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.