by Kim Karr
It’s an orgasm that rocks me.
Makes me feel alive for the first time in months.
I may not know what it is about Nick Carrington that is making me feel like I want to get close to him and keep my distance at the same time, but I do know for absolute certainty that I needed this. Needed this to put an end to the craziness going on in my head about a man I certainly don’t need to get involved with.
About a man who’s pure temptation.
About a man who I know can only bring me heartache.
“Stop,” I order myself.
And I think I can now. I tell myself that I will get out of here and put those animalistic desires to rest as soon as I do.
Stepping out of the claw foot tub is tricky. I didn’t plan very well. The floor is wet and the towels are across the room.
Just as I take my first step the door bursts open. “Auntie Tess. Auntie Tess. Auntie Tess. We’re going to have a campout. Uncle Nick started a fire. Come see, come see.”
The doorknob is broken, and therefore the door could not be locked. I’d completely forgotten about that, but it’s just Max, and I although I want to hurry to grab a towel, I’m afraid I’ll slip and fall, so I step carefully, but swiftly. “That sounds like so much fun. I’ll be down as soon as I get dressed,” I tell him softly.
“Max,” Nick yells coming to an instant stop in the doorway.
Now I’m like a deer in the headlights. I have no idea what to cover first. My breasts? My sex? Like one of those dumb movies, I place one arm across my small breasts, the other going down allowing my hand to shield my sex.
Nick’s gaze simmers over me for the longest time, and then a smile curves his lips. “Ummm…sorry about this. I tried to stop him from coming up, but he was too excited about the campout. I had no idea you were bathing.”
My eyes widen. I consider waving him away, but I’ll expose myself even more if I use my hands. I consider yelling for him to go already, but that will scare Max. So I do neither. Instead I remain calm. I saw him naked. Now he saw me. No big deal. Right? “Yes, I thought I’d clean up before dinner. How about you two boys go downstairs and finish setting up?” I suggest.
Nick seems to be enjoying himself. Staring at me. At what he can see, which isn’t much.
“Nick,” I prod.
He scratches his messy hair, shifts his eyes back and forth, and then absently says, “Yeah, Max, come on buddy, Tess could use from privacy.”
“Privacy?” Max asks, “What’s that?”
Nick’s gaze is practically sizzling now as his eyes travel over me. “Well, it’s when someone, well…” As Nick struggles to try to explain the word to Max, he takes his hand and leads him away, leaving the door open behind him, and looking back one last time before disappearing out of the bedroom.
Temptation is clear in his gaze, as I’m sure it must be in mine. And just like that, my little pep talk seems irrelevant.
It’s now very apparent—we are both in so much trouble.
13
Nick
Ethan is a cheap bastard.
It’s true.
Fact in point, I have repeatedly offered to personally assist him with the renovations of his old house, and yet he keeps saying no. He says he has a budget. A plan. A schedule.
Did I mention a budget?
Since he hates to spend money, he hasn’t been in a huge hurry to update or fix anything. And after more than three years, the majority of repairs are still left undone. Of course the one thing he did take care of is converting the old gas heater to a new electric one.
Go figure.
The power had been flickering on and off before going out completely thirty minutes ago, and leaving this old house with a brutal chill.
Thank fuck the wood-burning fireplace is roaring in front of the three of us, and keeping us warm. It’s eight o’clock at night and Max is out cold.
When Max and I decided to have a campout, I had set up three piles of blankets and pillows in the shape of a triangle, so no one was stuck in the middle. Max’s words, not mine. Anyway, it’s a good thing I set up camp because it looks like until the power goes back on, we’ll all be sleeping here on the living room floor.
Lying back on the pillow with my hands behind my head, I glance down to see Tess’s messy bun moving on top of her head. The same way she was wearing her hair when I saw her naked mere hours ago. Something I wouldn’t mind seeing again, sometime very soon by the way. “You awake?” I whisper.
She twists onto her side to look up at me. “I am.”
My voice is low. “Listen. I want you to know I’m sorry about earlier. I honestly had no idea you were taking a bath.”
The flush on her cheeks could be from the fire, but I highly doubt it. “It’s not a big deal. I saw you naked, now you’ve seen me.”
Trying not to remember how turned on I was by the sight of her and her beautiful backside that I know I shouldn’t have been staring at in the mirror, I make light of her comment. “Yeah, I guess that makes us even.”
She laughs that soft laugh that does something to my gut I can’t explain. “Well, not quite.”
Speechless, I give her a quizzical look wondering if she busted me for the sideways glances in the mirror when I thought I was being so sly.
“Don’t you remember?” she asks, “You mooned me at Ethan and Fiona’s barbeque last year.”
Okay, time to fess up. “About that. I know you think I was mooning you because I heard you call me a jerk, but it honestly had nothing to do with you.”
“Right,” she scuffs.
“It wasn’t you I was mooning. I swear.”
Confusion clouds her features.
“It’s true. You just happened to walk outside right after Jace dared me to flash your Andy.”
