Mediterranean Mavericks: Greeks

Looking from right to left, she could see the dark vista of Central Park, the high-rise buildings to the Hudson River, and the lights of New Jersey beyond it, and to the south, the skyscrapers of Midtown, including the Empire State Building, all the way to the Financial District and the gleaming One World Trade Center.

The sparkling nighttime view provided the only light in the penthouse, aside from a single blue gas fire that flickered in the stark fireplace.

“Incredible,” Letty breathed, going up to the windows. Without thinking, she leaned forward, putting her overheated forehead against the cool glass, looking down at Park Avenue far below. The cars and yellow cabs looked tiny, like ants. She felt almost dizzy from being so high off the earth, up in the clouds. It was a little terrifying. “Beautiful.”

His reply was husky behind her. “You are beautiful, Letitia.”

Turning, she looked at him in the soft blue glow of firelight. Then, as she looked more closely…

Her lips parted with an intake of breath.

She’d thought Darius hadn’t changed?

He’d changed completely.

At thirty-four, he was no longer a slender youth, but a powerful man. His shoulders had broadened to match his tall height, his body filling out with hard muscle. His dark hair had once been wavy and tousled, like a poet’s, but was now cut short, as severe as his chiseled jawline.

Everything about Darius was tightly controlled now, from the cut of his expensive clothes—a black shirt with the top button undone, black trousers, black leather shoes—to his powerful stance. His mouth had once been expressive and tender and kind. Now his lips had a hard twist of arrogance, even cruelty.

He towered over her like a king, in his penthouse with all of New York City at his feet.

At her expression, his jaw tightened. “Letitia…”

“Letty.” She managed a smile. “No one calls me Letitia anymore.”

“I have never been able to forget you,” he continued in a low voice. “Or that summer we were together…”

That summer. A small noise came from the back of her throat as unwanted memories filled her mind. Dancing in the meadow. Kissing the night after her debutante ball. Escaping the prying eyes of servants in Fairholme’s enormous garage, steaming up the windows of her father’s vintage car collection for weeks on end. She’d been ready to surrender everything.

Darius was the one who’d wanted to wait for marriage to consummate their love.

“Not until you’re my wife,” he’d whispered as they strained for each other, barely clothed, panting with need in the backseat of a vintage limousine. “Not until you’re mine forever.”

Forever never came. Their romance had been illicit, forbidden. She was barely eighteen, his boss’s daughter; he was six years older, the chauffeur’s son.

After a hot summer of innocent passion, her father had been infuriated when he’d discovered their romance. He’d ordered Darius off the estate. For one awful week he and Letty had been apart. Then Darius had called her.

“Let’s elope,” he’d said. “I’ll get a day job to support us. We’ll get a studio apartment in the city. Anything as long as we’re together.”

She’d feared it would hurt his dream of making his fortune, but she couldn’t resist. They both knew there was no chance of a real wedding, not when her father would try to stop the marriage. So they’d planned to elope to Niagara Falls.

But on the night his car waited outside the Fairholme gate, Letty never showed up.

She hadn’t returned any of his increasingly frantic phone calls. The next day, she’d even convinced her father to fire Eugenios Kyrillos, Darius’s father, who’d been their chauffeur for twenty years.

Even then, Darius had refused to accept their breakup. He’d kept calling, until she’d sent him a single cold message.

I was only using you to get another man’s attention. He’s rich and can give me the life of luxury I deserve. We’re engaged now. Did you really think that someone like me would ever live in a studio apartment with someone like you?

That had done the trick.

But it had been a lie. There had been no other man. At the ripe old age of twenty-eight, Letty was still a virgin.

All these years, she’d promised herself that Darius would never know the truth. He could never know how she’d sacrificed herself, so he’d be able to follow his dreams without guilt or fear. Even if it meant he hated her.

But Darius must have finally found out the truth. It was the only explanation for him seeking her out.

“So you know why I betrayed you ten years ago?” she said in a small voice, unable to meet his eyes. “You forgive me?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said roughly. “You’re here now.”

Her heart pounded as she saw the dark hunger in his eyes.

