A Deal with Demakis

by Tara Pammi

  “Is beginning to like Ms. Havisham.” He finished her thought. “But the realization won’t stop him. He will try to kill her.”

  “Unless she kills him first,” she said, laughing. At his disbelieving stare, the smile slid from her face. “Maybe you understand Spike, but Ms. Havisham is not like me, Nikos. Not weak or lonely and forever needing someone to make her feel like she matters. She’s strong, independent, a survivor. She has no qualms about her sexuality or her place in the world. If Spike threatens her survival, she will kill him. As she has already killed before. And have no regrets about it.”

  He placed the paper slowly on the nightstand and turned her until she was straddling him. Having her this close was nothing short of torture. He held off the liquid longing at bay with sheer determination. This—this sexual desire, this situation between them, it was still under his control. It had to be. Never before had this kind of control been so important to him. “I don’t think she’s all that different from you.”

  “I clung to Tyler all these years. I let Faith walk all over me. All for what? For a few crumbs of affection, to feel like I have someone who loves me? Ms. Havisham is—”

  “She might be packing in the boob and leg department,” he said, using her words, and she instantly smiled and swatted his shoulder. “And she might be a badass with that gun, but all those are outward things, Lexi.” He placed his palm on her chest, and her heart thundered under his touch. The words flew out of him on a wave, and he could do nothing to curb them. “Here, you’re just as strong as her or even more. No one else could have lived your life and retained the good you have, the warmth you have. You don’t have to rewrite your story, yineka mou. It is already an extraordinary one.”

  Lexi swallowed at the raw honesty that rang in Nikos’s words, the tenderness shining in his gaze. She had been drawing for as long as she could remember. It had started as a comfort, and somewhere down the line had become more than that. It was her lifeline, her way of controlling things she couldn’t change, her way of righting the things that had gone wrong in her life. In her bleakest moments, it had been the only way she could hold on to a life that had been nothing but lonely and sometimes, even cruel.

  She had always meant for Ms. Havisham to kill Spike. But ever since she had begun the actual sketching, the story had taken on a life of its own. And the man staring at her with liquid desire in his gaze, with a tenderness that threatened to pull her under, it was him.

  He had changed the course of her story and that of her own life.

  How was she supposed to remember that this was just sex when he made her heart ache for more, when he looked at her as though she was the most precious woman in the world?

  How was she supposed to walk away when it was time?

  She threw her hands around his neck and kissed his jaw, choking back the tears catching in her throat. She breathed her thanks into his skin, explored the tangy taste of him with her tongue. The depth of emotion roiling inside her scared her.

  She took a bracing breath, willing her heart to slow down, willing her mind to take control, willing herself not to ruin this glorious moment with this wonderful man with unwanted fears.

  Only then did she realize the absolute stillness that had inched into Nikos.

  He was so rigid in her embrace that she wondered if he was even breathing. Pasting a smile on her face, she pulled herself back and looked into his eyes. “Sorry,” she whispered, forcing a levity she didn’t feel into her tone. “Talking about my stories and sketches always makes me emotional.” As cop-outs went, it was a good one.

  She pressed her mouth to his, not waiting to see if he believed it or not. Because the desire she felt for him, the need that was already unraveling inside her—that she understood and she used it to root herself in reality.

  With a groan, he dragged her closer until her aching sex rubbed against his erection.

  She instantly parted her legs and moved over the hard ridge, wanton hunger rising to the surface. Her time was limited with him. And it made her desperate.

  She tugged her T-shirt off with trembling fingers. He threw his head back and laughed. A gravelly sound that abraded her skin. Rising to her knees, she attacked the band of his black trousers. But he stilled her hands on them.

  His large hands holding her immobile, he licked her collarbone. That small, almost-there-but-gone point of contact, her whole body gathered behind it. “I want to see all of you this time.”

