Chapter3
LEONIDAS DID NOT VIEW sex as anything particularly sacred. It was a pleasurable act, intimacy a part of his life, his routines and rhythms. He didn’t sleep around indiscriminately, but nor did he build it up into anything more meaningful than two people pleasuring one another. To him, it was purely fun, like a sport, so long as his partner felt the exact same way.
But Mila wasn’t just some gorgeous woman he’d met in a bar. She was Benji’s cousin. She was…different.
He broke away, breath ragged as he stared down at her darkened lips, her eyes silently inviting him, cheeks flushed.
“Leonidas?” Just his name on her lips was an aphrodisiac. “What is it?”
His dick was as hard as a rock, his blood firing with familiar, urgent need. Hunger rolled his belly; hunger for this woman. She smelled so sweet. From the moment he entered the house last night, he’d wanted her, and that steady, desperate drumming of desire hadn’t stopped. All night it had hammered him, and now, it was deafening in its intensity.
“This would be a mistake.” It would be. He owed Benji more than this. He owed Benji, in many ways, his life.
“Why?” Huge eyes locked to his. He saw uncertainty there and before he knew what he was doing, he was kissing it away, his tongue dueling with hers, his lips mashing her mouth, angry, hot, fevered kisses that overcame his soul. He wrenched himself away, shocked by his lack of strength.
They stared at each other, each breathing hard, as if they’d run a marathon. “Leonidas?”
She was asking him for an explanation and hell, he owed her one. But he couldn’t properly make sense of his thoughts. Not like this.
With a groan, he pulled away, just enough to put space between them at first but then, when the raging lava of his bloodstream wouldn’t slow, he stood, hoping that would bring sanity.
“We can’t do this.”
“What? Why not?”
He expelled an angry breath. “You’re Benji’s cousin. He’s my best friend. There’s just no way to act on this. I owe him too much.”
“What does he have to do with this?”
“He wouldn’t approve.”
“You think I need his approval?”
“I think you’re very vulnerable right now and I have no right to take advantage of that.”
She stood up with innate gracefulness, despite her sore ankle. “What if I don’t feel like I’m being taken advantage of?”
His brow furrowed. “Listen to me, Mila,” his voice took on an intensity, heavy with his past, the truth of who he was.
“I’m not interested in excuses,” she dismissed angrily.
“It’s not an excuse so much as an explanation. I told you, I came here to be alone.”
“Yes,” she muttered, eyes not meeting his.
“A little over a fortnight ago, my father died.” The words burst into the room, forcing her gaze back to his face, and the sympathy in those eyes made him want to sink into her and stay forever. He swallowed past the unexpected tangle of grief, trying to focus.
“Leonidas, I didn’t know—,”
“No,” he nodded once, clipped, indicating the conversation was closed. He didn’t want to speak of Konstantinos here. Not when he’d come to get away. But her curiosity was obvious, her desire to understand completely normal, so he relented a little. “It was unexpected. I wasn’t ready.” He ground his jaw. “If you and I were to sleep together, I’d be using you to deal with my father’s death.” That’s what he used to do. Obliterated pain with sex. Alcohol. Drugs. Whatever it took. But he’d grown beyond that now; Benji had helped him grow. Leonidas owed him so much. “I can’t do that to you, of all people.”
“Why not me, of all people?” She whispered, her eyes scanning his, her confusion obvious.
He closed his eyes. “Benji is like a brother to me. I’m staying to protect you. Having sex isn’t…appropriate.”
She moved towards him and he tensed, bracing for her nearness, knowing it brought with it a certain danger.
“Even if I want to?”