by Tara Pammi
His mouth hovered inches from hers, and she wanted to close the distance between them with a raw ache that blinded her to everything else.
“Is there no end to your stupidity?”
She dragged her gaze to his, heat creeping up across her neck and into her cheeks. “Everything’s going according to your sordid plan. Why do you care what I do?”
“I’m trying to protect you from yourself. Are you so infernally stupid to believe that’s the real him or that he won’t throw you away the moment he remembers everything? Or do you plan to sleep with him and seal the deal this time?”
“There’s nothing to seal, okay?” She struggled to draw a breath, to form a coherent thought, cringing from the pain he could so easily inflict on her. “I’ve loved him since I was thirteen, and yes, I slept with him. But it was awful. Just as awful the next time too and then I just kept finding excuses to not do it. We had this horrible fight and he left me—he moved out. Are you satisfied? He’s all I have in this world, but there’s nothing left between him and me.”
“You baited me.” Instead of the anger she expected, a tight smile split his mouth. His gaze shone with a wicked fever. And Lexi regretted her behavior. Her attraction to him, it was frying her mind. “Why kiss him then?”
“Again. None of your business.”
He tugged her close to him in a quick movement, with his hands on her hips, bringing her off the ground. With a gasp, she clutched his shirt, bunching the crisp fabric in her fingers.
His erection rubbed against her belly. It felt hard, and so unbearably, unbelievably good that she moaned loud. Arrows of pleasure sparked off every inch of her.
Her gaze flew to his, her skin on fire. “Nikos...”
“Yes, Lexi.”
He was smiling, a wicked, buckle-your-knees smile. She was on fire and he was smiling. “This, you and I...I can’t...this feels like...” She swallowed, barely catching the whimper of pleasure in her throat.
His hands spanning her tiny waist, he pressed an openmouthed kiss, wet and hot against the pulse in her neck. Nerve endings she hadn’t known existed thundered into life. Her arms around his neck, she held on tight, every drag of her muscles against his sending a spasm through her.
His hands moved from her waist to capture her face, forcing her to look at him. Her mouth dried at the naked hunger dancing across those arresting features. There was a black, molten fire in his eyes and it was all for her. “What you do to me, it isn’t amusing in the least.”
The open, toe-curling want in his words set a low, pulsing ache in her lower belly. She closed her eyes and struggled to pull in air.
Nikos Demakis, the most gorgeous man she had ever seen, wanted her. That in itself had her shivering, and the storm of hunger he was holding back in his powerful body...it was as if every decadent fantasy of hers had come to life. And she...she was still just her...plain Lexi Nelson.
How was she supposed to say no to him?
Too tight in her own skin, she rubbed herself against him. Their mingled groans rent the air, the rasp of his body fully clothed against hers, pure torture. A shudder racked his powerful body, a string of Greek, curses she was sure, pervading the air.
She did it again, and he pushed her back against the wall, his hands spanning her tiny waist.
Lust stamped his features. “Don’t do that, thee mou. Unless you want me to take you against the wall. Not that I won’t oblige you if that’s what you want.”
“Wait.” Panic bloomed in her stomach at the raw tingle that swept through her. She had to put a stop to this, now. While she still could. “Please, Nikos. Let me go.”
He let her go instantly, his gaze devouring her. His silence screamed at her, his face a feral mask of control.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lead... The fact that you want me, it’s dangerous, it’s gone to my head....” She took a deep breath. This was not fair, to him or to her. “I don’t think there’s a woman alive who could say no to you. But I...”
“Every time you look at me with those blue eyes, you’re wondering how it would feel to kiss me. Your body, whether you don’t know it, or you know it and don’t want to accept it, is crying for my touch.”
She wrapped her hands around herself. “It is, but I have control over it. I won’t have sex with just anyone, without involving my heart.”
His mouth curled into a sneer. “No, you will only have sex with a friend, for whom you’re an emotional crutch and nothing else, to stop him from leaving you, even if you don’t really want it, no? You’re prepared to go to any lengths, give up anything to keep him in your life. Who’s using sex now?”
Every word out of his mouth was the utter, inescapable truth. Only she hadn’t seen it until now. It coated her mouth with distaste, twisted the biggest relationship of her life, the only one, to a painful, jagged mass.
Was that what everything between her and Tyler had been reduced to? Had she clung to him all these years knowing that things weren’t right? She couldn’t bear the desolate thought. “You don’t know what you are talking about. You just can’t understand what the big deal is, why Venetia and I are willing to go to any lengths for Tyler. Because you’re incapable of understanding it, of feeling anything, and it’s beginning to annoy the hell out of you.”
His face could have been a mask poured out of concrete. Every muscle in his face froze in contrast to the blistering emotion in his gaze. It put paid to her stupid claim that he didn’t feel anything. “You little hypocrite. I saw you when he kissed you. You couldn’t wait to get away and yet you clung to him. You want to know how it feels when you feel the opposite, Lexi, when you can’t wait to rip off someone’s clothes?”
