by Tara Pammi
Not his father, not Venetia and not Savas.
Until, one day, he had stopped feeling at all. He had turned himself into stone, starving everything else but his ambition. And he hadn’t even realized until Lexi had showed up.
This feeling...it was gratitude, it was fear, and it gripped his body and wouldn’t let go. But as warm and excruciatingly real as it was, he didn’t want it. The only thing he understood, the only thing he could handle was his desire for her.
Nothing more.
“I care about Venetia,” Tyler said, approaching him, his eyes welling with emotion. “And I don’t know how to say no to her without hurting her, Nikos. But I can’t marry her like this, not when I don’t remember her, not when I have messed up every important relationship I’ve ever had.” He took a step closer to Lexi and planted his hands on her shoulders, as though drawing strength from her.
Nikos had the most atavistic urge to push his hand off Lexi, to tell him that he had no rights to her. That she belonged to Nikos now.
There was such a ringing clarity to the thought that Nikos fisted his hands to not follow through on it.
“I trusted Lexi’s word that Venetia’s well-being is important to you, too,” Tyler said in a gruff tone, “that you can find a way out of this without hurting her. I know you want me out of her life, but all I want is her happiness, Nikos. Venetia might very well hate me for this.”
“Nikos? Please say something. This is the only way I could think of to—”
Nikos nodded, not trusting himself to say anything right. He didn’t know what was right or wrong right now. Only that the expression in Lexi’s eyes—concerned, expectant—would stay with him forever. He held the answering desire in him at bay through sheer will.
“Where is my sister now?”
“At the inn. She was getting overexcited about the wedding tomorrow, and extremely anxious about not telling you, so I suggested she take a sleeping pill and take it easy for tonight. She is out like a light,” he said with a wince.
Nikos nodded, once again surprised. Whether Tyler loved Venetia as he claimed or not, Nikos couldn’t know. But he could clearly handle her well. “Go back to the inn now,” he said, considering several scenarios one after the other. “Don’t say a word to her about being here. I will be there in the morning at the inn. I was this close to locating you both anyway.”
“And the wedding?” Tyler asked.
Lexi had been right. His sister was stronger than he had given her credit for. “I will convince her to not go through with it. For now. Which means I have to give her my blessing about you.”
Lexi looked up at him. “Do you?”
He gave in to the urge and tugged her to his side, unable to keep himself from touching her. Her apparent happiness at the very thought, the depth of her goodwill toward two people who had caused her immense hurt, it was hard not to be transformed in a little way by it.
“I won’t ask you to leave immediately,” he said finally, meeting Tyler’s eyes. “My sister has already suffered a lot. I don’t ever want to see her hurt.”
Tyler met his gaze unflinchingly. “Neither do I. Nor do I want to marry her until I remember everything, until I’m worthy of her. All I ask is that you give me the chance to try.”
Still clasping her wrist, he pulled Lexi along with him. “You have it,” he threw at Tyler, who stood looking at them with a nonplussed expression on his face.
* * *
Did she leave now?
The innocuous question attacked Lexi as Nikos pushed her into her bedroom and disappeared to answer a phone call. She knew the question had been coming, but she had shoved it away while figuring out how to handle what Tyler had told her this morning.
Now that everything between Tyler and Venetia was resolved, at least for now, the fact was that what she had come to do was no longer valid.
Tyler didn’t need her anymore. Which meant her deal with Nikos was done.
Her stomach twisting into a painful knot, Lexi got off the bed and walked to the connecting veranda. She didn’t want to sit there and let Nikos see the confusion in her eyes.
Because she didn’t want to leave, she didn’t want to walk away from Nikos. Not yet.
If ever, a sinuous voice whispered. Rubbing her clammy hands on her T-shirt, she leaned against the wall, fast tears gathering in her throat.
She would not cry, as much as it hurt. She needed to be grown-up about it. Deal with it like a holiday fling.
“Lexi?”
She heard Nikos’s tread in the bedroom, drew in a deep breath and ventured back in. Feeling as though she was marching into battle.
Nikos stood beside the bed, his knees propped against it. Undoing the cuffs of his shirt, his gaze traveled over her pale face with increasing curiosity. By the time he was done, wariness entered his face. “I thought this was what you wanted for them—a real chance.”
She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling inexplicably cold. “It is.”
“It would have never worked out between you and him,” he said in a soft voice full of emotion.
“What?” she said automatically, frowning. Realization dawned. “Nikos, I’m not moping over Tyler.”
Reaching her, he took her hands in his. Her hands were the size of his palms, the rough grooves and ridges now as familiar to her as her own. She trembled as he ran one finger over her cheek and the circles under her eyes. “Thank you for trusting me with the truth today.”
She smiled up at him, wondering if everything she felt was written in her eyes. And if he would run if he saw it. “I think you like deluding Venetia, your grandfather, and even yourself into thinking that you don’t understand love or affection or any matters of heart. But I know that you do. I believed that in the face of Tyler’s honesty, you would give him a chance.”
