The Architect (Nashville Neighborhood Book 3)

by Nikki Sloane

  No, worse.

  It was thoughtless.

  E’s thrusts were just as demanding as his kisses, and my bare skin squealed against the polished wood floor as he drove into me. Even when his mouth wasn’t on mine, his lips didn’t stray from my skin. They roved over my cheekbone, down the curve of my neck, and wandered to my breasts. It was like he loved the taste of me and couldn’t get enough of it.

  His hips beat against me as his body pumped into mine, and my hands played over the muscles of his chest and arms. While his insistent mouth explored, I reveled in touching him.

  Trapped under the heat of him, it took no time for my skin to become slippery with sweat. It was hard for him to get traction with his knees since his jeans cut across his thighs, so as we writhed and thrashed, we inched along the floor.

  His groans of satisfaction filled my ear, and I raked my nails down his powerful back until I could clench a hand on his ass. I loved feeling the flex of him as he drove into me, and my hold, plus my legs wrapped around his, helped keep me from shifting too much.

  Because the angle was just right.

  Tingles began in my center, and goosebumps lifted on my arms. My heart raced along. All the warning signs of my orgasm were there, but it lingered frustratingly just out of reach. Maybe all the edging before had made my body reluctant and defensive.

  I was too desperate and frantic to see any other reason for why my orgasm was being so elusive.

  The sex was so aggressive, it was taxing on both of us, and I sensed his confusion on why he hadn’t been able to push me over the edge. He’d done all the things right. He was thick and hard, pushing deep inside me with a punishing rhythm that should have made my toes curl and my eyes roll back into my head.

  And it wasn’t like it didn’t feel good. It felt amazing.

  But it had felt amazing since the moment he’d gotten inside me, and this sustained high point had become a plateau.

  So, I drew one of my knees up, and urged him to let me hook it over his shoulder. It allowed him to slip even deeper, past the point of comfort for me, and I welcomed the sensation.

  His eyes widened and then hooded with pleasure. When he slowed and ground himself against me, he gauged my reaction carefully. Or maybe he was trying to even himself out and make it last.

  “Oh, fucking yes,” I groaned.

  The aching fullness of him was just enough to break up my plateau and I finally crossed the threshold. I came in a rush, shuddering all around him, and he smothered my cry of pleasure under a devouring kiss. Like he wanted to drink in my moans.

  The connection of our mouths went unbroken as he came too. The muscles beneath my hands solidified into rock, making him jerk to a stop, and the rhythmic pulses inside flooded me with heat. I sighed in enjoyment at the sensation.

  My orgasm had been short, and evaporated from my body nearly as quickly, and as the man over me went still, déjà vu descended on me. Like yesterday, my release had only given me temporary satisfaction. There was a large part of me that wasn’t satiated.

  It left me feeling incomplete. Like I’d been treating a symptom but not the underlying cause.

  Instead of warming as he usually did afterward, tension gripped E and it was cold.

  “Shit.” His tone was pure dread. “We didn’t use . . . I forgot to—”

  Oh. Well, that was another reason why it’d felt so different. I’d completely lost my head about using a condom, and he had too. His gaze was on me, but his eyes were unfocused, and I squeezed his arm to bring him back and assure him.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I’m on the pill, and I’m safe.”

  It took him a moment to process and he relaxed with a sigh, melting into the crook of my neck. “Me too, I swear.” He planted a kiss at the spot where my pulse pounded. “Fuck,” he whispered, “I can’t believe I did that.”

  Did he mean forgetting the condom . . . or was he talking about the sex we’d just had?

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Icy slush seeped through my veins, making me cold all over. What the fuck had I just done? No, that was a stupid question. I knew exactly what I’d done. My betrayal would shatter all the trust I’d built up with Clay, and I’d destroyed this incredible partnership.

  Hope it was worth it, a bitter voice said in my head, and the pain of it was so sharp, I had to tear my gaze away from E. I stared blindly at the bottom of the beautiful drawing table I was fairly certain Clay had built himself while E shifted, moving to lay on his side next to me.