She looked down at the coffee stain on her uniform, the smear of ketchup near the cheerful name tag still on her left breast: LETTY! She whispered, “You can’t still…want me?”

“You’re wrong.” He pulled her handbag off her shoulder. It felt unspeakably erotic. He pulled off her coat, dropping it to the marble floor. “I wanted you then.” Cupping her face with both hands, he whispered, “I want you now.”

Electricity ran up and down her body. Involuntarily, she licked her lips.

His gaze fell to her mouth.

Tangling his hands in her hair, he pulled out her ponytail, and her long dark hair tumbled down her shoulders. He stroked down her cheek, tilting back her head.

He was so much taller. He towered over her in every way.

She felt crazy butterflies, like she’d gone back in time and was eighteen again. Being with him now, all the anguish and grief and weariness of the last ten years seemed to disappear like a bad dream.

“I’ve missed you for so long,” she choked out. “You’re all I’ve dreamed about…”

He pressed a finger to her lips. At the contact, fire flashed from her mouth and down to her breasts. Sparks crackled between them in the shadowy penthouse, as she breathed in his woodsy, musky scent. Tension coiled low and deep in her belly.

Pulling her body tight against his own, he lowered his mouth to hers.

His kiss was hot and demanding. The stubble on his rough jawline scratched her delicate skin as he gripped her hard against him. She kissed him back with desperate need.

A low growl came from the back of his throat, and he pushed her back against the wall. His hands ran down her body to rip apart the front buttons of her white dress. She gasped as her naked skin was exposed, along with her plain white bra and panties.

“Take this off,” he whispered, and he pulled her white dress off her body, dropping it to the floor. Kneeling in front of her, he pulled off her white shoes, one by one. She was nearly naked, standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that revealed the whole city.

Rising to his full height, he kissed her. His mouth plundered hers, searing her to the core. She realized her hands were unbuttoning his black shirt to feel the warmth of his skin, the hard muscles of his body. She stroked his chest, dusted with dark hair, and trembled. He felt like steel wrapped in satin, hard and soft.

She desperately wanted to feel him against her, all of him. She wanted to be lost in him—

As he kissed her, his hands roamed over her shoulders, her hips, her breasts. Her fingers twisted in his hair. She felt dizzy with longing as he pressed her against the wall, kissing her with savage desire, nipping at her lips until they bruised.

He kissed down her throat, reaching beneath the white cotton fabric of her bra to cup her bare breasts. She felt his rough warm hands against her naked skin, and her taut nipples ached, until with a low curse he reached around and unhooked the clasp of her bra.

She heard his intake of breath as it fell to the floor. She now wore only panties, while he was still fully dressed, with his black shirt unbuttoned to reveal his bare chest. As he lowered his head, taking her exposed breasts fully in his hands, her head fell back, hair tumbling down, as she gripped his bare, muscular shoulders.

She gasped as she felt the wet heat of his mouth envelop a taut nipple. Lightning shot down her body as he suckled her in his stark, shadowy penthouse, with its spectacular view of nighttime New York at their feet. She moaned softly.

Abruptly, he pulled away. She opened her eyes, feeling dizzy. Her lips parted to ask a question, but before she could remember it, he lifted her into his arms.

She didn’t try to resist as he carried her through the great room into an enormous bedroom in the opposite corner. That, too, had windows on both sides, twenty feet high. She could see all of Midtown, from the Chrysler Building to the Empire State, a forest of skyscrapers between two dark rivers with their bright, moving barges.

Manhattan sparkled coldly in the dark night as Darius spread her across his bed, his expression half shadowed. He undid his cuffs and dropped his shirt to the floor.

For the first time, Letty saw the full strength of his hard-muscled torso and powerful arms. His shoulders were broad, narrowing to tight, hard abs. Removing his belt, he kicked off his shoes. Wearing just low-slung black tailored trousers, he climbed onto the bed.

Lowering his head, he kissed her against the pillows, his lips hard and rough. She felt his desire for her; she felt his heavy weight over her. Darius wanted her… He cared…

Something broke, deep inside her heart.

