Honey watched stunned as Nikos carried the plates over to the trash, dumping the remaining food before carrying them over to the sink. She whipped her head to the left to make sure her son hadn’t seen them, and luckily, he was too busy carrying his toys into his room.
“What was that?” Honey asked in disbelief as she came over to the sink.
“I’m cleaning up dishes,” Nikos said.
“No. What you just did,” Honey said pointedly, placing her hand on her hip.
“Kissing you,” Nikos said casually as if he were speaking about the morning weather. “It’s a hobby of mine.”
He continued cleaning the dishes, ignoring her obvious glare, and Honey turned off the water.
“We need to discuss rules,” she announced.
“Rules?” Nikos exclaimed, laughing. But Honey didn’t find anything funny at all. Now was the time to lay down some ground rules.
“Yes. Rules,” Honey repeated, fixing him with a serious stare, the same stare she gave her son whenever she wanted him to listen. “First, we don’t do anything around Kai.”
Nikos arched a brow, and Honey explained herself, though it should be obvious already. Clearly, Nikos was slow on the uptake.
“I have to be careful bringing men into Kai’s life.”
“Kai likes me,” Nikos argued.
“That is true,” Honey admitted. She couldn’t argue against that even if she wanted to. Instantly, Kai had taken a liking to Nikos and was always asking about him, wanting to know when Nik was coming over so they could play together.
“Kai gave me his blessing,” Nikos added, and Honey rolled her eyes.
“That’s true too,” she said begrudgingly, still in disbelief about that conversation that she was subjected to in front of Olivia, who thought it was so amusing. “But I still don’t want to get Kai’s hopes up while we’re only talking.”
“Talking?”
“You know like we aren’t in a relationship, but getting to know each other,” Honey explained, wondering if there were a similar term in Greek.
“Oh, talking. Like, when you’re uncommitted?”
Honey opened her mouth to protest but quickly closed it because technically that was what it meant, and yet, she really didn’t like the sound of it, but instead of backing down, she shrugged.
“Yeah.”
Nikos turned from the sink, directly facing her. “So, that means I can talk to other women while we’re talking.”
“No,” Honey quickly snapped before blinking in surprise at her own actions. She avoided eye contact, mildly embarrassed, but even still, from the corner of her eye, she could see Nikos’s smirk.
“Then that means we aren’t just talking, and we definitely have something more because I don’t want to talk to other women,” Nikos said as he snaked an arm around her waist, pulling her flush against him. “I only want to spend my time with you.”
She stared into his eyes before his lips met hers, sucking her into another kiss. She should have stopped him because she clearly just told him the rules, and yet, Nikos was clearly a person who did not live to follow them. He lived to break them. They kissed and kissed, and Honey’s head went in the clouds, nearly getting lost from the nips of Nikos’s teeth and the swipe of his tongue. It was so good that she could do nothing else but kiss him back until she heard the patter of soft feet against the floor, and Nikos and her both pulled back at the same time as though they had been burnt.
“Where are my shoes?” Kai asked as he came down the hall now dressed in his school uniform, and Honey nearly breathed a sigh of relief, glad that he hadn’t caught them.
“Check under your bed. Remember you kicked them off last time?”
Kai immediately barreled back down the hall to his room. Honey sighed before turning to Nikos, who watched her with amusement. She didn’t get what was so funny because she found nothing amusing about the situation. She had nearly jumped out of her skin just now.
“Kai already knows,” Nikos told her, and Honey’s eyes widened with shock. “He’s a smart kid. He already told me this morning that he’s happy we’re together now.”
Honey was speechless, but it seemed that Nikos was still full of words.
“But you don’t have to worry,” Nikos said reassuringly. “I wouldn’t have committed to this if I weren’t serious. Whether as a friend, your boss, or your man, I plan on being in Kai’s life as long as you’ll allow me.”
