by Katee Robert
She tore her mouth from his and made a breathy keening sound. “Oh shit, Isaac, that feels good.”
“How many?”
Noemi blinked those big blue eyes at him as he used his palms to spread her legs wider and dragged his thumb over her center. Her panties were in the way, but a mere two years wasn’t anywhere near long enough to make Isaac forget how to touch her. A lifetime wouldn’t be long enough, not with their every time together haunting his dreams and far too many of his waking hours. He’d tried. He’d tried so fucking hard to forget her, to purge her from his mind and body the same way she seemed so willing to purge him.
It hadn’t worked.
She was a drug to his system and he needed another hit. Now.
He ripped her panties off and tossed them aside. And there she was, wet and pink and practically dripping for him. He pushed two fingers slowly into her, cursing softly when her pussy clamped around him like she never wanted to let him go.
He knew better.
“How many, Noemi?” He kept up that slow finger fucking. “How many men did it take before you forgot how my cock filled you up? How many times did you scream my name when they tongued your pussy before you remembered it wasn’t me—would never be me again?”
“Bastard.” But she lifted her hips to take his fingers deeper, her body betraying the truth despite her harsh tone.
Isaac braced one hand on the back of the couch, leaning down until his lips almost brushed hers with every word. “It doesn’t matter. They didn’t give you what you need, the rough and ready fucking that only I can provide. They made love to you, polite sex beneath the covers in the dark until you were bored to death of them.”
She dropped her chin, and that was the only answer he needed. “Look at me, Noemi. You look at me when I’m inside you, and you say my fucking name when you come so we both know exactly who you’re craving. Me. No one else.” Cruel. He was so fucking cruel, and he couldn’t bring himself to care. Not with his heart bleeding out between them, even after all this time.
“You weren’t…” Her breath hitched as he crooked his fingers inside her. “You fucked other people, too.”
“Yeah. I did. Until they all ran together and I stopped bothering to tell them apart.” He pressed his thumb to her clit and caught her mouth as she came apart around him, eating her cries and milking her orgasm until she could do nothing more than shake.
Isaac withdrew his fingers from her, waited for her to meet his gaze, and then sucked them into his mouth, reveling in the taste of her even as he hated himself a little bit for not having the self-control to walk away before they got to this point. He stood before she could reach for him and moved away.
Noemi struggled to sit up, and even naked and flushed, with her hair a mess, she still looked so fucking perfect. The ache in his chest wouldn’t get better as long as she was in the palace, but he hadn’t expected for this to crack the wound wide open. He wanted to rail at her, to point out for the thousandth time why she was a goddamn coward for leaving him, why she could have had it all but she’d chosen the easy way out.
What was the point?
She made her choice. He made his when he didn’t go after her and try to force the issue.
End of story.
Or it would have been if Noemi wasn’t sitting there with evidence of the orgasm he’d just given her written all over her face. Mistake. This was a mistake. He started for the door.
“Oh, no you don’t.” Noemi somehow got there first and plastered herself against it. Though her lips were swollen from his kisses, he recognized the hard look in her eyes. She pointed a finger at him. “You get to be cruel. I deserve it. You can spit all the bullshit you want, but you do not get to start something we both want and then walk before it’s finished.”
“I don’t want to finish it.”
“Liar.” She watched him for a moment, and then another. Finally Noemi stepped away from the door and smoothed her hair back. She didn’t give a fuck that she was naked except for the heels she’d managed to keep on, and he couldn’t help raking his gaze over her again, soaking up every second of this experience to torment himself with later.
Because torment is exactly what he’d experience.
He’d be jacking himself seven times a day for god knew how long to exorcise the single orgasm he’d just given her. If that wasn’t karma, Isaac didn’t know that karma existed.
Noemi didn’t approach him. She just walked to that damn side table and poured herself yet another tumbler of brandy. Unless something had drastically changed in the last two years, three wasn’t enough to get her more than a little buzzed, but Isaac didn’t like that he’d driven her to drink so much in such a short time.
This is what you wanted, isn’t it?
To make her hurt the same way she made you hurt.
Too bad that blade cut both ways, and cut deep.
“Leave. That’s what you were doing, isn’t it? Putting me in my place.” She lifted the glass to her lips and he detected the slightest shake in her hand. Noemi drained the amber liquid without so much as a grimace and set the glass back on the table. “You win, Isaac. Yes, there were others. No, they can’t compare to you, so I stopped trying. I’m so desperate for your cock, I’m as close to begging as I’ll ever get.” Her lips pulled up into an unhappy smile. “Would you like me on my knees crawling to you?”
No. Never that. He looked at the door. A few steps and he could be out of this room, down the hallway, charging to the security headquarters to demand Galen take him off this security detail. He hadn’t asked the other man for shit in all the years they’d known each other, and Galen could do him this single goddamn favor, especially since Isaac was the one who’d helped pave the way for their exiled king to retake his throne. Yeah, it was his duty, but he’d gone out on a limb for them. The least they could do was give him a different detail that wouldn’t twist the knife for the next three days.
