Hunger rakes me just to recall it. I see that same erotic invitation in her desire-drenched gaze now. She inches toward the center of the leather seat, her skirt riding high above her naked hips. The string of pearls rolls with the subtle motion of the vehicle. The long strand dips low, creamy baubles sliding against the shadowed cleft of her sex.
“Christ.” The curse wrenches out of me, dark and urgent. “You are so fucking beautiful.”
Her sensual mouth curves at my praise. With her eyes locked on mine, she reaches down, her fingers moving the pearls in a slow caress between her slick folds. She arches beneath her own hand, her teeth sinking into her bottom lip as a soft moan curls up from the back of her throat.
It’s more than I can bear. I descend on her, pushing her thighs wider as my face meets her pussy and I lick into her sweetness. She sucks in a gasp, bucking against me as I tongue her clit. The pearls are warm and sleek against my face, rolling between us with each hungry movement of my head between her legs. I slide my hands beneath her and angle her so that she is completely at my mercy.
“Oh God,” she whispers, her spine undulating in time with my tongue’s lashing.
On a low whimper, she rises up to watch me devour her, unabashed in her enjoyment. Her fingers tunnel into my hair at the back of my head, clutching me against her in fevered demand.
“Fuck,” she gasps as I hold her darkened gaze and continue my onslaught. “Nick . . . oh fuck.”
Small tremors vibrate in the pearls that brush against my mouth as her climax starts to build. When I catch the end of the strand with my tongue and roll it over the hardened bud of her clit, her body shudders, trembling in my hands.
I don’t stop until she’s coming, until her soft, shallow panting becomes a moan and then a cry of uncontainable pleasure.
Only then do I stop long enough to unfasten my belt and zipper enough to take my stiff cock in my hand and guide it to her. I drive in deep, too lost to be gentle. Too consumed with love and desire for this amazing woman to exercise any degree of control.
Her arms wrap around me as I stroke into her tightness, her pussy gripping me like a wet, hot fist.
“You’re mine,” I utter against her mouth.
I hear the plea in my gruff voice and I know she must too. She must feel it in every hammering thrust that takes me to the very limit of what her small, impossibly snug body can accommodate.
And still I can’t get deep enough. I never will, not with her.
“Mine, Avery.”
“Yours,” she says, clutching me as I move inside her. Her beautiful face is slack with pleasure, lips parted on a gasp. “God, Nick, yes . . . only yours.”
She starts coming again and her sharp cries spur me into a desperate rhythm. I plunge hard, furious in my need for release now.
My orgasm erupts in a violent rush, flooding her in hot unrelenting bursts. On a coarse snarl, I lower my head to the curve at the base of her neck and shoulder, my teeth taking hold of her soft sinewy flesh as her sheath milks me. Those tiny contractions strip me of all control. I shudder and jerk atop her, wrung out and utterly owned.
God help me, I’ll never get enough of this—of her.
“Mine,” I whisper harshly.
I don’t care if she knows how badly I need to believe that. I need her to understand it too.
My past has stolen so much from me. The other night it almost took her away too.
Never again.
No matter what I have to do to ensure that.
Even if it means I have to walk through hell itself to keep her.
Chapter 22
I wake up alone in Nick’s bed sometime in the middle of the night.
We’d made love again after returning home to the penthouse, then fallen asleep sated and content in each other’s arms. My body is still warm, my senses still thrumming from all of the ways we pleasured each other, so it is a jolt to open my eyes and realize he’s gone.
The sheets on his side of the big bed are cold. His phone rests on the nightstand where he set it when we went to bed. The room is dark and silent. No light in the adjacent bathroom, nor in the hallway off the large bedroom suite either.
An unreasonable panic sweeps through me when I see no sign of him here at all.
“Nick?” My voice sounds hollow in the darkened, vacant room.
Apprehension makes my nape clammy as I slip out of bed and set my bare feet down on the rug. Shrugging into the short kimono draped on the small cushioned bench at the end of the bed, I head out of the bedroom and into the living area of the penthouse. He’s not there. When I don’t find him in the kitchen either, I pad anxiously down the corridor that leads to his office and study.
“Nick? Are you here?”
Next I check the second floor of the palatial eight-thousand square-foot penthouse, worry mounting when I find no trace of him in the library or the entertainment room. He’s not in any of the places he might have gone to burn off sleepless hours.
He’s not out on one his late-night jogs either. His running shoes are all arranged neatly in the foyer coat closet, not a single pair out of place.
And anyway it’s not like him to leave me in the middle of the night without a word.
I think about how troubled he’s gotten since we were apart. He’s always had his personal demons but he seemed able to keep them at bay until recently. Or had he?
I think back to the private room in the back of Dominion. The wreckage Nick had hidden from me the entire time we’d been together last year. The admission that he’d been walking a razor’s edge of despair and torment in the months before we first met.
A dark possibility leaches into my subconscious—one that chills me to so much as consider.
No.
Oh God, no.
“Nick!”
I race back into the bedroom, my mind spinning with a hundred ugly scenarios, each of them with an outcome I’m too terrified to imagine. My heart is in my throat, my pulse hammering so loudly in my temples I almost don’t hear the muffled keening sound coming from somewhere nearby. But then I hear it again and I freeze, all my faculties trained on that pitiful, wounded animal noise.
