Pulse - Part Three (The Pulse Series)

by Bladon, Deborah

  "That's irrelevant. We're talking about the private room." I need him to stay focused on something other than sex for twenty seconds.

  He scratches his forehead. "Jessica, what's this about?"

  Why does he have to say my name like that? Why didn't I tell him my name was Jess? If I had done that it wouldn't pull up so many feelings each time he said it. "You have a key card to get into that room, don't you?"

  He studies my face. His expression is so indifferent. I can't read it at all. "I do, yes."

  "Nathan." I feel my knees buckle slightly so I lower myself to a chair. "Nathan," I repeat his name.

  "No." His voice is serious, the tone uncompromising. "Jessica, no. Don't think that."

  "Think what?" I can feel my stomach knotting. "You have a key."

  He slams the glass down with a thud on the bar before he's in front of me. "Jessica, listen to me."

  I want to cover my ears. I don't want to hear another lie seep out of his mouth. "I just wanted to know if you had a key." It's the truth, that's all I came here for. I just wanted him to acknowledge that he had a key because he takes women in there to fuck them when he's at that club.

  He moves swiftly to where his suit jacket is hung by the door on a coat rack. I watch silently as he rummages through the inner pocket, pulling out his wallet. "I need to show you this."

  "You don't have to show me anything." I'm on my feet. I have to walk out of his door and never look back at him again. I can't keep doing this to myself. I can't keep circling back thinking he's going to magically change into a decent human being.

  "God, this is so fucked up." His voice is barely recognizable. There's so much raw emotion in it. "Jessica, wait."

  "No." I brush past him and reach for the doorknob. "I'm going."

  "Look." He shoves a key card in my face. It's so close my eyes can't register anything beyond the blue and yellow hues of the card. "Take it. Just look."

  "I don't want to." I turn the door handle. "You're never going to change."

  "Look at the god dammed card, Jessica." His hand covers mind and twists the door handle back into place. "You're not going anywhere until you look at it."

  Chapter 12

  "You joined the club yesterday?" The details don't register. Why did he join yesterday?

  "Jessica, fuck, please understand this," he's pleading. His hand is pulling on the hem of my sweater. "I can't resist you. I literally almost come when you walk in a room. I'm hard all the time when I think about you."

  "Yesterday?" I repeat again.

  "Shit." He moves away from me and starts pacing. "This is going to sound so fucked up."

  "What?"

  "I've come every day since you were in the hotel suite. I've jacked off thinking about you." He nods towards my body. "I'm so hard right now, Jessica. I can't control it. Tell me you get that."

  I shake my head. "No. I don't."

  He bows his head and pulls in a heavy breath. I can see his chest heave under the fabric of his light blue dress shirt. Small beads of perspiration are gathering on his forehead.

  "Tell me," I spit out. "Nathan, say it."

  "Your body is like a drug to me. Christ, it's like I'm fucking addicted to everything about you. The smell of your skin, the taste of you, how tight you are when you're gripping on my cock and I'm pumping myself into you." He leisurely runs his hand along the outline of his erection. "I could jerk off right now. Seriously, you make me so hot."

  "The room." I want him to explain. I need that.

  "You're going to hate me." His voice wavers with the confession. "You're going to walk out of here if I tell you."

  "Nathan." My voice cracks. He's going to tell me he fucked someone else yesterday in that room after I left because he was thinking about me.

  He reaches behind where he's standing to lower himself onto the arm of a chair. "I came to see you at your apartment. Remember I told you that?"

  I nod.

  "I spent all day in bed before that. Stroking, thinking, coming. I had to get you out of my system. I couldn't help myself."

  "What did you do?" Why does it matter to me? Wasn't the phone proof enough that he can't keep his cock out of commission for more than a few hours?

  "I don't know how many times I came but it wasn't enough." He pulls his hand over his face. "This is just so fucked up."

  I rest my face in my palms. I need to walk out of here. I need to end this right now.