Isaac sighed. “That’s not what I want.”
“Could have fooled me.” Noemi wasn’t any closer, but her voice drew him, coaxing him to face her again. Why couldn’t he leave this woman alone? One would think he’d have learned his lesson by now, but then, Isaac had always been a stupid son of a bitch when it came to Noemi Huxley.
She started to cross her arms over her chest but abandoned the motion halfway through. “What if it was just for now? It’s three days. I hurt you, and I’m sorry.” She straightened, throwing her shoulders back. “Take it out on me. All of it. All the anger and frustration and bullshit. Punish me if that will make things right.”
There was no making things right. She knew that, even if she was reaching right now to prolong this goodbye. Because that’s exactly what this was—their last goodbye. Once the prince was married, there wouldn’t be any critical events that required Noemi to have a security detail, and if there was, she’d bring her own people. Even when she was in the palace for Family shit, he could plan on it and avoid her accordingly.
“You want me to take it out on you,” he said slowly, giving her time to change her mind.
Isaac should have known better. Once Noemi set herself on a path, not even a hurricane could blow her off course. She nodded, something like relief flickering over her features as he turned from the door. “Yes. That’s exactly what I want.”
“Are you feeling guilty, Noemi? Or are you just looking for an excuse to have my cock again?”
“Both.” No hesitation. Sure as fuck no embarrassment.
He loved her so much, he couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Years and pain and the kind of heartbreak Shakespearean tragedies were made of should have smothered any feeling he had for this woman.
Walking away was the only option. He’d kept barely a shred of his sanity intact when she left, and Isaac had managed to crawl halfway out of that hole in the intervening time. Not all the way. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be whole again. More than his multitude of scars, more than the battles of his youth, the thi
ng that launched him out of sleep in terror night after night was the memory of Noemi’s lips forming the words, It’s over. I’m now Head of Family Huxley and I can’t be with you anymore. Never again.
Never again.
Those two little words haunted him still.
But when he opened his mouth to reject her, the words wouldn’t come. Different syllables rose in their place, hijacking what was left of his good sense. “You want to beg, Noemi? Then get on your fucking knees.”
3
Noemi’s knees hit the carpet before she made a conscious decision to obey Isaac’s rough command. She’d asked for this, demanded this, pushed and pushed him until he felt cornered and lashed out. So why the hell did it hurt so much to kneel there and watch him?
It’s only for now.
The words gained no traction. Time held no meaning. It was just the two of them in this moment, no past dogging their heels, and no future to speak of.
Isaac watched her with those pale eyes of his as he locked the door and pulled his shirt over his head. He moved easily, the long-standing pain in his left shoulder obviously not bothering him anymore, and undid his jeans to slide them down his thick thighs. He always looked even larger when naked, as if being stripped of the civility of clothing revealed his true self.
Her warrior.
No, not mine anymore.
Isaac considered the room as if surveying a battlefield and finally walked to the oversized chair tucked into the corner directly across from her. She’d bought that chair five years ago just so he’d have something to sit in that couldn’t be termed “doll sized,” so he’d be comfortable here with her. It was such a long time ago.
“Crawl.” The word rasped from him as it pulled against his will.
It had never been like this with them. Rough and brutal and so hot she could barely stand it? Yes. Always. Every time. He was the only man she’d ever been with who treated her as if she wasn’t an object in danger of breaking from a strong word or a harsh touch. Isaac knew she could take everything he gave her and more.
But it had never been cruel. He had never been cruel.
She didn’t care. She meant it when she said she deserved whatever he chose to deal her. He would never, ever hurt her with his strength, but words were more than capable of causing lasting damage. Noemi had apparently developed a masochistic streak, because she welcomed it.
She dropped to her hands and knees and crawled to him. Every agonizing, humiliating movement only spiked her desire higher.
Because it was for Isaac. Because she could feel him watching her, his big body tense with the need to touch her. Because she knew what came next after she reached the chair he sat in.
Noemi would fight to the death before she’d abase herself like this under normal circumstances, but it simply felt right with him. She couldn’t think too hard about that, couldn’t fight through the jagged shard of pain in her throat at the knowledge that this was it for them, so she set it all aside.
Tonight, nothing mattered but what happened in these rooms.
She made it to Isaac and straightened to put her hands on his thighs. The chair was deep enough that she wouldn’t have to climb him to get to his cock and she let herself drink in the sight of him sprawled there like some kind of indolent king. He was beautiful, and tonight he was hers.
“You know what to do.”
She did. Noemi reached out and wrapped her fist around his cock. Rationally, she knew he wasn’t bigger than she remembered, but two years and some intentional forgetting had dulled the memories of how he filled her hand and then some. Her body clenched in response. Yes, yes, I need this.
But…
She made herself release him. “Isaac, I don’t want this to be because I pushed you into doing something you wouldn’t do.” The words tasted foul on her tongue, but she forced them out despite wanting to clutch onto anything to keep him from leaving. “I provoked you.”