He inclined his head and smiled. The warmth of it enveloped her. “Then why that look in your eyes?”
She tried for casual nonchalance and utterly failed. “You don’t need me here anymore. It’s time I returned to New York.”
“Ahhh...so you won’t want this then?” With his hand on her wrist, he tugged her from the room, giving her no chance to answer.
They walked through the corridor, went down the steps, through the lounge into one of the rooms to the side. It was the room she loved most in the villa. Very sparsely furnished, and during most of the day, sunlight filled the room.
They came to a stop in front of the closed door.
“Open it.”
Her heart in her throat, Lexi pushed the door. Nikos switched on the lights behind her. Tears clogged her throat, her stomach a mass of flutters at the sight that greeted her.
A huge drafting table stood at one corner, with a detachable drawing board set up on top, slightly angled and perfectly positioned for her height. A sleek silver laptop sat on a table next to it with a printer/scanner, a filing cabinet next to it. Reams of four-by-six paper, magnetic draw/erase boards, paintbrushes and boxes, pencils in every brand and size, erasers, everything and anything she could ever want was in the room.
It was a studio he could have plucked from her dreams.
Her mouth dried up, her chest filled with a lightness that should have made breathing easier.
Nikos stood leaning against the door, drinking in every expression on her face.
“Do you like it?”
“It’s perfect,” she whispered, her pulse hammering in her throat. “I... You have thought of everything. But I... It’s just always been a hobby.”
“Why is it just a hobby?”
She couldn’t even answer for a few minutes for the tumult of feelings that flew within her. For years, she had wished for someone to think of her, to care about her. And in his own way, she realized, Nikos did.
“Your talent is be
yond average, Lexi. You should finish your graphic novel and submit a proposal.”
Her heart slammed against her rib cage. “For what?”
“For publishing it.”
Trepidation swirled through her. He caught her hands in his, his fingers drawing circles on the backs of her palms.
“Or you can just scan a few teasers, and put it up on the web. There’s a large community online that’s much less scary if that’s what you—”
“Wait. How do you know all this?”
“I’ve been researching it. People are going to love your work. Compared to everything that’s out there, I have no doubt your work will stand out. The second way, you create a reader base, and the best thing about it is, knowing that people want to read it will motivate you to keep going.”
Lexi blinked, unable to formulate a response. The fact that he had put so much thought into this, that he had researched it, the fact that he understood her trepidation, it sat tight on her chest. “I just... It’s not going to be like Superman or Spiderman, you know. And I’m not that ambitious really, either. I just want to be able to do it more and support myself.”
His long strides swallowed up the distance between them. His gray V-necked T-shirt delineated that broad chest gloriously. His long fingers clutched her shoulders as he looked down. “Then stay here.”
“What?”
“Stay for as long as we both want this. It seems even your friend is going to be here for a while, right?”
She laughed at that last incentive and liked him a little more. He was making it so hard to say no to him, to refuse this chance. The little resistance she might have had was crumbling before his thoughtfulness.
“I can’t accept all this...” She colored furiously. “I can’t just live off of you, Nikos. That would just taint everything we have. Please try to—”
“I will respect your wishes,” he said with such easy acceptance that shock robbed her of words. “The second half of your payment should be debiting even as we speak.” He laid a finger on her mouth. “Before you argue, I am... I was the boss. All I wanted was to stop my sister from getting hurt. I think you did a great job. With that money you have, all I am offering you is a place to stay. It’s nothing less than what I would do for a friend.”
She scrunched her nose at him. “You don’t have any friends.”
He ignored her little quip. “Apart from this studio, I won’t force anything else on you. You can even put in a few hours at the hotel when they need some help.”
She thought her heart might burst open from her chest. It took every bit of self-possession she had to remain still. “This is what you want?”
He bent his head and kissed her nose. She smiled at the gesture. Over the past week, she had realized that while being an extremely physical man with an insatiable sex drive, Nikos really didn’t do the little things like touching, or hugging outside the context of sex.
So every moment he touched her, or kissed her like this, was a precious gift she hugged to herself. “I want this, too...but I won’t to be your sex stop of Greece.” In this, she would not relent. She fought to force casualness into her tone. “I grew a monstrous, scaly, green head when that woman was touching you the other day. I’m not sophisticated like your other—”
His hands moved to her buttocks and tugged her off the floor until she was cradled against his groin, his arousal a hard, pulsing weight against the V of her legs. “I haven’t looked at another woman since you began messing with my head. I don’t want anyone else but you.”
Something colored his voice—a resigned acceptance that this was different—and she smiled. It was not only her that was venturing into new territory.
She ran her fingers over his jaw. The rasp of his stubble against her palm was an intimacy that left her shaking. Equal parts excitement and fear raced through her veins. How long would they last? What happened when he was through with her? Wouldn’t it be better to walk away now?
