It was true. She would make a lot more money working for him as an employee whose overheads were absorbed by the company rather than as a fledgling design business that sucked up the vast majority of the not-insubstantial fees charged to her clients.

“So, you thought I might like the Midwest enough to take Pearson’s job offer?” She couldn’t imagine it and disbelief colored her voice.

“They didn’t just offer you a job.”

“No, they also offered a contract for several projects they have in the pipeline over the next two years.” While still leaving her an independent operator, the offer would provide the kind of security most up-and-coming designers dreamed about.

If living in a landlocked state without a single authentic Vietnamese or Thai restaurant was what she wanted. It wasn’t. She was too fond of the diversified and active culture of Seattle.

“I’ve gotten too spoiled to big-city living. The only Thai restaurant I found was run by a man named Arnie who thinks a good curry comes with corn-on-the-cob.”

Zephyr shuddered. “So, you are not taking the contract.”

“Doing so would have made it impossible to do this property. I wasn’t willing to give up a chance at decorating a specialty resort in paradise for re-creating my first design in a series of cookie-cutter office buildings.”

One of the things she and Art had disagreed on, besides the whole issue of marital fidelity, was her need to create, not merely re-create. For Art, the bottom line was always money. While Piper craved security, she needed the chance to stretch her artistic muscles just as much.

“I’m glad.”

She smiled. “Good.”

“I’m equally pleased you are here with me now.” For a man like Zephyr, that was quite an admission.

It deserved rewarding, at the very least reciprocating honesty. Emotion she was doing her best to suppress colored her single-word answer. “Ditto.”

He made a sexy sound, very much like a growl, before pulling her to him for a scorching kiss. Finally.

She’d missed him; she’d missed this so much. Being touched. Being held. She’d gotten very spoiled to seeing him so frequently.

She threw herself into the kiss without the least resistance. She adored his lovemaking, but she could do this for hours.

And from the way his lips moved against hers, so could he.

She felt herself being lifted and then she was straddling his thighs, her skirt rucked up around her hips. The mattress was firm enough to support his sitting up easily. What brand was it? She couldn’t help wondering.

And then all work-related thoughts disappeared as her brain focused on the only thing that mattered right now, the sensation of being held and kissed by the most amazing man she’d ever met.

His mouth fit over hers perfectly. And he tasted like her idea of heaven. He deepened the kiss, but with no sense of urgency, telling her silently that they had all the time in the world. He was the only man she’d ever known who treated kissing like an end unto itself.

The kiss broke for a moment, their lips sliding apart in a natural movement. He caressed her cheek and temple with his lips.

She smiled, warmed clear through and pleased by the fact he hadn’t just missed sex with her. He seemed to have missed their connection almost as much as she had.

“I’m surprised you’re not tearing my clothes off after six weeks going without,” she whispered, the hushed quiet around them feeling almost sacred.

Then a chilling thought took her. Maybe he hadn’t gone without. Maybe that’s why he was so relaxed. They’d never made the commitment toward monogamy. He could very well have found someone else back in Seattle.

“I kept myself busy at work. With Neo cutting back his hours to spend more time with Cass, there’s a lot of reorganization of responsibilities going on.” He gave her gentle baby kisses all over face and neck between words. “Even if you had been in Seattle, I would barely have seen you over the past six weeks.”

Which implied he hadn’t been with anyone else, either.

“I didn’t realize it was that bad.” He’d mentioned something to that effect, but she’d thought he was just trying to make her feel better.

She should have known better. For all his apparent affability, Zephyr Nikos was an almost brutally honest man. He’d warned her early in their association that he didn’t do “sensitive” and he hoped she could handle candor, even when it meant criticism. He’d been referring to their work association, but she’d gotten the impression he was that way on a personal level as well.

Then, after they’d become friends, she’d gotten proof of her impression. So, why did she keep looking for evidence to the contrary now that they were involved more intimately? On a physical level anyway.

He pulled his head back and met her eyes with a sardonic expression. “Neo is a force of nature. We’ve had to restructure our head office entirely, promoting several people into positions of greater authority while hiring others and training them to take over the new vacancies.”

“With you picking up the slack.”

The signs of exhaustion were there and she couldn’t believe it had taken her this long to notice. Her delight in being in his company again was her only excuse. Dark shadows under Zephyr’s eyes, his vitality muted—she wasn’t the only one who needed a couple of days without work.