“Yeah, you did.” He sifted his fingers through her hair, winding it around his fist until it was just this side of pain. “Getting cold feet?”
Never.
She leaned down and took his cock into her mouth. There was a time when she could deep throat him without hesitation, but she’d long since fallen out of practice. She fought to take him down, battling her body’s instinctive response to gag.
All the while, he kept that grip on her hair. “Stubborn to the bitter end, aren’t you?” He gave her a tug, which she ignored. “Careful there, Noemi. You keep sucking me like that, and I might start to think you missed me.”
She had. God, but she’d missed him so much she could barely breathe past it some nights. She ran her hands up his thighs to dig her fingers into his hips, loving the way his muscles flexed beneath her, an involuntary response he’d never been able to hide from her. She sucked him deeper, harder, falling back into the rhythm of it.
Apparently her body hadn’t forgotten, after all. It was only her mind that has caused her so much in the way of grief.
“Did you swallow those fuckers down until they came just from the sight of your pretty red lips wrapped around their cocks? You always were good at this, Noemi. No, not good. Fucking perfection.”
She dragged herself off his cock, her heart wrenching in her chest. “Stop it.”
Isaac’s face showed nothing, but a storm of emotion lurked in those pale eyes. “You signed on for retribution. It hurt too much to know that none of those other cocks will compare to mine? That’s on you.”
This was a mistake.
They might have loved each other once, but now they seemed incapable of doing anything but driving their respective knives deeper and twisting it every chance they got. She couldn’t walk away. She’d never get another chance with Isaac again. This isn’t a chance, Noemi. This is a goodbye, and you’re a fool if you forget that.
Yes, she knew that. Of course she knew that.
She gave Isaac’s cock another rough stroke and then released him so she could climb into his lap. “You want to keep throwing the past between us? Do what you’ve got to, Isaac.” She fitted herself against him and rolled her hips, dragging herself over the ridge of his cock. It felt good, so damn good, that she did it again. “Are you angrier that I fucked other men—or that you couldn’t fuck the memory of me away any more than I could do it with the memory of you?” She’d tried. Good lord, she’d tried so hard to put him in the past, to carve out a clean break. It hadn’t worked. She wasn’t sure it would ever work.
“You’re not mine anymore, Noemi.” He grasped her hips and urged her down against his cock harder, dragging her nice and slow over him. “You can fuck whoever the hell you want to.”
I don’t want anyone but you.
She didn’t shut the thought down fast enough, and something must have shown on her face, because he shook his head. “No. Don’t look at me with those big blue eyes like I mean shit to you. That’s not what this is about.”
She couldn’t turn off her emotions. If Noemi had learned that trick before now, she would have used it without hesitation more than a few times in her life. She wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with. God, she could barely stand herself right now. This indecisive hurting thing wasn’t Noemi Huxley. She was a powerhouse, a woman who went after what she wanted without hesitation or apology.
So be it.
She reached to rummage in the tiny side table situated next to the oversized chair and came up with a condom. Isaac snatch it out of her hand before she had a chance to do anything with it, holding the foil package in front of his face as he read it. “This is the kind we used.”
No convenient answer arose to explain this away. Lying wouldn’t work. Isaac had always been able to tell when she tried to dissemble. “Yes.”
He stared at it for several beats. “The expiration date should have passed by now.”
“It hasn’t.” She found herself holding her breath and cursed herself for showing even that much reaction.
Isaac finally looke
d at her, really looked at her, for the first time since he walked into the room. “If I were a stupid man, I’d assume you were replenishing your stash in here in hopes that this thing would happen between us again.”
Since that’d been exactly what she had done, she couldn’t pretend otherwise. “I missed you.”
“Fuck that.” He shook his head once, then again. “Fuck that, Noemi. You don’t get to throw me away like yesterday’s trash and expect me to be grateful to know that you had left me crumbs if only I’d come crawling back to you. That’s shit and you know it.”
It was. She had no defense against it. What was she supposed to say? That she’d missed him so much in those first few months apart that she’d gone so far as to start the process to give up her position as Head of Family in favor of passing it to someone else? She had, but ultimately there was no one else. Huxley Family was responsible for over a hundred people, both members of the family itself and the staff they supported. There were other adult members of the family, but no one capable of running the finances and playing the game of politics as well as Noemi, especially in the wake of her father—the former Head of Family—being a goddamn traitor. If she shirked her duty, people would get hurt, people she was responsible for.
What was her happiness compared with that reality?
So, yes, she’d tortured herself for months on end with the thought of how she could have it all… and she’d come up with nothing. She was expected to marry well, to further Huxley’s interests on that front as well as with their various business accolades. Isaac might be the best man she’d ever known, and she might love him—even still—beyond all reason, but he wasn’t titled. Worse, as far as the nobles of Thalania were concerned, his mother hailed from Russia. Having him serve within the palace security ruffled feathers, but with the King and both Consorts behind him, no one could do anything about it.
To marry him?
She’d jeopardize Huxley’s standing, would undermine the Family’s power in a way that might not be recoverable.
