by Lara Adrian
I look at him. There’s no question he’s pissed, but I’m only now seeing the concern on his face. His lips are flat, his jaw rigid. And behind the flashing anger in his eyes is real fear.
Fear for me.
Because he came home and found me gone.
Because he thought I had left him?
“I’m sorry.” I shake my head, feeling shitty for making him worry. And I must be all kinds of awful, because that small admission that he might need me as much as I need him makes my heart begin to pound heavily in my breast. “I didn’t know you were looking for me. I . . . lost my phone today.” The lie feels sour on my tongue. “I guess I must’ve dropped it on the subway or something.”
“You’ve been walking around the city without any way to reach me all this time?” He scowls, his face darkening. “That’s one more reason I ought to bend you over my knee.”
My breath catches and I feel my cheeks flame at that remark. “I’m not a child, Nick.”
“No, you’re not.” He steps toward me. “And that’s not what I meant.”
God help me, that grim but unmistakably carnal curve of his mouth as he speaks should trigger a hundred different reactions in me. And it does, but next to shock the strongest of them is excitement. I glance away from him, unnerved by how easily this man can entice me.
His fingers are briefly under my chin, lifting my gaze back to his. “Fuck the phone. It can be replaced. As for a studio, if you want space to paint, all you had to do was say so. There’s plenty of room for you to work here.”
“Nick, you don’t—”
“Yes, Avery, I do. If you have needs—any needs at all—I will take care of them. I have the means. I think we both know I’m capable.”
I lick my lips, feeling the heat of that promise wrap around my senses. Somehow I manage to break free from the spell he’s casting over me and shake my head. “I already put money down on the sublet. It’s a shared studio with a few other artists. I need to be able to paint. Not here, but someplace of my own.” I force myself to hold his penetrating stare. “I need some boundaries between you and me and reality.”
“Reality.” His face remains impassive, but there is a flicker of surprise in his eyes. Displeasure in the way his hand slowly drops away from me. “This is because of what happened at lunch today?”
“Seeing someone you used to fuck didn’t bother me as much as what happened afterward.” It’s the truth, even though I burn with suspicion over what Kathryn once meant to him. “You shut me out today. You made me feel unimportant to you.”
As shaken as I still am over my conversation with Rodney Coyle, it’s this current confrontation that has me trembling. I don’t want to lose Nick. I don’t want to lose what we have, elusive as it may be. Today I felt our connection slip, and it terrified me. I’m still afraid to keep my heart open to him when I have nothing solid to hold on to.
When I start to withdraw from him, Nick traces the backs of his knuckles against my cheek, halting my retreat. His other hand slides around to my back, bringing me closer than I was before.
“I told you once that I don’t do relationships. Christ, I wouldn’t know how if I tried. I’m too selfish, Avery. I fuck things up. I hurt people. I guess today is a good example of that.”
He sounds remorseful, his words careful as he strokes the side of my face.
“You are important to me. This is reality.” As he speaks, he takes my hand, pressing it to his chest. His heart pounds hard and heavy against my palm. We’re standing so close now, I can also feel the heat and power of his body. His gaze is locked on mine, giving me no room to run. Nowhere to hide. “You feel pretty damn real to me.”
The temptation to give in to him right then and there overwhelming, but I need more.
Today of all days, with doubt clawing at me and my past resurrected and threatening to destroy me, I need something more from Nick than just this need for each other that neither of us can resist.
“Tell me about her. Tell me what she means to you.”
“Kathryn Tremont means nothing to me. I’ve already told you that.”
“But you haven’t told me what happened between you two.”
The few details he has shared—and only because I pressed him once before—have painted only the briefest sketch. I know she and Nick were lovers. According to him it was only for a short time soon after he first arrived in New York. I know there had been a time when his sexual needs ran considerably darker than they do now, but he’s insisted that Kathryn was never part of that with him.
