LITMIR.BIZ

      Leah’s soft cries haunted Stavros as he paced room after room, trying to find her. More than two hours had passed since he had left her with Giannis and rejoined the party, his thoughts in a whirl.

      When Giannis had brought him to this very mansion years ago, it had taken him a month to learn the layout of the house. Now he cursed it.

      His nurse had just informed him that Giannis had returned to his bedroom an hour ago. Which meant Leah could be anywhere.

      A sense of failure haunted him, a gnawing in his gut just as in the days after Calista had died. Had he pushed her too far tonight? Why had she cried as though her heart had been breaking?

      Her reaction to seeing Giannis shook Stavros on levels he couldn’t grasp.

      He finally found her in the dark music room, a shadow sitting in silence. Ioanthe used to play piano here, he remembered Giannis telling him fondly.

      Stepping inside, he flicked the switch on and light from the overhead crystal chandelier flooded the room.

      His chest swelled with a sudden surge of emotion as his gaze found her on the chaise longue, her legs tucked under her, her dress billowing around her.

      “I wouldn’t comment on the wine bottle, or my dress or how I live my life just now, Stavros.” She flicked him a wary glance, guilty color streaking her cheeks. A bottle of red wine sat on the vanity table, a half empty glass in her hand. “I’m painfully alive, so that should be good enough for you.”

      His breath came out in shuddering exhale, old fear lurking just beneath the surface.

      Her hair had come undone from the severe style she hadn’t liked, framing her face in disarray. Her eyes looked a little swollen and that laughing, mocking, sensuous mouth was pinched at the corners. Face scrubbed of makeup and huddled against the dark red upholstery, she looked achingly innocent, and lonely. And afraid, he thought frowning.

      “Are you hiding from me, Leah?”

      Her sigh rattled in the silence. “Would it help my case if I said I was?”

      Irritation flickered inside him. Couldn’t she tell him even such a tiny truth?

      Even the proper, demure dress had lost its war against her. Crumpled and stained at the hem where she must have been kneeling while one strap hung half down her arm, it bared her neck and the upper swell of one breast. The diamond choker glittered against her slender throat.

      A relentless peal of hunger began to simmer through him. His fingers itched to trace that delicate collarbone, his mouth tingling to press against the pulse hammering at the base of her throat.

      But even as desire ran rampant in his veins, it was the underlying thread of tenderness that unsettled him. He should have been happy that she had done as he had asked, that she hadn’t hurt Giannis as she had…hurt him? Wounded him?

       You are made of stone.

      How had her words found such purchase in him? Another new awareness that only Leah could elicit, another new territory that she pushed him into…

      Theos, what was wrong with him?

      Tucking his hands in the pockets of his trousers, he leaned against the doorway.

      “You don’t look like my version of you anymore. You look like…you. Even that dress…I think you have bent it to your will, Leah.”

      “I’m glad to hear that,” she said, sounding anything but. “Aren’t you done pulling my strings tonight?”

      The dare in her tone would have made him smile if he could have believed it completely. If he hadn’t heard the quiver she worked hard to suppress. If he hadn’t seen such ache and longing ravage her fragile face when she had seen Giannis.

      Still, he played along, unsure of her mood. Even more dangerous, unsure of his own intentions. “Have you still not learned not to challenge me, Leah?”

      She looked down into her drink and he had a feeling she wanted to hide from him. That she didn’t want him to see her like this at all.

      “I’m telling you to leave me alone, Stavros.” She confirmed his suspicions. “I’m telling you that I feel as reckless and deranged as you have always called me. I’m telling you to not dissect my actions today and pronounce judgment.”

      Even as her tone rose, she still didn’t meet his eyes.

       Had he made it so hard for her to show him anything but that selfish facade? Was he truly such an unfeeling monster then?

       Had he always been like that?

      He had worked so hard at his grandfather’s small farm, trying to pitch in for his father’s negligence, afraid that they would throw Calista and him out on the streets.

      He remembered a strange calm the night his grandmother had said his mother wasn’t coming back; he remembered not shedding even a tear when he had found out that his father was dead. All he had thought of even that day was how he would shield Calista from it.

      For as far back as he could remember, it had been about the little girl that had followed him around from the moment she had been able to walk, hugging him, kissing him, and coming to him with tears when she had a bruise, knocking the breath out of him.

      She had had such trust in her eyes that he hadn’t known, literally, what to do with it. Hadn’t known how to return those hugs, hadn’t known what he could say to her. So instead he had done what he could.

      He had protected her, provided her with everything he possibly—

      Theos, no!

      The thought that had always brought such comfort to him now flayed him, digging in, making him flinch in pain.

       Do you actually miss Calista? Did you ever love her?

      Had Leah been right in her cruel judgment of his feelings for Calista too?

      After he had lost Calista, he had felt angry, confused, unbalanced. His failure poisoned his very thoughts, so he shoved them away and focused on his actions instead.

      Protecting Leah, and punishing himself and her, had provided him with perverse relief.

      Now, her words taking root inside him, he felt raw.

      He should leave her, every instinct warned him. He should walk away when all she was capable of was piercing him with her acerbic words. He should be done with her, set her free and not look back.

      And yet, he couldn’t have walked away if his very breath had depended on it.

      Beneath his duty toward Giannis and his sense of responsibility toward her, even beneath his unnerving attraction to her, something very strange had begun to flutter in him for Leah.

      He was in awe of that feeling as much as he was wary of it.

      “What else do you intend to put me through in this test of yours, Stavros?”

      Everything about what he had seen tonight troubled him. “Leah, was your hatred of me reason enough to keep away from Giannis?”

      The wariness slowly dissipated as she held his gaze and finished her drink. Something new dawned in her glittering gaze—a satisfaction, and his breath rattled. One long leg stretching in front of her, her stance loosened. Her slender shoulders squared, her nostrils flared.

      “I would let you think that if I thought it would hurt you. I would do anything right this moment if I thought it would make you bleed.”

      He found himself walking toward her, found himself straddling the lounger to face her. It was as though the combination of pain and fury in her eyes tugged at him.

      She looked glorious, infinitely breathtaking.

      She

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