“Nick?” Every cell in my body feels stretched to the point of shattering as I pad in the direction the awful noise seems to come from.
Nick’s enormous walk-in closet is open, but dark as pitch inside.
Not so dark that I don’t see the large naked shape huddled on the floor in the far corner.
Oh, Nick.
I don’t speak now. As soon as I step inside, I recognize instantly that he’s not aware of me or even his surroundings. Hunched like a child with his knees bent and his arms banded tightly around them, he rocks back and forth, his eyes open but unseeing. Dreaming even though he appears to be wide awake.
I bite back the soft cry that bubbles up from my throat upon seeing him like this. Naked. Terrified. Caught in a psychic anguish that was strong enough to wrench him from our bed and drive him here into the dark.
I don’t know what to do. Part of me knows that waking him might only cause greater pain and fear, yet I can’t look away. I can’t let him suffer like this alone.
I step closer to him, easing down at his side on the floor. Tentatively, I reach to him, my fingers lighting in his hair, my touch careful, meant only to soothe not startle. Sweat soaks the thick black waves. His big body shivers against me, seeming to tremble all the way to the bone.
When he doesn’t flinch away from my caress I wrap my arm around his broad shoulders. He sags into me, his breathing shallow and rapid. The moan I heard him make before starts building once more.
“Shh. It’s okay.” Holding him against my breast with one arm, I use my other hand to cradle his head, stroking the damp strands of his hair. “You’re safe with me, Nick.”
“No.” The denial is sharp, but whispered low under his breath. He swallows, his head shaking back and forth beneath my hand. “He can hear me. He’ll find me in here.”
&nbs
p; Ice forms behind my sternum—along with a rage unlike I’ve ever felt before. “Who’ll hear you, Nick?” I ask him gently. “Who’s going to find you?”
He shakes his head again. “Be quiet. I have to hide or he’s gonna find me. He’s gonna hurt me again.”
Oh, God. I stroke his bulky shoulder, my arms barely long enough to embrace him fully. Yet I understand it’s not Nick the man I’m protecting now, it’s the boy he once was. The innocent, artistic boy whose father mistreated and maligned for as long as Nick can remember.
And now the sick suspicion I’ve had about his past—about the abuse he suffered in his childhood—galvanizes into a chilling certainty. Bile climbs up the back of my throat and it takes everything I have not to lose it and start crying. I have be strong for him now. I have to be strong for the child who’s still broken and anguished inside.
“No one can hurt you anymore,” I whisper, gathering his big body as close as I can against me. “Nothing bad is ever going to find you while we’re together.”
I don’t know if he hears me. I’m not sure I want him to know what I’ve just witnessed here. I just want him to feel safe.
I think on some level he must. A ragged sigh rasps out of him as he buries his face in my breast.
His grasp on me is unbreakable, as if he is drowning and I am his only life line.
Long minutes pass before his breathing deepens and levels out to something close to normal. It’s even longer before the shudders finally begin to subside. I don’t know how long we sit like that, huddled together on the floor in the dark.
I only know I’ll hold him for as long as it takes.
If he’ll let me, I’ll hold on to him forever.
Chapter 23
Somewhere nearby a cell phone rings. I open my eyes at the same time I feel movement behind me and hear Nick’s drowsy groan.
It’s morning. And we’re in bed together, me lying on my side and him spooning me from behind.
The phone’s ringer is abruptly silenced, then his arm comes down around my torso and draws me farther into the warmth of his naked body.
His voice croons against my ear. “Good morning.”
“What—” I swallow on a parched throat, confusion tangling my thoughts. How did we get here? Had I been dreaming last night?
But no, the lingering queasy feeling in my stomach wasn’t put there because of any dream, not even a nightmare.
Nick’s anguish a few hours ago—the night terror that pulled him away from me—was real.
As real as his heated body pressing against my naked curves now. The rigid length of his arousal moves in a slow rhythm between my legs, priming me for his entry.
“Nick, last night—”
He kisses my nape, the heat of his mouth on my sensitive skin short-circuiting my already sluggish morning brain. I take a breath and try again.
“How did we get back to bed last night?”
“I carried you.” Another kiss, accompanied by the fluid motion of his hips behind me, his cock gliding distractingly through my slick folds. “I’m sorry if I disturbed your sleep.”
Disturbed my sleep? I shift on the mattress, extricating myself from the enticing tangle of our bodies. As much as I enjoy the feel of his nakedness against mine, I can’t pretend what I witnessed last night didn’t actually happen.
Which is apparently what Nick intends to do.
“Nick, we should talk about it.” I sigh when the head of his cock seats at the opening of my sex and gently pushes inside. Oh, God. It feels so good. I moan, trying to hold on to my sense of reason but he’s not making it easy.
“Stay, baby.” His voice vibrates against me while he begins to move in a soothing, seductive rhythm. “I don’t want to talk right now, all right? I just want to be inside you like this for a while.”
I relax, loving the feel of him. Loving the feel of us.