All this time, Letty had thought their love had ended forever. But nothing had changed, she thought in wonder, tangling her hands in his dark hair. Nothing. They were the same two people, still young and in love…

He slowly kissed his way down her body, his hands stroking her. She quivered, helpless beneath his touch. He dropped kisses here and there as he traversed the softness of her belly to the top edge of her white cotton panties. Drawing up, he looked down at her.

“You’re mine, Letty,” he whispered. “At last.”

Then his heavy, hard body crushed hers deliciously, sensually. Her fingertips moved down the warm skin of his back, feeling his muscle, his spine. He moved his hips against hers, and she felt how huge and hard he was for her. Desire coiled low and deep in her belly.

He slid her white cotton panties down her thighs, down her legs. Like a whisper, they were gone.

Pushing her legs apart, he knelt at the foot of the bed. She held her breath, squeezing her eyes shut in the shadowy bedroom as he kissed the tender hollow of each foot. He moved up her calves, his fingertips caressing her skin as he lifted each knee for a slow kiss in the hollow beneath. She shivered as she felt the warmth of his breath on her thighs.

His hands moved beneath her, cupping her backside. Her thighs melted beneath his breath, hips trembling.

Finally, with agonizing slowness, he lowered his head between her legs.

Moving his hands, he kissed her inner thighs, one then the other. She felt his breath against the most intimate part of her and tried to squirm away, but he held her firmly.

Spreading her wide, he took a long, deep taste. The pleasure was intense. She choked out a gasp.

Holding her hips down against the bed, he forced her to accept the pleasure, working her with his tongue, twirling against her aching nub for long exquisite moments, then lapping her with the full width of his tongue.

She forgot to breathe, held by ruthless pleasure like a butterfly pinned to a wall. Her hips lifted involuntarily off the bed as she soared, and she gripped the white bedspread so she didn’t fly up into the sky.

Waves of pleasure crashed against radiating joy. She’d never stopped loving him. And now he’d forgiven her. He wanted her. He loved her, too…

Twisting and gasping beneath his mouth, she exploded with a cry of pure happiness that seemed to last forever.

Instantly lifting his body, he pushed her arms above her head, gripping her wrists against the pillow, and positioned his hips between her legs. As she was still soaring between ecstasy and joy, he ruthlessly impaled her.

She felt him push all the way inside her, the entire enormous length of him going deep, to the heart. Her eyes flew open in shock and pain.

His back straightened at the moment he tore through the barrier that he clearly had not expected. Feeling her flinch, he looked down at her in shock.

“You were—a virgin?” he panted.

She nodded, closing her eyes and twisting her head away so he couldn’t see the threatening tears. She didn’t want to mar the beauty of their night, but the pain cut deep.

He held himself still inside her.

“You can’t be,” he said hoarsely. “How, after all these years?”

Letty looked up at him, her throat aching. And she said the only thing she could say. The words that she’d repressed for ten years, but that had never stopped burning inside her.

“Because I love you, Darius,” she whispered.

CHAPTER TWO

DARIUS STARED DOWN at her. Letitia Spencer, a virgin?

Impossible. Not in a million years.

But her words shocked him even more.

“What do you mean, you love me?” he choked out.

Her dark eyelashes trembled against her pale skin. Then those big, beautiful hazel eyes shone up at him from the shadows of the bed as she whispered, “I never stopped loving you.”

Looking down at her beautiful heart-shaped face, Darius was overwhelmed by emotion. Not the good kind, either.

He felt the cold burn of slow-rising rage.

Once, he’d loved Letty Spencer so much he’d thought he’d die without her. She’d been his angel. His goddess. He’d put her on such a pedestal, he’d even insisted they wait to make love. He’d wanted to marry her.

The memory made him writhe with shame.

How far she’d fallen. Today, she’d sent him a message—her first direct communication with him since she’d dumped him so coldly ten years before—offering him her body. For money.

All afternoon, Darius had tried to ignore her message, to laugh it off. He’d gotten over Letty years ago. He wasn’t interested in paying a hundred thousand dollars to have her in his bed tonight. He didn’t pay for sex. Women fought for his attention now. Supermodels fell into his bed for the price of a phone call.

