Remembering that was my cue to start worrying how much more difficult it would be to maintain the charade of businesslike courtesy after a night without Nick. Would I be more or less inclined to touch him? And if I messed up …
Hmmm. Would it really be so bad if I messed up and touched him in front of the others? Just … touched him? Like, say, ran my little finger over that patch of skin behind his left ear where I’d discovered he was ticklish …? I smiled, remembering what he’d done last night when I’d touched him there. He’d picked me up and wrapped my legs around him and –.
Okay, maybe I wouldn’t try exactly that in public.
Maybe a fleeting brush against his forearm would be safer. Or what about his thigh, if I sat next to him in the van, just a touch, as though to get his attention? Nobody even needed to see that. Although I wasn’t sure at this stage that even a perfectly innocent shoulder bump wouldn’t have me launching myself at him and licking him. That was a new habit of mine, whenever I had a millimetre of his skin close to my mouth. Licking him. Licking!
I mean, come on, who licked people? He wasn’t a freaking candy apple, was he? He wasn’t even sweet. He was salty. And nobody interested in their health liked an excess of salt. Too much salt was bad for you. Not to mention how many germs I’d transferred from his skin to my taste buds.
But it was no good. I still wanted to lick him. Right now. Right. Now.
But he was not here to lick!
That was an inescapable fact. So I should stop thinking about him and go to bed, alone, and sleep, alone.
I scrubbed off my carefully applied make-up, removed the bodysuit, and flung myself onto the bed, where I couldn’t seem to get comfortable. A thump of my pillow didn’t do anything to improve either my state of comfort or my temper, so I thumped Nick’s pillow instead. It wasn’t until about the tenth whack of that poor abused object, when I saw a few feathers floating in the air, that I realised I was completely out of control. This did not bode well for the next morning’s professional courtesy, so I took a long, deep breath, and forced myself to get up and got the bathroom to splash water on my face.
As I looked at my damp and angry face in the mirror, I did my best to argue myself into a state of greater serenity.
I wasn’t a nymphomaniac. One sex-free night wasn’t going to kill me.
Even if it was the second last night, goddammit to hell!
No, seriously, after having had such an unaccustomed amount of sex over the past few days, my body could do with a rest.
Even if I was so wired I could scream my lungs out.
Which of course betrayed an appalling lack of self-discipline, and if that was what I was reduced to, it was for the best that Nick was calling it quits ahead of schedule. It wasn’t as though I were some desperate groupie who couldn’t tell when her use-by date was up. I’d just make sure he knew I wasn’t going to be available tomorrow night should he have a sudden change of heart.
The deal-breaking, reneging, welching BASTARD.
It was definitely time to get back to reality. I might even take Drew up on his offer to take me shopping for a Vibrating Rock Chick when I landed in Sydney.
A vibrator was much more reliable than a heartless beast who sent you a text message leaving you up in the air while he was out with another woman, a woman you wanted to crush, kill, destroy, right after you smashed his head in!
Okay, so it seemed the talking-to I was giving myself to coax myself towards serenity was an abject failure, so I tore back into the room, threw myself on the bed again, reefed Nick’s pillow up, held it against my face, and screamed satisfyingly into it.
And then smell of the pillow infiltrated my senses, and I screamed again – not so satisfyingly.
Okay – throw the pillows off the bed. Done.
Hmmm. The sheets. He was on the sheets, too.
Rip them off the bed. Done.
Cleary, I should have ditched the environmental consciousness and got the hotel to change the damn bedding every day instead of every second day. I would do that first thing in the morning. Meanwhile, I would –
Knock.
Once.
And every word I had just said to myself became meaningless, and I was racing to the door, flinging it open.
Nick was slumped against the jamb, looking exhausted and somehow melancholy, and my insides did some weird swirling, melting, psychedelic thing that made every vestige of anger in me drain away, leaving me lightheaded.
‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance you considered coming to my room to wait for me?’ he asked, stepping inside as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of condoms.
I closed the door. ‘You said you were out.’
