by Tara Pammi
She hadn’t spoken to Tyler in a week, and even before that only to assure him that she had reached New York safely—like a flight on a private jet would be anything but—and that she was fine. He knew she was not fine. But she hadn’t wanted to linger for an extra day, so she had promised him that she would take care of herself. But she couldn’t talk to him over the phone. Because if she did, she was going to start crying, and she didn’t want to alarm him.
Because more than the threat of loneliness, it was the shadow of the happiness, the joy she had known with Nikos that remained behind, making her ache. And now he was here again, setting her back to square one. Not that she had made much progress in moving on.
She still had a couple of weeks before she went back to work and she had been eating greasy takeout, drawing and crying herself to sleep.
“So your sister is fine, you are still the CEO—” she had never heard so much bitterness in her voice “—then why are you here?”
He stood rooted to the spot. She watched him swallow, watched the dark shadow that fell over his face.
Suddenly she felt exhaustingly fragile. Being in love was so hard. She would have given anything to make it stop hurting so much.
Nikos was looming in front of her before she could draw another breath, running a finger over the bags under her eyes. There was such desolation in his eyes, such open need that she trembled from head to toe. “There’s this tightness in my chest, thee mou, like someone is relentlessly carving away at it. It hurts like nothing I have ever felt before.”
Lexi felt dizzy from the emotion in his words. “You don’t have a heart.” She wanted to sound cutting, instead she sounded immensely sad.
His mouth closed; he smiled without warmth. “Apparently I do. You kick-started it when you blazed into my life.”
“I didn’t blaze anywhere. You manipulated me.” Tears filled her throat. “You forced the truth on me and then you—” She hit him in the chest. “I have never been so angry with anyone in my entire life, Nikos. I hate you for you doing this to me.”
His arms came around her, his grip infinitely fragile. She felt his mouth on her temple, felt his sharp hiss of indrawn breath. “Not as much as I hate myself, thee mou. Theos, there isn’t a single name I haven’t called myself these last few days. I had a whole speech prepared, liberally infused with begging. And I don’t remember a word of it.
“Every time I come near you, you unravel me a little more. You show me how much I can feel, how much I can hurt. It’s a little scary, Lexi.”
Tears came fast at her and spilled onto her cheeks. She had no defense left to fight him. Not anymore, not when he said things like that, not when the heat of his body was an incredible fortress of warmth around her.
His mouth compressed into a line of pain, he gathered her closer. And she cried. She thought it wasn’t possible for her heart to break again. Apparently it still could. The pain was as sharp as ever.
“Don’t cry, agape mou. I can’t bear it.” He tucked her chin up gently, a flash of indecision in his gaze. “I’m desperately in love with you, Lexi. You were wrong about one thing. This thing...it’s not just taken root inside me, it’s consuming me whole. My life is terrifyingly empty without you. The power you hold over me, over my happiness—I’m not scared of it anymore. I want to spend the rest of my life loving you, yineka mou.”
Lexi’s heart beat so fast she wondered if she was having a heart attack. His hands around her waist, Nikos held her tight, a shudder racking his powerful frame. “You mean it?”
Nikos nodded, his heart shining in his eyes. “I do. I can’t stop giving thanks for the moment that brought Tyler into Venetia’s life and you into mine.
“You are the most wonderful woman I have ever met, and I want to live my life with you. I want to have a family with you. I want to make love to you every night and every morning. I want to hear your incredible stories about space portals and time warps. I want to be the first one who sees every sketch you ever draw. I want to take care of you, and I want you to take care of me. The number of things I feel for you, they are dizzying and invigorating.
“Please tell me you don’t want to have an extremely elaborate wedding like Venetia because that would just about kill me.”
“What?” Her heart pounding harder, it seemed all she was capable of was asking inane questions.
His thumbs moving over her cheeks, he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I want to marry you, yineka mou, as soon as possible. We will honeymoon on the yacht, I think. I promised Savas we would return in a month so that I can officially take over and be the new CEO.”
Her gaze flew to his. It was too many shocks for one day. “He agreed to this?”
“I didn’t give him a choice. I told him that the CEO position meant nothing to me without you.” He pushed her hands behind her with one hand and tilted her chin up. “Tell me this is what you want, too. Tell me you love me.”
Lexi smiled, but she still couldn’t stop crying, either. “I do love you, Nikos. You helped me discover that I’m just as cool as an imaginary action heroine with a penchant for killing. Or even better—” she choked on the tears again “—you made me want to live my life. And then you left me to do it all alone. It’s a good life, I have realized. It’s just that it’s a lot happier with you in it, and I don’t want to spend another minute of it denying myself that happiness.”
