lost her control once with a Kiriakis male and opened herself to physical reprisal from her husband. She still had nightmares about her last meeting with Dion, the feeling of bruising male fists landing against her unprotected flesh.
“America is my home,” she said, spacing the words evenly, keeping her voice flat.
“It was your home before you married a Kiriakis, yes. But now Greece is your home, specifically my villa.”
“Your villa? You expect me to live in your villa permanently?” She was in a waking nightmare.
He reached out and opened the minifridge, pulling out a bottle of water, handing it to her before taking one for himself. “Yes.”
She stared at the cold plastic bottle in her hand, wondering for a second how it had gotten there. “I can’t.”
He didn’t bother to argue with her. In fact, he didn’t answer her at all. Instead, he pulled a buzzing cell phone from his pocket and answered it.
Savannah slowly regained consciousness, uncertain what had wakened her, and shifted in the cocooned warmth of her make shift bed. She burrowed her face into the pillow, which felt strangely hard against her cheek. Unsated exhaustion tugged at her, tempting her back into an unconscious state.
Her bed moved and the blanket pressed against her back in a soft caress. “Wake up pethi mou, we have almost arrived.”
Her eyes flew open. For the space of several seconds she couldn’t even breathe. The blanket caressing her back was in fact a large, male hand and her firm pillow, a muscular chest. Frozen into immobility by shock, she further discovered that her arms were wrapped tightly around his torso.
The subtle fragrance of fresh, clean male and expensive aftershave teased her senses. Familiar and yet unknown. She blinked, trying to focus, but her vision was clouded by crisp white silk and her mind could not quite come to grips with the first intimacy shared with a man in well over four years.
And not just any man.
She was wrapped up like an early Christmas present in the arms of Leiandros Kiriakis.
Reality so closely matched the dreams that had tormented her subconscious for seven long years that she spent several precious seconds trying to determine if she were still asleep.
“Eva, how come Mama is hugging that man?” Nyssa’s voice unlocked Savannah’s frozen limbs.
She was definitely awake. Her daughters had never played a role in the dreams she had had about Leiandros. Yanking her arms from their snug nest in his suit coat, she launched herself from Leiandros with such a violent movement she bounced against the opposite door and nearly fell off the seat.
He reached out to steady her and she recoiled violently from the possible touch. “I’m fine,” she all but snarled, her usual polite reserve a forgotten ideal.
“He’s our family,” Eva said, as if that explained everything. She had that much in common with her uncle.
Savannah couldn’t help but wonder if he had thought the familial claim justified the intimacy of their position as well.
“Mama?” Nyssa asked, her brown Kiriakis eyes wide with curiosity.
Savannah settled herself more firmly on the large limousine seat. Not caring what Leiandros thought of the action, she scooted as close to the door as she could get without sitting on the armrest. “Yes, sugar?”
“Why did you hug the big man?”
“I wasn’t hugging him.” She turned and glared at Leiandros. This situation was all his fault. “I was asleep.”
“Oh.” Nyssa turned her interested gaze to Leiandros and stared at him in silence for several seconds before turning back to her mother. “Were you sitting in his lap to sleep?”
The heat of embarrassment crawled over Savannah’s skin like ants on a picnic blanket. She couldn’t look at Leiandros. She had no idea how she’d ended up sleeping with her body plastered against his and feared finding out she had been the instigator.
The last thing she remembered was letting her head rest against the back of the seat. She’d closed her eyes in weariness as she tired of waiting for him to finish the latest of his numerous business calls on the cell.
She’d obviously fallen asleep. That she could understand. She’d been nearly comatose from exhaustion before the plane had landed. The last two weeks had been peppered with sleepless nights and emotionally draining days visiting her aunt.
Even so, she found it difficult to believe she’d allowed herself to get that close to a man, asleep or not. Her subconscious mind might crave Leiandros Kiriakis, but her conscious mind rejected even the hint of intimacy with any man.
The evidence, however, was irrefutable. Her skin still tingled from where she had touched him.
Before she got a chance to form a reply to Nyssa’s question that wouldn’t betray the rawness of her nerves, her daughter smiled at Leiandros. “Sometimes I sit on my mama’s lap for sleeping, but she says I’m getting too heavy. Isn’t she too big for your lap?”
Savannah wanted to groan out loud at her daughter’s logic. Nyssa’s nap had clearly been long enough to rejuvenate her mind as well as her spirits. Savannah wished she had been so lucky. Her mind felt too sluggish to deal with the current situation. Unbelievably, her traitorous body craved return to the warm, muscular resting place of Leiandros’s chest.
“I’d say she’s just right.” His low, sensual tone caressed Savannah’s insides, making them tighten and interrupting her chaotic thoughts.
Awareness of his masculinity bombarded her. Along with something else, something elemental that left her feeling hot and strangely edgy. Impossible. She had spent the last four years believing she would never again experience sexual desire and here she was as jittery as a mare being bred for the first time. Wanting it, but terrified at the same time.
“Where are we?” she asked in a desperate bid to change the direction her thoughts were taking.
“Very near Villa Kalosorisma. We have just crossed the bridge to Evia Island.” His eyes told her he knew exactly why she’d asked the question and found the knowledge amusing.
The car slid to a halt and seconds later, the door next to Savannah opened. The chauffeur helped first Eva, then Nyssa from the car. By the time Savannah swung her legs around to climb out, Leiandros had exited from the other side and come around to take her hand in his.
He pulled her from the sleek chauffeured car, the heat of his hand branding her as intimately as if he’d kissed her. She tried to ignore the sensation and swiftly stepped away from him.
The girls stood a few yards away, staring at the villa’s front with identical expressions of surprised awe. Savannah identified with the feeling.
She had never been to Villa Kalosorisma. Dion had kept her separated from the rest of his family as much as possible, even his parents and sister. He’d told her at the time it was his way of protecting her from their disapproval until they came to accept the marriage. She now knew differently. He’d been afraid of having his ugly lies about her morality revealed. She still cringed at what a gullible idiot she
