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.