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 welldeserved 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