‘I’m back now.’
‘No kidding,’ I said, and although my voice was dry, happiness was bubbling up in me like a broken fountain on gush mode.
Nick tossed the condoms onto the bed, then frowned. ‘What happened to the bed?’
‘I could smell you. It was … frustrating me.’
‘Then come on,’ he said. But his eyes had shuttered.
He took a deep breath, then braced for attack.
And I surprised us both by dropping to my knees before him.
‘Chloe, what are you doing?’ he asked.
‘Figure it out,’ I said, undoing his jeans and dragging them down.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I responded, and eased his underwear over his hips and down his thighs. ‘Wow.’ I was a little daunted, I’ll freely admit. ‘You are so damn big.’
‘Then don’t,’ he said, and his hands reached for my underarms, trying to lift me.
‘I want to. I want to suck you dry the way you do to me.’
He groaned, his fingers moving to my hair.
‘Although I’m going to warn you, I might not be great at it,’ I admitted. ‘I don’t do this. Often, I mean. And you have a way of making me forget all about technique.’
A low, incredulous laugh. ‘You think I care about technique?’
‘I’m hoping to make up for it with enthusiasm. Because I love licking your skin …’ I licked the tip of him. ‘And I have to tell you, I want you in my mouth so much I’m ready to come just thinking about it.’ I ran my tongue from the base of him to the tip.
‘Chloe, I mean it, you don’t have to – Fuuuuuuuck.’
I’m guessing that last bit meant he liked the way I eased him into my mouth and sucked. His hips bucked once, twice, before he could control himself, and I shifted so that I could hold him more securely at the base, and sucked harder.
‘Jesus, Chloe, I … Aaahhhh. God. God. God help me. Ahhhhh.’
Okay, so he seemed to have lost the power of a sensible speech. I felt a little drunk at that. Drunk too, with the feel of him, the taste of him. I wanted to make him hotter, make him lose it completely, sweat and buck and spill. I could feel the battle going on, through the clench and strain of his thigh muscles, his restless hands in my hair – he wanted to grab and twist and thrust, but at the same time, he was trying so hard to be gentle.
‘Chloe,’ he tried again, his voice raw.
I ignored him, and instead, took him more deeply in my mouth, increasing the pressure, playing around the base of him with my fingers. Cupping him, stroking between his legs. Then everything in him tightened, and my name ripped out of him. He was coming, and cursing too, as I continued to suck him. Another sound, a surrendering groan, and his whole body relaxed.
I released my hands, let him slide from my mouth, and looked up at him, smiling. One last stroke of a finger along the softening length of him. He reached for me again, and this time I let him draw me up and pull me in. I kissed the side of his neck, and felt him tremble.
‘Chloe,’ he whispered again.
I waited for whatever he was going to say – but it seemed that it was only my name that was going to be forthcoming.
I found myself wanting to cry, and I had no idea why. So I opted for a mood-breaker. ‘I w
onder if you’re ever going to actually see me in my underwear, Nick. I think you’d like it. It’s expensive, you know.’
And we both started laughing. Laughing, laughing, laughing … and then … no laughter. Just Nick smoothing his hand through my hair.
‘It’s not your underwear I’m interested in, Chloe,’ he said. ‘Or your perfect makeup. Or your perfect hair. Or your clothes. Wear everything or something or nothing. Put it all on, take it all off. I’ll want you, whether you’re in all of it or none of it.’ And then I felt him take a deep breath. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Round two, right? Crash and burn.’
‘Okay, round two,’ I said, raising myself onto my toes, drawing his face down and kissing his cheek.
He flinched. ‘Not like that, Chloe.’
I kissed the other cheek.
‘Chloe, come on,’ he said, sounding a little freaked out.
I licked his top lip, fluttered there like a butterfly.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
‘Kissing you,’ I whispered, and managed a kiss to his neck before he jerked me away from him.
‘You can’t do this to me,’ he said.
‘Do what?’
