His gaze darkened as he leaned closer. Close enough so she could feel the heat pulsing off his body as well. “I don’t want to be some jerk who treats you like garbage.”
“And I don’t want to pine away for some prince who can’t stop treating me like gold but doesn’t think I’m worth enough to—”
“Damn it. That’s not it.” Garrett’s hands were hot on her shoulders, his face right up in hers as he gave her a firm but gentle shake. “You know that’s not how it is!”
Nichole shook him off. “Close enough, Garrett.”
SIXTEEN
Across the gallery, Nichole set her empty glass on a passing tray and smoothly picked up another.
She wasn’t drunk.
But there was a kind of liquid grace to her movements she hadn’t possessed when she’d first arrived, met his eyes for a beat and then turned away—presumably to congratulate Jesse on his latest opening. But he couldn’t say for sure as he’d stayed rooted in place at the far side of the gallery.
He hadn’t actually exchanged more than a cursory greeting and goodnight with Nichole since that afternoon two weeks before, when she’d basically told him the only thing he could do for her was be a bastard.
He’d been so damned mad he walked away without a word. Skipped out on his family plans and gone home to stare at the wall and swear at the empty space around him for the next three hours. That Nichole would even dare to—
Hell, he wasn’t going there again.
“Excuse me...Garrett Carter?”
Garrett shifted his focus to the woman standing in front of him, a direct smile on her lips, invitation in her eyes. He tried to place her face but nothing came to him.
“Yes?”
“I thought I recognized you.” She offered her hand. “I’m Fawn Lesley. Walter Lesley’s daughter. You probably don’t remember me, but we met briefly about five years ago, when—”
“Of course—Fawn.” Her father had been putting up some luxury condos and Garrett had bid on the contract before Walter Lesley ended up backing out because of cash flow problems. The daughter must have been at one of the information meetings. “How’s your father doing?”
Fawn replied that he was well, then transitioned into some light chit-chat, her hand reaching out to touch his arm in a way that was supposed to suggest an unconscious intimacy but in Garrett’s experience had always been fairly rife with intent.
She was an attractive woman, by all means. Nicely built, with a sensual assortment of features. But he wasn’t interested. Could barely keep his eyes on her, in fact, because they kept drifting across the room to—to where some guy was pulling Nichole into an embrace that had every muscle in Garrett’s body going taut.
Not a hug. No. Not the way those arms closed around her body, almost pulling her up and in. And the extra second or six they lingered, like whoever this guy was didn’t want to let her go.
Who was he?
Garrett scanned the gallery for someone to grill, but Maeve wasn’t there, he didn’t see Sam, and Jesse was talking to a reporter from the Trib. He reached for his phone, thinking Maeve did this sort of thing all the time.
He stopped to think, Maeve did this sort of thing all the time.
“So, Garrett—I have a confession.”
He look back at Fay—no, Fawn—feeling like an ass for forgetting she was there. Nice guy. “I’m sorry? What was that?”
Lowering her impossibly thick black lashes—truly impossibly thick, because he couldn’t begin to imagine what she’d put on them to make them look that way—she went on, “I had a mad crush on you that first time we met. And I know I was too young, but now....”
She let the words trail off, and Garrett pulled his mental faculties together enough to focus on what he was going to say. What he always said. Only across the room Nichole was still blinking up at the yet to be identified hugger, one hand hovering around her throat as though he’d completely caught her off guard and she was still recovering.
Damn it. Walter Lesley’s girl—right. Smiling down at her, he shook his head. “I’m flattered, Fawn, but I’m...involved with someone right now.”
He’d been about to give her his pat speech about not mixing business with pleasure, ready to use his association with her father as an excuse, when he realized he had a truth at his disposal that was much more straightforward.
Nichole might have ended their relationship, but the fact that he was essentially flipping out about the guy across the room said Garrett was still very much involved. He might have stepped back, but he hadn’t let go.
“Give your father my best.”
And then Garrett’s focus returned to where it had been. To Nichole, with her head tipped back, exposing the delicate line of her neck as she laughed at something the guy said and gestured animatedly in the air between them, pulling him in to some private joke they both seemed to understand.
Another laugh. Open. Genuine.
The riveted focus of Nichole’s eyes was on this man’s face like she simply couldn’t look away.
And Garrett’s gut took it like a blow.
Tension laced up his spine, tightening the muscles at the base of his skull, around his jaw and through his temples.
He couldn’t watch this—and yet he couldn’t look away.
Only he had to. Because if he sat there much longer...if he had to see the inevitable moment when this guy tested the waters with some innocuous touch...
Hell, already he wanted to take the guy’s arm off and he hadn’t even moved on her yet. But it was coming. Garrett recognized the signs. And God help him if Nichole moved into that touch instead of skirting away. He wouldn’t be able to stand it.
And then it happened. The world around him closed in.
The blood tore past his eardrums like a freight train.
