“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.