The Art of Wedding a Greek Billionaire (4 page)

No doubt she, too, had been unable to think of a way to break the ice between them. He was the man who had her thrown into jail, and she had married him. She had admitted to his face that she had allowed another man to touch her, and he had married her. It just wasn’t ice between them – it was a whole glacier the size of Mt. Everest.

He said quietly, “Mairi?”

Now was her time to let him know she was awake,
Mairi thought.

But a second later, what she ended up doing was…

“
Yoooooaaaaaarrrrrrr…
”

Damen tried his best to suppress his smile as Mairi let out the most grossest-sounding
snore.
Aside from knowing for a fact that Mairi did not snore when sleeping, no human female could produce such a sound naturally. It sounded more like a cross between a rhino’s roar and an ogre’s phlegm-filled cough.

Deciding to tease her a little, he said again, “Mairi?”

Now’s the time to let him know she was awake,
Mairi thought. But if she did, what would he say? What would
she
say?
 

“Mairi?”

Panicking, she ended up flipping to her side as if in deep sleep.

Swallowing back a silent, startled chuckle, Damen deftly swerved away from Mairi’s flying kick as she almost kicked him to the floor while flipping to her side.

He waited for her to “settle” before speaking again. “I guess you’re tired, mm?”

Mairi almost stopped breathing.
Oh my God, she knew what was going to happen next. He was going to confess Something Important.
It always happened like that in books and movies. Always!

If she squeezed her eyes any harder
, Damen thought with amusement,
she might end up bursting a blood vessel or something
.

Clearing his throat, Damen continued in a grave voice, “I suppose it’s better this way,
matakia mou.
It would be easier to tell you without you seeing me.” He almost had to bite his tongue to keep himself from reminding Mairi that people still
breathed
in their sleep.
 

Mairi was dying of anticipation.
Oh my God, the wait was killing her!!!

“I just want to tell you that—”

Thaaaaaaaat?

The pilot’s voice suddenly boomed out of the speakers, cutting Damen off as he announced that the jet would be starting its descent in a few minutes.

Mairi wanted to scream.
Nooooooooo!

But there was no going back. The moment was gone, the mood broken, and it was time for her to “wake up”. She tried to channel Sleeping Beauty as she did, thinking she should flutter her lashes several times before she could open her eyes.

So fucking hard
, Damen thought,
not to laugh out loud when Mairi seemed to be aiming for a Guinness record for the most number of times she could flutter her lashes under one minute
.

Mairi finally opened her eyes.

And the first thing she saw was Damen’s dazzlingly handsome face, which was too close for comfort and made her cheeks flush red. The second thing she saw was the gleam of wicked amusement in his silver eyes.
 

She gasped. “You knew, didn’t you?”

“Knew what?” he asked with complete innocence, but the grin tugging at his beautifully shaped lips ruined it.

Her cheeks turned a darker shade of red. Her voice turned into an embarrassed wail. “
You knew
!”

Damen allowed himself a small chuckle. “Yes, I did know you’ve been awake for quite some time.”

She wailed again, but when she started to cover her face, Damen was there to pull her hands away, and just like that the air between them sizzled, the simple contact of their hands generating enough heat for Damen’s smile to disappear and Mairi to swallow audibly.

Awkward.

Hot.

Awkward.

Hot.

She felt like she was picking off petals from a flower to determine the exact nature of her feelings. Damen’s gaze was on hers, intense but unreadable. It made her feel more self-conscious the same time every inch of her body tingled into life.
 

Awkward.

Hot.

Awkward.

Hot.

This man was her
husband.
 

Oh dear Lord, Damen Leventis was her husband.

The Greek billionaire she had dreamt of had married her, and she was now Mrs. Leventis.

It was the most bittersweet feeling, but underneath it was the unmistakable sense of joy, quiet and deep. Damen Leventis was the only man she could ever love, and no matter what had happened – no matter what the world thought – marrying him felt
right.

She just had to remember that he could never love her – could never
trust
her – the way someone who was truly in love would.

Damen was so attuned to his new wife’s feelings that he noticed the moment her smile dimmed ever so slightly. His heart clenched at the sight of it. “Mairi?”

Looking at his eyes, Mairi found whatever she had thought of saying dying in her throat. The look of fierce concern on his gorgeous face made her every misgiving fade.

How she loved this man.

Loved him so, so much it was just impossible to explain the magnitude of it.

And so in the end all she could whisper with a tremulous smile, akin to the old days, was, “Hi.”

But the concern on his face did not ease. “Something is troubling you.”

Her smile widened a little at the words. He spoke them as if they were an accusation and that she had no right to feel bad because he was there to go to battle for her.

She said half-honestly, “You’re too close.” When he raised one quizzical brow at her, she muttered, “It’s hard to
think
when you’re this close.”

Damen only frowned at her.
 

She frowned back at him. Did the man seriously think it was only his billions that made him hot? If he did, he needed to have his eyes checked.

