Black Sheep Bargain, page 14
Or tried to.
Nico cupped her chin in a careful, unyielding grip. That hold—possessive, dominant—had need twisting in her lower belly. She tried to shake her head, to clear it of the haze of lust clouding it, but she couldn’t. He wouldn’t allow it.
And damn if that didn’t have her squirming in his lap.
“More of what? Be specific, baby girl,” he ordered, onyx eyes glittering. “More of this?”
He nipped her bottom lip, then plunged into her mouth, his tongue dueling with hers in an erotic battle. When he lifted his head, she tried to chase him, but his hold prevented it. She glared at him, frustration a beast within her. He chuckled, the sound wicked, dirty.
“Or more of this?”
His hand on her hip firmed, pressed her down as he stroked up. His dick made a mockery of her thong, rendering it irrelevant as he ground against her folds and the tiny bundle of nerves cresting her sex.
“Oh God,” she breathed, her head falling back on her shoulders. Heat engulfed her, fanning from between her thighs, speeding up her spine, into her breasts, her belly before sizzling down to the very soles of her feet.
Was she so primed for pleasure, for his touch, that one nudge to her clit would send her over the edge into release?
Yes. If the way her body lit up like a damn torch was any indication, then yes, she was.
“Which one, baby girl?” He grazed a kiss over her lips, her chin. Rolled his hips. “Do I fuck this mouth or do I let you get the front of my pants even wetter?”
Oh damn. That dirty mouth should be outlawed. Or knighted for heroic deeds.
“Why can’t I have both?” She tunneled her fingers through his thick, black waves, tugging them away from his face, glorying in the silken glide over her fingers. This, she’d missed, too. “Give me both.”
She couldn’t be sure, but delight flashed in his eyes. The smile that curved his mouth was all hunger...and promise.
“Greedy,” he murmured, his fingers caressing her jaw. “One of the things I enjoyed about you most.”
Enjoyed. Not loved.
The prick of pain sliced true, but she firmly smothered it. Nothing in this moment had to do with love. They’d had their chance at that and lost it. Right now, as he molded his mouth to hers, licking it, sucking and owning it, while guiding her to ride him, the pursuit of satisfaction reigned.
Soon, prickles tingled at the back of her neck, danced down her spine and gathered at the base. Hips stuttering, a choked cry escaped her, but she didn’t need words, didn’t need to explain.
“Take it, Athena,” Nico encouraged. “Take the edge off.” Even as he spoke, he lowered his other hand between them and slipped underneath the band of her panties, unerringly locating the sensitive, stiff button. “But the next time is mine. You come around me.” He firmly circled, giving her just the right amount of pressure.
In seconds, she exploded.
She cried out, arching into his fingers, riding the ridge of his dick. The tight, cresting pleasure was good, so good, but not enough.
Not nearly enough.
As soon as the shudders eased from her body, Nico slid his fingers into his mouth, licking her from his skin. His lashes fluttered down, and that quick hunger flashed inside her as if she hadn’t just orgasmed moments earlier.
“That dress have a zipper?” he growled.
Instead of answering, she moved her hands to the hidden clasp and zipper at her side. Lowering it, she slid the straps down her arms, baring herself to him. Maybe modesty should’ve filled her as his gaze roamed over her breasts. Maybe she should’ve at least attempted to cover herself.
But it didn’t, and she didn’t.
She wanted Nico to see her, to want her. She exulted in witnessing those full, beautiful lips flatten in lust, and twin flags of color slash across his cheekbones. Watching his eyes become hooded. His need had haunted her dreams, and seeing it again in real life...
Oh no. She wanted to see it.
His mouth captured a nipple, his tongue and lips drawing on one while his fingers teased and tweaked the other.
She buried her face in his waves, whimpering, her body undulating and arching against the ecstasy he pulled from her. She’d say he worshipped her, but that would be profane. There was nothing reverent about how his tongue lapped and sucked, how his teeth raked and nipped. Nothing deferential about how his fingers molded, squeezed and twisted.
He possessed.
He corrupted.
And she loved every damn bit of it.
Lifting his head, Nico pinned her with his gaze. He cupped the nape of her neck, pressed his mouth to hers, and she greedily opened for him, accepted his kiss.
“What more do you want?” he asked. “I’ll make you come again and end this. Or I’ll give you my cock and make both of us burn. Your choice.”
“Make us burn,” she whispered against his lips.
He tilted his head back, stared at her. Then, whatever he saw, whatever he’d sought in the first place, must’ve confirmed something for him, because he nodded and dropped his hands to his pants.
“Let me.” She brushed his fingers aside but didn’t start on the band of his tuxedo slacks.
Instead, she tugged at his bow tie, casting it aside. Next, the buttons of his shirt received her attention. When she slid that last button through its hole, she sighed, sliding her hands up his broad, hard chest. Let her fingertips sweep over the flat male nipples. Delight in their tightening. But she didn’t linger there. Not when a throbbing and persistent emptiness beat inside her, insisting she fill it.