“It is worth it to see him so happy.” There was something in Zephyr’s tone. Not quite envy, not exactly sadness, but definite sincerity.

It confused her.

“I can’t imagine Neo in love,” was all she said, though.

“You’ve only met him a few times.”

“And he’s always the same. Intense. Focused. Almost dour.” There was no almost about it, but she didn’t want to offend Zephyr by calling his best friend and business partner an emotionless robot.

“Cass makes him laugh.” The strange tone was there again and no more comprehensible to Piper.

Regardless, she could not picture Neo Stamos laughing. “He really must be in love.”

“Yes.”

She might not be able to interpret that tone, but Piper did know something about it bothered her. She scooted up his lap so the silk panties covering her were directly over the hard bulge behind his zipper.

Whatever was going on in Zephyr’s head, his desire for her had not abated by even a centimeter.

He needed to relax and forget about Stamos & Nikos Enterprises for a while. She knew just how to help him do that.

She leaned forward and spoke against his lips. “No more talking, Zephyr.”

“You have something better to do with my lips?” Every word brushed his lips provocatively against hers.

“Absolutely.” She drew out the syllables, making each one a minicaress leading up to when she pressed their mouths together with serious intent.

He let her control the kiss for several tantalizing minutes she knew would not last. Allowing her tongue to tease his, he kept his hands locked onto her hips while she tunneled her fingers through his gorgeous dark hair. She rocked against him, bringing them both moan-producing pleasure.

One of the things she most adored about making love with this man was how totally into it he got. And how much he liked when she did the same. He never made her feel like a freak for enjoying sex. Art had often made cutting comments about her behavior in bed, reining in her abandon. And then he’d had the temerity to say that all men cheated because they couldn’t get what they needed from one woman. But especially their wives.

Bull. Art hadn’t been willing to take what Piper had been prepared to give. Zephyr, on the other hand, never made her feel dirty for getting lost in the physical. Her passion did not intimidate or disgust him. Not on any level.

Because his passion was just as deep and consuming. He didn’t posture or pretend. He wasn’t a man driven by appearances, like her ex-husband.

Zephyr did not worry about wrinkling or staining his clothes when their desires got in the way of a neat and tidy disrobing. Like now. It was clear from the way he touched and responded to her that he wasn’t thinking about anything but the pleasure between them, the way their bodies pressed and writhed together in primal need.

It wasn’t in the predatory nature of her tycoon to remain passive for long. And she waited with adrenaline-fueled anticipation for him to make his move.

He did not disappoint her, erupting from his sitting position to spin them around and lay her against the bed once more. He came down over her, his body heat and the strength of his bulging muscles surrounding her with his solid presence. A frisson of atavistic pleasure rolled straight down her spine directly to her feminine core.

She would never tell him, but she loved when her über-sophisticated lover went caveman on her. His big body rubbed against hers; his hands were everywhere. But then so were hers. He touched her through her clothes, then shoved her silk top up her torso with a growling wound deep in his chest. Masculine fingers caressed her stomach, circling her belly button before moving up to gently mold her unfettered breasts and pluck at her nipples.

Urgent sounds of need slipped from her mouth to his. Her body rocked upward of its own volition, sharp talons of sexual hunger piercing her and making her muscles tense and strain.

If he didn’t claim her body with his soon, she was going to lose her mind. Or take over. Somehow.

One of his hands slid between them, then the pad of his thumb was exactly where she needed it to be, caressing her swollen clitoris right through the silk of her panties.

The pleasure built at light speed and she felt her climax taking her over before she’d even gotten a chance to start really aching for it. Of course, she’d been hungry for his brand of loving since the last night they spent together six weeks ago.

His voracious kiss swallowed her scream of undeniable pleasure. It went on and on and on and on in an unending cascade of bliss that drained all coherent thought from her mind.

Then the caressing finger moved away and she floated on a haze of satiation. It was temporary, because she knew he wasn’t finished, or even close to it.

The sound of a condom wrapper tearing filtered through her consciousness, but her eyes wouldn’t focus. Everything was blurred by the mind-numbing pleasure she had just experienced.

It was her fragile panties tearing away from her body that got her attention, though. The look of near animalistic carnality hardening his features made her insides clench in wanton hunger. He pressed against her slick opening with his latex-covered shaft.

And then he was inside her, his long and thick erection filling her like no other man could.