‘Change the rules – when you’re going to fly out and leave me in two days. You can’t get all …’ He waved a hand. ‘You know, tender. And stuff. You can’t do that.’
‘Can’t I?’
‘No,’ he said, and swooped. Dragging me in, lowering his head, mouth diving onto mine. Long, long moments of sucking, dragging kisses. ‘Come on, Chloe, come on,’ he urged, when I stayed pliant in his arms, letting him ravage my mouth.
Then he was lifting me, spinning, so my back was against the door. ‘Come on, Chloe,’ he said again, frantic now. ‘Fuck me, like usual. Do it.’
Instead, I kissed the corner of his mouth, ran my hands into his hair, undulated against him. I could practically feel the panic steaming out of his pores as he pulled me roughly away from the door, started backing me towards the bed, fumbling with my robe and dragging it off.
And then I was falling backwards onto the bed. Nick’s breathing was ragged as he followed me down, knees between my thighs. Hands scrabbling over the mattress, feeling blindly for a condom as he kissed me, sliding it on – seriously, he could get hard in a nanosecond. Another kiss, deep and dark. ‘Chloe,’ he sounded almost despairing as he sank himself inside me. ‘Do it. Bite me, scratch me, hit me.’
But the only thing I did was envelop him in my arms and cling to him, squeezing everything inside me tight to make this good for him. I didn’t need to punish him, didn’t want to hurt him tonight. It was gone, that urgent need. I just wanted to hold him and accept that we were connected, the way he’d always said.
‘Chloe,’ he breathed into my hair. ‘What is this?’
‘Shhh,’ I whispered back. ‘Please, just … just … Ahhhh,’ as he slid into me again. ‘Perfect.’ And it was. The connection, the fit, the everything. ‘Nick. I love what you do to me. Love it, love it.’ He twisted slightly, crushing me close enough to crack a rib. His mouth slid off mine, gasping for air like he couldn’t breathe. Long, beautiful, voluptuous thrusts, over and over, silent except for his ragged breaths. I wanted it to go on forever, never stop, never, but at last I felt him clench, ready to come but holding back, waiting for me. One, two, three more thrusts and I was there. Coming. With him. So beautifully in synch.
Silence. Again. And then he rolled so that he was next to me on the mattress and pulled me into his side. We stayed like that until our heartbeats settled. And then he kissed me, but not on the mouth. He kissed me … wait for it … on the forehead! And the real shock of it was that it quivered all the way down to my toes, in a way Marcus’s kisses never had.
‘You said you’d never do that,’ I said, and my voice was a little wobbly as I tried to make sense of my reaction.
‘I say a lot of stupid shit,’ he said. Then he was off the bed, heading into the bathroom.
I followed him in. ‘Where were you tonight, Nick?’ I asked, as he turned on the shower.
He got under the spray and drew the shower curtain around, blocking me. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I’m just interested,’ I said, leaning against the sink.
Pause. ‘Okay.’ Another pause. ‘When you interviewed me, I talked about the kids living on the streets in Manila. Tonight, that’s where I was, with a priest I met on my last visit.’
‘I didn’t know you were religious,’ I said cautiously.
‘I’m not. But Father Mulvaney walks the talk, and I … I like him, respect him. I wanted to see what he sees when he goes into town three times a week to buy dinner for one of the gangs.’
‘What did you see?’ I asked, as my palms started to sweat.
Silence. Stillness. All I could hear over my own heartbeats was the water running. No soapy scrubbing was happening on the other side of the curtain. And then, he said, ‘Rugby boys, they call them.’
‘I would have thought playing sport was –’
‘It’s not rugby league or rugby union.’ Another pause. And then the soap sounds started up again. ‘Rugby is a solvent, a glue. The kids are glue sniffers.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Oh.’
‘It helps moderate their hunger. And I guess it gives them some kind of escape from their crappy lives as a side benefit. But, of course, then they need to support their addiction and that leads to – What …?’
Because I was opening the shower curtain.
‘Chloe?’
Stepping under the spray beside him.