She hid her face in his chest, fighting the swarm of questions, fighting the urge to ask them. His heart thundered under her cheek.
He smelled like sex and warmth and...even with all his contradictions, he made her happy.
Being with Nikos made her happy, made her feel alive for the first time in her life. It was as simple as that.
Of course, there was her fear that he would end this suddenly, that she was already in too deep...and that gut-wrenching feeling in her stomach every time he reached for her in his sleep.
It was the time her every defense, her carefully constructed attitude to keep this uncomplicated, collapsed like a pack of cards. Just as she did then, she pushed away the fear again.
Nikos liked her. Every action of his made up for words he didn’t speak. And that was enough for her.
When she was with him, she believed she was beautiful, that she was courageous and that she deserved the best that life had to offer. She loved what she became when she was with him.
She wouldn’t let her worry about the future destroy her present like she had done for so long.
He had taught her to live, and live she would. She wound her arms around his lean waist. The hard muscles tightened for a second, but she held on, knowing that he was new to this kind of intimacy.
She looked up at him and smiled. “I’ll stay.”
He rubbed his thumb over her lower lip, his gaze full of...warmth and a light she had never seen before. “That’s good.” He spoke the words in a matter-of-fact voice, but the depth of emotion he was struggling to contain and failing to was enough for her.
A hundred things could go wrong in a day. But this moment with this man was perfect. She stood on tiptoes and pressed a hard kiss to his mouth. Teeth and tongues tangled against each other, and they were both out of breath in ten seconds flat.
Breathing hard, she laughed. “Can I give you my gift now? It finally got delivered yesterday, and I’ve been dying to show it to you.”
“A gift?” He said the words as though she had pointed a gun at him.
She nodded, embarrassed. “It’s not something as grand as this studio, but I thought—”
He cut her off with a finger on his lips. “Go bring it, thee mou.”
It took her all of two minutes to go upstairs, grab the package from her closet and run back down to him. She clutched it tight in her hands, suddenly feeling stupid. She had thought it a riot at the time.
But then what did she have that she could give him that he didn’t have?
* * *
She had a gift for him. It was what normal people in normal relationships did.
Nikos stared at the colorful, cheap packaging in her hand and struggled to remain still against the shudder that racked his body.
He had lived through the most painful moments in his life without falling apart. He had cradled his mother’s weak body, seen the life go out of it while his father had cried Nikos’s tears, he had held Venetia through her silent screams when she found their father without succumbing to the grief and fury that had roiled inside him.
And yet that small package in her hands, the expectant expression on Lexi’s face—it was the most dangerous moment he had lived through. Cold sweat drenched him inside out. He wanted to walk away from it, never lay eyes on the package even as another part of him was dying to see it. Like a child that he had never been.
Without another thought, he plucked the package from her hands.
“I used the scanner in your office upstairs.”
Nodding, he tore the packaging aside and a T-shirt fell out. It was plain white, made of cheap quality cotton. He unfolded it and froze.
It had a sketch of the space pirate Spike imprinted on it. Like the one Lexi wore of Ms. Havisham, but this one was colored in, a contrast of black and white.
Spike wore black leather pants an
d a sleeveless leather vest. A gun hung from the holster on his side. It was again incredibly detailed but it was his face that caught Nikos’s attention.
An arrested expression covering his features, Spike was looking at something in the distance. It was the moment when he found that Ms. Havisham was the key that would open the time portal—Nikos knew it.
He felt as if someone had pushed a hand into his chest and given his heart a quiet thumping to get it going. It slammed against his rib cage now and he felt his pulse everywhere in his body like a savage drumbeat. His breath choked in his throat, and his chest hurt.
It was the most precious thing anyone had ever given him and the most dangerous. Words failed him, and the cold dread multiplied a few hundred times. Suddenly, he had the most incredible urge to possess that time portal in his own hands, to turn back everything he had said to her in the past hour, to turn back to the time before Lexi had even entered his world. Before his emotions had been safely under lock and key, before he had begun to look beneath his bitter anger for his father. He fisted his hands and let a curse loose.
“Nikos?”
Shaking himself out of it, he looked at Lexi.
Her lower lip caught between her teeth, she didn’t meet his eyes. She pounced on him, to grab it probably and he tugged his arm out of her reach just in time. “It was just a silly idea.”
The wariness in her eyes propelled him out of his pensive mood. He would not shatter this moment for her. It was the only reason he was doing this. The thought rang flat and false within him.
Holding his arm out to ward her off, he pulled off his shirt. Her gaze followed the movement as he pulled the T-shirt on.
Warmth shone in her blue eyes. And something in him instantly recoiled against it.
“Perhaps Spike should kill Ms. Havisham,” he said, emotion roiling in his throat. It was a warning, for himself and her. “He is a heartless pirate, isn’t he? He’s not going to miraculously fall in love with her and want to save her.”