I’ve never been so relieved and devastated at the same time. How am I going to fix this?
“I don’t know how to deal with it either, Nate.” I cup his face in my hands. “I was so sure that you were finished with me, that I’d pissed you off so badly that we couldn’t fix it. I didn’t mean that our relationship is bullshit. I didn’t.” I stress this and look him dead in the eyes. He’s watching me, listening, and I continue.
“Everything happened so fast yesterday. I was a mess, and I’m never a mess. You were gone, Carly at work was bragging to me about how she’s banging you and running off to New York with you”—Nate blanches, but I keep going before he can speak—“and then Luke called, freaking out because Nat’s water broke. I just left and went to the hospital, forgetting everything else.” I take a deep breath and wipe my tears away with my fingers.
“When Natalie finally agreed to take the meds, I checked my phone and saw that you’d been trying to reach me, and I called you right away. I swear, I didn’t mean to hurt you at all, but I was annoyed that you were annoyed with me, and I had so much going through my head. I said the wrong thing, and I apologize again.”
“Jules, I’m sure I could have handled things better too, I just…” He swallows and looks down, carefully choosing his words. “I just hate the fact that I have this primal need inside of me to protect you. I’ve never felt this about anyone before, and you just don’t need me. I’m so proud of you for being the independent, confident, intelligent woman you are, but you don’t need me, and I want to take care of you, more than you will ever know.”
He releases my shoulders and runs his hands down my arms to link his fingers in mine. He’s so wrong. I do need him.
I take a deep breath, steeling myself for the words I’m about to say. I grip his fingers with mine and realize we’re still standing by the doorway. I don’t want to break this moment by suggesting we sit, so I look into his eyes again and bare my soul.
“You’re so wrong,” I whisper. He frowns and looks apprehensive again. “You once said to me that if I’d been paying attention for the past year I would have seen that I’m the only woman you’re interested in.” I swallow and look down at his chest.
“Look at me,” he whispers, and I comply, seeing hope in his gorgeous gray eyes.
“Well, if you’d been paying attention, Nate, you would have seen that I’ve been in love with you since long before we first made love in this apartment.” His eyes widen in wonder, and my stomach settles as calm washes over me, and I know that this is right. “I do need you. I hated that you were away yesterday. I wanted to come home to you last night and tell you all about the baby and the delivery. I need your strength. Yes, I’m a badass, but there are times that I need someone to hold me up, too, and I didn’t know until I found you that that doesn’t make me weak. It means that I’ve found my partner.”
“Julianne…” His voice is rough with emotion, and he leans his forehead on mine, wraps his arms around me and holds me close. “Say it again.”
“Which part?” I ask with a laugh.
“The good part,” he whispers.
“I need you.”
“The other good part.”
I run my fingers down his smooth cheek and brush my lips over his, breathing him in. “I love you.”
“Oh, baby, I love you, too.” Nate scoops me into his arms and carries me to his bedroom, turning on the sidelight, and lowers me gently to my feet. He pulls my hair out of the tie holding it off my face and runs his fingers through it.
“I love how soft your hair is.” He unzips my simple, black shift dress, letting it fall down my arms and onto the floor. My bra and panties follow it, and he steps back, enjoying the view.
“Like what you see?” I ask and smile.
“God, you’re so fucking hot.”
Oh. When he says it like that, my panties go all wet, and I just want to lick him.
“I want you naked, Nate.” I walk to him and pull his T-shirt up over his head. He raises his arms and backs out of the shirt, making it easier for me. I unfasten his jeans and slide them, along with his boxer-briefs, down his legs and off his feet as he steps out of them.
Nate lifts me and lays me on the bed. He kisses my stomach, my breasts and collarbones as he crawls up my body and nestles his large, thick cock against my folds. I run my hands down his back to his ass and smile up into his molten gray eyes.
He kisses me, softly, tenderly, brushing my lips in that expert way of his. I lift my legs and wrap them around his hips. As I do, I feel his apa brush against my clit, and I gasp.
Nate smiles against my lips. “Like that?” he asks.
“God, yes.”
“If you don’t, I’ll take it out.”
My wide eyes find his, and I cup his face in my hands. “You don’t have to do that for me.”
“I’d do anything for you.”
And here come a few more tears. God, when will they stop?
“Julianne, I’ll do anything to make you happy.” He brushes the hair at my temples off my face and gazes at me with such love it takes my breath away.
“You do make me happy. Keep the apa. I like it.” I grin and tilt my hips, rubbing him against me, and moan again. “I more than like it.”
Nate laughs and starts to rock his hips just a little faster, sliding the tiny metal ball against my clit with each stroke.
“God, don’t stop doing that.” I push my hands into his black hair and hold his face to mine, kissing him passionately as those little metal balls do amazing things to me. “Oh, honey, shit…”
“Yes, baby, let go.” He rocks once, twice more and bites gently on my lower lip, and I fall over the edge.
He reaches down between us and guides himself inside me, slowly stretching me, and my already sensitive muscles clench around him tightly.
“Fuck, don’t do that. I’ll come too fast.”
