Chapter 34 #2
Honey wished she could easily doze off too, and if she were in her bedroom with her door locked, she probably would be able to.
But her awareness of the man on the other side of the makeshift bed kept her alert in the way she shouldn’t be at this time of night.
She lay with her eyes open, looking up at the ceiling.
When she heard Nikos sit up, she immediately closed her eyes, hoping that if she pretended to be asleep, she could avoid a conversation.
She knew that Nikos wouldn’t do anything with her son here, but that didn’t mean that Nikos wouldn’t try to continue their conversation from earlier, which was the one conversation she did not want to have.
Her ears became her most used sense as she listened to Nikos stand.
She could hear his footsteps, and her heart raced until she realized he had walked down the hall.
Once she heard a door close, she quickly opened her eyes and looked over to see the bathroom light peeking out from under the door.
She sighed before relaxing and flipping her back towards the door.
She would get no sleep tonight if she kept this up, and if that were the case, she would have been better off sleeping in her room, though, at this point, she wondered if she would have even managed to get sleep there.
When she heard him come out of the bathroom, she pretended to sleep again, promising herself that once she heard him lay back down, she would keep her eyes closed and force herself to go to sleep.
She was doing a good job of that until she heard Nikos’s footsteps stop close to her.
Her heart sped up, anxious about what he was doing because he hadn’t laid down yet.
She waited and waited, and when she took the chance to open her eyes, she didn’t see Nikos lying on the other side of her son.
Eyes widening, she flipped on her other side to see Nikos bending down to lay next to her.
“What are you doing?” Honey whispered fiercely as he settled down next to her. And here she thought Nikos would play by the rules with her son around, but clearly, he was more sly than she thought.
“Nikos, I—”
“I just want to talk to you.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Honey said.
“There’s a lot to talk about, actually,” Nikos argued. “Like why you’re running from me.”
“I’m not running from you,” Honey denied, wishing she could move over more, but she didn’t want to squash her son.
“I know what running looks like,” Nikos said. “Running is the reason I’m here.”
Honey realized that he was referring to why he had come to New York in the first place.
The vulnerability in his blue eyes was enough to make her quiet, but not enough to make her speak.
She sighed before relaxing her body, which had been stiff since the moment she laid down here, and it wasn’t because of the hardwood floor that she still managed to feel even with a thick quilt underneath her.
“I’ve already told you that you’re different,” Nikos said, picking right back up from where they left off the last time they spoke in his office. “You’re special in my eyes, and I think you know that.”
He grabbed her hand and placed it against his heart, and she could feel the thrum beneath her palm and knew that if he were to put his hand against her chest, the beat of her heart would reveal her secret, a secret in her heart that she had been keeping from both herself and him.
As Honey looked into his eyes, she could finally admit what she had been denying for a while now. She liked him. She liked Nikos a lot.
She felt something for him, and in moments like this where he spent time with her and her son, it made her want to spend more time with him.
It made her want to be close to him. But she was also terrified of this feeling and desire festering inside of her.
She wanted to get rid of it before Nikos could find it.
“What do you want from me?” Honey asked seriously.
The sex should have been enough. He had fucked her twice already, and at this point, if fucking her twice more would get him to leave her alone and stop stirring these feelings inside of her, then she would willingly do it.
She wanted to get off of this roller coaster ride.
She wanted to rid herself of these feelings.
“You,” Nikos said.
“You’ve already had me,” Honey said.
“I haven’t even scratched the surface yet,” Nikos said, and Honey felt her heart beat faster because he sounded so sincere.
Nikos moved closer before pressing a gentle kiss against her lips, and she felt like putty in his hands.
“Why are you running from me?” Nikos asked again, and this time, she felt compelled to answer as if Nikos had cast a spell on her.
“Your uncle,” Honey said, feeling her heart race again, but this time from a different feeling— fear.
Though it had been a few months since Antonis had gone out of commission, he had never left the back of her mind.
She could still remember his threat that rang loudly in her ears of what he would do if she did something with Nikos.
Back then, she thought it was foolishness and him being the paranoid son of a bitch that he was with any man that so much as breathed near her.
But now that she was in this precarious situation with Nikos, maybe Antonis had foreseen this.
He had always been smart, too smart, so damn smart that she didn’t think it was worth it to continue this.
Two times had been enough. They shouldn’t let it happen again.
That was what she thought, but as she looked into Nikos’s eyes, they were as clear and as calm as still water, so much so that it made her heart slow down to a normal pace.
Why wasn’t he feeling the same anxiousness that she felt?
“Don’t worry about him,” Nikos told her, and the inflection in his voice was serious, but not enough to quail her thoughts. Antonis was someone to fear and had been instilling fear in her since the day she met him. That wouldn’t just go away with a few words.
“But—”
Nikos kissed her until she was breathless, and her senses were filled with nothing but him. They had kissed plenty of times before, but nothing compared to this. She melted, breathing nothing in but him.
Nikos pulled back, holding her gaze.
“Only think of us. You and me. Whatever this is between us, I don’t want to lose it before I even get the chance to explore you. Your body is only the surface, and even then, I haven’t even gotten the chance to do everything that I want to you.”
“A poet, aren’t you?” Honey drawled sarcastically, though she must admit, she wanted to know what those things were that he wanted to do to her.
“I try,” Nikos said with a small shrug, but it was enough to make her smile and forget the monster hiding in the back of her mind. She wanted to feel at ease. She wanted to let go of her fears.
Nikos leaned in again, but Honey stopped him.
“My son is here,” Honey said pointedly, and to keep it as a reminder to herself too, because she was becoming lost in Nikos’s persuasive words, she turned her back on him.
But instead of returning to the other side, Nikos came up closer behind her, wrapping his arm around her waist and tugging her closer to him.
“I hope you give us a chance,” he said, and she could feel his breath against her neck. They lay together in silence with Nikos’s hand playing with her own. She could feel the thrum of his heart against her back. It matched her own. As his chest fell, her chest rose.
“Okay,” Honey finally said quietly, wanting to give in to what she wanted.
Olivia was right. She didn’t have to make a big deal about this, and she could enjoy this, like other people.
It was not as if Nikos was asking to marry her.
He was asking for a chance, and right now, not only did she want to give one to him, but she wanted to give a chance to herself so she could experience the joys of dating again; something that had been long stolen from her since Antonis appeared in her life.
Nikos held her tighter, intertwining his fingers with her own, and they fell to sleep together like that, as one.