A Deal with Demakis

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.