A Deal with Demakis

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 and 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.