Читать книгу In Too Deep / Matched - Taryn Belle, Kelli Ireland - Страница 17

NICOLA AWOKE TO the sound of running water in the bathroom. She rolled over to see that Alex’s side of the bed was empty, but a tray of food sat on the desk—coffee and orange juice, a basket of pastries and a plate of cut fruit covered with plastic wrap.

“Hello, beautiful,” Alex said. Nicola turned to see him coming out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his hips.

“Hello yourself. How long have you been up?”

“Long enough to order breakfast. I thought you might have worked up an appetite.” He gave her a devilish grin.

“As a matter of fact, I did,” she said, smiling back and sitting up in bed. How many times had they awoken in the night to satisfy their insatiable appetite for each other? Two or three—she’d lost count at some point as the need for sleep finally overcame her body.

Alex came over to her and leaned down to kiss her.

“You’ve already brushed your teeth. No fair,” she said self-consciously, but by the way he was devouring her lips, it was pretty obvious he didn’t care. She put her arms around his neck, and he settled down beside her in bed.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, tracing her cheek with a fingertip.

“A little sore. More than a little, actually.”

He grinned. “Me, too. But I meant…”

“Oh! Good. Great!” she added brightly, but this wasn’t the whole truth. A part of her did feel great—better than great. She’d just spent the night with the hottest man alive and had had—she may as well admit it—the best sex of her life. And she had to admit to herself that what she felt when she was with Alex reached beyond the physical; how could it be that after less than twenty-four hours together, she already wanted to spend every moment possible with him? But Nicola also felt a creeping anxiety that had stolen her sleep last night despite her exhaustion. Alex didn’t live here. He would be leaving. And if they spent any more time together before he left, not telling him the truth about herself would start to be weird. And after she told him, the fantasy would be over—and she really, really liked the fantasy.

“I have some work to do today,” Alex said, tapping the tip of her nose. “But I’d love to see you later. In fact…” He pressed a palm to his forehead. “I just remembered. It’s my brother’s birthday today, so he has a party planned tonight. Would you like to come with me?”

She blinked in surprise. “Oh, I… Are you sure I won’t be crashing it?”

“Are you kidding? The whole island will probably be there. You’ll be the only person I know besides him and his outrageously amazing chef, Rosie, so you’d be doing me a huge favor.”

The whole island. If someone recognized her and said something…but then again, there was safety in numbers.

“Well, then, sure. I’d love to.” Nicola smiled over the butterflies of unease in her belly.

“Perfect.” He pulled her close. “Just make sure my brother knows you’re with me. If he lays eyes on you…”

“Oh, please.” She rolled her eyes, and then glanced out the window at the white sky. “I wonder if he knows there’s supposed to be a storm tonight. They can get pretty fierce around here.”

Alex grinned. “I’m sure he has his people on it. He’s got people for everything.”

“Hmm. Sounds weird,” Nicola commented with a furrowed brow. Then she pushed her hands into Alex’s hair. “You know, there’s a very basic question I haven’t asked you yet.”

He ran his fingers up her arm and clasped her hand in his. “Am I gay? I don’t mind you asking, but I thought I answered that pretty well last night.”

She laughed. Alex was funny and charming, that was for sure, and he seemed intent on easing all of her concerns. The problem was that only she had the power to put her real worry to rest, and the only way to do that was to have a conversation she really didn’t want to have. “No. How long are you staying on Moretta?”

He trailed his hand down her side. “How long do you want me to stay?”

“That’s a dangerous question.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. You might not like my answer.”

“Try me.”

She caught his trailing fingers in her own. “Maybe later. Give me your answer first.”

He sighed. “Sadly, I’m due to return to the rat race on Tuesday. Five days from now. But I’ll need to extend my ticket if I can’t nail down a meeting with the contact I’m here for.”

“Wait. You mean you came here on business, but you don’t even have a meeting lined up?”

“Yeah, I know. Long story. I won’t leave without talking to him, though, whatever it takes.”

“Sounds important.”

“It is. I’ve been trying to track him down for months. We want to add his company to our roster, but he’s pretty elusive. I won’t bore you with the details of mergers and acquisitions—I’ve yet to see your eyes glaze over, but that would be a surefire way to make it happen.”

She nodded slowly. “Okay, so…five days.”

“At the least. When I ordered breakfast, I also took the liberty of asking the hotel to extend my stay here.” He pushed her hair back from her face and lowered his voice. “And I want to spend every minute of it that I can with you. Staring into the mirror of these beautiful eyes—not that I’m vain or anything.”

Nicola laughed again. “Do you ever stop?”