But the part of him that still couldn’t completely forget the past relished the idea of seeing her one last time.

Only this time, she’d be the one begging. He’d be the one to reject her.

As he’d signed the contracts that afternoon to formally sell his company, built on a mobile messaging app with five hundred million users worldwide, to a massive tech conglomerate for the price of twenty billion dollars, he’d barely listened to his lawyers droning on. Holding 90 percent of equity in the company made him the beneficiary of an eighteen-billion-dollar fortune, minus taxes.

But instead of rejoicing in the triumphant payoff of ten years of relentless work, he’d been picturing Letitia, the woman who’d once betrayed him. Imagining her trying to seduce him with an exotic dance of the seven veils. Picturing her wearing nothing but a black negligee. Begging him to take her to bed, so she could perform Olympic-level sexual feats for his pleasure.

After the papers were signed, he practically ran out of the office, away from all the congratulations and celebrations. All he could think about was Letty and her offer.

He’d spent hours trying to talk himself out of it. Then, gritting his teeth, he’d driven to the Brooklyn diner when the message said she’d be getting off work.

He didn’t intend to actually sleep with her, he told himself. He’d only wanted to make her feel as small and ashamed as he’d once felt. To see her humiliated. To see her beg to give him pleasure.

Then he’d planned to tell her he no longer found her attractive, and toss the money in her face. He’d watch her take it and slink away in shame. And for the rest of his life he’d know that he’d won.

What did he care about a hundred thousand dollars? It was nothing. It would be worth it to see her abject humiliation. After her savagely calculated betrayal, he craved vengeance far more than sex.

Or so he’d thought.

But so far nothing had gone according to plan. Seeing her outside the diner, he’d been shocked at her appearance. She didn’t look like a gold digger. She looked as if she were trying to be invisible, with no makeup, wearing that ridiculous white diner uniform.

But even then, he’d been drawn to her. She managed to be so damn sexy, so sweetly feminine and warm, that any man would want to help her, to take care of her. To possess her.

Bringing her back to the penthouse to enjoy his vengeance, Darius had allowed himself a single kiss.

Big mistake.

As he’d felt the soft curves of her body press against his, all his plans for vengeance were forgotten against the ruthless clamor of his body. For ten years, he’d desired this woman; and now she was half-naked in his arms, willing to surrender everything.

Suddenly, it all came down to two simple facts.

She’d sold herself.

He’d bought her.

So why not take her? Why not enjoy her sensual body as a way to finally excise her memory, once and for all?

She’d lied her way through the evening, pretending it was a romantic date, instead of a commercial transaction. He’d almost been surprised.

Until now.

Naked beneath him, Letty looked up, her eyes luminous in that lovely face he’d never been able to forget.

“Say something,” she said anxiously.

Darius set his jaw. After her heartless betrayal, followed by ten years of silence, she’d just told him out of the blue she loved him. What could he say in response? Go to hell?

Letitia Spencer. So beautiful. So treacherous. So poisonous.

But now, at last, he understood her goal. She wasn’t just playing for a hundred thousand dollars tonight. No. Tonight was just the sample that was supposed to leave him wanting more.

Because he’d seen her face as she left that diner. She was tired. Tired of working. Tired of being poor. Perhaps her father, newly free from prison, had been the one to suggest how to easily change her life—by becoming Darius’s wife.

She must have seen his company’s sale trumpeted in the newspaper today and decided it was time she made a play for his billions. He almost couldn’t blame her. She’d been holding on to her virginity all these years—why not cash in?

She loved him.

Cold, sardonic anger pulsed through him.

She thought he’d learned nothing all these years. She actually thought, if she told him she loved him, he would still swoon at her feet. That he was still the lovesick idiot of long ago.

If Darius had despised her before, it was nothing compared to how he felt about her now.

And yet, he still desired her. Holding himself motionless inside her hot, tight sheath, he was still so hard, he was close to exploding.

That fact enraged him even more.

He wanted to make her pay. Not just for this last insult, but for everything that had gone before. Suddenly, causing her one night of humiliation wasn’t nearly enough.

