“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.