Most of his time on the ocean was spent at night, far out, when it was a vast, silent, black void that went on forever in all directions. Nick stared and stared, feeling the old sense of kinship.
“Boss?” Matty’s voice was quiet, hesitant.
Nick looked over his shoulder. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
They headed back for Quiet Cove Harbor. Home. His work tonight was not yet done. He had falsified death records to arrange. And Brian’s mother to inform and console.
And, when he could allow himself the luxury, his best friend to mourn.
~ 10 ~
Beverly woke and opened her eyes. Her bedroom was still dark, so without even bothering to look at her clock, she rolled to her other side—easing herself over in a careful move that had become habit since she’d been hurt and was now, ten days after the bombing, more the need of habit than anything else. She’d been feeling a lot better.
And then she yelped and jumped back, pulling her ribs enough to remind her that, while she felt better, she was not entirely healed.
Nick was sitting on the side of her bed, staring at her. He was shirtless—no, he was naked.
In the five days since he’d told her he wanted to be with her, he’d seen her for at least a couple of hours every day, except the day that had just passed, but they had not been intimate at all. Nothing more than kissing. He was a brilliant kisser, controlling but not overwhelming, rough but not brutal. But he’d insisted that he wanted her healed before they did more, and no matter how she’d cajoled, he wouldn’t go even so far as he had that first afternoon. Which was, even though it had been only high-school-level friskiness, way up on her list of hottest things ever. She was going crazy trying to get into this man’s pants.
And here he was, in the middle of the night, sitting naked on the side of her bed.
God, if this was a dream, she did not want to wake up.
“Nick?”
He said nothing. For another few seconds, he stared, and then he leaned over, tugging the covers out of her hand and throwing them away. Then he kissed her, his mouth crashing down and his hand twisting into her hair, clutching and pulling. The kiss was overwhelming and brutal, and it took her breath away.
Ignoring the pull and pinch in her chest, Bev wrapped her arms around him, feeding her hands into his short, dark hair as she tried to keep up with demands of his mouth, tongue, teeth. His hair was wet, and then she realized that he smelled strongly of soap and shampoo. He’d come to her straight from a shower. Fleetingly, she wondered if something had happened during the day. He’d told her that the day was important and that he would be away—had something gone wrong? But then his hand was out of her hair and moving down to grip her thigh, roughly pulling her legs apart, and she stopped wondering. All she could do was marvel.
She wore a nightgown—nothing fancy, just a little pink cotton thing with spaghetti straps and a big sunflower on the front—and as he moved between her legs, he grabbed a handful of the cotton and yanked it up, baring her breasts and all the rest of her. She didn’t wear underwear to bed.
His hand went first to her breast, and sweet Jesus, he felt good. She remembered the night of the bomb, when he’d helped her undress. She’d felt the weight of his gaze on her like a touch. A few days later, in her kitchen, he’d plucked hard at her nipple through her clothes. Those had been intensely erotic experiences. But this, his large, hot hand on her bare skin, his palm, and then his thumb, massaging her sensitive, zinging nipple until it was a nearly painfully hard knot of pleasure—nothing compared to it.
It was so much more than her breast, too. His long, fantastic, fully naked body was on hers, and he was not still. She could feel the muscles of his thighs flexing between hers as he drove his hips against her, keeping time with his mouth and hand. She could feel his hard length digging into her stomach. In all of it, she could feel his need, strongest of all. This strong, intense man, so dangerous, so full of controlled power, was nearly desperate in his need. Of her. Her clear sense of that truth was the most erotic, overwhelming part of this erotic, overwhelming occurrence. He needed her.
Moaning, she flexed her hips hard, driving herself up against him, trying to let him know, in this silence he clearly needed, that she was in, that she was his, that he could have her, take her, take what he needed. When she did, he grunted and tore his mouth from hers.
And then, staring down at her, he shifted, releasing her breast, reaching down and hooking her leg over his arm, dragging it up high, high enough that her thigh, ten days without yoga or much exercise at all, complained a little. Bev didn’t care. It could join the complaints of her ribs; she was ignoring it all in favor of the other, beautiful feelings filling her. He shifted again and pushed into her with impatient force, still staring into her eyes, his tormented expression illuminated only by the pale light reaching them from the kitchen, where she kept the light over the range on at night.