  "I got that room at the club so I could fuck you there." The words spill out so quickly they fall into one another in a twisted heap.

  "What?"

  "Jessica, please," his voice is soft and tempered. "Don't hate me for this."

  "You got that room at the club to fuck me?" My eyes widen. I can feel them. I'm pulled back to the club in that moment. Pulled back to when he reached around to grab my waist. My body knew it was him. My body wanted him just as much as he wanted me.

  "I signed up for the membership when you were dancing." He pulls his large frame up so he's standing again. "I just wanted to pull you into a room and slide into you. I needed to feel you around me. I haven't been able to focus or think straight in weeks."

  "You knew you'd have sex with me there?" I'm both appalled and aroused by the epiphany.

  "When you walked out of your apartment in that dress, Jessica." His breathing stalls. "I almost lost it on the street."

  "I just went there to have fun. I wanted to forget…" I can't confess that to him.

  "You wanted to forget me?" There's no surprise woven into the question. He knows that’s what I've been trying to do for weeks.

  "I can't deal with this." I pull my hands to my mouth hoping that will stop the rush of emotions I feel. "You can't do things like this."

  "Jessica." He's right next to me now. "I can't stop what I feel."

  "It's all just sex." I want him to see that. I need him to see that everything between us centers on sex.

  "You're wrong." His stance hardens. I've offended him. I can tell.

  "I'm right," I counter. I look up into his face. There's so much emotion in his eyes. I can't read it all. I can't grasp what he's feeling.

  "If it was all about sex, I would have hiked that tight dress up, slid my cock into you and fucked you hard until you screamed over and over again."

  I take a step back out of sheer need. My body betrays me when he's so crude and direct. I know my breathing has increased. I can feel my pulse racing.

  "You did have sex with me." I push back. "You licked my…"

  "I wanted to hear you come. I crave the sound of that. There isn't a sweeter sound in this entire world than you when you're on the edge of an orgasm. I would kill to hear that." His breath catches before he continues, "I knew in that room after I heard you come twice that it was all I needed. I didn't need to get off. I didn't need to shoot my load between these perfect lips." He lazily runs the pad of his thumb over my parted lips. "I didn't need to feel my cock sliding into you. I knew then that the craving, the addiction, this never ending need that I have here…" He hits himself squarely on his hard chest with a fist. "Isn't about my cock. It's not about my need. It's all about you."

  Chapter 13

  "You've seen him again, haven't you?" Drew hands me another tray of carrots to peel. Before our awkward almost date he told me that he was recommending that I be moved up to dessert prep. My refusal to be exclusive with him meant that I'd be cleaning vegetables for the foreseeable future.

  I toss the peels from the last batch into the bin for composting. "We're not going to talk about him." We aren't. The mere fact that I can't even wrap my head around what's happening with Nathan and I is enough to keep me from trying to explain it to anyone else.

  "You know that he's always at the clubs, right?" The words are meant to hit me bluntly in the face. They do. I don't turn to look at him. I can't. I'm certain right now my expression is a mixture of anger and disappointment.

  I slowly slide the peeler across the carrot. "You don't kn
ow him."

  "I saw him at the club for months before I met you there." If his comment is meant to enrage me, he's hit a home run.

  "Drew." I turn around and dangle the carrot only mere inches from his nose. "What's your problem?"

  He bats it away and we both watch it tumble to the floor. "Guys like that are bad for girls like you."

  I feel like I'm listening to my father give me the talk before I went to high school. "I'm a big girl. I can take care of myself."

  He smirks. "You're just like all the rest of them."

  "The rest of who?" My eyes briefly land on the peeler in my hand. If I don’t start getting along with him, I'm never going to move up the internal ladder in the kitchen of Axel NY.

  He reaches forward to run his hand down the front of my chef's jacket. I don't miss how his hand lingers a touch longer than it should near my breasts. "Jess. I'm saying this strictly as your friend."