  She nodded, her mouth dry. She slid from his lap, her skin tingling at his continued perusal. “I want to see you, too. On the bed,” she added, forcing the words past the thundering beat of her heart.

  He stood up from the chair and neared her. His smile cut grooves in his cheeks, making him look deliciously divine.

  “What? I’m being outspoken, demanding what I want from life, from you.”

  “I can see that. And you look gloriously beautiful doing it.” He ran his finger over the edge of her pink bra, and she willed herself not to step back. It was easy to speak the words, but to match her actions was something else altogether. Because she would always be amazed that he could want her, that the blazing desire in his eyes was for her. “Did you just think that up?”

  “It’s like my subconscious speaks up every time I am near you. You probably think the bed is boring but—”

  He covered the distance between them and picked her up. She tucked her hands around his neck and pushed herself closer. “Nothing with you is boring, Ms. Nelson. Although, I think we can make it interesting.”

  He threw her on the bed, and Lexi thought she would expire from how soft the sheets were. “What do you mean, Mr. Demakis?”

  Unbuttoning his dress shirt, he prowled to the other end of the room and grabbed a champagne bottle from the ice bucket.

  Lexi moved to her knees. The dark desire in his gaze sent a tingle from her head to toe. “You should know I’m not much of a drinker.”

  He shrugged off his T-shirt and took a sip of the champagne. “Who said you will be drinking it?”

  With his other hand, he reached around her back and unhooked her bra, while his tongue found the exact spot on her neck that drove her out of her skin and licked it. His hands tugged down her shorts and panties next.

  She was naked and twin strips of color blooded his cheekbones. “Never say you’re not beautiful again, thee mou.”

  One hand snaked around her waist, his long fingers cupping her buttocks. Her nipples grazed against his chest. Throwing her head back, Lexi groaned, shivering all over.

  He kissed her mouth, his tongue swirling the tender inside, licking, nipping, her hands roaming his back, desperate for more. His fingers sank into her hair and pulled her face up for his scrutiny. “Do you trust me, Lexi?” he whispered against her skin.

  Lexi nodded, no words coming to her mouth.

  “Then close your eyes.”

  Willing to do anything he asked, she closed her eyes. Words whispered in Greek and English, wicked promises, rained down sensation upon sensation. She gasped as he bound something around her eyes, and realized it was the tie he had loosened earlier.

  He pushed at her shoulders softly and Lexi fell back, every inch of her trembling. She waited, the soft breeze from the veranda touching every inch of her. Desire coiled tighter and tighter in her lower belly as she heard the rustle of his clothes. The bed dipped and Nikos’s hair-roughened leg rasped deliciously against her.

  She gasped as something cold, the champagne she realized with a gasp, fell in a slow trickle over her collarbone. Then over her breasts, over her trembling stomach. She fisted her hands in the sheets as the cold liquid only heated up the rest of her skin even more.

  Nikos’s heated breath, the warmth of his body, swathed her. His lips met hers in a fusion of need and lust, the pressure of his mouth, the silky strokes of his tongue, ever
y sensation amplified without sight.

  And then he was licking the champagne off her body in sure, lingering strokes, setting her on fire. He licked it from her breasts, his tongue rasping against the tight nipple.

  “Champagne has never tasted better, Lexi.”

  Now his mouth licked it off her abdomen, and she sank her fingers into his hair with a shaking moan.

  Sensation on sensation piled over her, her skin crackling with pleasure. The minute she felt his breath on her inner thighs, she clamped her legs closed, heat billowing inside her skin. “I’m... Nikos...”

  His fingers kneaded her hip, his mouth opening in a smile against her thighs. “I want to see you, thee mou. All of you.”

  Her thighs trembled as she let him push them apart. He didn’t give her another minute to think. His fingers separating the folds, he tasted her wet sex in a leisurely lick, and Lexi bucked off the bed with a long moan.