Since he has no reason to lie to me, I don’t doubt any of the things he has divulged about his past. It’s the things he hasn’t shared that frighten me the most. After all, I am a master at that game too.
“Kathryn and I are ancient history, Avery. Not important—neither is she.”
“Then why do you still hate her?”
“I don’t hate her.”
“Did you love her?” I have to know, even if he won’t ever be able, or willing, to apply the word to me. Maybe especially because of that. “Were you ever in love with her?”
“No.”
My relief leaks out of me on a pent-up breath.
“I cared for her, though. What’s more, I trusted her.” His jaw seems tense, though whether in reluctance to speak about her or in memory of what happened between them, I can’t be sure. “I trusted Kathryn at a time when I had nothing else to give. She betrayed me. I don’t allow anyone the chance to do it twice.”
There is a vulnerable quality to this admission, but I don’t dare take it as weakness. Not when his eyes are cold and dark with meaning. As much as he is sharing a piece of himself with me, it is also a warning.
It’s one I respect, because when it comes to trust and the penalty for breaking it, Nick and I are very much alike.
It’s a struggle to hold his penetrating stare, especially when the weight of my own lies and evasions are pressing down upon me even more now. He blinks, and some of the edge is gone from his gaze.
“I shouldn’t have left you at the curb the way I did. Seeing Kathryn made me unfit company. We’d had such a good day together up until then, I didn’t want to ruin it by bringing my shitty attitude home with you. Instead, I worked off my aggression on some contract negotiations back at the office.”
He caresses the side of my head, trailing his hand over my unbound hair. When his fingers spear into the loose strands to cup my nape, the feeling is so warm and possessive, I can’t hold back my small, pleasured moan. “If you had come home with me, I doubt your shitty attitude would’ve lasted for long.”
A faint smirk tugs at the corner of his sinful mouth. “Is that right?”
I nod, falling deeper under the spell of his touch. “Next time, talk to me. You could’ve worked off some of that aggression on me.”
A low groan rumbles in his throat. The tension I feel in him shifts instantly into something deeper, something needful and hungry. He descends on my mouth. Fevered, starving, he kisses me as if we haven’t been in each other’s arms for days, not just a few hours.
When he finally breaks contact, I’m gasping and so turned on I can hardly see straight. His mouth trails over to the sensitive spot beneath my earlobe before moving down the side of my neck and into the curve of my shoulder.
I startle when he gives me a sharp nip.
“That’s for not telling me where you were this afternoon.” When he draws back to look at me, his handsome face is taut with demand—and desire. “Don’t make me worry about your safety ever again. And never withhold your needs from me. Understood?”
I slide my hands under his untucked shirt. “Yes, sir.”
Raw sexual energy pours off him as I stare up at him and murmur those words. We’ve only played at these games a few times, enough for me to know the power my submission holds for him. His erection is already rampant, but it surges even firmer, as rigid as a thick column of stone where it presses against my abdomen.
“Baby
,” he snarls, and then he takes my mouth again, his tongue thrusting as his hands move expediently to strip me of my blouse and bra. When my breasts are bared to him, he scoops them into his palms, kneading them harshly, his touch as primal as his kiss. His mouth is hot on mine, then savage on my breasts as he licks and suckles and fondles me into a state of near boneless arousal.
I fumble with the buttons on his dress shirt, but I’m too slow. My movements are impeded by the slick, hot need that’s roaring through every fiber of my being. On a wordless sound of impatience, he rips the custom-made shirt off, sending buttons scattering.
My hands roam his smooth skin and firm musculature of his chest and abdomen. But it’s his cock I need in my hands even more. I wrap my hand over the solid ridge beneath the zipper of his suit pants, moaning when I feel his shaft jerk against my palm. A deep tremor answers in my core, setting my blood on fire.