He groans, and he sounds so content it’s hard for me to deny him. Or myself. After the terrifying experience I had with him last night, I need this contentment too. I need this peaceful sense of intimacy, possibly as much as he does.
But I can’t give in to it without knowing that he’s okay.
I need to understand what he’s struggling against because ultimately I am struggling against it now too.
I turn my head and place a tender kiss to the muscled biceps that holds me so tenderly. I know Nick feels me go still in his arms. He slows at my resistance, then stops.
“Am I hurting you?”
His concern wrenches me. “No. But I’m hurting for you, Nick.”
I move out of the circle of his embrace, closing my eyes in regret as our bodies separate. Rolling to face him, I place my hand against the beard-roughened shadow that darkens his cheek. His eyes search mine, yet I can see how badly he wants to hide from me right now.
“I’m worried about what happened last night,” I confess gently. “I’m worried about what I saw.”
His lips flatten with the furrowing of his brow. “I sleepwalk sometimes. Just a bad habit that comes and goes sometimes.”
“It never happened before,” I point out. “I was with you for several months, most of the time sleeping right here in this bed with you. This never happened, Nick.”
He attempts a look of nonchalant, mild disbelief. “I’m surprised it didn’t. Glad too. It’s embarrassing as hell to know I stumble around in the dark and say a lot of crazy, nonsensical shit whenever I’m under stress.”
“Are you under stress now?” The fact that he doesn’t answer with a quick retort or a deflecting joke speaks volumes. “Am I adding stress to your life?”
“No. Never.” He cups the back of my head and pins me with a solemn stare. “You’re my touchstone, Avery. My only true peace. Being with you makes everything else bearable.”
“What is everything else?”
More silence, then his cell phone begins to ring again.
He rolls away from me on a curse to mute the interruption. For a long moment his head hangs down, staring at the screen. On another curse, more virulent this time, he slaps the device onto the nightstand.
I push up onto my forearm, staring at his bowed back. “Are you having issues at the office? Sounds like someone really wants to reach you this morning.”
He grunts, seated on the edge of the bed. “It’ll be a cold day in hell first.”
The venom in his tone takes me aback. We’re not finished with our conversation but he stands up, casting me a remorseful glance. “I need a shower. I’m ripe from those fucking night sweats.”
A knot forms in my throat as I look up at him. I want to tell him to stay, scream at him to talk to me, to let me in.
If he pretends this isn’t important, if he simply walks away—even if it’s just into the next room—it will be impossible for me to believe that we’ll ever get past this moment.
After what happened last night, all of the strides we’ve made together will be for nothing if he can’t trust me with his heart . . . with the secret I dread he’s been keeping since he was a boy.
“Avery,” he says gently, catching my chin on the edge of his hand. “We’ll talk some more. I just . . . give me a little time to sort it out, all right?”
I nod, relief leaking out of me in a heavy sigh. “All right.”
His palm curves along the side of my face, his eyes filled with tender regard. “All right.”
Mesmerized and so in love my chest aches with it, I watch him stroll toward the bathroom. He’s just disappeared into the spacious en suite when his phone goes off again.
“I got it.” I reach over and grab the device, thinking I’ll just run it to him in the bathroom and he can decide what to do with the persistent caller who’s apparently not about to give up anytime soon.
But then I glance down at the screen and my heart does a small freefall when I see the Florida area code. It could be anyone, but given the way Nick has been acting—given the awful way I found him last night—I know this call isn’t coming f
rom just anyone.
He’s already come back out of the bathroom by the time I take a handful of steps away from the bed, the phone held numbly in my hand. I lift my head and our eyes meet. I’m sure that mine look confused, questioning.
His look is rueful. Haunted.
Resigned.
The phone is still ringing when I hand it to him.
He silences it without even glancing at the display. “My father had a stroke five years ago. I understand it was debilitating. He never recovered, and since then he’s been living in a nursing home south of Miami.”
Nick’s voice is toneless, as if he’s talking about the weather, not the man who raised him, mistreated him . . . nearly killed him the day Nick and he fought for the last time.
“They tell me his dementia has gotten worse in recent months. Apparently he doesn’t remember anymore that we hate each other. Or, hell, maybe he does. For the past couple of months he’s been calling me, but since the bastard can’t talk anymore he just sits there on the other end of the line. Breathing. Waiting. Fucking with my head.”
I walk toward him, trying to find a way to reopen our earlier conversation without pushing him too quickly. I don’t want him to shut me out. “Does the nursing home know this?”
He nods tightly. “His caregivers at the home think it would do him good to have contact with family. Lucky me, I’m it.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them I don’t give a damn about what might be good for him. I told them they could tell the son of a bitch I said so.”
A memory niggles at the back of my mind. Something I’ve hardly thought of until now. “That morning at my house, Nick . . . after you spent the night. When I came downstairs you were on the phone with someone and those were almost your exact words. That’s who you were talking about? Your father?”
He clutches the phone in his fist, his expression taut with leashed anger. And pain.
I look at the torment in his handsome face and there’s no need to ask how long he’s been suffering night terrors again. I have no doubt they started around the same time his father began trying to reach him.