  His forearm stayed on her abdomen, the hair on it tingling against her skin. Heat gathered in her belly like a storm, as he continued his torment. He made love to her with his tongue, and she climbed higher and higher, sweat gathering on her skin, throwing her head from left to right.

  She sobbed his name, again and again, in search of a rhythm, in pursuit of relief. Her breaths were raspy, her body feeling like it would implode if she didn’t find release soon.

  He sucked the quivering bundle of nerves and Lexi orgasmed, in a shower of pleasure that had her shivering from top to toe.

  With a guttural groan that pushed her over the edge, Nikos thrust into her.

  Lexi trembled violently under him, the weight of his hard body knocking the breath out of her, her body twisting as he pulled out and thrust back in, setting a rhythm that told tales about his shattered self-control.

  On the next thrust in, she felt his warm breath on her breast, and then his mouth closed over the hardened peak. The minute she felt his teeth on the tautly tender bud, she came again in an electrifying wave of spasms.

  She dug her nails into his back, feeling the deep ridge of his spine stiffen, the hard muscles tightening.

  With another firm thrust, Nikos came, his sweat-soaked skin rubbing against hers. Slowly, his breath evened out again, but he was still on top of her. She nudged the tie away from her eyes, but kept them closed, focusing on evening her breaths out, glad that he couldn’t see her expression.

  Only he kissed her again. Slowly, softly. She tasted his sweat, she tasted his passion and most of all, she tasted his tenderness in that kiss. And she sucked in a deep breath, trying to stem the avalanche of feelings inside her. He moved away from her, and she instantly turned to her side, her breathing still labored, but for a different reason.

  Stretching behind her, Nikos pulled her close into the haven of his body. She felt the shudder in his body as he tucked her close to him. “Are you all right, thee mou?”

  Running her fingers over his forearm, Lexi pressed a kiss to his palm.

  She could talk as if she owned this affair, but she had a feeling sex was never going to be just sex for her. She didn’t know whether to be happy or sad about it. But it was the truth, and she already had had a lifetime of shying away from it. She had wanted to stop hiding from life, to stop standing on the sidelines. But it also meant accepting herself as she was.

  She was in this bed with Nikos because it was him, because for all his acerbic words and unfeeling facade, she liked him. It scared her—the little fluttering in her tummy when he looked at her, the way her heart missed a beat when he smiled. She couldn’t lie to herself that it was just attraction or desire.

  “Never better, Nikos,” she said, speaking past the thump, thump of her heart. And felt his smile against her skin.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  VENETIA AND TYLER are getting married tomorrow morning.

  From the minute Nikos had received the message from his security head, only one thought resonated incessantly in his head.

  Had Lexi known all this time where they had been? Her concern for him—had it all been an act?

  She hadn’t denied his earlier accusation that she wouldn’t tell him if Tyler contacted her. And yet, he wanted to hear it from her mouth that she had knowingly deceived him.

  He thanked his pilot and swung his legs out of the chopper.

  Pulling his cell phone from his coat pocket, he switched it off. Savas was going to call; he knew it in his bones. And he was not ready for another one of his grandfather’s ploys. Theo Katrakis was going to make his move any minute now, and then Nikos would finally have what he wanted, and this time without paying Savas’s price.

  Walking through the marble foyer, he shrugged off his coat, suit jacket and tie. He mounted the steps to the first floor, and stopped outside Lexi’s bedroom.

  It was past eleven and by the absence of light under the door and the silence, she was sleeping. The last thing he wanted to do was scare her.

  He turned the knob slowly. Moonlight filled the room with a silvery glow. His heart thumping in that annoying way anytime he was near her, he reached the bed, only to find it empty.

  A hushed whisper reached him from beneath the veranda, and he took the stairs down to the pool behind. A rented scooter lay against the wall next to the ivy at the back of the house and standing by the pool was Lexi.

  In her white shorts and bright yellow spaghetti strap top, she looked innocent and young, as if she was incapable of deception.