He looked down at her, his dark eyes practically black with desire. “Okay?”

She answered with a tilt of her pelvis, taking him in as deep as he would go. The feel of his blunt head pushing inexorably against her cervix sparked another orgasm, this one deep inside, an intense contraction of her womb that tilted between pain and pleasure.

Though she didn’t think she’d done anything to reveal the shock of internal delight, his openly feral gaze gleamed with satisfaction.

And then he started moving, setting a rhythm that both demanded her participation and coaxed it from her with jolt after jolt of electric pleasure.

They moved together with an urgency that would not be denied. It was only minutes before he was tearing his lips from her and roaring out his release.

Shockingly, her body contracted around him in a third muted climax sparked by the final swelling of his hardness pressing against her G-spot with inflexible pressure.

He said a four-letter word.

“I prefer the term making love.” She grinned tiredly, her entire body boneless from the overwhelming cataclysm that had been their joining.

He barked out a laugh and shook his head. “That was incredible.”

“That’s one word for it.” She looked down their bodies. They were both practically dressed. Clothes unzipped and moved out of the way only as much as absolutely necessary to make their copulating possible. “Earthshaking is another.”

“That’s two words.”

“And two more words for you—still dressed.”

His gaze traveled the path hers had and he took in their still dressed condition with widening eyes. “Unbelievable.”

He sounded as shocked as she felt, which struck her as unbelievably funny and she started laughing. Soon his laughter joined hers and he had to grab the condom before rolling off her as their humor continued unabated for long minutes.

He stood up and disposed of the condom before yanking off slacks that looked like they belonged on the jumble heap. “I wonder what the dry cleaner is going to think of that.”

“Do you really care?”

“No.” He finished undressing and then started working on her clothes. “Your panties are goners, but I think the dry cleaner can save your skirt.”

“You could have the decency to sound at least a little apologetic about that.”

“Why? What is a single pair of panties in comparison to the pleasure we both just enjoyed?”

Too true, but it wouldn’t do for her to say so. “They were my favorite pair.”

“Oh, really?” He gave her his patented doubtful frown that had sent more than one negotiator toppling toward defeat. “I don’t recall seeing them before. Ever. And I think I have more than a nodding acquaintance with the delectable bits of fabric you choose to cover your own even more enticing bits.”

“Charmer.” Then she gave him a fake pout. “I bought them new for today.”

“So how could they be your favorites?”

“They were my new favorites.”

“Well, they’re rubbish now.” And really? He didn’t sound even sort of bothered by that.

Which she liked. A lot. Still, she wasn’t ready to cede the game completely. “I thought you’d like them.”

“I did. Couldn’t you tell?”

She laughed, feeling joyous and free. “I’m only going to forgive you because I had multiple orgasms.”

“Three of them. In a very short period,” he added with well-deserved smugness. “It makes me wonder what I can do with the rest of the night.”

What he did was make love to her until she passed out from exhaustion sometime around dawn…after no less than three more orgasms.

They slept in, waking at the tail end of the morning to share a decadent brunch. Then he took her to the Acropolis. She’d watched a travel video about the temple ruins found there, but nothing prepared her for how it felt actually standing where many claimed the modern constructs of Western Civilization had been born. Maybe not everyone reacted like she did, but she felt a sense of profundity that she could not shake.

She could not help staring at the Parthenon in absolute awe.

When she told Zephyr about it, he did not laugh at her like Art would have done.

Zephyr only nodded, his expression serious. “This is not just a pile of ingeniously put-together stone. We are standing on history. You cannot dismiss something like that.”

“That’s why your developments are so special, isn’t it?”

“Because I recognize history when I see it?” he asked with underlying amusement.

She reached out and took his hand. She could not help herself. She needed to touch this incredible man. “Because you recognize the unique flavor of wherever you are and rather than try to change it, you seek to enhance it.”

Very few developers could make that claim, and none as successful as Stamos & Nikos Enterprises.

“Neo and I learned early to see the good in wherever we were.” He laced their fingers together, giving her a look that implied he wasn’t just talking about property development.

“Even the orphanage?” she asked softly.

“I admit I saw more good there than Neo did.”

“I’m not surprised.”

He shrugged.

“That’s a pretty nice talent to have. I wish I’d had it as a child like you did.” She might have found moving around as much as her family had done easier than she had. “Heck, I wouldn’t mind having it now.”

