Mediterranean Mavericks: Greeks. Кейт Хьюит

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ here she was, on his private jet this time, ensconced in sheer luxury. Thick cream carpet that swallowed her, spacious rear cabin with a huge king bed, and the man who was turning her inside out, as always.

      Sighing, she locked her fingers in her lap when all she wanted was to sweep her fingers into the elaborate updo the stylist had twisted her hair into.

      The weight of her thick hair piled into that unceremoniously tight knot pressed against the back of her head and neck. Tension piled into her shoulders.

      When the stewardess arrived and inquired after her, she requested sparkling water and aspirin.

      “You do not feel well,” he stated in that final tone of his.

      In a movement that was as graceful as it was quick, he reached her side of the aircraft. His seat was not attached to hers yet he was far too close.

      She remained stubbornly silent, determined to win the war against herself.

      “You’ve been fidgeting uncontrollably for the past hour.”

      “If I’m disturbing you, I—”

      “Theos, Leah. For once, just answer my question.”

      “I… I don’t like this hairstyle or this dress. They make me feel like…” Closing her eyes, she leaned back against her seat. God, she couldn’t have sounded like she was ten years old if she had tried harder.

      “Like what?” his tone hovered between resigned amusement and curiosity.

      She took the water and aspirin from the stewardess and swallowed it while it watched her.

      “Answer me, Leah.”

      Fighting the urge to burrow into herself like a turtle, she said, “I look like your version of me.”

      “My version of…” He looked stunned. “Explain.”

      “In this dress and jewelry, I am Leah Sporades, the demure and dutiful wife of respected billionaire Stavros Sporades. There’s nothing of me in this. It is all you.”

      He froze and it seemed air and sound, the very matter around them froze along with him. “I do not understand.”

      “That stylist you hired, she—” she forced herself to breathe “—this is what she presented me with.”

      Frowning, he ran his gaze over the straps and over the tight ruffles of the bodice.

      Her skin warmed up as if she was a flower and he was the very sun she craved. Leah tightened her fists to stop from covering herself.

      He cleared his throat, his nostrils flaring. “I agree that it is not your usual…style.”

      She nodded, wondering why she couldn’t have just shut her mouth. Why some stupid, irrational, brazen part of her always insisted on putting herself in his line of fire. Why, even as she hated his overbearing interference, she recklessly courted it.

      “You are saying that this stylist, that someone in my staff picked, chose…this demure, dutiful little outfit,” he repeated her words, “based on how I want my wife to be presented to the world?”

      “Yes.”

      He lounged in his chair, his expression thoughtful. “Why did you give in then? You won’t even breathe air if it means following my orders.”

      “You commanded an army to help me get dressed for a party. Like any sane person would, I assumed that you hate how I dress. Just as you hate how I breathe, talk and generally conduct my life.”

      “I don’t hate how you dress. You do, somehow, own and wear the flimsiest articles of clothing of I have ever seen…”

      “That is my style as a designer—light and dreamy bohemian pieces,” she sputtered, affronted.

      “…and will probably expire either because of the sun or the cold one of these days, but you always look sexy and sophisticated.”

      Little pinpricks of heat awoke all over and her gaze flew to his. He stared right back, as if daring her to challenge his accurate and somehow intimate observation of her style. Or maybe his right to comment on it.

      The moment stretched and morphed into something else, a strange heat filling the cabin.

      Accepting defeat under the thundering boom of her heart, Leah looked away. She cleared her throat and fingered the fabric of her dress.

      “For all my sins, thee mou, I did not dictate how you should be dressed.”

      She looked up. “Then she, like everyone else in the world, rightfully believes that you are ashamed of me and decided that her job was to make me somehow worthy of you.”

      “Do not push me, yineka mou.” The glitter in his eyes pushed Leah into keeping mute. “Tell me why you relented, Leah.”

      She looked away, squirming under his leisurely scrutiny. “I’m being dutiful, cooperative…”

      The words trailed on her lips as he started laughing.

      It swelled in the decadently silent cabin, crept inside her, filling every yearning space with itself. Scraped against her senses, like a physical thing meant to incite that relentless clamoring in every cell again.

      “When you laugh, you almost look human,” she blurted out.

      “As opposed to an alien?”

      “As opposed to a man whom I’ve never seen to be anything but rigid, autocratic, and driven by duty and responsibility. When was the last time you did something because you wanted to do it and not because your lofty sense of morals said you should do it? Something that’s totally crazy but feels unbearably good? Something that devours you until you have it?”

      Lazy interest flickered in his face. Little pinpricks of desire uncurled within her. “What and when was the last time you did something like that?”

      Her throat dry, Leah licked her lips. “I ate half a cheesecake that Rosa baked for me last night. It was heavenly.”

      That tawny gaze fell to her mouth. And lingered. “Wanting to do something with an utter madness is usually a sign of why you shouldn’t.”

      Leah could very well imagine that mouth, beautifully carved and yet cruel, pressing on hers, could feel the liquid desire skitter across her skin.

      “Living like that, with no thought to the future or the people around has lasting effects, pethi mou. It’s a choice that has consequences beyond one.”

      “Like what?”

      He shrugged, something shuttering in his expression.

      “How is it that Dmitri and you are such close friends and he didn’t corrupt you at all?” Leah asked.

      “Maybe I’m incorruptible.”

      The cocky rise of his brows goaded her on. “Maybe,” СКАЧАТЬ