  Her slender shoulders stiff, she looked up at him. There was no guilt in her eyes.

  He knew, and he had accepted as much as he could, that what Lexi shared with Tyler was indescribable. That he was her friend, family, everything rolled into one. He understood their relationship had been born out of the hardest time of her life.

  Having known that bone-crushing loneliness, he was only glad that she had had Tyler.

  But the consequence of that was that in her loyalty, her affection, Nikos would always only come second to Tyler.

  Something flashed in her gaze as she took in his scowl. Fear? Shame? “Nikos, I’ve been trying to—”

  He didn’t let her finish. “Did you know where they have been all this time?”

  Her luscious mouth trembled.

  “Answer my question, Lexi.”

  “Yes.”

  The one word reverberated in his ears. His gut felt strangely hollow, his throat closing in, making it hard to breathe. Shying his gaze away from her, he turned and looked out at the blue surface of the heated pool.

  There was a gentle breeze around them, the sounds of the ocean beyond the estate walls soothing, and yet inside, he felt anything but.

  He felt betrayed, hurt, he realized. And yet she had made him no promise, owed him nothing.

  It was his own fault for forgetting what was important. Because five days of spending time with the woman, making love to her every which way, waking up with her slender form tucked tight against him, had warped his defenses, his armor.

  Every time he had made love to her, it was as though she was changing him from inside out and he didn’t know how to stop it. Sex had become something else, something he had never felt before.

  His hunger for her knew no bounds, but it was the little things he craved to see that lingered in him long after he was away from her, the little intimacies they shared that sent a ripple of fear to brew within.

  How else had the little minx gotten him to admit that Spyros worked for him in Athens? Her soft body cradled against his, her eyes had shimmered in the moonlight as she muttered about why he wanted to paint himself in the cruelest color possible with her.

  She was determined to prove that he had a heart, and a kind, working one, at that. To stop her from going on, he had said that it had been to his own advantage to hire Spyros behind Savas’s back, because he knew everything a
bout the ins and outs of the business.

  To which she had smiled, looking at him as though she had discovered a treasure, and kissed him, forcing Nikos to admit that Spyros at the end of it all, had been thankful to Nikos because he would have never had the guts to stand up to Savas and admit his love for his wife.

  But she had drawn the lines now, had shown him his place in her life, like everyone else he had ever cared about.

  The little realization sat on his chest like a boulder cutting off his breath. For all her claims, she hadn’t given him another thought, while he...he had been planning to ask her to stay as long as she wanted, he’d had a studio prepared for her, he...

  Hurt gave way to bitter anger that he had to choke back to speak. “Have you just been manipulating me, hoping I would learn about them too late?”

  She looked at him with a stricken expression, shaking her head. “I didn’t tell you when I thought they just needed time. I have been trying to rack my brain about what is best for everyone—”

  “You mean what is best for him.” The words barreled out of him on a wave of emotion that suddenly he had no control over. “Because everyone and everything else is secondary to you.”

  “This whole week...I’ve never felt more alive, I’ve never been happier. How dare you taint it with your ridiculous accusations?”

  She sounded so uncharacteristically ferocious that Nikos stilled, his heart thundering loudly in his ears. Her gaze blazed with pure fury. “Then why didn’t you...”

  Tyler stepped out from behind the wall. Fierce emotion flooded through him, washing away the hurt, the anger, and he stood shaking in its wake.

  Theos, what was happening to him?

  Lexi clamped his fingers tight, refusing to let him retreat. “I know how much she means to you, Nikos. I... The moment I learned what Venetia was proposing, I have been going crazy with worry. I spent all morning trying to contact Tyler. I begged him to come clean with you.”

  He couldn’t look away anymore. Their gazes met and the depth of feeling there rocked him to his toes. No one had ever considered his feelings before in his life, no one had ever wondered if he was in pain, that he could hurt and bleed just as anyone else, that he wanted to be loved and cherished and even protected.