A Deal with Demakis. Tara Pammi

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      CHAPTER THREE

      NIKOS CURSED LOUDLY and violently. The words swallowed up by the crowd around him didn’t relieve his temper one bit.

      It had been three days since Lexi Nelson had come to see him and yet the sneaky minx had avoided his assistant’s phone calls. Exasperated, Nikos had been reduced to having Kane discover her shift times at the club. Thoroughly disgusted by his minions’—a word he couldn’t stop using ever since she had—failure to persuade the woman to leave for Greece, he had flown back to New York.

      He had arrived at three in the morning, forced himself to stay awake and arrived at Vibe five minutes after five. Only to find her gone. So he had his chauffeur drive him to her apartment in Brooklyn.

      But even after a ten-hour shift, the irritating woman still hadn’t returned. He had been ready to call the cops and report her missing. In the end, he had entered her apartment, barged into a bedroom and forced the naked couple in the bed to tell him where Ms. Nelson was. Her eyes eating him up, the redhead had finally informed him that Lexi had gone straight to another shift at a coffee shop around the corner.

      So here he was standing on the sidewalk at nine in the morning outside the bustling café amidst jostling New Yorkers. He was tired, sleep-deprived and furious.

      He understood the need for money. He was the epitome of hunger for wealth and power, but this woman was something else.

      Ordering his chauffeur to come back in a few minutes, he entered the café. The strong smell of coffee made his head pound harder. With the hustle and bustle behind the busy counter, it took him a few moments to spot her behind the cash register.

      His heartbeat slowed to a normal pace.

      A brown paper bag in hand, she was smiling at a customer.

      Her hair was combed back from her forehead in that poufy way. The three silver earrings on her left ear glinted in the morning sunlight as she turned this way and that. A green apron hung loosely on her slender frame.

      She thanked the customer and ran her hands over her face. He could see the pink marks her fingers left on her skin even from the distance. And that was when Nikos noticed it—the tremble in her fingers, the slight sway of her body as she turned.

      He tugged his gaze to her face and took in the dark shadows under her stunning blue eyes. She blinked slowly, as though struggling to keep her eyes open and smiled that dazzling smile at the next customer.

      Memories pounded through him, a fierce knot clawing his gut tight. He didn’t want to remember, yet the sight of her, tired and ready to drop on her feet, punched him, knocking the breath out of him.

      He hadn’t felt that bone-deep desolation in a long time, because as hard as Savas had made him work for the past fourteen years, Nikos had known there would be food at the end of it. But before Savas had plucked them both from their old house, every day after his mother had died had been a lesson in survival.

      The memory of it—the smell of grease at the garage, combined with the clawing hunger in his gut while the lack of sleep threatened to knuckle him down—was as potent as though it was just yesterday.

      The bitter memory on top of his present exhaustion tipped him over the edge.

      A red haze descending on him, he stormed through the crowd and navigated around the counter.

      With a gasp, Lexi stepped back, blinking furiously. “Mr. Demakis,” she said, sounding squeaky, “you can’t be back—”

      He didn’t give her a chance to finish. Ignoring the gasps and audible whispers of the busy crowd, he moved closer, picked her up and walked out of the café.

      Crimson rushed into her pale cheeks, and her mouth fell open. “What are you doing?”

      She wriggled in his hold and he tightened his grip. “Seeing dots and shapes, Ms. Nelson? I’m carrying you out.”

      Weighing next to nothing, she squirmed again. The nonexistent curves he had mocked her about rubbed against his chest, teasing shocking arousal out of his tired body.

      For the first time in his life, he clamped down the sensation. It wasn’t easy. “Stop wiggling around, Lexi, or I will drop you.” To match his words, he slackened his hold on her.

      With a gasp, she wrapped herself tighter around him. Her breath teased his neck. He let fly a curse. As rigid as a tightly tuned chassis in his arms, she glared at him. “Put me down, Nikos.”

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