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Chapter10
VINES WHISPERED AS HE passed and he listened to them with a frown on his face. The sun rose slowly, to the east, casting gold across the green leaves. He followed it, eyes on the horizon, looking out, rather than towards the villa, which he’d woken with a burning need to escape.
He’d never realized it before, but desire could be an oppressive force.
Suffocating, overwhelming, terrifying.
Every day since arrive in the Loire, he’d expected to want her a little less. To grow tired of her, as he always did the women he slept with, but Mila wasn’t like the others. She wasn’t like anyone he’d ever known, and rather than accepting that as a purely academic concept, he now had to grapple with the brutal reality. What did that mean? How could he arrange the pieces of their lives to make this work?
To make what work?
Sex?
Would he really ask her to continue seeing him until his physical obsession with her was at an end?
Or was there more to it?
And what the hell was he going to tell Benji? He’d broken a promise to his best friend. He’d betrayed him, and Leonidas was not someone to take that transgression lightly. Nor, he suspected, was Benji.
He expelled an angry sigh, ripping a hand through his hair as finally, he stopped walking and simply stared.
Mila didn’t want a relationship, she’d been very clear on that score. So whatever angsting he was doing about how to proceed from this point was irrelevant. When the week was over, she’d pack up and leave, just as she’d said, many times. And he’d let her go, perhaps he’d even be glad when she did leave? For as much as there was pleasure here, there was also a strange sort of pain, a terrifying level of desire, and things in Leonidas’ life were simpler before. They would be again afterwards too, he was sure.
For six days,she’d looked out at the vines and imprinted them on her memories, in her mind, as she had so much of this trip, but with every sensual, heady day and blissfully erotic night that passed, brought the end of it all closer.
While there was no word on her stalker, one way or another, she had to leave this place.
To stay was unsupportable, the idea terrifying, for how addicted she had already become to Leonidas.
Wanting to stay was the warning she needed to leave.
As she slipped a piece of watermelon into her mouth, delighting in the sweet crunch, Leonidas reached for his buzzing phone, standing and moving to the other side of the room. She watched him without realizing, her eyes feasting on him because her hands no longer could.
“Yes? I know. You said that.” His eyes flicked to hers, a frown on his face. “You’re sure?” A sigh of exasperation, a nod. His eyes dropped to her lips. “When?”
Her heart twisted.
“Today?”
His eyes lifted to hers, the frown in their depths now.
“I can, yes.” A hesitation, a beat, a question on his face she couldn’t understand. “Thanasi? I won’t be alone.”
Her stomach squeezed and something hot and fierce lurched through her. Relief?
“How wouldyou feel about an excursion today?”
Her heart pummeled her but with effort, she kept a nonplused expression. “Where to?”
He hesitated, as if weighing the words in his mind before expressing them. “My family home.”
And now, she understood his pause.
It was a step that neither felt comfortable taking, and yet, it didn’t feel wrong at all. As for whether or not she wanted to go with him, the answer was a resounding yes. Curiosity fired through her.
“When do we leave?”
His eyes flashed to hers, fire igniting between them. “As soon as you can be ready.”