She could have said that she already knew—that it was all she wanted to do when she was near him. But he didn’t give her the chance. Pressing his upper body into hers, he nudged a thigh between her legs and claimed her mouth.
Her shocked gasp was lost in his mouth. The stubble on his chin scratched her sensitive skin, the hard angles of his body imprinted on her and she shivered as he nipped at her mouth, knocking the breath out of her.
He didn’t kiss her gently like Tyler had done. It was as if the storm had burst, as if he had been waiting forever to do it, as if his next breath depended on kissing her. His hands stole under her T-shirt until his hot palms were laid flat on her bare flesh.
His tongue licked the inside of her lower lip, sucked at her tongue, stroked her to a high that she had to climb.
It was a kiss with pure erotic intent, it was a kiss to possess her senses, it was a kiss to prove his point. But he didn’t know that he didn’t need to. She was already a slave to her body’s wants and desires when she was near him.
A moan rose through her throat and misted into the darkness as he sank his teeth into her lower lip. An electric shiver tingled up her spine as a million nerve endings sprang into life, both pain and pleasure coalescing and shooting down between her legs.
The wetness at her sex shocked and aroused her even more.
She groaned loud, a whimper to stop and a plea to continue, all rolled into one. Her knees trembled and she rubbed against the hard thigh lodged against her throbbing core, mindless with aching need.
His hands gentled in her hair, his hard muscles pulled back from her. He murmured something in Greek. She shivered as he blew a soft breath on her throbbing lower lip. Something almost like an apology reached her ears.
He claimed her lips again, but this time, he was exploring, teasing, and it was the unexpected gentleness that broke the spell for her.
With a grunt, she pushed him back from her, her chest rising and falling with the effort it took to pull air into her lungs. “No,” she whispered into the darkness. And then repeated it louder for her sake more than his. “No, Nikos.”
The dark intent in his eyes scared her, he
r own powerlessness in the face of the blazing fire between them scared her. If he touched her again, if he kissed her again, she wouldn’t say no. She couldn’t say no.
He was the first man to incite knee-buckling desire in her. Why did he have to be so out of her league, so different from who she was?
And look how things panned out with your best friend, an insidious voice whispered in her ear.
She ran the back of her hand over her trembling lips. The taste of him wasn’t going to come off so easily. “I don’t love you. I...”
He jerked back slowly, his gaze incredulous. “Have you still not learned the lesson? Your love for Tyler blinded you to everything, crippled you into not living your life. You still want that love?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Tyler had an affair with Faith behind your back. He cheated on you with your friend.”
She raised her head and looked at him, fury and self-disgust roiling through her. “You’re making this up...you’re...”
Her desperation had no end, it seemed. If Nikos had been angry before, he was a seething cauldron of fury now. Taking her arms in a gentle grip that pricked through her, he set her away from him.
“I’m an unfeeling bastard, true. And I’ve no misconceptions about what or who I am. However, I don’t settle for what people throw at me. I don’t let them treat me like trash.”
She closed his mouth with her hand, and sagged against him. “I had no idea about Tyler and Faith. That they even liked each other that way. I...”
There it was, the tiny truth that been evading her for so many months, the last piece in the puzzle that threatened to pull her under.
She had done all this.
She finally understood why Tyler had called her selfish. Because he had felt bound to her by his guilt, because even though there had been proof enough that they could never be more than friends, she hadn’t wanted to let him go, because her refusal to move on had meant he couldn’t move on, either.
Because she had been the one who had gone to juvie, even though both of them had been responsible for the robbery.
All because she had been scared to live her own life.
So many times, Tyler had asked her to apply to a college somewhere else, asked her to change her job, always encouraged her to reach for more, to take a risk and she...she had been scared to leave his side, scared to venture into an unknown life, amongst unknown people because she had been terrified of being alone.
Of having no one who loved her, of mattering to no one. And so she had continued on her little merry way, clinging to Tyler, clinging to Faith, ruining all their lives in the process. She had convinced herself that he loved her, that she loved him in a way she hadn’t, forced herself and guilted him.
And that’s what he was doing again. He was leaving Venetia, breaking her heart because he felt guilty about how he had treated Lexi. And Lexi couldn’t let him do that anymore.
She couldn’t be a coward anymore.
Straightening her shoulders, she looked at Nikos. Fear was a primal tattoo in her head that she had to mute long enough to speak. For the first time in her life, she wanted something. She wanted to be with Nikos, she wanted to revel in the desire she felt for him.
She had to do it now, before she lost her nerve, before she forgot how many lives she had ruined because she had been scared, before she crawled back into her safe little place and let life pass her by.
She had to let Tyler go, she had to set herself free. If she fell, he would be there to catch her. He always would. She knew that now. Which meant it was time to start living.
“You want me, Nikos? You got me,” she said, knowing that there was no turning back now.
A blaze of fire leaped into life in his gaze. He took another step closer. Instinctively, she stepped back and the wall kissed her spine. Her breath came in ragged little whispers as he placed his palm on her midriff, right beneath her breast. It spanned most of her waist. Her pulse leaped at her throat, and immediately, she closed her eyes.