“Don’t play down your strengths. That was one of the first characteristics I admired in you.”

“Seriously?”

“Definitely. When you look at a property, you do not see what is, but what could be.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“No, but it comes from the same attitude.”

“Then why was I such a miserable kid?” She felt like an idiot asking that. She’d been a grown-up for a long time. The little girl that found changing homes and schools every couple of years so traumatizing was long gone.

“It wasn’t an inability to find the good in each new situation that your father’s military career led you to that made you so unhappy. It was the fact you found so much to love and enjoy in each new place and that got ripped from you with every new reassignment.”

Feeling light-headed, and not from the panoramic view of Athens, she swallowed after developeing a suddenly dry throat. Because Zephyr was exactly right. Every time she had found the place she wanted to occupy in her new world, she had been ripped away from it.

But still. “Lots of kids grow up the way I did.”

“That doesn’t make it any easier on each one that does it. There were more than two dozen other children in the orphanage my mother abandoned me to. That reality did not make my own situation any easier to accept when she left me behind.”

“Your mother abandoned you to the orphanage?”

Zephyr walked to a viewpoint that overlooked Hadrian’s Arch. He still had hold of Piper’s hand, so she came with him. Feeling like the only connection he had with the present was their entwined fingers, he could not believe he had shared that information with Piper. He’d never even talked about it to Neo. Yet, he knew he was going to tell Piper the truth now.

Maybe not all, but at least some. He just didn’t understand why.

“How old were you?” she asked, after several moments of somber quiet between them.

“Four, almost five.” He looked down at her to gauge his tenderhearted lover’s reaction.

She did not disappoint him. Her pretty blue eyes glazed over in shock. “I thought you were a baby, or something.”

“No. My mother was a prostitute.” Again, a sense of utter unreality that he should be telling Piper these things assailed him. “One of her clients fell in love with her and wanted to marry her, but he didn’t want a living reminder of the life she’d led before they met.”

As an adult man, he could almost understand that. Not forgive, but understand. As a child who had adored his mother, the only bright constant in his short life, the one he had relied on entirely for acceptance and love, he hadn’t been so wise. Neither his child’s mind, nor the heart he’d later encased in impenetrable stone, had been able to comprehend his mother’s actions, or even her husband’s attitude.

The man had been kind enough to the small boy the few times they met before he decided to buy Leda’s freedom from her procurer, Zephyr’s father.

“But you were her child!” Piper’s obvious shock nearly ripped her hand from his grasp.

He tightened his grip, unwilling to let her go. “My mother visited. Once a month, but I learned to wish she wouldn’t.”

“Because she never took you with her when she left.”

“No.” No matter how he’d begged at first.

“When was the last time you spoke to her?”

“Last month.” But he hadn’t seen her since he’d run away from the orphanage with Neo, this time by Zephyr’s choice.

Piper stared up at him, her eyes swimming with emotion, her mouth opening and closing, but no sound coming out.

He took pity on her clear inability to fathom this state of affairs. “I contacted her after I made my first million. She was glad to hear from me.”

“You sound like that surprised you.”

“It did. Even though I was now wealthy, there was no guarantee she would want the reminder of her past.”

“You thought money was all you had to give her.”

Naturally. He’d never met a woman who didn’t appreciate financial gifts, his mother setting that precedent early for his young mind. “Why would I believe anything else?”

“She was glad you were safe, though, wasn’t she? I bet she cried that first time you called her.”

That time and almost every one since. “You are right.” Not that he understood why.

If his disappearance was such a hardship on his mother, surely she would not have dumped him at the orphanage in the first place? Nevertheless, she had not abandoned him entirely.

“She paid the orphanage to care for me.” He had discovered that when he made his first donation to the home long before he amassed his first million.

It was the reason he had contacted her later. Without the knowledge she had attempted to provide for him in some way, he did not think he ever would have. But nothing could have altered the path he had taken with his father.

“Are we going to see her while we are here?” Piper’s voice dripped with the emotion clouding her expression.

“No.”

“Of course, I’m sorry.” From looking on the verge of tears, Piper went to embarrassment in a single breath. “There’s no reason to take your friend to visit your mother.”

“It’s not that. She would like you.” How could she not? Piper was a very likable woman. “However, I have no intention of seeing my mother.”

“What? Why not? Surely we have time. Even if she lives on one of the islands. We can skip the sightseeing.”