Darius wanted vengeance.

He wanted to raise her up, give her hope, then bring it crashing down as she’d once done. Fantastical plans coursed through his skull. He wanted to marry her, fill her with his child. He wanted to make her love him, then coldly spurn her. He wanted to take everything, and leave her penniless and alone.

That wouldn’t be revenge. It would be justice.

“Darius?” A shadow of worry had crossed her face as she looked up at him, naked on the bed.

Lowering his head, he kissed her almost tenderly. She trembled in his arms, her plump breasts crushed against his naked chest, her amazing hips spread wide for him. Seeing her stretched out on his bed, with the play of shadows and light on the sexy curves of her tantalizing breasts, stretched the limits of his self-control.

“I’m sorry I hurt you, agape mou,” he said in a low voice. Lie. His lips brushed the sensitive flesh of her cheek. As lightly as a butterfly setting down, he kissed the two tears that had overflowed her lashes. “But the pain won’t last.” Another lie. He would make sure it lasted the rest of her life. He smiled grimly. “Just wait.”

She looked up at him, the picture of wide-eyed innocence. Then sighed, relaxing in surrender.

The kiss he gave her then was anything but tender. It was demanding, rough, fierce. He had experience, and she did not. He knew how to lure her. How to master her.

Unless—she could be feigning her desire?

No, he thought coldly. He would make sure she did not. That would be one insult he’d not allow her to pay. He would make sure every bit of her pleasure was real.

He stroked her soft body, taking his time, caressing her, until, slowly, she started kissing him back.

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pulling his weight back down on her. He shifted his hips, testing her ability to accept him, still rock hard and huge inside her. She whimpered, then exhaled, swaying her hips.

He moved expertly, drawing back slowly, then pushing inside her a second time. She gripped his shoulders, closing her eyes. He suckled a nipple, watching her face carefully. It wasn’t until he saw the glow of ecstasy return to her face, and felt her muscles start to tighten around him, that he knew he’d succeeded. Triumph filled him as he began to ride her.

Filling her so deeply, this woman he’d desired for almost a third of his life, he felt light-headed. His body started to shake with pleasure so intense that it was almost like pain. They were so intertwined it was hard to know where one ended and the other began.

Pleasure and pain.

Hatred and desire.

As he thrust into her, sweat covered his body with the effort of keeping control. Her breasts swayed as he thrust inside her, all the way to the hilt. Gasping, she put her hands against the headboard, bracing against the force of his thrust. Her breathing became shallow as her body twisted beneath him with building need.

Her eyes were closed, her head tilted back, as she panted for breath. She moved her hands to his shoulders. He barely noticed her fingernails digging into his skin. He was lost in the sensation of possessing her, filling her, owning her, the glory of her flesh, the sweetness of her skin.

He felt simultaneously lost and found. Every corner of his soul that had ever felt hollow was miraculously filled. His body was pure light.

From a distance, he heard a low ragged shout and realized the sound was coming from his own mouth, releasing emotion he’d kept locked up for a decade. Her voice joined his as she cried out her own joy and grief and pain.

His body spasmed with a final, violent thrust and he poured himself into her, collapsing over her on the bed, their bodies slick with sweat, fused together.

It was much later when he opened his eyes and discovered Letty was sleeping in his arms. He stared down at her in wonder.

He wondered how he’d ever been satisfied by those pallid, skinny supermodels who had filled his bed till now. Those affairs had been insipid, hollow, dull compared to this fire. Tasting her, feeling her shake, hearing her cry of pleasure had pushed him to the limit.

It’s hatred, he realized.

Hatred had made him utterly lose self-control in a way he’d never done before, in a way he’d never imagined possible. As he’d taken possession of her body, after ten years of frustrated desire, he’d slaked his ache in a dark, twisted fantasy of vengeance.

It had been the single best sexual experience of his life.

But as he pulled away from her, he sucked in his breath.

The condom had broken.

He’d worn one, of course. No matter how he might fantasize about revenge, no matter how much he hated her, the last thing he would want was to actually get her pregnant and drag an innocent child into this.