided to brave it out and wear it tomorrow night.
Brave because tomorrow night was going to be dangerous in so many ways that she wanted to turn the time back to a couple of months ago when it had been just her and the apartment and her blistering hatred of him...
Whatever truth he was hunting, it wouldn’t be anything she’d want to tell. Which left her to face his kisses...
Running a comb through her messy hair, Leah stilled. A glimmering energy in her gaze, her pulse beating with a frenzied clamor, she looked like a stranger.
She looked almost happy.
CHAPTER TEN
HE WAS GOING to lose in his own game, Stavros decided ruefully as Leah walked down the steps of the house the next evening.
A game the likes of which he had never before thought of.
He was still amazed at how easily Leah made him laugh, tease, even think of absurd scenarios just for a chance to touch her.
Thin, almost flimsy straps at her shoulders held up the black dress. The hem of the dress, startlingly white, ended high above her knees in the front but fell to her ankles at the back.
Animal-print pumps showed toned calves when she walked down the steps.
All in all, the dress was simply elegant. Or so he thought until she moved, waiting against his Maserati.
A flash of creamy thigh greeted his greedy gaze. The clinging material outlined her braless breasts when she took another step. A sudden breeze highlighted the tips of her nipples as she neared him.
Pure, liquid lust hit him hard, and every muscle in his body tightened, readying for pleasure.
Begging, at this point, if he was honest.
Smoky shadow and dark red lipstick turned her face from pretty to siren... Thick glorious waves framed her fragile features... Her cheeks were pinkened by the time she stood in front of him...
Was that his perusal that had done this to her? Would she tell the truth when he asked or would she prefer to be kissed?
Cristos, he would never even want truth this way. All he would want was to kiss her again and again.
Because he didn’t know what was the right step anymore. He didn’t know where his duty ended and his need for her began...he didn’t know if he was making reparations for the mistake he had made or if he just wanted to see her smile for his own selfish reasons...
For the first time in his life, Stavros was lost, didn’t care about right or wrong. Only how startlingly alive he felt when he was with Leah.
“Hey,” she said, reaching him.
He nodded, still absorbing the effect of her smile. She looked excited, almost happy, and he felt like he had done something right for the first time in so long.
She pointed to the top of the stairs. “So I packed up some of my collection...will you help bring it to the car?”
Inordinately pleased that she was flustered at seeing him, he halted her with a hand on her arm. “You look gorgeous.”
She blinked, and then looked at him almost shyly. “Thanks, it’s one of my own designs.”
“It’s insubstantial, sophisticated and outrageously sexy. I figured out that much.”
* * *
By the time they had arrived at the venue, Leah couldn’t sit still, much less think straight. And the pleasant conversation with Stavros, the way his gaze lingered over her mouth for a fraction of a second longer every time she turned toward him, it was like she was being pumped with a bit of electricity.
The powerful Maserati crawled to a stop at a centuries-old hotel and a uniformed valet immediately ran up to them. The locks turned on with a click on the doors. Frowning, she turned toward him. “What is it?”
“Time for my first question, pethi mou.”
“What...now?” The intensity in his expression sent tingles up and down her body. “Stavros, I’m going to show my collection to a group of intimidating professionals who make or break designers on a whim. This is not the time for some silly game that I lose whichever way—”
“Why? Do you have so much to hide?”
That shut her up promptly. “Fine,” she said, bracing herself for a lacerating question.
“My estate, what did you truly think of it?”
“Austere and isolated, like you.” The lie was so automatic, so swift that only after hearing it in the lush interior of the powerful vehicle did she realize that she had
said it.
His gaze instantly fell to her mouth. “Liar.”
In a movement that was like slow motion, he wrapped his hand around her nape and slanted his lips over hers. The gear shift dug into her side, her torso was twisted to the side, but the hot taste of Stavros’s mouth...it numbed her to everything else but him.
There was no soft seduction in this kiss, no gentle erosion of her senses. No intent to dominate or control...only to take pleasure...
He pressed and licked, sucked and stroked, made love to her mouth with such raw passion that Leah couldn’t breathe.
Gasping for breath, moaning in the back of her throat, she wrapped her fingers around his nape. A blistering heat spread through her, pooling at her sex as his large hand caressed her knee, climbing up her thigh...
His mouth trailed wet heat over her jaw. Sucked at the pulse at her neck. An arrow of sensation went straight to her sex and she squirmed in frustration. “God, please...”
Those devilish lips opened against her skin and she felt his smile. “I would like nothing but to continue, gaelika mou...”
Her forehead flopped against his shoulders, her lungs burning for breath. “Fine, I lied. I...love that estate. It’s the most beautiful, most peaceful place I have ever seen in the world. Even Giannis’s estate cannot compare against such simple, stark beauty.”
His silence reverberated in the interior, the remnants of lust making the tawny irises wide. “Now I wish I had shown you my bedroom.”
Their gazes collided and Leah shifted in her seat, unbearable to be in her own skin. The rub of her thighs when she crossed her legs, the rasp of her dress against her nipples, every inch of her sparked with awareness. It was like the powerful car they were sitting in. She was all revved up by that kiss and yet, there was no relief.
All evening, this was what he was going to do to her. No wonder he had looked so damn interested in taking her.
How, despite all her efforts to the contrary, was it that Stavros always ended up with all the power? “You’re enjoying torturing me like this, aren’t you?” she whispered.
The locks on the door opened with a click. “It’s very little compared to the torture you put me through all these years, pethi mou.”
Having nothing suitable to contest that with, Leah stepped out of the car on legs that could barely hold her up.
Her dress bags draped over his shoulder casually, Stavros caught her. “Smile, Leah. The world’s not going to know what’s hit them when they see your creations.”
With her hand over his arm, she stopped him. There was nothing but sincerity in his expression. “I would not jest over something that is so important to you, Leah.”
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 He
lene? 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...”