Reluctantly,
Sonny pulled out of the embrace. “I’m gonna take a shower
and then get to the mainland to see if I can scare up an address
on Yuri’s wife,” he told Alexis.
“I’ll go, too, Sonny. I speak passable Russian. It may
help.”
“Ok, Nikolas. Give me ten minutes.”
Sonny padded out of the room followed by the younger man. Once they
were gone, Alexis got out of bed, slipping on a robe.
“How chauvinistic are they?” she remarked sarcastically,
brushing the happy tears from her eyes. “Neither one bothered
to ask us to go.” And then she yelled toward the departing
males: “I speak FLUENT Russian, by the way!”
Emily laughed. “Too much testosterone for their own good.”
Then she turned beet red again as she remembered the little scene
she’d interrupted earlier. “Ah, Alexis, I’m sorry
we burst in on you like that. That was wrong of us.”
Alexis was as mortified as Emily when she replied. “I know
you were just excited about Luke calling. But I am really sorry
you saw that,” she muttered. “I know what you must think
of me…sleeping with Sonny. I mean, he’s married and…”
“Alexis, could I really judge you on this situation? I mean,
you remember how Nikolas and I got together.”
Alexis nodded, thinking of Zander, so heartbroken at the end of
his marriage to her. “Still, I feel…I don’t take
things like this lightly,” Alexis explained. “I just wanted
you to know that. I don’t want to break up his family. Not
that I ever could.”
Emily looked her husband’s aunt in the eye. “Are you kidding
yourself? I’ve seen the way he looks at you when he doesn’t
know someone is watching him. I’ve heard how he says your name.
Over the last two years when I would visit my brother, Jason, sometimes
Sonny would be around. And I don’t recall him being this content
in all that time. Even with the crisis we’re all undergoing
now, he’s more grounded than he ever is with Carly.”
Alexis shook her head. “Don’t even encourage my thoughts
to go in that direction,” she said. “I hoped once…but
now hope of loving him…having him love me back...is dead. He
has this…thing…with Carly that I will never understand.
And I don’t want to. So all I can have is what we share in
bed. And I’m gonna just be okay with that this time. When it’s
over, it’s over. Except for raising our daughter, our lives
will be separate again.”
Emily frowned, disbelief in her eyes. “Are you buying that
or is it just a line for me?” the younger woman queried. “Alexis,
we can deny our desires until the end of the world, but it doesn’t
change their existence.” She pointed to Alexis' chest in the
region where her heart would reside. “Sonny lives in there.
He has for so long. Its time you face that.”
My sister would have said the same thing, Alexis thought, her heart
squeezing painfully. And in that instant, Alexis wanted to cry.
Partly because she missed her sister…but mostly because Emily
had spoken the truth.
Nikolas stopped Sonny in the outer room of Alexis’ suite. He
fixed the older man with a stare that was deadly serious. “I
know we don’t have much time so I’ll make this quick,”
the Prince intoned quietly. He gestured toward the bedroom door.
“You sure that’s smart right now?”
“Being with Alexis?” Sonny frowned.
“Being with Alexis, yes,” Nikolas snapped. “You hurt
her a lot in the past, Sonny—”
“Yeah, well, so have you,” Sonny rejoined, voice dripping
with scorn. “You rejected her more than a few times when it
suited you…so I hear.”
Nikolas glared at him. “Yes, I did hurt her. But I learned
from that. I learned how special she is and how much it means to
have her in my corner…in my life at all. Her support for me
has never wavered.”
“That I know first hand,” Sonny told him. “She once
threatened to quit me if I went after you for framing my sister
in that reckless driving thing years ago. She and I both knew you
did it, but Alexis was dead serious. She was the only thing that
saved your royal butt, know what I’m sayin’?”
At the trademark deadly Corinthos stare, a reddish hue crept under
Nikolas’ suddenly pale skin. The younger man had been quickly
trumped in this conversation, but he still felt he had to protect
his aunt from any more misery.
“Look, I know you’re both adults,” he said. “But
she’s going through hell here. Don’t sleep with her and
make her think it’s love if it’s comfort…or that
you’re choosing her if you don’t intend to leave your
wife!”
Sonny blinked, thinking once again how similar aunt and nephew really
were. Hadn’t Alexis also assumed he’d been indulging in
comfort sex just a short while ago? Sonny sighed and shook his head.
“My marriage is over,” he asserted, his eyes glinting
like steel. “Not that that’s any of your business. Nikolas,
I NEED Alexis in my life, and I hope she needs me, too. But whatever
we decide to do, it’s gonna be between her and me. Nobody else.
Got it?”
Nikolas looked intently at Sonny as if attempting to gauge the man’s
seriousness. Confident that he saw real emotion in Sonny’s
eyes, Nik nodded and the two men slipped back into an uneasy peace.