“I can’t help it. You feel so damn good.”
He cups my breast in his hand and massages the nipple as he moves in and out of me at a slow, easy pace, watching my face, smiling softly down at me. “You are amazing. I love watching your beautiful face when I’m inside you.”
God, I love it when he talks like this.
“Faster, babe,” I whisper, but his grin widens, and he keeps the same gentle pace.
“No, this is going to have to be slow and steady, baby.” His mouth finds mine once again, and his tongue teases me. His mouth slowly moves across my own, his whole body loving mine, oh so slowly.
“I missed you so much,” I whisper against his lips.
“I hated being so far from you.” His hips start to move just a tiny bit faster, and I rake my nails down Nate’s back to his ass and hold on. “God, you make me crazy.”
“Good.” I feel my body tightening, another orgasm approaching, and I cling to him, wrapping myself around him. My body shudders with my release, and Nate clenches his jaw, rests his forehead against mine and surrenders to his own climax, whispering my name.
Chapter Eighteen
“How did you get fresh chocolate cheesecake in your fridge while you were gone?”
We are seated at the breakfast bar, me in panties and his gray T-shirt, and Nate just in his black jeans, the top button undone.
He looks as delicious as this decadent cake.
“I had my housekeeper bring it in.” He grins and offers me a bite from his plate, and I happily accept.
“I didn’t know you have a housekeeper. I never see her.”
“She only comes in once a week while I’m at work. I don’t need someone full time.”
I put my foot up in his lap, and he starts to rub the arch.
“Okay, I’m in girl heaven. Chocolate and a foot rub. Men think we’re so hard to figure out, but it really just boils down to this.” I close my eyes and enjoy his thumb rubbing up and down the sole of my foot.
“So noted.” He chuckles and clears our plates. “Come on.”
I take his offered
Oh, I love him.
“So, tell me about yesterday.”
I sigh in contentment and smile at my sexy man. “The baby is amazing. It was a rather quick labor, for a first baby, and Nat did great. Luke almost passed out when Olivia’s head crowned, but I talked him down from the ledge.”
I laugh at the memory.
“Natalie was incredible. She’s so strong. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was the best birth control I’ve ever seen. I’m doubling up on my pills from now on. I don’t care if I become a mutant from the hormones.”
“Baby, you’re so strong, childbirth would be a snap for you.”
Why is he sitting here, calmly talking about me having babies?
“Hell to the no.” I shake my head vigorously. “No babies are coming out of this body.”
He eyes me speculatively. “Are you saying you don’t want children?”
I pause. He’s being serious. “I don’t know.” I frown and look down at his strong hand on my foot. “I’ve never thought about it.”
“Think about it,” he suggests.
“Someday.” I shrug.
“I’d like to go see them tomorrow after work.” He turns the conversation back to Natalie and starts to rub the other foot, and I moan.
“They’d love that.”
“You’ll come with me.” His gray eyes find mine, and he smiles softly.
“Okay.”
He runs his hand up and down my bare leg, his eyes following his movement. “You have great skin, baby.”
“Natalie has a tattoo on her va-jay-jay,” I blurt out.
“What?” Nate gapes at me, his jaw dropped.
“I had no idea, but I saw it with my own eyes. It’s actually right here.” I point down to my freshly waxed, panty-covered pubis.
“I don’t know if I need to know this. If Luke knew something like that about you, I’d kick his ass.”
“I have to tell someone, and you’re the only one I can tell.” I laugh and link my fingers with his.
“What is it?” he asks.
“It’s script in a foreign language. All of her tattoos are. She won’t tell me what it means.” I shrug.
“All of her tattoos? How many does she have? I’ve never seen any.”
“I’m not sure how many she has. I don’t know if I’ve seen them all. She puts them where you can’t see them when she has clothes on. My point was”—I trace the tattoo on his forearm with my finger—“what is up with you guys letting some creep put needles in your genitalia?”
“I thought you liked it.” He gives me a wolfish grin, and I laugh.
“I do, but why in the world would you do it in the first place?”
“I was a twenty-year-old kid who wanted to impress chicks.” He shrugs and grins.
“Why did you keep it all this time?” I ask.
“Because I went through hell to get it. It hurt like a son of a bitch.”
“Poor baby.” I pat his cheek roughly and giggle when he grabs my wrist and bites my palm.
“Okay, so if we’re done talking about babies and needles in sensitive places, tell me exactly what Carly told you yesterday.” His face is completely serious, and his eyes look a little pissed.
I didn’t mean to let that slip.
“It was nothing, really. I know she’s full of shit.” I pull my feet out of his lap, but he grips my calf and holds me in place.
“What did she say, Julianne?”
I sigh. “She’s told me twice now that she’s dating you. Once the day that your ex was in your office, and again yesterday. I know it’s a lie, so I shrugged it off the first time, but yesterday it was like she was going out of her way to tell me about you two and even asked me to work her accounts for her so she could leave early for a date she had with you.”
Nate scowls and clenches his jaw. “Go on.”