“I try not to.” He slid his hand under the sheet to caress her breast. “God, you’re beautiful,” he said, his voice thick. “Too good to be true. So what’s wrong with you? What am I going to find out if I Google you?”

Nicola’s heart stopped.

Shit.

She wasn’t ready for this.

“You know what I love about Moretta?” she answered smoothly. “It’s so close to paradise that you can almost imagine a world without the internet. I kind of love that idea—getting to know someone without the influence of Google. Can you believe the world was actually like that once upon a time?”

Alex grinned. “Can you believe I remember what that world was like?”

She smiled back at him, waiting. It will be better if it’s his idea.

“Okay, so no Google,” he said. “Let’s shake on it.”

Relief flooded through Nicola’s body. She hadn’t solved the problem, but at least she’d dodged the bullet for now. She’d spend today planning out how she was going to tell him. Anxiety subsiding, she snaked her arms around his neck. “Isn’t there another way we can seal the deal?”

“There sure is,” Alex said.

“Just one problem,” she said, glancing at the alarm clock. “I have to be at work in twenty minutes.”

“So that gives us…?”

“About five minutes.” Luckily, she kept a bikini in her locker at the scuba shack and could change at work.

“More than enough time.”

Alex kissed her deeply, and Nicola felt her body respond immediately. God, what was it about this man? In an alarmingly short time, he’d already become like a drug to her. Dangerous.

She reached out and tugged at his towel, exposing his already stiffening cock.

“See how much I want you?” he said softly.

She moved closer to him, closing the gap between them. “Take me any way you want,” she whispered into his chin. “Just make sure you fuck me hard. I need this one to last me for the next ten hours.”

“You’re sure you’re up for that?” he asked, but she could tell by how his body was reacting that he liked the idea—a lot. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I’m up for it,” she replied. “And I can see that you are, too.”

“You better believe it,” Alex responded, sliding a hand down to her pussy. “You’re already wet for me.”

How could that have happened so fast? But it had—her whole body was already on fire. “Because you make me crazy.”

Alex made a growling noise in his throat and grabbed her by the waist, effortlessly flipping her over onto all fours. Then his head was beneath her and his hands were on her ass, pulling her down to his mouth. Nicola moaned, pushing herself into his mouth as his tongue swept at her clit. “Oh, God, I need more—your beautiful cock—”

The words were barely out of her mouth before he was behind her and pulling her hips toward him. And then he was sliding into her, filling her deeper and deeper. It hurt but it felt so good, the most exquisite kind of pain.

“Nicola. You are so fucking amazing.” Alex punctuated each word with a thrust of his cock, harder and harder, each stroke building the heat within her. Then he reached his hand beneath her and found her clit, massaging it relentlessly until—

Until she was there with him, both of them cresting and falling together, their moans of pleasure intermingled until finally he collapsed forward onto her back.

“Now, that’s what I call a deal sealer,” Alex said.

“Okay, spill,” Kiki said to Nicola the moment she walked in the front door. She closed it gratefully behind her—a brisk wind had picked up, an early sign of the promised storm—and smiled at her roommate. Kiki was sitting on the sofa with one leg bent up, polishing her toes in two contrasting shades of pink.

“What are you talking about?” Nicola said, trying to look innocent. But it was pointless—within two seconds she burst out laughing. “Fine,” she said, tossing her satchel onto the tiny entrance table. “I may or may not have been having the time of my life.”

“Assuming you were. Would it happen to be with a Z-list celebrity?”

Nicola could only laugh again. Only a day and a half had passed since she’d sat across from Kiki whining about her Hollywood-wannabe rescuee, but so much had changed since then that she’d nearly forgotten she’d once thought of Alex that way.

“Big misunderstanding on my part,” Nicola said, taking a seat next to Kiki on the sofa. “He’s Dev Stone’s little brother. He’s not trying to be famous at all. He’s just here for some business deal. We went for drinks, and then… Anyway, he explained to me that the reason he got so upset on the dive was because he almost drowned as a kid. Kind of dramatic, but there you go.”

Kiki’s jaw dropped. “Dev Stone’s brother?”

“Wait. Out of everything I just told you, that’s your takeaway?” Nicola stared at her friend as she flopped onto the sofa beside her. “You don’t have a thing for Dev Stone, do you?”

Kiki stretched her foot in front of her to admire her toenails, then she reached for the nail polish bottle on the coffee table. “Doesn’t every woman on earth? I mean, God, look at him! Those eyes…” She shook her head. “But we’re talking about you, not me. So tell me. Hot and heavy?”

Nicola felt her cheeks redden. “Wrong color. You’re about to put the brush in the wrong bottle.”