Tess flops onto her stomach and rises on her elbows. Her oversized button-down shirt gapes open and I wonder if it belonged to him. The thought provokes the oddest feeling of jealousy in me.
“You know his name is Ansel,” she remarks with a sigh, “and I told you, he’s not mine anymore. But all that aside, why would Jace dare you to do that?”
With my neck straining to look at her, and the top swells of her tiny breasts all I can see, I decide to avoid temptation and reposition myself. Moving beside her, facing the same direction as she is, I prop myself up on one elbow and look into her brown eyes. “Truth?”
She mimics my pose and stares back. “Always.”
“Jace was drunk and he swore the dude had a thing for me. He wanted me to test it out.”
Tess moves the palm that was resting on her outer thigh to the open neck of her shirt, and says, “Wait. What? Why would you think that?”
“Who knows? It was dumb. We were drunk and just being stupid.”
“Ansel might have had a wandering eye, but I can assure you it was for women only.”
My body tenses from the hurt I see in her eyes. “Did he cheat on you? Is that why you two broke up?”
She nods. Sadness seems to grip her and I can tell she knows it shows on her face when she sucks in a deep breath.
“I shouldn’t have asked. It’s not my business.”
I’m surprised when she plunges forward. “It’s okay. Yes, that’s what happened. He cheated on me.”
“I’m sorry. Do you want to talk about it?”
“There’s not much to say. I caught him one night in the kitchen of our restaurant with a liquor sales rep after hours. Once I opened my eyes, I discovered he’d been screwing other women right under my nose for years. Probably the entire time we were together.”
A low growl escapes my throat because I want to fucking kill him. This girl is honest, smart, sexy, funny—the whole package, and that douchebag has the nerve to treat her like shit. What a goddamned asshole.
“At first I felt like a fool. I mean, I should have known. Right?”
I shrug. “Not if you weren’t looking.”
Her laugh is bitter. “That’s just it, I wasn’t.
I was working. I thought he was too. We were trying to make the restaurant a success. I never thought to worry about someone else. I honestly believed what we had was enough for him.”
I clench my hand into a fist, trying to fight the anger I feel for the dick that hurt Tess. “It should have been.”
Tess dives into more detail, telling me about how her and Ansel met right after her parents died. That she was vulnerable and alone, and he was there. It was what she needed at the time. Once she tells me about the ups and downs of their long-term relationship, she returns to their breakup. “At first, he tried to convince me that his predilection for other women was poor judgment on his part, and that he was sorry. That what we had was enough. He actually wanted me to give him another chance.”
“Fucker,” I mutter.
She smiles but it doesn’t show in her eyes. “Right. I mean he was my boyfriend and he was supposed to love me. What he had been doing wasn’t love.”
“What did you tell him?” I ask.
“What else could I say other than we were over? Even if my feelings for him hadn’t changed, I could never trust him again.”
I push a stray piece of hair from her eyes. “Good for you.”
She sighs unhappily. “Well, not really. I not only lost him, but the restaurant too. So look where my trust issues got me?”
I glance around and grin. “It got you back to Chicago, and here, with me. That isn’t so bad.”
This time she laughs a real laugh. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Have you ever had a girlfriend?”
“Not really.”
“Why not?”
It takes a few moments to decide how to answer her, but then I decide to tell Tess the truth—to tell her all about my mother. How the woman had grown up in Las Vegas, was on her own since she was sixteen, married some guy at seventeen, but divorced him soon after for reasons she never told my father. She then moved to Chicago and met my father. Out of the blue, some twelve years later, a guy claiming to be her ex-husband shows up at our doorstep and the next day she disappears from our life, never to return. We haven’t heard from her since, then again, we never went looking. After twenty minutes I think I’ve told her more about myself than I’ve told anyone at one time—ever.
Tess lays her head on her pillow and tugs her blanket up a little higher. “Nick, I’m really sorry that happened to you, but you can’t put a wall around yourself because of it.”
With a yawn, I lay my own head on my pillow. “I didn’t build a wall around myself,” I reassure her before closing my eyes.
It went up all by itself.
14
Tess
There’s a noise, and I awake with a start.
For a moment I feel disorientated and it takes a minute to gain my bearings. I can’t immediately place my surroundings. Then, as my eyelids flutter open, I see Nick lowering himself, squatting down beside me. His sleepy blue eyes are watching me with intensity.
Alarmed, I sit up and look around the dimly lit room. “Where’s Max?”
Nick places his hand on my shoulder to calm me. “The power is back on and I just brought him upstairs to his bed.”
Okay, the creaky staircase is the noise I heard. Relieved, I flop back down, not ready to move. “What time is it?” I ask groggily.
“Almost six.”
I groan. “In the morning?”
“In the morning,” he reassures me, offering me his hand. “Come on, I’ll help you off the floor. It’s time to get up anyway.”
Declining, I roll to my side and peek up at Nick through my lashes. “God, it feels like I never went to sleep.”
“That’s because it was almost two before you stopped talking.”
To shield the lights from the kitchen, I tug the blanket up over my head. “That’s so not true. You were the one doing all the talking.”