“She seemed embarrassed when I told her you’d gone out of town, but then her phone chirped with a text, and when she looked at it, she said it was you with her itinerary to join you in New York. I don’t get it. She’s been a complete hag since the day she started this job, but I don’t understand what she’s doing with this elaborate story of hers.” I watch the flames in the fireplace and pull at my bottom lip with my fingers.
“What do you mean she’s been a hag?” Nate asks, his voice deceptively calm.
“Oh, she hates me.”
“She seems professional enough in meetings.”
I chuckle ruefully. “Honey, of course she does. It’s when we’re alone that her claws come out.”
“Why haven’t you ever said anything?”
“What am I going to say? ‘Carly doesn’t play nice, and I don’t like her’? It’s not that serious. I’ve dealt with morons like her my whole life.” I shake my head at him.
His eyes narrow, and he cups my cheek in his palm. “She’s jealous of you.”
“I don’t see why.” I kiss his palm and lean my cheek into him. “She doesn’t know about us, obviously, and she has the same job I do."
“You’re gorgeous and intelligent, and she knows that you out-class her. You’ll move up in our company far more quickly than she will. And she knows it.” He brushes his thumb along my lower lip, and I pucker my lips and kiss it.
“Well, it’ll be interesting to see how long she keeps this story up.”
“Julianne, if she says anything like that again, you have to tell me. If she were to spread this rumor around the office, it would mean an investigation into me, and while I know that they wouldn’t find any fault on my part, it’s unnecessary drama.”
“I want to kick her carrot-top ass.”
“Now that, I would like to see.” Nate laughs, and I smack him on the shoulder.
“You’re a perv.”
“I’m a guy, babe.”
“So.” I straddle his lap and tangle my fingers in his soft, thick hair. His hands glide up my legs to cup my ass. “You want to see other women naked, huh?”
“I didn’t say that. I said I wanted to see you kick her ass. If you both happened to be naked, who am I to complain?”
I chuckle against his lips and nibble the side of his mouth. He grips my hips and pulls my pelvis more tightly against his, and I can feel his erection through his jeans.
“I want you,” I murmur.
Nate growls, and suddenly I’m on my back on the couch, and he’s hovering over me.
“I never stop wanting you,” he responds. He pulls me up long enough to pull his shirt over my head and trails wet kisses down my throat to my breasts.
God, his lips are magical.
He pulls and tugs on my nipples, with both his lips and his fingers, and I’m writhing beneath him. I comb my fingers through his hair and hold on as he moves south, nibbles at my belly button, and nudges my legs farther apart with his shoulders. He rips my panties off and throws them on the floor.
Oh. My. God.
“You have the prettiest pink pussy, baby.” He licks my core, from my anus to my clit, and my back bows up off the couch.
“Fuck!”
“Easy.” He grips my ass in his hands and tilts my pelvis up toward his handsome face. He places a sweet, chaste kiss on my clit and another on my labia, and then he begins kissing me more deeply, swirling his tongue inside me, gently sucking me.
It’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever felt.
“Oh God, Nate.” I’m still gripping his hair in my fingers. He moves his mouth up to my clit and just pushes the flat of his tongue against it as he inserts two fingers inside me and pushes down gently. “Holy fucking shit.”
I feel him chuckle against me, and I’m completely lost to the sensation between my legs. A thin coat of sweat covers my skin, and I convulse as the orgasm tears through me, leaving me wrecked.
He fucking spanked me!
I hope he does it again.
He has a tight grip on my hips as he slams into me, hard, over and over again.
“God, I love how tight you are,” he growls and continues the steady, punishing rhythm. He’s so deep inside me, and the apa is pushing against that most sensitive spot, and I know this orgasm is going to consume me.
“Oh, baby.” I feel my muscles tighten around him. He lifts my torso, his hands on my breasts, and buries his face in my neck, kissing me.
“Ride me, baby.”
I move up and down, my hips countering his movements, and it pushes me over. I grind down on him as I’m overwhelmed by my intense climax, and he cries out as he convulses and finds his own release.
“Did I hurt you?” He pulls out of me and turns me around in his arms, cradling me close, pushing my hair off my face.
“No, why?” We’re both still panting.
“I hit you.” His gray eyes are wide and regretful, and if I hadn’t loved him before, I would be falling now.
“You spanked me, honey. There’s a difference.”
“I’m sorry, I was caught up in the moment. I know I’m strong. I could hurt you.”
“Hey.” I take his face in my hands and kiss him, soothing him. “You didn’t hurt me. It was fucking hot.”
“It was?”
“Oh yeah. Spank me any time, hot stuff.”
“Really?”
“Yes, please.” I nibble his lips and smile at him, loving the way he’s running his hands up and down my back.
He places a kiss on my forehead and takes a deep breath. “I love you, Julianne.”
Chapter Nineteen
“You bought Olivia Louboutins?” Natalie asks incredulously.
It’s Friday evening, and Nate and I are at Luke and Natalie’s place for dinner. The rest of our workweek was way too busy to manage a trip to the hospital, so Luke called and invited us over for the evening.
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