Kiki stared at the bottle and then corrected her mistake. “You’re avoiding the question.”

“We had a good time. He’s…well, amazing, if you want to know the truth. But he doesn’t live here. And he’s leaving in five days. And…” She looked away. “He doesn’t know the truth about me.”

Kiki placed her hand on her friend’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “The truth about you? What, that you’re smart and kind and brave and beautiful? That you’re a kick-ass scuba diver who wouldn’t hesitate to put her life at risk for someone else’s? That you’re an amazing schoolteacher whose kids made you pictures of themselves bawling their eyes out when you had to leave them? That you just happened to get caught up in a big, fat mess that wasn’t even close to being your fault?”

Nicola dropped her gaze again. “You know that’s not true. Not the whole truth, anyway.” Suddenly, her eyes were filling with tears. She shook her head as she tried to stem the flow with the edges of her fingers. As surreally wonderful as the events of the past twenty-four hours had been, they’d also put her on an emotional roller coaster that she hadn’t been prepared to ride.

Kiki moved closer to Nicola so she could put an arm around her shoulders. “It’s okay. You’ve been so strong about this for so long, I think it’s good for you to have a cry about it. What happened to you was fucking bullshit.”

“Sure, it might have been, but—” Nicola took a deep breath, trying to get her emotions under control. She wiped at her tears and looked at her friend squarely. “Even if Matthew and I never acted on our feelings, we still had them. I can’t deny that. Sure, the press blew it into so much more—all that stuff about secret meetings and family outings with his son was bullshit—but that day after our meeting about Oliver… Well, that photo didn’t lie. Matthew told me how he felt about me, and I didn’t brush him off or tell him to go away or remind him that he was a married father. I let him kiss me. I wanted him to! And after that, I started dreaming about him leaving his wife, about a future with him and Oliver. It was an affair of the heart if not the body—”

“But you did the right thing,” Kiki reminded her. “You never touched him again after that. And in the end you left your whole life behind to do the right thing! You need to give yourself a break, sweetie.”

“I’d like to, but the guilt is still there.” Nicola sniffed. “I can’t help it. When I think of Oliver now, wondering what happened to his family… I just can’t take it. I still feel like it’s all my fault.”

“But it’s not. If a marriage is strong, it’s like an airtight room—nothing can get in to destroy it. But when there are big problems, the walls start to wear away, leaving an opening for someone else to enter the relationship. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been another woman.”

Nicola stayed quiet, but her friend’s words made sense. Despite Kiki’s scatterbrained ways, Nicola had a lot of respect for her. With her light red hair, freckles and tiny-but-perfect figure, she had the look of an innocent china doll, but Nicola knew that her appearance belied a tough inner strength. She’d come from a childhood that had been traumatic in a completely different way from Nicola’s, but she’d prevailed and created the life she wanted on her own terms. And it wasn’t like Kiki didn’t know a thing or two about relationships—though only thirty, she already had a four-year marriage behind her.

“Okay,” Nicola said, taking a deep breath. “Okay, so maybe you’re right. But that still doesn’t solve my problem. What about Alex? How do I tell him my big claim to fame is being the 10 Things to Know About Matthew Beck’s Mistress girl—not to mention point number ten? Remember that one?”

Kiki shook her head. “Just tell him, sweetie. He’ll understand—everyone makes mistakes. I’m betting he’s got a few under his belt.”

Nicola nodded slowly. “You’re right. I know—I just have to look him in the eye and do it.” She took another deep breath, already feeling a little better. Screw it if he couldn’t accept who she was—her past wasn’t going away, and it was better to know now if this was a deal breaker for him or not. She glanced at her watch. “Speaking of which, I’m supposed to be meeting him in an hour. Hey!” she said, snapping her fingers. “Guess where I’m going tonight? To Dev Stone’s birthday party.”

Kiki’s eyes widened. “Are you freaking kidding me?”

“Seriously. Actually… Alex said the whole island would be there.” Said aloud, this statement suddenly gave her pause. The party was bound to have more than a few LA residents attending, and what if one of them recognized her? But then again, compared to Dev Stone’s friends and acquaintances, she was hardly considered noteworthy. She added, “I’m sure Alex was exaggerating a tiny bit, but I bet he wouldn’t mind if you came along. I mean, if you want to?”

Kiki jumped up from the sofa. “Want to? Are you joking?” She brought her hands to her head. “Shit—what am I going to wear?” But then her excited expression was erased by a thundercloud. “What am I saying? I have to work tonight! Fuck!”

“Maybe you could get off early?” Nicola suggested.

Kiki snorted. “With Juan managing tonight? Not freaking likely. But, hey—stranger things have happened.”