She opened the tab of his pants, jerked the zipper down, her fingers grazing his skin. His abdomen went concave, and a sharp hiss sounded above her. His thighs shifted beneath her, and his restless, hungry movements only ratcheted the need in her. Dipping her hands inside his black boxer briefs, she cupped him.
Their twin groans saturated the limousine’s interior.
The hot, thick weight of him pulsed in her hands, and she couldn’t resist squeezing him. Couldn’t hold back from pumping him.
How could she have gone three years without touching him, having him, inhaling his scent? Even now his heavy musk teased her nose, made her mouth water for a taste. Already she could feel the heft of him on her tongue, sliding toward the back of her throat...
“No, baby girl.” His hands clutched her arms, and only then did she realize she’d been on the verge of sinking to the floor between his thighs to fulfill the vision in her head. “Not this time. I want you too bad. Need to be here—” he cupped her wet, swollen sex “—too bad.” Tangling his other hand in her hair again, he drew her head down until their breaths mingled, mated. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Again, no hesitation. She had zero doubts. About this. About needing him inside her, taking away the ache.
Now about other things... God, yes. But this? No.
It was a long time coming.
Giving her that nod again, he reached into his jacket pocket and removed his wallet.
“No.” She shook her head. Nico went still, his gaze on her face. “I’m on the pill. And I’ve been tested. You don’t have a reason to believe me but I—”
“I believe you,” he interrupted. And dropped the wallet to the seat beside them. Without removing a condom. “I’ve been tested, too.” A beat of charged silence. “And I haven’t been with anyone since you.”
Wait. What?
“That’s...” she started, disbelief spiraling through her like a shrieking whirlwind.
“Three years. Yes.”
Why? How? Why?
The questions bombarded her, but his tongue curled around them. And by the time he lifted his head, she didn’t care about the answer. For now.
“Athena,” he rumbled, one of his hands brushing both of hers aside to fist the base of his cock and hold himself. “Take me inside.”
He didn’t have to tell her twice. Reaching down, she looped her fingers in the band of her thong and—
Nico fisted the band and ripped it. Gripped the other side and shredded it, too.
Well, okay. That was one way to handle them.
Lifting her gaze to his, she straddled him again, her chest rising and falling, her breath whistling from between her lips. Slowly, she lowered her body until the head of him brushed her folds, her entrance.
And then he pushed inside her.
Then he was inside her.
The moan rolled out of her, pained and ecstatic. The pressure. The stretching. The taking. With one hand clasping the nape of her neck, pressing her forehead to his, and the other a vise grip at her hip, holding her steady as he pulsed his hips, claiming her. Conquering her. Until he left no inch of her untouched.
God, he touched her everywhere.
And it was beautiful.
It was everything.
Only once he was fully seated inside her, his cock an undeniable, pounding presence, did he pause, allowing her to become reaccustomed to him.
As if she could ever become used to this...to this body-and-soul event.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, brushed her lips over his ear.
“I was afraid.”
His head jerked back and that onyx gaze burned into her like fire.
“Afraid of what, Athe—”
She pressed her hand to his mouth, and his jagged, hot breath bathed her palm. The fire in his eyes blazed hotter, but she closed her own and sank her teeth into her bottom lip, choking back a whimper. That only served to emphasize the sensation of him filling her to damn near overflowing, reclaiming her, rebranding her.
“That’s why I left you. I was scared of falling so deep in love with you that I’d disappear. That there would be nothing left of me. I was terrified of loving you more than myself. Of what I’d do because of it.”
Like stay with a man whose heart was so hardened, he couldn’t love her back.
Shivering, she rose off his cock, pleasure rippling through her as his thick, hard flesh dragged over her slick, sensitive core. When only the tip of him nudged her entrance, she plunged back down, driving the air from her lungs and a small scream from her throat. Panting, she kissed his ear, the rim of it, the lobe.
“Not a day hasn’t gone by that I didn’t second-guess my decision,” she rasped, voice hoarse. “Because, no, you aren’t perfect. But you’re beautiful, protective, loyal. You’re imperfect perfection, and I—”
He yanked her hand from his mouth and slammed his lips to hers, swallowing whatever else she would’ve confessed. Thank God. Because with her sex full of him and too many emotions shoving against her chest, she might have said something she couldn’t have taken back. Something that would’ve left her more naked, spread open and exposed then she was right now in the back of this limousine.
“Ride me, dammit,” he demanded in a ragged, hoarse voice.
And she obeyed.
She rode him with uninhibited abandon, rising and falling, grinding into him, fucking him. His growled praise urged her to take him, and with every raw compliment, each hoarse command, he shoved her closer and closer to release. Electricity sizzled through her, and she opened her arms to it, transforming into pleasure’s willing conduit. And when he reached between them and rubbed the nub of engorged flesh, she soared.
In the grip of her orgasm, he followed, thrusting and pouring into her. She held him through it, relishing the evidence of his desire for her. Of their cataclysmic desire for each other. With his raw shout still ringing in her ears, she buried her face in his neck, clinging to him.
A quiet settled around them, and only then did she realize that the limo had stopped. Damn, how long had they been sitting... Where? She lifted her head high enough to glance at the smoked-out window and glimpsed the front of her condominium’s building.