He touched his forehead to hers and whispered the words into her skin. “Then you never will. Your happiness, our happiness together, that’s all I want now, thee mou.” He sealed his promise with a kiss, and Lexi felt the stress and tension leave her body. Her heart thundered inside her chest, and she trembled in his arms, bursting with happiness. “Although I think I have to kill whoever Tony Stark is.”
“What?”
“It says I Love Tony Stark on your T-shirt, agape mou. You’re not allowed to love anyone but me.”
She laughed and stepped back from him, loving the jealous glint in his eyes. She loved him like this—playful and willing to show what he felt for her. It cost him a lot, and she loved him all the more for it. “Sorry, but that’s an occupational hazard of being a comic artist, Nikos. At any given time, I’m in love with at least two to three fictional heroes. Recently, it’s been Iron Man. And it’s not like you can compete with him, so it’s better—”
She squealed and turned as he reached her in two quick steps and pressed her to the wall behind her with his huge body. She saw his hunger in the tight lines of his gorgeous face, in the way he clenched his muscles hard holding the lust at bay. “By the time I’m through with you tonight, you won’t remember your own name much less another man’s, thee mou. My name, that’s all you are going to say, or scream.”
She trembled at the dark promise in his words, her body already thrumming with arousal and anticipation. She choked back a laugh as he picked her up and moved toward the couch.
She shook her head and pointed him in the other direction. “The bedroom is that way.”
Desire roared into life in his eyes.
“Three hundred and sixty hours and forty-three minutes.”
“What?”
“Since you made love to me.”
“I think you’re addicted to sex, Ms. Nelson.”
“Nope.” She tucked herself tighter around him and smiled up at him. “I’m addicted to you, Mr. Demakis.”
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from THE ULTIMATE PLAYBOY by Maya Blake.
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Ten years ago one devastating night changed everything for Austin, Hunter and Alex. Now they must each play their part in the revenge against the one man who ruined it all.
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CHAPTER ONE
New York
NARCISO VALENTINO STARED at the box that had been delivered to him. It was large, made with the finest expensive leather, trimmed with velvet rope, with a horseshoe-shaped clasp made of solid twenty-four-carat gold.
Normally, the sight of it brought anticipation and pleasure.
But the ennui that had invited itself for a long-term stay in his life since he’d turned thirty last month leached excitement from him as the stock market leaked money after a juicy disaster.
Lucia had accused him of turning into a boring old man right before her diva exit out of his life two weeks ago.
He allowed himself a little grin of relief. He’d celebrated her departure with a boys’ weekend ski trip to Aspen where he’d treated himself to a little palate cleanser in the form of a very enthusiastic Norwegian ski instructor.
But much too quickly, the jaded hollowness had returned.
Rising from his desk, he strode to the window of his seventieth-floor Wall Street office and stared at the New York skyline. Satisfaction eased through him at the thought that he owned a huge chunk of this city.
Money was sexy. Money was power. And The Warlock of Wall Street—as the newspapers had taken to calling him—never denied himself the pull of power and sex.
The opportunity to experience two of his favourite things lay within the package on his desk.
Yet it’d remained unopened for the last hour...
Shrugging off the lethargy, he returned briskly to his desk and flipped the clasp.
The half mask staring up at him from a bed of black satin was exquisite. Pure silver edged with black onyx and Swarovski crystals, its intricate design and flawless detail announced the care and attention that had gone into creating it. Narciso appreciated care and attention. It was what had made him a millionaire by eighteen and a multibillionaire by twenty-five.
His vast wealth was also what had gained him admission into Q Virtus, the world’s most exclusive gentlemen’s club, whose quarterly caucus invitation was the reason for the mask. Two four-inch-long diamond-tipped pins held the mask in place. Pulling them out, he flipped it over to examine the soft, velvet underside, which held the security microchip, his moniker—The Warlock—and the venue, Q Virtus, Macau. He ran his thumb over the smooth surface, hoping to summon a little enthusiasm. Failing miserably, he set the mask down and glanced at the second item in the box.
The List.
Zeus, the anonymous head of Q Virtus, always provided club members with a discreet list of business interests who would be attending the caucuses. Narciso had chosen not to attend the last two because he’d already dealt with those lists’ major players.
His gaze skimmed the heavily embossed paper and his breath caught. Excitement of a different, dangerous kind sizzled through him as the fourth name jumped out at him.
Giacomo Valentino—Daddy dearest.