“She lives in Athens. I bought her a house in Kifissia.” The distance between that district and the one he had been born in was measured in more than kilometers, though.

Piper’s brow furrowed. “According to the guidebook in our suite, that’s the elite part of town.”

“Is that what it said?”

“Well, as good as.”

“The book is right. The wealthy have inhabited Kifissia for generations.”

“And you bought your mother a house there.”

He shrugged. What did Piper want him to say? He had wanted to give his mother a physical break from the past.

“Yet you are not going to visit her.”

“No,” he confirmed.

“But…”

“I have not seen her in more than twenty years, Piper.”

“But you said you spoke last month.” The confusion on Piper’s face was adorable.

He kissed her. Not passionately, but he could not resist the innocent incomprehension covering her features.

“It was her birthday. So, I spoke to her.”

“You call her once a year, on her birthday?” Piper guessed.

“Yes.” The year after he first reconnected with Leda, he had made the mistake of asking what she would like for her birthday.

He’d become too ingrained in American customs. And he’d wanted the excuse to give her something nice, something to show her and the man she had married that Zephyr wasn’t such a dead loss after all. He wasn’t a lame puppy to be abandoned.

But his mother hadn’t asked for a designer handbag, or a new television. She’d only wanted one thing. For Zephyr to call her once a year on her birthday, so she could know he was doing all right. She could follow his success in the papers now, but he still made that call.

Once a year.

“Does she call you?”

“I have asked her not to, unless there is a problem with my brother or sister.” Keeping his mother at a distance was necessary and he could not change that.

“You have a brother and sister?”

He had expected some kind of criticism for his coldness toward his mother, but Piper hadn’t focused on a situation he could not change. She’d zeroed in on the one reality he found truly important. His sister and brother.

“They are half siblings, but I feel a responsibility toward them nonetheless.”

“How old are they?”

“Iola is twenty-nine. She is married to a good man and has three children of her own.”

Six years younger than him, his sister had been born a year and a half after he went into the home.

His mother had missed her visit with him that month and the one after. He’d thought she’d finally grown tired of coming to see him and wasn’t coming back. But she’d returned and she’d had a beautiful baby with her when she did.

“Have you met the children?”

“Yes, Iola insisted.”

“You sound like you don’t understand why.”

“I’m the bastard child her mother gave birth to when living a life they would all rather forget happened. My sister doesn’t even remember meeting me. She was too young the last time I saw her.”

“Your mother brought her to visit?”

“Yes.”

“That was cruel.”

He shrugged. To his way of thinking, it had been much more cruel when his mother stopped bringing Iola. Some might have thought he would be jealous of the baby, but Zephyr had adored Iola from the very beginning. He had been heartbroken when his mother’s husband had insisted Leda stop bringing his sister to visit when she was two.

But just like when he had begged to be taken with her, his mother turned deaf ears to his pleas to see the little girl he had allowed himself to love.

“I thought she was the most amazing being ever. I was in awe of her.”

“What did she think of you?”

“I don’t know. Her father did not want her to wonder about me, so my mother stopped bringing her on the visits when she was old enough to begin remembering them. My mother only brought my brother a handful of times as an infant for the same reason.”

“Clearly, they don’t want to forget you. Not if your sister insisted you meet her children.”

“I take care of them.” And even his stony heart could be moved by the little ones who called him Uncle Zee.

“You think that’s the only reason they want you in their lives?”

“Why else?”

“Maybe for the same reason I’d want you in my life even if I didn’t work with you.” How could he be so unaware of his own true worth? she wondered.

“Would you?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t believe her, but he appreciated the sentiment.

“Does your brother-in-law work for you?” Piper asked.

“How did you know?”

“You said you take care of them. Does your brother work for you as well?”

“No. He’s academically brilliant. He’s finishing his doctoral thesis in physics right now.”

“Let me guess, you’ve paid for his education.”

“Naturally.”

She threw her arms around him and kissed him, far more exuberantly than he had kissed her just a moment ago. “You are an amazing man, Zephyr Nikos.”

He shook his head, but he was no idiot. He kissed her back and enjoyed the moment while it lasted, all the while wondering what in the hell was wrong with him that he had shared so much with Piper.

Maybe this friends-who-shared-sexual-intimacy wasn’t such a good idea after all. He couldn’t give her love and this openness was bound to give her the wrong impression.

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For the Greek Tycoon's Pleasure

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CHAPTER TWO

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