“Whatever,” he says. “I’m going to go for a run. Do you want a hand getting up or not?”
Lowering the covers, I sit up and look out the window at the still heavily falling snow. “You’re going outside in this weather? Are you nuts? I think I’ll stay right here where it’s warm.”
Nick laughs and flops down beside me on his back. “You have a point. I think I’ll hit the treadmill at my office later today.”
I laugh too, and groan a little when I shift in my pile of blankets from the lack of comfort that comes from lying on the floor. “Wow, you have a treadmill at your office?”
“Not just a treadmill, an entire gym. Come by later if you want and workout.”
I laugh again. “I haven’t worked out in months. I’m not sure I remember how.”
“Then you really should come by. I could give you a pointer or two to help you get back on track.”
My eyes dart to the spot where his long-sleeve t-shirt has lifted, and then my gaze slowly slides up his hard body until it lands on his face. “Right. So I can make a fool of myself,” I respond, hearty laughter still in my voice. “I think I’ll pass, thank you very much.”
Nick’s staring at me again with that same intensity I saw when I first woke up. This time though, his breathing is hitched, and I can’t help but wonder if he’s thinking the same thing I am.
Still laughing, I fall onto my back and keep my focus on him.
“God, you have a beautiful laugh,” he says hoarsely.
My entire body reacts to the look he’s giving me, and all I can do is keep staring. I have no words, no smartass comeback, nothing.
Moments pass where all we share is a look. It’s a look that screams, “I want you, do you want me?”
Slowly, Nick nods his head.
At the same time, I nod mine.
And then Nick is rolling, shifting his body, and in a beat he’s above me looking down into my eyes. Within moments, his body is covering mine with the twisted blankets around his hips. He maneuvers himself until my thighs are spread and I can feel his heavy erection through the fabric of his track pants right between my legs.
“I want you,” he rasps, grinding his hips into mine in the most delicious way.
“I want you too,” I respond breathlessly, lifting my pelvis to meet his slow and distinct movements.
He pushes some stray pieces of hair from my eyes. “Are you sure about this?” he whispers.
“I’m sure,” I whisper back.
Without another word, Nick quickly gets to his feet. The fire is still roaring. Nick must have stoked it when he woke, and I suddenly feel extremely warm.
With my heart pounding, I watch him as he strides toward the kitchen. Watch his long lean body, watch the confidence in his walk, watch the pure male who might have decided against this very poor decision we both made days ago but are just now acting on. But then he picks up his wallet and pulls out a condom. When he strides back in my direction, there is purpose intent on his face. And my heart pounds even more.
Standing above me with his brilliant blue eyes on me, he drops the condom to the ground and pulls his t-shirt off. I stare at his ripped abs, biting my lip, wanting to taste him so bad I can hardly stand it.
There is no hesitation in my next move. With my gaze locked on him, I sit up and slowly unbutton my own shirt in spite of my trembling fingers. He watches me, his chest rising and falling even faster than moments ago. Once I shrug out of the oversized shirt, my small breasts are completely exposed to him.
Nick sucks in a breath. “God, you’re so fucking beautiful. I can’t wait to be inside you.”
I can’t wait either. I want this. And right now. So, I pull my leggings off, panties too, and sit naked in front of the fire. In front of him.
If Nick is surprised by my forwardness, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he strips out of his own pants and then finally lowers himself down to me.
He takes his time putting himself back in the position he had been in before he went to retrieve a condom. It’s slow, torturous, and amazing. His breath whispers across my neck. His skin feels so
good against my own. And his body is like it was made for mine. Once he is pressing firmly against me, he presses his lips to mine.
Our first kiss is with the both of us completely naked. Completely open to each other. Vulnerable. And both more than ready to be together.
His lips move soft, then hard, against mine, and then he pushes his tongue into my mouth. Soon our tongues begin to move together, and his kiss consumes me.
My hands slide down his back to his firm ass and I pull him against me. “I want you inside me, now.”
I thought he’d fight me. Tell me he was in control. Show that alpha male dominance I have seen so many times. He does none of those things. Instead, Nick reaches with one hand and retrieves the condom he’d tossed beside me. My pulse races with an odd excitement, one I never recall having prior to intercourse. I watch him tear away the wrapper with his teeth and sheath himself with the latex, and I’m completely overtaken by lust.
It all starts to happen very quickly after that. He is obviously just as desperate as me for this. His fingers slide inside me, and as soon as he feels how wet I am, he shudders. Within seconds, his fingers are gone and he slides his cock into me. It’s with his first thrust that I realize I was wrong—he is the one in control, this is what he wanted too, and all I can do is gasp because he feels so good.
Moments after he starts to thrust, he pauses in his movements. He’s still staring down at me, but this time his eyes are tender in a way I’ve never seen them. “I’ve wanted you from the first time I saw you at Ethan and Fiona’s engagement party. Everything I’ve done and said to you since that night has been to fight the need to have you.”
I open my mouth to speak, unsure of what to say.
