A Deal with Demakis(26)
He grinned, and didn’t pull his legs back. Muttering something he couldn’t quite hear, she stepped over him. The scent of her soap and skin combined wafted over him. His muscles tightened at the hard tug of want in his gut.
Why had he sent away Emmanuelle instead of taking up what she offered—easy, uncomplicated sex?
Leaning back against the couch, he slid lower and closed his eyes. Much as he tried, instead of Emmanuelle’s sexy body and the pleasure she was so good at giving, his mind kept remembering stunning blue eyes and a slender body with barely there curves.
Lexi Nelson was definitely an interesting distraction. He gave her that. But nothing more.
Little Ms. Pushover, with her endless affection and her trusting heart, had no place in his life. With ruthlessness he had honed to perfection over the years, he shoved away the image.
CHAPTER FIVE
KNOWING THAT HIDING inside her bedroom was like inviting Nikos to mock and taunt her some more, Lexi dressed in denim shorts and a worn T-shirt that hung loose and ventured back to the sitting room.
She froze at the hubbub of activity. The sleek coffee table was gone and in its place stood a rack of clothes, designer if she was seeing the weightless fabric and the expensive cuts right. A tall woman, impeccably dressed in a silk pantsuit, stood next to it with a pad in hand, while another woman, probably assistant to the first, unwrapped a red dress from its tissue.
Even the sound of soft tissue sounded filthily expensive to Lexi’s ears. Her heart raced in her chest, shameful and excited.
“You’re practically drooling.”
His lazy drawl pulled her gaze to Nikos. He was sitting in a leather recliner, his hands folded, his long legs extended in front of him. Latent energy rolled off him.
Sliding past the clothes with a longing glance, she reached him. “What’s going on?”
“A little gift for you.”
“A gift?” she said dully. One thing she had learned, and he had hammered it home, was that nothing he did was without calculation. “Like a ‘give the poor little orphan a makeover’ gift? Are my friends behind that glass waiting to jump up and down and shed tears at my transformation?”
He wrapped his fingers around her arm and tugged her close. “You’ve never seen your parents then?”
There was such an uncharacteristic gentling note in his tone that it took her a few seconds to respond. “No, I haven’t.”
“Do you think about them, wonder why—”
“I used to, endlessly.” After all these years, she could talk about it almost normally, without crumpling into a heap of tears. “The first comic I ever had sketched had a little orphan who goes on a galactic journey and discovers that her parents are cosmic travelers trapped on the other side of the galaxy. One day I realized that as stories went it was fantastic. But reality, sadly, stayed the same.” She jerked her hand away from him. “Now will you please tell me what’s going on?”
His gaze stayed on her a few more seconds before he cleared his throat. “Venetia’s life is a constant roller coaster of parties and clubs, and I’m providing you with armor so that she doesn’t crush you. Think of me as your fairy godmother.”
She burst out laughing. “Ple-e-e-ase. More like a rampaging space pirate.”