He perused the other names to see if anyone else on the list would make his attendance worthwhile.
His lips twisted. Who the hell was he kidding?
One name and one name only had become the deciding factor. There were one or two business interests worth cultivating during the two-day event, but Giacomo was who he intended to interact with.
Although perhaps interact was the wrong word.
Setting the list down, he fired up his computer. Entering the security codes, he pulled up the file he kept on his father.
The report his private investigator updated on a regular basis showed that the old man had rallied a little from the blow Narciso had dealt him three months ago.
Rallied but not fully recovered. Within minutes, Narciso was fully up to speed on his father’s latest business dealings.
He didn’t fool himself into thinking it gave him any sort of upper hand. He knew his father kept a similar file on him. But the game wouldn’t have been this interesting if advantages had been one-sided. Nevertheless Narciso gained a lot of satisfaction from knowing he’d won three of their last four skirmishes.
He was contemplating the latest approach to his annihilation campaign when his phone buzzed.
Allowing the distraction, he thumbed the interactive surface and read the message from Nicandro Carvalho, the closest thing he had to a best friend.
Still caught in premature midlife-crisis mode, or are you ready to shake off that clinging BOM image?
Boring old man. A corner of his mouth lifted as his gaze slid to the list and his father’s name. Suddenly energised, he whipped back a response.
BOM has left the building. Care to get your ass whopped at poker?
Nicandro’s response—Dream on but bring it on—made him laugh for the first time in weeks.
Powering down his laptop, he slammed it shut. His gaze once again fell on the mask. Picking it up, he stashed it in his safe and shrugged into his suit jacket.
Zeus would receive his RSVP in the morning, once he’d devised exactly how he was going to take his father down once and for all.
* * *
The internet was a scary place. But it was an invaluable tool if you wanted to hunt down a slippery son of a bitch.
Ruby Trevelli sat cross-legged on her sofa and stared at the blinking cursor awaiting her command. That she was reduced to online trawling for a solution to her problem spiked equal measures of irritation and frustration through her.
She’d made it a point to avoid anything to do with social media. The one time she’d foolishly typed her name into a search engine, the sheer volume of false information she’d discovered had scared her into never trying again.
Of course, she’d also found enough about her parents to have scarred her for life if she hadn’t already been scarred.
Tonight, she had no choice. Because despite thousands of pages featuring Narciso Media Corporation, every effort to speak to someone who could help her had been met with a solid stone wall. She’d already wasted a solid hour discovering that a thirty-year-old billionaire named Narciso Valentino owned NMC.
She snorted under her breath. Who on earth named their child Narciso anyway? That was like inviting bullies and snark-mongers to feast on the poor child. On the flip side, his unique name had eased her search.
Sucking in a breath, she typed in her next request: Narciso’s New York hangouts. There were over two million entries. Awesome.
Either there were millions of men out there named Narciso or the man she sought was indecently popular.
Offering u
p a Hail Mary, she clicked the first link. And nearly gagged at the graphic burlesque images that popped up.
Hell no!
She closed it and sat back, fighting the rising nausea.
Desperate was fast becoming her middle name but Ruby refused to accept that the answers to her woeful financial predicament would be found in a skin den.
Biting her inside lip, she exhaled and typed again: Where’s Narciso Valentino tonight?
Her breath caught as the search engine fired back a quick response. The first linked the domain of a popular tabloid newspaper—one she’d become rudely acquainted with when she’d received her first laptop at ten, logged on and seen her parents splashed over the home page. In the fourteen years since then, she’d avoided the tabloid, just as she avoided her parents nowadays.
Ignoring the ache in her chest, she clicked on the next link that connected to a location app.
For several seconds, she couldn’t believe how easily she’d found him. She read the extensive list of celebrities who’d announced their whereabouts freely, including one attending a movie premiere right now in Times Square.
Grabbing the remote, she flipped the TV channel to the entertainment news station, and, sure enough, the movie star was flashing a million-dollar smile at his adoring fans.
She glanced back at the location next to Narciso Valentino’s name.
Riga—a Cuban-Mexican nightclub in the Flatiron District in Manhattan.
Glancing at the clock above the TV, she made a quick calculation. If she hurried, she could be there in under an hour. Her heart hammered as she contemplated what she was about to do.
She despised confrontation almost as much as her parents thrived on it. But after weeks of trying to find a solution, she’d reached the end of her tether.
She’d won the NMC reality TV show and scraped together every last cent to come up with her half of the hundred-thousand-dollar capital needed to get her restaurant—Dolce Italia—up and running.