  I nod. "What is it?" The carrots unfortunately aren't going to peel themselves and I'd like to take a break sometime this year so I need him to spit out whatever vile thing is sitting impatiently on the edge of his tongue.

  "You're like really," his nostrils flare slightly as he leans in very close to me. "You're really ripe. You have this aura that screams, I want you to fuck me."

  I push back away from him so harshly that I almost tumble backwards into the large sink I'm assigned to work at. "You can't say those things to me."

  "He fucked you because your body was asking for it." His tongue glides slowly over his bottom lip. "It was screaming the same thing to me when we danced that night and when we had a drink after I got you this job."

  There it was. The icing on the Drew cake. He thinks I owe him because he set me up for an interview.

  "You know this is completely inappropriate, right?" I glance behind him to where the kitchen manager is standing, staring at us.

  "I know that once he's done with you and he's moved on to someone new, you're going to come crawling back to me."

  "Don't bet on it," I mutter under my breath as I turn back around.

  ***

  "Who knew Drew had it in him?" Rebecca turns the corner and almost walks face first into a man walking briskly down Broadway.

  "He's a creep." I pull my hair into my hand. The wind today isn't making it easy to get around Manhattan on foot. I shrug. "It's weird. I swear he has this inner issue with Nathan. Like he's completely pissed off with him over something else and he's projecting that onto me."

  She stops dead in her tracks. "When did you become Dr. Phil?"

  I laugh at loud at the comparison. "I don't have a moustache." I push my lips out.

  "You should find a new job." She weaves her way through a throng of school kids walking towards us.

  "No way," I raise my voice so it carries over the traffic noise. "I need that job and he can go fuck himself."

  "I'll volunteer. He can fuck me. I'm totally into hard-ass, arrogant, douche bag chefs."

  Chapter 14

  "Christ. Jessica. Jesus." The words tumble from his mouth and into mine. "I swear to God I could come right now."

  I lean back and ram my hips down onto his cock. A small moan ripples through my body. "Only this one time, Nathan."

  "Sure, whatever the fuck you say." He raises his arms above his head to grip the back of the couch. The sight of his biceps flexing only pushes me closer to the edge.

  "You work out." I don't mean to say it out loud. Why would I say that?

  "I do." His eyelids flutter open briefly to soak in the sight of my naked body. "Fuck me harder."

  I don't need the coaxing. I push my body forward and grab the couch too. I slide my hips back and forth along him, gliding his cock into me. "I can't believe it feels this good."

  "Believe it." His hands jump from the couch to my thighs. "You're so wet. Christ, so wet."

  "You know I came here just to fuck." The words are raw and unapologetic. They're true. After listening to him tell me on the phone how he was going to fuck me if he ever got the chance, I got in a taxi and knocked on the door of his apartment. Now, twenty minutes later, I was on the brink of my third orgasm.

  "I don't give a shit why you came here." He smiles through clenched teeth.

  I groan as he pushes my body back so he can run the pad of his thumb over my clit. "It's only this one time."

  "It's not." He pushes his hips up from the couch in a lazy circle. "I'm so fucking deep right now."

  "So deep," I repeat back. "I can't fuck you again."

  "Shut up, Jessica." His hand bolts to my head and he pulls my lips into his. "Shut up and fuck me."

  I raise my hips at the sound of the challenge. I push back down, hard and fast and he moans so loudly, it reverberates through me. I push back and then forth again clenching my sex around him.

  "Christ, this is my heaven." He throws his head back onto the couch again, his eyelids closing.

  I lean back, resting my hands on his powerful thighs as I glide my body back over his. I pull myself up and then drive myself back down over and over again.

  "I'm going to come." His breath is barely more than a whisper. "I'm going to fucking come so hard."

  I still as he pulls tightly on my hips, pushing his body deeper into mine. A deep, guttural groan flows out of him as he clings tightly to me.

  "Please, Nathan." I grasp onto his shoulders. "It was one time."

  "Like hell." He pulls me quickly from him, pulling the condom off with deft ease. "You're going to come until you see that you can't live without this."