‘I’m sorry, Nick,’ I said, and put my arms around him. ‘There’s nothing to be sorry about,’ he said, sounding gruff – but his arms closed around me, the way they always did. ‘It’s just the way it is.’
‘I know, but I’m still sorry … for you … that you had to see it.’
‘And if I didn’t see it? It wouldn’t change the fact that it exists. Someone has to see it, Chloe. It might as well be me.’
‘It’s just … I don’t think you’re as tough as you like people to think.’ I looked up at him. ‘In fact, I think you’re soft.’
He laughed. ‘I’m not soft,’ he said, and nudged me with his burgeoning erection. ‘Feel that? It’s getting harder by the second with you in here.’
But I wasn’t to be sidetracked. ‘Nick, why do you like to pretend you’re an ogre?’
He started washing me with the soap. ‘It’s not pretence.’
‘Sunshine Children’s Home? Feeding the homeless?’
‘The orphanage – that’s just money, easy to give when you’re making a fortune. And feeding those kids? I’m here, so why not?’
‘Because it hurts you, to see them.’
‘Ah. Is that why I got the blow job? Sympathy?’
‘No! I just –’
‘Don’t, Chloe.’ He turned off the taps and looked at me. ‘Just … don’t, okay?’
‘No, it’s not okay.’
‘Then make it okay. The way you make everything else in your life okay.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘You know what it means, white swan. Hide it, bury it, paper over it. It’s why you spent a whole year not wanting to know a damn thing about me. Or nothing good, at any rate. One way to keep me at bay, right?’ The taps went back on, and he recommenced washing me. ‘And that’s okay. I get it. I do.’
‘But I want to know about you now.’
‘Why? When we have only two more nights together?’
But I didn’t have an answer to that, so I took the soap off him and started washing him. ‘Sauce for the goose, right?’ I said, when he tried to snatch the soap back. ‘Hmm, cooked goose. And I have an idea where I’d like to shove the cooking thermometer.’ And I let my soapy fingers drift.
Nick grabbed my hand, laughing. ‘You know, I’d let you – as long as you promised to go in after it.’
I started laughing, ‘You are so much like Drew, it’s disturbing.’
; ‘I’m okay with that. I like Drew.’
I frowned before I even knew I was doing it.
‘What is it?’ Nick asked, smoothing a wet finger over the creases in my forehead.
‘Nothing, except … Marcus didn’t like him.’
‘Well, each to their own,’ Nick said, and turned off the taps again. He pushed the shower curtain out of the way and reached for a towel.
‘I don’t think it’s so much that he didn’t like him. More that he didn’t feel comfortable around him. Weird, when I think about it, because –’
‘Are we really going to talk about Marcus?’ Nick interrupted, wrapping the towel around his hips. ‘Because I have to tell you, Chloe, I’m not up to it. Not tonight.’
I swallowed. ‘But it’s nearly time to … to …’
‘See him again?’ He sighed. ‘I know. Just … not tonight, okay?’
I grabbed a towel for myself. ‘Fine. What do you want to talk about, then?’
‘You could tell me where you thought I was tonight. Out whoring, I suppose.’
‘That thought did cross my mind. You’re well known for sleeping with every available woman. And there are six just on the Do-It-Right team who’d take you on in a flash.’
He touched my face. The tiniest gesture, and one that had tremors running through me. ‘For the longest time, I’ve only wanted to sleep with one, and she hasn’t exactly been available. I’ve been feeling like one of those hyenas on the Discovery Channel, hunting down the zebras every night waiting for a show of weakness so I can make my move.’
I laughed. ‘A hyena? You’re not exactly terrifying me with that image.’
‘Hey, those hyenas are scary bastards. They’re like machines. They can go for several days without water. Did you know that?’
‘Oddly enough, I did not know that.’
‘And in just one feeding frenzy, they can eat up to a third of their body weight.’
I stared at him as the truth dawned. ‘Oh my God, you really do watch the Discovery Channel, don’t you?’
Escaping Mr Right Page 17