Immobilized by that single graze of some chump’s fingertips at the bare skin of her elbow, Garrett couldn’t do anything but wait. Watch. Stare. Until he saw how Nichole would answer the unspoken question with the language of her body. Would she move in to the touch, inviting more? Hesitate and contemplate, making herself all the more enticing a challenge and target? Or would she step back out of reach, putting up those invisible barriers that had kept her out of most men’s reach for the better part of three years?
Her gaze lowered to her arm where the man had touched her. No subtlety about it. Just blatant awareness. And, God damn it, uncertainty. Didn’t she know that indecision was like a red flag? A challenge. A reward not every Tom, Dick and Harry got to have.
The fingers at her elbow moved to catch her chin. Lightly, tipping her face.
The knot through Garrett’s gut twisted tight. He knew what this guy was going to see in her big brown eyes. Vulnerability. Questions. Warmth and desire.
Everything Garrett saw the minute he closed his own. And now this guy—
Wasn’t going to see any of it. At least not directed at him.
Oh, it was there in her eyes, all right. Only now her gaze had slid away from the man in front of her, was moving across the room in a slow, steady path, suggesting she knew exactly where her target lay—and had landed on him.
Asking if he could really let her go. Asking if he cared.
Whatever relief Garrett had felt was short-lived as frustration and hostility began to crawl up his throat.
Game-play. And he hadn’t even realized she was doing it. Hadn’t realized she was even capable of it.
She’d let her guard down enough to lure this sorry bastard in just to test his reaction.
See what he would do.
That was a mistake, Nichole.
She must have read his eyes, because her chin pulled back and her eyes went fractionally wider. More wary.
She’d made her point in reminding him he couldn’
t sleep tight secure in the knowledge that while he wasn’t touching her no one else would either.
Only her little plan wouldn’t work out the way she’d expected.
* * *
Across the room those deep blue eyes began to blaze and Nichole felt her skin flush at the sight of them.
The finger at her chin drifted away, along with whatever questions Nichole had about whether it was possible for her to be attracted to another man. Even a man who’d once been her whole world. Of course looking back, it hardly seemed fair to have burdened Paul that way when he’d been so young at the time. He’d barely been a man at all.
Hence the broken engagement.
Just like Garrett, Paul had needed a chance to live. Be free. But while she couldn’t begrudge him the decision now, it would have been nice if he’d recognized it before putting a ring on her finger.
“Who’s that?”
Forcing her attention back to the man who, if things had been different, might have become her husband, she answered without pretense, “Garrett Carter.”
“Carter who just put up that skyscraper down off Wabash?” At her nod, he asked, “You two have something going on?”
She smiled up at him and, recognizing Paul for the old friend Garrett had wanted to be himself, didn’t bother to hide the heartbreak in her eyes. “We did.”
Another sidelong glance and Paul’s jaw set in obvious disappointment.
“And it’s not quite over,” he observed. Leaning in, he chucked his knuckles in a light graze beneath her chin. “I know you’re tough, Nichole, but if you need a shoulder or an ear...I’d like to be there for you.”
As she watched that piece of her past walk away a low heat built at her back and her body took on a subtle charge unique to Garrett.
“Are you done?”
“It wasn’t about you.” The words were out before they’d even been processed in her mind, and as soon as they passed her lips she realized how untrue they were.
She’d known he was there. Known he’d been watching her. She’d felt it as the hours passed. And though running into Paul had a been a complete surprise, and her curiosity about her reaction to him genuine, just knowing Garrett’s eyes were on her throughout had made it about him as much as anything else.
Before she could admit it, Garrett’s temper crackled at her ear. “Bull.”
She could feel the tension vibrating between them, the hostility and accusation.
“Are you leaving with me,” he growled, “or am I going to follow you home?”
She spun around to stare at him. “I don’t need you to follow me home, Garrett.”
With only inches between them to start, he leaned closer. “You’re sure as hell acting like you need something.”
Her breath caught, and then very deliberately she took a step back, and another. Turning, she muttered, “Tell Jesse goodnight for me. I’ll call him tomorrow.”
* * *
Returning home, Nichole didn’t bother to close the door behind her after letting it swing wide enough to bounce against the far wall when she pushed through. Breath ripping in and out of her lungs, she replayed the events of the night, coloring each scene as it unfolded with what she should have said. What she’d wanted to scream.
He had no right!
Slapping her keys atop the bookshelf, she pinched her lips between her teeth.
You’re sure as hell acting like you need something.
To hell with him.
The door closed with a hard thud behind her. The lock sounded next, putting every nerve in her body on alert. Tightening her skin, her belly.
She turned, glaring at Garrett from across the distance of her hall.
“What did you think would happen?” he asked, walking toward her as he jerked the tie at his throat until it came free.
“I wasn’t—” But her denial fell short when his hands moved to his collar, opening the top button and then the next.