  I was aware he was looking at me. Perhaps he was assessing my mood or hoping I’d turn to him and give a shy smile. But I didn’t move. I couldn’t do anything because my guilt was crushing.

  His fingers were warm as they gently grasped my chin, and he pulled my focus back to him. His expression was full of concern, and whatever look I had on my face made his worry deepen.

  Now it was his turn to reassure. “Hey, it’s okay.” He slid his palm up and down my arm as if trying to warm me up. “It’s going to be all right, L.”

  Displeasure made me press my lips together. How the fuck was this going to be okay? Even though I was in a sexual relationship with both Clay and E, we’d gone behind my partner’s back. I’d effectively cheated.

  E raised up onto his elbow and his expression was serious. “This wasn’t your fault—it was mine. I’ll explain what happened, how I took advantage of the situation.”

  “What?” What was he talking about?

  He struggled to assemble the words. “I was so frustrated, I stopped thinking and I let my emotions take over. All I wanted was you alone, to talk to you.” His voice dipped low. “I wanted to kiss you. I didn’t give a damn about the consequences.”

  “Hey, I didn’t either.” His hand on my arm had slowed to a stop, so I set mine on top of his. We’d done this together, and the blame was at least as much mine as it was his. “What are we going to do?”

  His answer was immediate. “We tell him.”

  I swallowed a breath and nodded, but my head was a mess. I loved what the three of us had. Was there any chance I hadn’t fucked it up beyond repair? The way E looked at me now, I felt lost. Now that I’d slept with him outside of my arrangement with Clay, what did he think? Would he expect me to leave my partner and become his?

  My voice wavered. “How do you think he’ll react?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Will he end the arrangement?” Panic made my heart flutter. “What if I never see you again?”

  “That won’t happen.” His brow furrowed. “Clay’s a good guy. Yeah, he’ll be pissed, and he’s got every right to be, but . . .” He sighed. “Look, I’m new to this and all, and I’m not trying to shift blame, but his rules set us up for failure.”

  Had they? And what did he mean?

  “New to this kind of,” I wasn’t sure how to define it, “group thing?” I found a better word. “Dynamic?”

  His gaze slipped away. Even without Clay, I think we both still felt him there, and it was obvious E was hesitant about what to reveal.

  “Yeah, but also, like everything.” His attention snapped back to me, as if tired of fighting it. “I’ve had girlfriends. I’ve gone to the club a few times and played before. So, I’ve done some scenes, but this?” He tangled his fingers with mine. The air in the room slowed, making dust motes suspend in place. Like the whole world crawled to a stop. “You’re the first person I’ve done this with more than once. You and Clay,” he said, gravity filling his voice, “you two are my first partners.”

  “Oh, my God. Really?” Warmth rolled through me, but his statement was hard to believe. “But you’re so good at it.”

  His smile was temporary. “Thanks, but if that were true, I wouldn’t have stayed. I would have had some fucking control.” He rolled onto his back and jerked up his pants, his hands doing up his fly and there was tension all through the muscles of his chest and arms. “I thought I had more self-c
ontrol, but if this was a test, I failed.”

  “Yeah? Well, I did too.” It was sweet, but also kind of annoying how he once again wanted to take all the blame.

  He shifted back onto his side, put his arm around me, and pulled me up against his chest, where it was warm and distracting. “I’ll talk to him,” he said. “I’ll explain what happened and apologize.”

  “Um, I think you mean we’ll talk to him. We made this huge mistake together, so we can apologize together.”

  It was a careless word to go along with all my thoughtlessness, and when he stiffened, I felt even worse. The atmosphere in the room plummeted twenty degrees. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Yeah, good point.” He did little to cover the hurt in his voice and he ignored my attempt to correct myself because the damage was done. His arm slid away, and he sat up, his unfocused gaze not meeting mine. “If we tell him it was a one-time thing and won’t happen again, maybe he can look past it, and then everything can go back to how it was.”

