He doesn’t stop. Hammering into me, he draws back to watch my face as my orgasm rips through me. I shudder and break on a scream I can’t contain. I want to look away from him, embarrassed by the ferocity of my response, but when I try to lower my gaze, Nick’s fingers are at my chin, refusing to let me hide.
He drives into me again and again and again. His strokes are coming harder, ramming deeper, prolonging my release while he chases his own. I see the tension grip him now. His muscles turn to granite under my fingertips as I cling to him. Inside me, his cock feels even more immense, pulsing, and hot as fire.
Our gazes lock and hold even as his big body arcs beneath me with one final, bone-jarring thrust. I feel his cock jolt as he comes. I see the ferocity on his face as he buries himself deep and his climax explodes out of him.
And still, he keeps pounding. Branding me with the heat of him, making every cell in my body submit to his will, to the power his body has over mine.
“Yes,” I gasp, as if answering the command. “Nick, yes . . .”
I clutch his shoulders as he sends me toward another peak. When I tumble over the edge a moment later, the tears I’ve been holding back spill over with me. I tell myself the reaction is merely physical. I tell myself that the hot constriction in my chest is nothing more than my body’s response to desire and pleasure I never dreamed I’d know.
And as I cling to Nick in the back of his limousine, cocooned from the city and the rest of reality waiting outside, I tell myself the biggest lie of all . . . that I’m not falling for this man who will never be mine.
Chapter 24
If I’d been harboring any delusions about Kimmie not throwing me under the bus at work, they evaporate no sooner than I walk in the door for my shift the next afternoon. Joel is standing in back of the restaurant signing for a delivery when I walk past the hostess stand at the front of the house. His dark head lifts and swivels in my direction. Seeing him with an unpleasant expression on his face is nothing out of the ordinary, but today, his scowl is thunderous.
Tasha zooms out from where she’s folding silverware setups to intercept me, her eyes wide with warning. He’s pissed, she mouths to me.
Yeah. As if I can’t see that for myself.
“Hey, Avery!” she calls out with exaggerated volume. “Are you feeling any better today?”
“Don’t bother,” I tell her, as she walks with me back to the coat room.
I quickly fill her in on my evening out with Nick and my unexpected, ultimately unpleasant run-in with Kimmie at the hotel.
“That back-stabbing little bitch. I guess that explains why she’s walking around like the cat who ate the canary today.” Scowling, Tasha folds her arms over her chest. “I hope you make her choke on the feathers.”
I give her a wry look in acknowledgment. “I honestly don’t give a shit about Kimmie. And I don’t regret a single second of yesterday.” I slant Tasha a grin. “Or last night.”
She exhales a dramatic sigh. “Okay, go ahead and tell me how awesome it was parading around in front of the Who’s Who of Manhattan on Dominic Baine’s arm.”
I let go of a small laugh. “Well, I wouldn’t call it parading, but, yeah, being with him is always pretty awesome.”
I shrug my purse off my shoulder and sit on the chair to switch out of my flats into my work heels. The same chair where Nick made me come with just the power of his words. Heat creeps into my cheeks and I slowly shake my head.
“I like him, Tasha. It’s scary how much.”
“You like him, he obviously likes you. You’re both unattached, gorgeous, and sickeningly hot for each other. Oh—and his personal net worth could support the entire population of a small country. Remind me how any of this is scary?”
Maybe it wouldn’t be for someone else. Anyone else. But I have a hundred reasons to be afraid of what I’m feeling for Nick, each more terrifying than the next. If I were to begin listing them for Tasha now, I wouldn’t even know where to start.
I do, however, know where they all end. My truth. My lies. And the dark place where I’ve buried all of my ugliest, most damning secrets.
“When are you going to tell him?”
My head snaps up at Tasha’s question. For a moment, I’m startled. Did I speak my fears out loud?
“Sooner or later, he’s going to find out you work here, Avery. If he’s got a problem with that, then he damn well doesn’t deserve you.”
I nod because I know she’s right. I should tell him. I dodged a bullet last night with Kimmie, but just because she didn’t have the opportunity to out me to Nick in public doesn’t mean I should try to prolong my lie.