At her unhappy frown, Damen realized with surprise – and pleasure – that Mairi did mean every word. Satisfaction coursed through him, and mixed with it was more than a good amount of possessiveness. She
still
wanted him. He could work with that. He
would
work on that. It would be his topmost priority to make Mairi forget another man’s touch to the point that her mind, body, and heart would only remember Damen.

Mairi’s heart started to race when Damen looked at her with hooded eyes. Oh no, she knew that look. And it spelled trouble.

And her suspicions were proved correct when her husband murmured in a low sexy voice, “You think I’m hot then,
ne
?”

Oh God, the words had even become a hundred times sexier because Damen didn’t hold back on his Greek accent. The darn man knew how she loved his accent, and he was using it to his advantage!

Thankfully, she was saved from replying by the pilot announcing that the seatbelt sign was on, signaling their descent.

Damen took the seat next to his wife and immediately bent towards Mairi to buckle her belt for her.

“I can do it myself,” she protested weakly, trying not to inhale too much of his wonderfully male scent. God, it was so unfair. Why did Damen always smell so darn good? Damen didn’t answer and when he moved back, she sucked her breath in as the side of his arm brushed against her breasts, which immediately caused her nipples to harden under her blouse.
 

When Damen inhaled sharply, too, Mairi cringed in a mixture of embarrassment and arousal, realizing it meant Damen was aware of her body’s instant reaction to his proximity.

As Damen returned to his seat, she turned away, closing her eyes and biting her lip hard. She had the stupidest urge to bury her head in the sand and plead with him to forget everything and just run away from the problems that haunted them. If he could promise that he would pretend to love her forever, then she was good with that.

The thought made Mairi ashamed of her weakness, and she bit her lip harder, willing herself to get over it.
Be strong. Be strong. Be strong.
She had to be strong for Damen and for all the people who were silly enough to love her.

The roaring of the jet’s descent cued her to taking deep breaths.
 

Please God, please make me strong.

“We’re here.”
 

Damen’s quiet words made her look at him. His face was grim and it struck her then, and she felt even more ashamed at how she had momentarily allowed herself to wallow in her selfish self-pity. It wasn’t only her life that had been turned upside-down.

The last time Damen Leventis had been in his homeland, he had been a Greek billionaire, running his own business empire and flying in his own private jet.

Now, he only had…her.

Damen was bemused when Mairi suddenly held his hand and squeezed it hard. When their eyes met, she gave him a determined smile. “We can do this.”

His chest constricted at his wife’s battle-ready expression. A five-foot former schoolteacher was ready to fight one of the world’s richest women and a power-hungry shipping magnate for him. God, how he loved her. He knew then that he would never deserve her, but he would try his damnedest to at least get
close
to being worthy of Mairi’s selfless devotion.

And maybe, maybe if he tried hard enough, maybe one day she would learn to love him again.

As the jet’s door opened and slowly revealed them to the public, the media’s first shot of the newlywed couple was of Damen and Mairi Leventis holding hands.
 

Damen drew Mairi close to him protectively, doing his best to shield her from the blinding glare of cameras that photographers managed to shove at their faces despite the security team that Stavros and Ioniko had sent in preparation of their arrival. It was a bitter pill for Damen to swallow, asking help from other people, but for Mairi he would do anything.

Mairi did her best to keep her smile in place as Damen forged a way through the crowd to the car waiting for them. Just when she was beginning to believe they would make it, one of the paparazzi shouted,
“Is it true he and Alina Kokinos lived under one roof while you were gone?”

The question threw Mairi back to that awful day she had met Alina, the same woman Damen once called a “real lady”, and the other woman had revealed to her what had been happening while Mairi had been away.

“Damen and I have been sharing a bed, too
…”

Mairi stumbled.

Cameras exploded into action, every lens able to capture the heartbreaking pain flashing on Mairi’s face.

Damen caught her before she fell completely, and this time his arm went around her waist like an anchor.

Mairi’s distressed look had Damen whitening because he knew – he fucking knew the
exact
reason why Mairi was looking like that. He started to speak, but the words burned into nothing when Mairi shook her head.

Teeth clenching, he held nothing back this time, aggressively making his way to the car and only allowing himself to breathe when he had Mairi stowed safely inside Ioniko’s limousine. As the door closed behind them, he began, “Mairi—”

She forced a smile. “I’m okay. It’s the past.”

“Let me explain—”

“You don’t have to.” Looking down, Mairi whispered, “It’s not as if I didn’t do the same thing.” She waited for Damen to speak after that, but he did not. When she made herself look at him, Damen was gazing outside the window, his face hard, his body tense.
 

Mairi’s fingers dug into her palms. She had a foolish urge to take the words back, but she didn’t. It didn’t matter if she had completely crossed the line or not. She had given Drake the right to touch her, and she would forever regret that.

Damen struggled to keep his emotions in check, a near impossibility when he felt so fucking strongly. He would always feel strongly about Mairi, but more so when he was reminded that his cruelty and idiocy had pushed her into the arms of another man.