“You were,” he answered, his voice too low and controlled to do anything but underscore the hostility surging within him. Hostility and purpose.
Another button and her heart skipped a beat, her feet starting to move in an effort to restore the space between them.
Garrett didn’t hesitate to step into her space. To crowd her back into the seldom-used dining room, continuing to close in even when she had no place left to go. The thick lip of the table pressed into her flesh as her hands braced behind her.
She didn’t know how far he intended to take this. What he planned to do. All she could say for certain was she couldn’t look away. Couldn’t say the single word it would take to make him leave. Couldn’t give up this interaction that fell on the wrong side of restraint, control and good sense.
Because she was desperate for it. Starved for what she knew she shouldn’t have.
“Did you think seeing another man touch you, put his hands on your body...” his palms shaped her hips and the contact was like a charge detonating deep in her belly, pushing down the line of her leg to fist the fabric and then draw it up “...would make me insane?”
The hem of her skirt rose with his hands, exposing inch after inch of her bare thighs and the pale silk of her panties to the cool air in her apartment.
“Did you think it would drive me to my knees, Nichole?” he asked, dropping to one knee and then the other without ever freeing her from the harsh burn of his stare. Making her wonder if she could ever actually be free of him at all.
It seemed impossible when, in this moment, so totally devoid of the tenderness and joy that had been a part of their every interaction, she still felt as though he owned her.
Releasing the fabric bunched at her waist, he smoothed his fingers beneath the black jersey skirt, catching her panties as he pulled them down.
“What’s this about, Garrett?” Her words sounded weak and shaky. Desperate.
Exactly the way she felt.
“It’s about you getting what you want,” he challenged. “Isn’t it?”
Before she could answer, tell him she didn’t even know what she wanted, he’d brought his mouth to her, shooting sensation through that critical point of contact. The firm stroke of his tongue was shaking loose whatever fragile grasp she’d maintained on reason, lacing desire through her center, pulling the strings of her need taut and making her ache blindly for more.
Fingers curled over the edge of the table rather than through the silky waves of his dark hair, she greedily took everything Garrett gave her. It didn’t matter that this need was fueled in equal parts by anger and desire, each building off the other. Or that there was no love in Garrett’s eyes. That he was being cold. Callous. Proving something to her as he proved it to himself.
All that mattered was she could have him. Like this. Right now.
* * *
God damn it, Nichole needed to end this. Slap his face and tell him to get the hell out. She needed to stop him, because he sure as hell couldn’t stop himself. He hadn’t even realized how far gone he was until he had the silk of her skin beneath his palms and the honeyed taste of her on his tongue.
The fact that she knew exactly what was happening between them—knew this wasn’t about tender affection and wanted it anyway—was all wrong. It bothered the hell out of him.
So why was he hard as a spike and letting her soft gasps wash over him again and again, hoping they never stopped?
His fingers clenched on her hips as he teased her with his mouth, let the light pressure open her to him. And still she didn’t break away from his stare. Those deep brown hungry eyes—the ones he’d been certain would be the first to give—were locked with his, the desire in them obscuring everything else.
Lifting her to rest on the table’s edge, he ran his hand up the center of her body and pushed her back with the steady pre
ssure of his palm until her weight rested on her elbows and he could slip her legs over his shoulders. Leaving her open and exposed, laid out to him like a feast for his taking.
His.
Because that was what this was about.
Proving to himself that the only hands on her tonight were his. Nothing mattered beyond that one simple fact. Not game-play. Not pride. Nothing.
* * *
It wasn’t Garrett’s kiss she was receiving. Nothing so tender or affectionate as that. It was something else altogether. Something that had to do with power and control. Both of which she’d already given over.
It was a claim. One she greedily accepted in exchange for the scrape of his evening stubble rubbing rough against her inner thigh. Heaven.
His mouth moved over her. Licking. Tasting. Teasing with the barest hint of teeth until she was writhing beneath him, her breath ragged and frayed. Then, covering that achy spot of need, he drew against it with a steady, rhythmic suction more about the destination than the journey getting there. It was so good. But too fast. Too much... Not enough. Already she was coming apart.
“Garrett!”
The last wave of her orgasm subsided and, tugging at his hair, she urged him higher with a breathless, “Please. All of you.”
It was only sex. She knew that. But she wanted the completion of union she’d ached for every night. Wanted the heady rush of his body moving within her. She wanted the slickness of his shoulders beneath her palms and the coarse groan of his satisfaction against her neck. The pounding of his heart echoing through her own.
She wanted him to crawl over her and push inside. Take what he needed. What she wanted him to have.
Only he’d turned to stone. Gone rigid. Immovable.
Head down now, he was no longer looking at her. Still, without seeing his eyes, she could sense the tension in him.
“Garrett?” she started, suddenly feeling more vulnerable and exposed than she’d ever been before.
She wanted to cover herself, though she knew Garrett was no longer looking. Didn’t want to see her.