  I pull away. "I came. Twice, please."

  He picks my body up so effortlessly, twisting it around so I'm kneeling on the couch. I feel him slide to the floor on his knees behind me. "I'm going to eat you until you come over and over again."

  "Nathan." Why am I pretending to resist him? I'm the one who came here for this? I'm the one who couldn’t stop thinking about that night at the club.

  "I love this body. I love you." He plunges his tongue into me just as the last word leaves his lips. He didn't say that. No. He couldn't have said that.

  Chapter 15

  "You're sure he said it?"

  "I heard it. I'm sure." I toss some mixed greens into a bowl. ""He said he loves me."

  She points towards a package of cherry tomatoes. "Use them all. I love those little things."

  "See that's my point." I wave the large knife in the air.

  She ducks in mock fear. "Hey, watch it. That point might kill me."

  "Sorry." I laugh. "See how you love the little tomatoes." I toss a bunch in a bowl and rinse them under cool water. "He loves me like that."

  "He loves you like a tomato?" Her face twists into confusion. "That's strange, even for Fingers."

  "No," I snicker. "He just said it in the moment. It wasn't based in reality. I mean you're not in love with the tomatoes."

  "Why are you trying to convince yourself that he doesn't love you?"

  I feel the weight of the question bore into me. "Men like that don't fall in love. They just don't."

  ***

  "This isn't a date." I feel the need to qualify it.

  He stares at me over his wine glass. "Christ, you're full of bullshit lately."

  "Shut up." I take a big swallow from my own glass before I realize I better slow down. "I can't drink too much."

  "Because you'll end up sitting on my face in the cab on the way back to my place?" He raises his glass before he takes a sip.

  I pull my hand over my mouth to stifle a laugh. He was likely right though. "No. I just want to stay clear minded. We have to talk about a few things."

  "Do I still have to pay for this even though it's not a date?" He raises a brow playfully.

  "I can't afford to eat here."

  "You work here."

  "I can barely afford to eat sandwiches on what they pay me." I glance back towards the kitchen. I didn't bother to check the schedule to see if Drew was working tonight. I'm hopeful he's got the night of
f too. I don't want to have to listen to him tell me why I shouldn't be seeing Nathan.

  "What is it, if it's not a date?" He takes a bite of the overpriced salad the waiter just placed in front of him.

  "Two people, who are kind of friends, talking." That seems about right to me.

  "So talk, friend." He motions towards me with his fork.

  "Why did you take your sister to the hotel suite that night?" I want to start at the beginning, or at the very least, the beginning of when things fell apart.

  "Why do we need to talk about that?" He takes another hearty bite of the salad. "Do you make this when you're working?"

  I shake my head. "I prep the carrots that are in the salad."

  "They're the best part."

  "You left for Boston and then you're suddenly back with your sister." It's not even a question. It's a lame statement.

  "Why do you think I brought her here?"

  "Stop being a lawyer."

  "I can’t." He pushes the plate away. "This tastes like dirt. Not the carrots though."

  "Why, Nathan?" I need to know. Other than that brief exchange in the hotel room when I thought she was his next conquest, I've heard nothing about her since.

  He reaches for my wine glass after downing what's left in his. "I can't believe I have to say this."

  "It's the truth, right?" I feel the need to stress that.

  "Christ, Jessica." He leans across the table to put his hand over mine. "I don't lie to you. Get that, okay?"

  I don't respond. I just want the answer. I raise my brow in expectation.

  "I brought them here to meet you." His voice is soft and sullen. It's hard to distinguish each word within the hum of the busy restaurant.

  "No, don't say that." I push back from the table. Please don't say that. It means I fucked things up worse than I imagined that night.

  He leans back in his chair and pulls his hands over his face before he lets out a deep sigh. "I couldn't shut up about you. I just wanted them to see you in the flesh."

  "So you brought them back to New York?"

  "I did," he says it with finality as if that's supposed to be the end of the conversation.