  We both knew it was a lie, but I didn’t call him on it.

  He reached for his shirt and jammed an arm inside. “I need to think about what I want to say first, so we should do it next time we’re together.”

  He was slipping away, but I didn’t know how to stop it. My voice was as weak as I felt. “All right.”

  I was all out of sorts as we both got dressed, and the awkwardness between us only grew more painful as the silence dragged on. Once again, all the questions I wanted to ask clogged my throat and nothing came out.

  My heart hammered in my chest when the last of my clothes were back in place and there was nothing left to do but face him. He stared at me expectantly, unsure what to do, but I felt the same.

  “I should probably go,” he said.

  Say something, a voice in my head screamed at me.

  He moved toward the front door and picked up the bag he’d left there.

  “Wait.” Finally, I found my voice. “Tell me your name.”

  His shoulders rose with a deep breath. “I think we broke enough rules tonight, don’t you?”

  Oh, God. My hands tensed into fists, and my voice broke on the word. “Please.”

  My plea visibly went through him, piercing through the hurt and reaching beneath. His throat bobbed with a hard swallow. “It’s Travis.”

  And then he pulled open the door and walked out without saying another word.

  SIXTEEN

  The clinic had closed half an hour ago, but Dr. Johnston was still in exam room three with Morpheus and his owner. The black Labrador was going to finish his recovery at home after surgery because everything had gone smoothly, and I suspected the reason this was taking so long was because the doctor was giving Morpheus’s owner some pointed advice.

  This was the dog’s third surgery to remove a foreign object from his stomach. Today, it’d been part of a belt, complete with metal grommets, and the doctor had to fish through several feet of intestine to find each one.

  Morpheus was a sweet two-year-old, but he was high energy. If he didn’t start getting daily exercise and more attention from his dad, this was going to keep happening, and next time the outcome could be different.

  My eyes flicked to the clock on the wall. The team from Grassmere Zoo would be here soon, and the doctor had mentioned she wanted to greet them when they arrived. Hopefully, she was wrapping up and I wouldn’t have to figure out whether to interrupt if our guests showed up early.

  Cassidy stood beside me as we worked to finish cleaning up the surgical area. There was still a lot to do after we finished sterilizing tools and wiped everything down, and I was grateful she was interning again during her summer break from Vanderbilt.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  I slowed as I shut the door to the autoclave and pushed the button for it to start its cycle. “Yeah. Why?”

  She shrugged. “I would have thought you’d be excited about tonight, but you seem kind of down.”

  She was talking about the care team from the zoo coming in. I was excited, but it’d been a long, grueling day, and it wasn’t over either. Not to mention, what I’d done with E—Travis—my brain corrected, had been stealing my focus every waking minute. Guilt laced around me, making the burn from his kiss linger.

  If there was an award for “Most Efficient Fuckup” I was sure I’d be declared the winner. I’d betrayed Clay’s trust, and then hurt Travis by saying that being with him was a mistake.

  “I’m just tired,” I lied, which only made my crummy mood worse. She was my best friend, and I was supposed to be able to tell her anything. “Okay, so I’m tired because I couldn’t sleep last night. I screwed up.”

  “What?” She stilled and concern flooded her eyes. “What happened?”

  “I like Clay,” I admitted.

  She looked confused, as if this were common knowledge. “Um, aren’t you sleeping with him?”

  “Yeah, but we have that arrangement where we don’t do feelings. It’s just sex and it’s so perfect, because it’s what we both want. You know what happens to me when I have a boyfriend.”

  She understood how I lost interest and wasn’t built to go the distance.

  “So,” she said slowly, “you like your fuck buddy, and that’s a problem?”

  I sighed. “It is, because I like him.”

  She nodded, finally getting what I meant. “And that’s breaking the rules.”

  Just one of the many rules I’ve broken.

  “That’s not even the really big problem. Everything was going great,” my tone was glum, “and then I had to go and fuck it all up.”