“Oh, God, Nick. Please . . . “
My jeans and panties come off in the next instant. His hand goes between my thighs, nudging them wider. I cry out when his fingers glide into the wet seam of my sex. He torments my clit, his fingertips rubbing and flicking, knowing precisely how to make me burn. Pleasure spirals through me, sharp and white, ready to explode. I squirm on his hand, shameless in my need. When he enters me with two fingers, then another, I clutch his shoulders, needing something to hold on to as my orgasm twists with the first inklings of release.
He makes a low noise, somewhere between a chuckle and a growl. “I shouldn’t make it so easy for you.”
I’m panting, on the verge of coming when he suddenly takes his touch away. He steps back a pace and looks at me with burning, hooded eyes.
“After the way you made me worry today, I should make you beg.” His voice is edged with a dangerous, carnal authority.
My clit throbs as though on command.
“I will,” I gasp, wholly unashamed. With him, I’m willing to do anything. And he knows it. “If that’s what you want, I’ll beg.”
His fingers find my clit again, but this time he’s only playing with me. Teasing. Showing me just how completely he controls my pleasure. His touch sears me, but it’s his eyes that consume me even more. Whether it’s the hunger I see in his gaze that’s drawn me to him from the start, or the darkness that lives behind it, I can’t be sure.
“What do you want, baby?”
“You,” I gasp as he takes me right to the edge again, then eases off. “I want you in my hands. In my mouth. Inside me, Nick . . . Please.”
His fingers wrap around mine now, guiding both my hands to his belt buckle. It’s all the permission I need. I can’t free him fast enough, can’t wait to feel the heavy length of his cock in my grasp, in my mouth.
I drop down in front of him and fasten my lips around the head of his penis. I want to make him come like I did this morning in his office, but he doesn’t have that kind of patience this time. All too soon, he pulls me up, kissing me long and hard.
“Go to the window.”
I glance over my shoulder at the large pane of floor-to-ceiling glass. Outside, the sun has just dipped below the skyline. The horizon is aglow in shades of peach, dark salmon, and lavender, while above Manhattan’s blanket of twinkling lights, the sky glows impossibly blue. The same incredible hue of Nick’s eyes.
Naked, I approach the glass and wait for him to either join me or command me to do something more. As much as I need the release he’s teased me with, I know how delicious he can make the torment of waiting. My body is ready for anything he wants to give it.
A shiver races over my bare skin as I look out at the glittering city below and anticipate whatever pleasure that is to come. I hear the soft glide of a bureau drawer being opened inside his massive walk-in closet that’s adjacent to the bedroom.
“Hands on the glass,” he orders me as he steps out behind me a moment later. “Spread your legs. Wider. I want that beautiful pink pussy open and waiting for me when I’m ready to fuck it.”
I hurry to obey. Anything to please him, especially when the reward is mine in the end.
I stand at the window, my palms pressed against the cold glass on either side of my head. My feet are spaced wider than my shoulders, making my hips cant forward and my ass jut up and out behind me. I feel exposed, vulnerable. At Nick’s mercy in this position that doesn’t permit me to shift without losing my balance.
I feel him approach, even though his steps are soundless on the rug-covered marble floor, his movements smooth and silent at my back. Yet each soft circulation of the air in the room rushes past my wet, swollen flesh like a kiss. I shudder at the sensation, desperate to turn around and look for him. I bite my lip to keep from asking where he is, what he intends.
His touch lights on my spine, fingers splayed between my shoulder blades before moving softly, tenderly, down to the small of my bowed back.
“You made me crazy with concern today,” he says, his deep voice quiet, but firm. “What do you think I should do about that, Ms. Ross? Reward you? Or punish you?”
I swallow. He’s teased me with this word before, too, but never after I’ve upset him. And never when I cannot see his face or his eyes to know if he is serious.
His tone seems to suggest that is.
When I feel the cool slide of long leather laces being draped gently against the curve of my ass, I have no doubt he’s serious. Alarm spikes through me, along with something too hot to be fear. He moves the flogger’s tails slowly over my skin, giving me a chance to get used to them, gauging my response.