“Yes,” Nicola agreed with a smile. “They certainly have.”

By the time Alex turned into Nicola’s driveway on his golf cart, he was good and ready to leave his day behind. With still no word back from Brissoli, this morning Alex had both left a message at the hotel for him and written him a curt email calling his bluff: leaving tomorrow. get in touch if you’re interested.

One of the things Alex had learned in business was that matching someone else’s communication style could be an excellent way to get results. He’d spent the rest of the day on the phone putting out fires back home, followed by a brief conversation with his father, who had of course wanted to know only one thing: Had Alex done the deal? Well, that wasn’t entirely true—Devin Sr. had also wanted to hear all about Dev Jr.’s latest successes and achievements. “He just continues to amaze, doesn’t he?” had been his father’s concluding observation before Alex hung up the phone, feeling the old sense of inferiority take hold that he’d left behind years ago—or so he’d told himself. Alex was a grown man, and the fact that he was still seeking his father’s admiration, or at least his approval, made him furious with himself.

And now, eight hours after Alex had left his message at the hotel and sent his email to Brissoli, the man still hadn’t taken the bait.

It was enough to make Alex regret, not for the first time, that he’d allowed his desire for his dad’s acknowledgment to sway him into taking over the family business rather than sticking with his import company, which had been really taking off when he’d sold off his half to his partner. But after his mother’s untimely death, his father undeniably needed his help. While Devin Sr. was the more creative partner, his mother had been more business-minded and less emotional—the true head of the company. Alex didn’t think it was any coincidence that his mother had died of a heart attack. She worked harder than anyone he’d ever known, and he knew she’d have expected the same from him if she were still alive. And one thing Alex Stone did not do was underachieve or disappoint. So when his dad asked for his help, he had to give it. If he’d walked away, more than the family business would fall apart—his relationship with his father would. And Alex didn’t have a lot of other family relationships to fall back on.

Alex parked his golf cart in front of Nicola’s tiny bungalow and walked to the front door, trying to shake off his bad mood. Even if his day had gone to shit, he couldn’t deny the low-grade buzz of excitement that had stuck around in his mind and body as he went about his work. Nicola. He didn’t want to analyze it too much, but she was different from any other woman he’d ever met. Sexier and red-fucking-hot in bed, but it was much more than that. She was also kind and courageous and humble. He knew she wasn’t perfect—no one was—but he trusted her to reveal her flaws to him in her own time. Alex couldn’t imagine her messing with his head, and he had no desire to mess with hers. He just wanted her, straight up, even if it was only for five more days. Right now he couldn’t allow himself to think beyond that, because the reality of their situation left him with an empty feeling in the pit of his gut that he just didn’t want to deal with.

One look at Nicola was all it took to bring Alex out of his funk. She smiled at him when she opened the door, and it was all he could do not to barge into the room, rip her clothes off and fuck her right there on the floor like a wild animal.

She was wearing some sort of romper thing with shorts that showed off her tanned legs to perfection. The outfit was black with subtle sparkles in it that caught the light when she turned. It was held on to her body by a single skinny strap that looped behind her neck, allowing the fabric to drape between her breasts in a way that was unbelievably sexy without being the least bit cheap. Her hair was done in loose waves with a single skinny braid running along one side of her face, all the better to showcase her heart-stopping beauty.

“Even more amazing than the picture I’ve had in my head all day,” Alex breathed, taking her hand and pulling her close to him.

Nicola reached up to kiss him lightly, but it quickly turned into a long, heated embrace. Pressed up against her, Alex willed his cock to behave itself. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you,” he said when they finally broke apart.

“Me, neither,” Nicola said, her eyes sparkling. She took both of his hands and gazed at him as if she was about to say something more, but then she broke eye contact to look over his shoulder. “Looks like that storm’s on its way. Shall we go?”

“If we must,” Alex said with mock sulkiness. He held his elbow out to her and swept his other arm out toward the golf cart. “Your horse and carriage awaits.”

Nicola giggled and took his arm, and they stepped out into the windy darkness.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I invited Kiki to come,” Nicola said. “She has to work, but she might drop by later. She’s…a big fan of your brother’s.”

Alex laughed. “Who isn’t?”

Nicola shrugged as she took her place in the cart. “Me.”

Alex turned to face her from the driver’s seat. “Really? Don’t worry, you can tell me. You didn’t dance around your bedroom to ‘All the Girls’? Write ‘Nicola Stone’ all over your three-ring math binder?”

“Maybe that part,” Nicola said, looking at Alex with over-the-top coyness, and he burst out laughing.

“Well, I guess I walked right into that one!” he said as he started up the golf cart.