  Cassidy smoothed her hands down the front of her maroon scrubs. “What’d you do?”

  I couldn’t contain it any longer. “I went behind his back and had sex with someone else.”

  My friend couldn’t have looked more confused if she’d tried, and her tone was dubious. “If you slept with another dude, um . . . how sure are you that you like Clay?”

  I frowned. “It’s complicated.”

  His words from our first conversation came back to me in a rush. I’m about as complicated a person as you can get.

  The door to the operating room swung open, interrupting my thoughts, and Dr. Johnston stuck her head in. She was a short woman in her fifties with thick glasses and long bangs, but they couldn’t hide the excitement dancing in her eyes. “The truck’s pulling up, ladies.”

  Cassidy and I followed her out to the side entrance of the clinic, along with the rest of the doctors and staff, and waited in the hot evening sun for our guests to arrive. A white, unmarked commercial truck lumbered through the clinic’s empty parking lot and pulled to a stop with the soft hiss of its brakes.

  For a moment, I forgot about everything else and remembered how much I loved my job. Even the bad days where I came home covered in fur or had stains on my scrubs from sick animals, taking samples, and lab work.

  Animals always kept it interesting, and I loved the variety of patients we treated, big and small. Being one of the largest clinics in Nashville meant we had a lot of specialized machines, and that included an open-air MRI. It was image diagnostic equipment big enough for horses and cattle.

  And today it’d be used to scan a Sumatran tiger.

  There’d been several cars following in a line, and while they parked, the truck driver and passenger worked to get the back door up. There were two people inside, a man and a woman who were both wearing dark gray scrubs with the zoo logo over the pocket. They must have ridden along in the back to monitor the sedated tiger.

  The metal rolling cage had circular holes for airflow, so I only got a glimpse of the orange inside as zoo staff brought the cage down via the truck’s liftgate and then began rolling it toward the entrance.

  “Dr. Eckhart?” Dr. Johnston asked the man, looking for the vet in charge.

  He craned his neck and looked around. “He rode behind us. I think he’s still in his car.”r />
  They couldn’t stop moving because they’d lose momentum, plus there was an incline to get in the building, and the tiger inside was at least two hundred and fifty pounds. I sprang into action, putting my hands on the back of the cage and helped push—

  “Lilith, wait here and show the rest of the team where to go,” Dr. Johnston said.

  I wanted to grumble in disappointment, but I should have expected this. I’d become the face of the clinic, and the doctors had praised me for my excellent ‘people skills.’ Whenever an owner was being difficult, I was the one who had to get on the phone or step into an exam room to assist.

  So, I stood in the walkway and watched as everyone else got to head inside. It’d be crowded in the MRI room, and this meant I’d be one of the last ones in. Fuck, I was going to be stuck in the back.

  I sighed, turned, and ran face first into a chest covered in gray, which was a wall decorated with a stethoscope.

  “Whoa,” the man said. As I bounced off him, his hands instinctively came up and grasped my arms, steadying me. His sharp intake of breath made my heart skip, and then stop altogether when I lifted my gaze to his.

  “Oh, fuck,” I gasped.

  He’d been introduced to me as Mr. E. Why hadn’t he corrected Clay and said it was Dr. E? It was right there on the name badge clipped to his scrubs.

  Dr. T. Eckhart, DVM.

  Thoughts flew threw my brain at a million miles an hour, and the dumbest one won out. I looked like shit. The makeup I’d put on this morning was long gone. Rather than heels, I wore a pair of slip-resistant rubberized shoes. My hair was up in a messy bun, with extra emphasis on messy.

  And no matter how careful I was, it seemed like every day I ended up with poop, pee, vomit, or blood on me . . . and today I had the full compliment.

  He was a veterinarian though, so maybe he understood. He gazed at me like he didn’t see any of it, he only saw me. And while I looked like garbage, he looked impossibly good. All confident and sexy and like a man who worked in my field and loved the same things I did.

  I was almost too stunned to speak, so it came out hushed. “Travis?”