I’ve never been a very good liar.
Beneath my fingers and his Red Sox T, Nick’s muscles are insanely firm. Nothing about his frame is soft, save for those lips of his which wreaked havoc on my fantasies for years. I used to picture them claiming mine, stealing away my breath the way I once convinced myself that he stole my heart. His mouth would dip lower, pressing kisses here, there, circling a nipple, before moving down, down, down to between my legs.
Unwanted arousal hits me square in the gut. No, no, and oh, right, hell no. Using his chest as leverage, I push out of his arms. “And on Mondays?” I ask, hating the way my voice tremors ever so slightly as I throw out a random day of the week. “If Wednesdays are for watching paint dry, then what are Mondays for?”
“Drilling.”
Oh, my God.
He did not just say that.
“Picking out the right speed,” he goes on blithely, seemingly clueless to the fact that I’m squeezing my knees together, not because it’s cold out but because I’m turned on. Oh, the injustice of it all. “Slow . . . it’s got its own merits. Precision, for one. Deliberate, for another. Or fast—gets the job done quickly. Instant gratification.” He meets my gaze, a small smile flirting with the corner of his mouth. “Have a preference on how I put up the drywall in Agape this weekend?”
Agape.
He’s talking about drilling in my hair salon, not drilling me.
I’ve never been so disappointed in my life.
Relieved, I shout at myself. You mean that you are relieved.
“Are you—” I clear my throat. “Are we already putting up the drywall?”
His nod is nothing more than a dip of his chin. “We’ll be ready by Wednesday, probably, but I was trying to keep up the weekday game.”
Because Nick Stamos is nothing if not a game player.
And I’m still crushing on him, Effie’s older brother, like a loser.
My eyes squeeze shut. Haven’t I been through this cycle enough times already? Liking someone—him—when the feeling isn’t mutual? Ten years. I was into him for ten years before finally bottling up those lovesick emotions and throwing away the key. You’d think by now that I would have my shit wrangled together when it comes to Nick Stamos. You’d think, but clearly he’s my kryptonite.
A cool, masculine palm cups my face, and it’s so shocking, so delicious, that I don’t dare move for fear that it’ll end.
“Another migraine?” Nick asks softly, and then he kills me altogether by pressing his lips to my forehead. He lingers, and my pulse skyrockets. “No fever.”
“I’m freezing.”
“Are you?”
He voices the question like his mind is a million miles away instead of on this deserted strip of sidewalk, with the night sky a blanket to our secret desires—or mine, at least—and his family only a few houses away. Any moment, his yiayia will come storming down the street, soup ladle in one hand and her customary black slippers shuffling hastily over the cement. She’ll demand to know what we’re doing, firing off question after question, as is her way, and I’ll stand here and announce: “I’m back in lust with your grandson again.”
Not back in love, just lust.
Lust is a whole lot safer.
“C’mere.” It’s not Nick’s yiayia saying that now, but Nick himself. “Éla edó,” he repeats again in Greek. Big, hammer-swinging arms wrap around my waist. They pull me in close, palms planting flat on my back, one between my shoulder blades and the other inches away from the curve of my ass.
And, just like that, Nick is holding me.
Hugging me.
Through the thin fabric of his T-shirt, I feel the heavy thud of his heart. It hammers away at a clip that matches the insistent beat of my own. Is he . . . is he as turned on as I am right now?
I whisper his name.
“I’m keeping you warm. Don’t read into it,” he mutters, and I recognize that tone. The surliness. The rigidity. Nick may have his arms wrapped around me, but his emotions aren’t open for dissection.
Too bad. There’s no way I’m letting him get out of being anything less than honest with me.
My hands snake around his solid form. “You’re hugging me.”
“I’m keeping you warm,” he returns stiffly. “It’s an exchange of body heat.”
Sure it is. “Are you using me, Nick?” I palm his back, rubbing in small circles. His muscles leap under my touch, like each tendon is vying for attention.
“Ti?” The Greek word for what slips off his tongue.
I bite back a grin. “You bundled me all up, coat and all, and wanted to go on a walk. You’re only in a T-shirt. I’m thinking you wanted an excuse to hug me. You could have just asked, you know. I wouldn’t say no.”
His hold on me tightens. “You’re out of your mind.”
“Am I?”
“Naí.” Yes.
I plop my chin on his chest and look up at him. He’s already staring down at me, his gray eyes wide, though they appear completely black in the evening light. “Then why did you want to take this walk?”
A tick bursts to life in his jaw. “I wanted to check on how you’re feeling—after the migraine. I haven’t seen you much this week.”