Leaning forward, Nico pressed a button under the divider.
“Please take us to my penthouse.”
“Yes, sir,” came his driver’s clear, disembodied voice.
“That okay with you?” Nico asked, hitting the button again and glancing down at her. “I don’t want to be done tonight.”
“Yes, it’s okay.”
He threaded his fingers through her hair, smoothing the curls away from her face.
“Good,” he murmured.
She should be at least a little embarrassed that the driver must know they’d been fucking. But for the life of her, curled up against Nico, breathing in his sandalwood-and-sex scent, still full and throbbing from the delicious burn of his fierce possession, she couldn’t bring herself to care.
And as the limousine pulled away from the curb and headed toward his penthouse, she closed her eyes and brushed her lips against the base of his throat, savoring the beat of his pulse against her lips.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow would be soon enough to worry about the actions and consequences of tonight. Because she didn’t fool herself. There would be consequences. But...
Tomorrow.
Eleven
The scent of vanilla, sugar and sex greeted Nico before he opened his eyes, and he burrowed his face into the source of it. Immediately, images from the previous evening and early morning hours flooded him.
The best fucking limousine ride of his life.
He and Athena back at his high-rise penthouse, in his bedroom, losing themselves in each other time and time again. Him taking her like a man possessed.
Like a man unsure of when he’d touch her, taste her again.
Yeah, he’d been frenzied.
And now his bed and the tangled sheet were empty.
He didn’t need to open his eyes or stretch out his hand to touch the cool sheet to verify that. An emptiness in the room and in his chest did it.
Sitting up, he scanned the room, confirming what he’d known. Athena had slipped out.
Disappointment burrowed deep within him. He tried to deny it, but shit, what was the point? He tossed a look at the digital clock on his nightstand. Six ten. How long had she been gone? Did she wait for the fucking sweat to dry—
“Hey, you’re awake.” She stood in the open bedroom door, his white dress shirt draped around her. And it had never looked that good on him. “Hi.”
“Hey.” More than that one word piled up in his throat, but none of them emerged. He could only stare at those gorgeous curls piled on top of her head, at those long, slender brown legs bared under his shirt’s hem. At that lovely face wearing a shy yet beautiful smile. “What’re you doing up?”
She arched an eyebrow, her gaze dipping to his dick that tented the sheet over his hips. Hell, she made him hard. Why deny that either? Especially when just last night he’d admitted to being celibate for three years.
“I planned on making breakfast for us and went to your kitchen to see what you had. Which, to answer that? Everything. I was thinking an omelet, bacon and French toast? Sounds good?”
“Sounds perfect. After I have you.” He stretched out a hand toward her and watched with satisfaction as her chest quickly rose and fell and her hazel eyes brightened with lust. “Come here, baby girl.”
She took a step toward him, then her cell phone rang; he recognized her ring tone from last night.
His arm dropped and dread curled in his gut as did a sense of déjà vu. He’d been here before with her. Three years ago.
Athena glanced toward the phone she’d left on the nightstand sometime last night, frowning.
“Go on.” He hiked a chin in its direction. “Answer it.”
They both knew she would, just as they both knew who it was on the other end of the call.
Indecision warred on her face, but Nico settled the battle by throwing back the sheet and swinging his legs over the end of the bed. He stood and crossed to the bathroom, closing the door behind him.
By the time he showered, brushed his teeth and emerged with a towel wrapped around his hips, Athena sat on the edge of the mattress, dressed in the red gown from the previous evening. A helpless anger burned inside him, and he strode to his walk-in closet, grabbing a pair of sweatpants and jerking them on. He used several more minutes to calm his temper before reentering his bedroom. But the helplessness clung to him like a burr he couldn’t shake.
He hated it.
Resented her for its return.
“I take it this means breakfast is off,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Nico, I’m sorry.” She rose, spreading her hands in front of her, palms up. “That was Mom.”
“Of course it was.” He nodded. “Let me guess. She needs you at home. Or no, wait. There’s a problem at the bakery.”
Her wince supplied his answer.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated, her arms falling to her sides. “Randall’s a no-show at the bakery, Kira’s sick and another employee called in. She’s shorthanded. Plus, she hasn’t worked in the store for a long time. She’s not familiar with how it runs. She needs me, and I can’t...” She shook her head, her shoulders lifting and falling in a shrug. “I can’t just leave her hanging.”
“Of course you can’t.”
Athena sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Nico, don’t do this. Not after... Please, just try and understand.”
“Not after what? Not after last night?” The temper he’d tried to rein in snapped at its tethers. “What does last night have to do with this?” He waved a hand between them. “I’m having a wicked fucking case of déjà vu, Athena. But the difference between then and now? I refuse to beg you to stand up for yourself. To set boundaries for yourself, for us. Because there is no us. So no, I don’t have to understand. This is you. This is who you insist on being. I can’t fight to make you see different, to be different when you don’t want that for yourself.”
“What do you want me to do, dammit?” she snapped. “Throw my mother to the wolves? Tell her, ‘Sorry you’re in a tough spot, sucks to be you’? Yes, they can be annoying and trying as hell, but they’re still family. I can’t abandon them.”