“Do you know what this is?”
I nod, even though my knowledge is limited to photos and fiction.
“Have you ever felt one?”
“No.”
He grunts. “Do you want to?”
“I don’t know.”
He leans in close, his words low and hot against my ear. “Yes, you do.”
I suck in a sharp breath as the long leather tails slip into the seam of my ass. They brush against my pussy, still cool, but warming from the heat of my body. I shiver, though not out of fear.
Nothing close to fear.
Not when Nick is gentling me with one hand, while the other swings the flogger back, then snaps the tails against my bare backside. I flinch, even though the sting of the leather is less intense than I expect it to be.
“That’s for the first hour, when I thought you were just trying to make a point by ignoring my texts and voice mails.”
He cracks the flogger against my other cheek. The tips of the leather laces brush my swollen folds, and the cry I emit is anything but pained.
“That’s for the second hour, after I left half a dozen messages on your damn phone, asking you to just call me back and let me know that you were all right.”
His deep voice is level, controlled, but I can hear the raw edge in his words. I can hear the worry he’s carrying, even now, when I’m standing here in front of him, safe and sound and vibrating with desire for him.
The flogger snaps against my ass again, and this time it does hurt. There’s more power in this blow, even though Nick’s voice drops to a tone that’s as tight and raw as I’ve ever heard before.
“Damn you, Avery. That’s for the third hour you were gone without a word—and for how fucking certain I was that I had lost you today.”
“Nick—”
He doesn’t give me a chance to say anything. Not to apologize nor to assure him that I have no intention of walking away from what we have together. Not willingly, anyway. Hell, I’m not even certain I could walk away if I were forced to.
I’m in too deep with him.
Today, more than ever before, I realize that he’s in deep with me too.
I glance over my shoulder, just in time to see that he’s thrown down the flogger. He’s already wearing a condom, and when he comes in close behind me, he is vibrating with sexual heat. I need him inside me with a desperation that rocks me. My body is aching for him. Empty without him.
Gu
iding his cock into the center of my slick, wet folds he impales me on a hard and unforgiving thrust.
A low, guttural roar boils out of him as he pounds into me, his strokes rough and deep. I’ve tasted Nick’s sexual fury before. I know what it is to be swamped by the ferocity of his need, his powerful, ruthless desire.
There is a torment in him, but it’s never been more evident than in this moment. I can’t hold out against it. With my palms and forehead pressed against the glass, I cry his name as my body shatters, every nerve ending detonating with the incredible force of my orgasm.
Nick’s not far behind me. His shout is guttural, animal. The sexiest sound I know. His big body shudders against me, his cock seated so deep inside me I can hardly tell where he ends and I begin.
“You feel that, baby?” His voice rasps beside my ear as his tempo finally slows. “This is real. You, me . . . us.”
“Yes,” I whisper, wanting so badly to believe it, my chest aches with the wish.
Our bodies continue to move together, pressed between the haven of our pretty cage in the sky and the rest of the world teeming and turning outside. The world where real monsters live—my own, and maybe his too—just waiting for the chance to tear us apart one day.
But not today.
Chapter 8
“I was starting to think I’d never see you again.”
Lita flips her safety goggles up as I enter the studio later that week. Today she’s got an old Godsmack CD in the boom box. While drums pound rhythmically and Sully Erna sings about snake bites and voodoo, Lita holds an industrial-size soldering iron in her hand, the metal tip still smoking from whatever she’s working on. She uses it to gesture at my small rollaway that contains my paints and brushes. “Where’s the rest of your shit?”
“This is all of it.” I wheel the box inside, careful not to jostle the large zippered portfolio that’s slung over my shoulder and almost as big as I am.
“You didn’t drag that here on the subway, I hope?”
I glance to the other side of the small studio, where a tall, lanky male artist with a mop of light brown hair has paused his work to stare at me as I come in. He’s got a lean, boyish face and a friendly, open smile.