His concern for me sparks warmth throughout my body, but it’s not enough to put me off my intended course. We’ve exchanged emails all week. Platonic, simple emails—emails that never once indicated that I had his erection a hair’s breadth away from my face.
That he got hard for me.
Talk about dirty dreams coming true. If I weren’t so frustrated that he seems content to never mention it again, I’d feel like I won the lottery.
“Nick.”
He draws in a sharp breath. “Yeah?”
“The migraine’s gone. It never lasts longer than twenty-four hours.”
A heartbeat of silence. “Glad to hear it.”
I bury my nose in the hard planes of his chest. “Nick?”
“Ermione.”
I’m prepared for this to blow up in my face. One hard dick does not take the fake out of our relationship. He’s still overhauling my salon, and I’m still pretending—if he needs me—to love up on him when or if the media cares to pay him any attention.
But I have to know.
I have to know what the hell he was thinking about when he stood next to my bed and got the hard-on to rival all hard-ons.
“Mina?” My name’s a question on his lips, and it hangs there between us. Waiting for me to make a move.
So, I do.
“Earlier this week, when you came to my apartment . . .” Oh, God, here goes nothing. “You were hard.”
Nick goes unnaturally still in my arms.
I squeeze my eyes shut and rip the proverbial bandage off. “I was drugged up on meds for the migraine, but I remember everything. I thought, maybe, you might bring it up this week. You never did.” I hear him curse under his breath, and I shore up the last of my confidence. “You were hard, Nick, and I want to know why.”
15
Nick
You were hard, Nick.
Thank God for below-freezing temperatures or I’d be facing the same predicament now.
Standing in the cold, wearing nothing but a T-shirt and jeans, it’s Mina’s warmth that chases the shivers away. Her nails digging into either side of my spine is the only sign that she might not be as confident as she’d have me believe.
The smart thing to do would be to haul ass back to the family dinner we’re missing.
Except, for reasons I don’t care to deliberate on, I can’t find it in myself to walk away.
Obviously the chill in the air has turned my good sense into nothing but frozen blocks of you’re-an-idiot. Something I confirm tenfold when I roughly mutter, “Don’t knee me in the balls for this.”
“Don’t what? Nick—”
I cup her ass. Under her coat but over her soft skirt. I cup her ass like it belongs to me, like it’s always belonged to me. Fingers pressing in, palms downright greedy. I block out every protest springing to life inside my head, starting with who she is and ending with I-don’t-give-a-fuck because I’ve thought of nothing else but this for days.
“Your tattoo,” I growl the words into the crook of her neck. “You want to know why I was hard? The ink you’ve got right here.” I squeeze her right cheek, and my cock twitches at the moan she releases. Jesus, that sound. Feminine and throaty and so damn sexy. The latter isn’t a word I’d have attributed to Mina Pappas in our youth. She’d been frustrating, always there, always pushing my restraint to the brink.
My restraint feels tangible now, ready to snap.
Distantly aware of the fact that we’re standing in the middle of the sidewalk, I brush Mina’s hair to the side and breathe life into the insane lust that’s plagued me all week. “You in that thong”—my nose glides up along her throat, taking note of the quickening pulse just below her jawline—“is the thing of fantasies.”
She arches her neck, giving me more room to play. “It’s big,” she whispers, squeezing my ass to let me know what she’s referring to exactly.
“I like big.”
“T-the women in my family . . . we call it the Pappas butt.”
My lips graze her smooth cheek. “Passed down through the family?”
“Never skips a generation—oh, wow, that feels good.”
I nip again at her earlobe, then soothe the sting with my tongue. She tastes sweet. Smells even sweeter, especially here near her hairline. Perfume, maybe? Or maybe it’s her natural scent. Either way, it’s addictive. Fingers tangling in her hair, I sweep the strands back from her face and pose the question that’s nagged me for days: “Any other tattoos?”
“There,” she says breathlessly, “behind my ear.”
“Why?” I have two myself, both from my early twenties when I thought having tattoos made me somehow more of a man and less like a kid playing at being an adult. But getting ink didn’t magically mature me—life took care of that all on its own. Most days I forget I have them until I see my reflection. Hearing about Mina’s, though, feels like I’m uncovering something new about her. Like I’m opening a box that’s long since sat on a shelf, the key poking out of the lock. Except that the key didn’t belong to me, and I’ve never been one to push where I’m not wanted. Right now, right here, I feel wanted. It’s a fucking heady sensation, and I pull back to meet her gaze. “It’s my temporary longing,” I rasp, “to know why you love tattoos so much.”