Clasping his face in her palms, Lexi shook her head. “I have no idea what went wrong.” Her breath faltered in her throat. It would never go back to what it had been. But her love for Tyler, it would never waver. Knowing that Nikos would roast her alive for it, she said the words. “You don’t have to decide anything now, Tyler. About Venetia. Do you understand?”
His eyes glittering with the same pain, he shook his head. “I can’t face myself right now much less Venetia. You’re all I’ve ever had in the world, and I hurt you.”
Lexi closed her eyes as he pulled her closer and pressed his mouth to hers. But the only thing she felt was a sense of comfort, and a growing desolation as an inescapable truth began to inch around her heart. It was the loss of a dream more than anything else. Had he felt this same desolation that day? Had he known that something was irrevocably wrong between them but hadn’t known how to tell her?
He met her gaze, the same realization dawning in his. “We’re going to be all right, Lex.”
They were. Lexi curled into him and hugged him tight. He had always been there for her, had always made her feel as if she mattered to at least one person in the world, that she wasn’t an unwanted orphan. They had no future together except as friends. The realization instead of hurting her only strengthened her.
She had her only friend in the world back, and she wanted nothing more.
Her skin prickled, the hair on her neck standing to attention. Without turning, Lexi knew it was not Venetia.
Nikos was close.
Bracing herself, she didn’t know for what, especially because she was doing what he wanted her to do, she turned around.
And stared up at the open terrace of the beach house where Nikos and Venetia stood. They looked like a vengeful Greek goddess and god, come to cast a curse on them.
Focus on reality, Lexi.
She felt Tyler stiffen next to her and squeezed his hand. “Don’t do this, Ty,” she whispered in his ear, knowing that whatever her faults, Venetia did love him. “I’ll always love you but there’s nothing more between us. Don’t ruin what you have with her.”
Tyler turned toward her, a sad smile on his face. “If I really loved her enough to hurt you, it will come back, Lex. But no more of Venetia looking at you as if you were the cause of her problems, no more of her brother looking at you as if he wants to devour you.”
Stunned, Lexi looked up.
His hand on his sister, and his gaze calculatingly blank, Nikos held Venetia there. Probably stopping her from running down the stairs to gouge Lexi’s eyes out.
Lexi untangled herself from Tyler. Amnesia or not, heartbreaking realization that something between her and Tyler was right or not, she had kissed Venetia’s fiancé.
Feeling as dirty as Nikos was paying her to be, she walked away.
* * *
Nikos stayed on the roof long after Venetia ran down the stairs after Tyler, tears streaming down her face.
The very tears he had wanted to stop her from shedding. He felt powerless, but he also knew that she needed to shed them now. Better she found the truth now than when it was too late, when her love had an even more powerful grip on her.
But the powerlessness he felt was nothing compared to the dark cavern of longing that rent him open at the sight of Tyler kissing Lexi.
Again, it was exactly what Nikos had wanted. He should be elated that, even now, Venetia was kicking Tyler out of her life. And yet all he could hear was the roaring in his ears, a possessive yearning to wipe the taste of that kiss from Lexi’s mouth.
He wanted that hungry look in her eyes when she looked at him. He wanted to make her mewl with pleasure. He wanted to shower her with every possible decadent gift in the world. He wanted to possess her, he wanted to teach her to be selfish, he wanted to show her every pleasure there was to have in the world.
He wanted a part of her, that intangible element in her that made her her.
It took him a few minutes to get himself under control, to fight the urge to trace Tyler’s steps and beat him down to a pulp, to shove the desire that thrummed in his blood into one corner.
The pleasure he had pursued had only ever been transient, and he had liked it that way. But now he wanted Lexi. And not just for a night. He wanted to understand what made her tick, he wanted to hold her when she cried, he wanted to show her the world.
And he would have her.
* * *
Stepping from under the lukewarm blast of the shower spray, Lexi grabbed a beach towel from the neatly folded stack and wrapped it around herself.
Wiping herself down in the deafening quiet of the beach house, she pulled on her gym shorts and a pink tank top and threw her damp swimsuit into her bag. Venetia might have an army of servants to pick up after her, but she didn’t feel comfortable leaving her dirty clothes for someone else. Even more so now that she was leaving.