His fingers moved up, traced the shape of her breasts, and she arched into his touch. “Look at me, Lexi. You don’t have to hide from this.”
She did, and his gaze held hers. She took his mouth in a hard kiss that stoked the flames in his eyes a little more. “I won’t hide anymore, Nikos, or hold back. I want everything you can give me.”
His fingers kept moving over her body, over her breasts, her hips, until they came to rest on her butt. He cupped her and pulled her close. The heavy weight of his arousal pressing into her belly, it was the most sinful sensation ever.
Every muscle in her body turned into molten liquid, ready to be molded into whatever he wanted. She gripped his nape and wrapped her legs around his hips. His breath coated her skin, his fingers found the seam of her bra all the while he nibbled at her lips.
He was everywhere, in her breath, in her skin, in her every cell, and she wanted to do nothing but sink into him, to give herself over into his hands.
Suddenly, he wasn’t kissing her anymore, and Lexi whimpered. Her heart slowly returning to its normal beat, she blinked and realized why he had stopped.
Nikos’s head of security stood on the other side of the pool. His thumb running over her cheek, Nikos grinned. “We’re not done.”
Lexi nodded and tried not to sink back into the wall. Her breathing still choppy, she moved to stand behind Nikos, heat streaking her cheeks.
She watched Nikos talk to the other man with increasing agitation, until a curse flew from his mouth that reverberated in the silence. Her gut feeling heavy, Lexi reached him just as his head of security left. She clasped Nikos’s arm, despite the angry energy pouring off of him. “Nikos, what happened?”
“Venetia and Tyler have been gone all afternoon.” He clicked Call on his cell and waited. “And she’s not picking up.”
“I don’t understand. What do you mean they’ve been—”
He ran a shaking hand through his hair, the color leaching from his skin. “The maids saw her pack a bag. Tyler’s clothes are missing, too. And apparently one of her friends picked them up in a boat. They have left.” She stilled as another curse fell from his mouth, ringing with his worry.
Without another word to her, he was gone.
CHAPTER EIGHT
WHAT HAPPENED WHEN Lexi Nelson, delusional coward extraordinaire, decided to finally live her life and throw herself at a six-foot-three-inch hunk of Greek alpha male who had a woman in every city?
Said Greek stud apparently lost all interest in sex because his sister ran away to God-knows-where with her lover, who happened to be Lexi’s best friend, in tow.
So instead of living her fantasy, Lexi was getting a peek into Athens’s nightlife with Nikos alternately cursing and glowering at her, apparently having easily dismissed any attraction he had felt for her in the first place.
This time, she was really pissed off with the Greek heiress.
Lexi had known Venetia had cared for Tyler, but she hadn’t expected her to spirit Tyler away from under her brother’s nose. All because Tyler had kissed Lexi.
If only Venetia knew the truth...
In her heart, Lexi was glad Venetia had refused to allow Tyler to simply bow out of her life. If only she could take away the guilt and worry shining in Nikos’s eyes...that and the fact Nikos hadn’t even looked at her, much less touched her again.
Every night for the past four days, Nikos, intent on interrogating every man or woman Venetia had ever spoken to, or even looked at, had dragged her to a multitude of dazzling nightclubs and lavish penthouses, each more decadently rich and sophisticated than the last.
This view into his sphere of life had her senses spinning. For the first two days, she had been awed, almost enjoying the glimpse she was getting into a life she could on
ly imagine about.
Except each visit had steadily chipped away at her already frayed self-confidence. Everywhere they went women—tall, beautiful and sexy—threw themselves at Nikos. She might as well have been an alien existing in a different galaxy.
Really, it was a testament to the man’s focus, and his love for his sister, that he hadn’t spared any of them even a second look.
She was beginning to believe Nikos might have been delirious that evening four days ago. She would have easily called herself delirious, except she couldn’t forget how mind-bendingly good it had felt to be cradled against his powerful body, how the simple caress of his mouth against her neck had branded her.
Had his desire for her already cooled off? She’d braced for that to happen after, not before he even kissed her again. And it stung.
With a curt “stay here,” he had dumped her in the private lounge of the nightclub almost forty-five minutes ago.
The nightclub was a glorious spectacle with live dancers on raised platforms on either side of the dance floor. Soft purple lights illuminated the crowd below. White couches, white columns, white tables—all soaked up the light giving a sultry vibe to the club. And having noticed the lines outside the entrance and the small crowd inside, she had no doubt it was an exclusive type.
Judging however by the curious, almost-hungry looks thrown up at the private lounge where she was sitting, she realized it was the private lounges that were the main attraction. And she could see why.
Separated and placed discreetly above the main party floor, the VIP lounge, enclosed by glass walls on all sides, offered a perfect view of the club. She sat on the edge of the provocative sofa bed, the leather luxuriously soft under her touch.
Amidst the crowd and music, she found Nikos as easily as if he was her honing beacon.
Leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the club, he was talking to a tall, curvy blonde. Her upper body was slanted toward him in an unmistakable invitation. Despite black envy scouring her, Lexi couldn’t find fault with her.
