Julia James - Greek Mavericks - Seduced Into The Greek's World

Still, she found she couldn’t turn away. “That is... It is an incredibly nice thing to say.”

“I’m stingy and arrogant, remember? I am neither generous nor particularly nice, to hear you tell it. I am not being kind when I say these words. I am being truthful. There’s a limit to the sorts of truths you can tell in my position. There are very few things I know for certain. But this is one of them.”

He shifted the position of his hand, cupping her face, his palm warming her. Igniting her. “You are my wife. I wish to know everything about you.”

He dropped his hand away from her face, drawing it back to his side of the table. She cleared her throat nervously, shifting the cutlery on the table in front of her as a displacement activity.

“Did you go to university?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“What did you study?”

She shifted, feeling uncomfortable and edgy beneath his intense dark gaze. “I was a history major. As you’ve probably guessed, I like old things. Really, the older and dustier the better.”

“Is that a jab at my age?”

She laughed. “Um. It wasn’t, but that’s an interesting point. No, I like the smell of books, musty pages and such. Aged velvet furniture that’s always a little damp.”

“Doesn’t sound too appealing to me.”

“No. Of course not. Your room here is all modernized.”

“I like things sans dust and mold, what can I say,” he returned. “So you did your history degree.”

“No,” she said. “I went for two years. And then I stopped.”

“Why?”

“I married you.”

Her answer settled uncomfortably between them. An accusation, when she hadn’t meant it to be one.

“Which begs the question,” he said, “that I have been dying for the answer to. How old are you?”

She fiddled even more intensely with the silverware. “Twenty-three.”

“So you were twenty-one when we married.”

“Twenty. I was just shy of my birthday, and we have been married a little over two years.”

“That seems a bit too young.”

She lifted her shoulder. “My father was dying. We both knew it. Knowing that I was safe with you, knowing that we were settled brought him a lot of joy. Neither of us wanted to deny him that.”

“And then your father died and... I have been off partying. I left you here in this house by yourself with no finished degree doing...”

“You helped. When he died. You didn’t just abandon me and go to parties. You supported me. You took care of so many details when I was far too emotional to do it myself.”

The relief on his face touched something deep inside of her. “Well, that’s something.”

“And I’ve been organizing my family history. Our family tree, which stems back to the founding of the country, actually. So it’s very rich and...you know, complicated.”

“Wonderful. So I left you here to grow moldy with the old furniture you love so much. How generous of me.”

“No,” she said, her chest tight. Because it was the truth. Her father had died and Leon had returned to the exact lifestyle he had been living before their marriage. He had never touched her, not once, but he had continued to sleep with other women. She knew it. She wasn’t blind. Gossip magazines were alight with it. The poor, sad Tanner heiress and her wandering husband. But she didn’t want to tell him that. She didn’t want to tell this man that.

How strange that she did not want to disappoint him with the truth about himself.

“You are not being truthful with me.”

“I’m not entirely certain the truth is beneficial in this situation.”

He rose from his seat and came to stand in front of her before dropping to his knees. They were eye level, and he was so close she could smell the soap on his skin, could feel the warmth coming off his body. She was seized by the desire to touch him. To close the distance between them. But she didn’t. She just sat there, frozen as ever.

It turned out she didn’t have to close the distance, because he was the one to do it. He reached up, cupping her cheeks with both of his hands, drawing her face down toward him. “Then we shall make a new truth. I see no reason why we cannot make a new life. You have shared with me your dreams, and I find that I like the sound of them.”

“You aren’t working right now. You are...housebound. I am the only entertainment you have.”

His dark gaze turned stormy. “You make me sound like a child.”

In some ways, he was. In some ways, he always had been. A man with a very short attention span who was constantly on to the next toy. The newest thing, the shiniest thing. As a girl she had found it exciting. His flashy cars, his sharp wardrobe, even the beautiful women he would sometimes bring to her father’s parties. Until the sharp claws of jealousy had sunk deep inside her. Until she had wanted to occupy the position those women were in.

It was the moments in between that got her. That held her affection for him. The spare times when she’d caught a hint of haunted darkness around the edges of his bright smile. The times when he’d looked at her and seen down deep.

The times he’d looked at her, period, and not just past her.

“I...”

“I am not a child,” he said, his voice a dark temptation she couldn’t turn away from.

And before she could say another word, before she could protest, before she could even breathe, Leon had closed the distance between them. And he was kissing her like she had never been kissed before. As he had never kissed her before, since he was the only man she had ever kissed.

His lips were hot, firm and commanding as they moved over her own, his tongue a slick, sweet enticement as it delved deep inside her mouth, sliding against her own. Immediately, her breasts felt heavy, her core a hollow ache, wet with need for him at the first touch of his mouth to hers.

She was drowning. In this. In him. In the desire. Completely and utterly at its mercy.

She wasn’t even sure she cared. Because she was being swept away on a tide that she couldn’t even hope to fight against. Desire dictating her every response, her every movement.

She felt... She felt ravenous for him. Completely and totally starved of the one thing she had craved for so long. She wrapped her arms around his neck, leaning out of her chair and crushing her breasts to his chest, nearly sighing with relief as she pressed herself against him. She wanted to meld herself to him completely, wanted to get lost in this forever.

It was a sickness, a kind of madness that overtook her completely. The desire to feel his skin against hers, to have nothing at all between them. His memories didn’t matter. His broken ribs didn’t matter. His betrayal of their vows didn’t matter. All of the hurt, all of the torture she had endured over it didn’t matter.

Nothing mattered but this. The fact that she was kissing him finally.

He slid his hand down her back, pressing her more firmly against him. She parted her thighs, resting the part of herself that was aching the most for his touch up against his hardened arousal.

He growled, drawing his hand down lower to cup her rear, pressing her even more tightly to him, rolling his hips against hers.

It occurred to her then that it wasn’t only alcohol he had gone a long time without. Granted, she had gone twenty-three years without this kind of sexual contact, but Leon was accustomed to more.

And it was that thought that found her pulling away from him, running her shaking hands through her hair and sitting back in her chair. “I’m sorry,” she said, the words rushed.

He looked at her, frowning. “Why are you sorry?”

“You don’t remember anything. You don’t remember us. And you’re injured...”