He swore and tried to gentle things. She wouldn’t let him. His fingers bit into the backs of her thighs as she engaged every well-trained muscle in her body and let her weight deepen his thrusts. Welling emotion was threatening to overflow in her. She wanted to absorb him completely and nipped at his mouth, holding the sides of his head as she sucked hard on his bottom lip.
He leaned them into the wall and pumped harder. Faster. Making her body clench around him stronger and tighter. The crescendo approached. She clasped him in greedy frenzy, determined to bring him over the edge with her as she felt the rushing expansion, both of them tipping, falling, flying …
Nic felt her climax arrive in a powerful clench that nearly took him alive. He let go with an explosion of molten heat so intense his skin went icy. The backlash of pleasure left him too weak to do anything but pin her to the wall, his hips finishing in uneven thrusts. She shivered around him, wringing magnificent throbs from him as he emptied himself into her. Her moans of rapture filled his mouth like spun sugar.
Drained, he stayed leaning on her for long moments, muscles shaking in strain.
Unprotected sex, he thought dimly, and a craven fear unfurled in him—something so apprehensive and insecure he drew in a sharp breath.
At his sudden inhalation Rowan quit playing her hand softly at the back of his neck. Her touch held a tenderness he’d only recognized when she’d moved her hand to his shoulder in a silent request for release. Another clench of loss hit him.
His head felt too heavy to lift. He didn’t want to disengage and experience the rush of cool air between them, or watch her nearly crumple because her legs refused to hold her. Chagrin poured through him as he reached to steady her, disturbed by how she trembled and avoided his gaze. “Rowan—”
“If I miss that ferry I’ll never forgive you.” There wasn’t much snap left in her voice. It was more a statement of fact. Weary resignation.
The service. Infuriated anger bled back, but there wasn’t anything he could do. Keeping her from it would only make both of them look bad.
“I’ll arrange the chopper.” He rubbed his face, already dreading the ordeal, his mind split with anger at her for putting him in this position and a more embryonic profound trepidation. She was at the door before he managed to say, “I didn’t use anything.”
“I know. The timing’s wrong. It’s fine.”
No, it wasn’t. Nothing about what had just happened was fine.
So that’s how babies are made, Rowan thought as she showered, dazed by the primordial way she and Nic had clashed like two cells intent on comingling their DNA. The fact that pregnancy was impossible should be providing her with a sense of relief, but it only increased the forlorn feeling of isolation that had been eating her all week.
Was that why she’d provoked him? To force his attention when she had been feeling neglected? She’d been so anxious about the tense distance growing between them. Had she just pulled the oldest trick in the female book? Trying to keep him with sex? Dumb idea. He wouldn’t hate her any less for goading him into losing control.
Filled with conflicted disappointment, she stepped out of the shower, thankful she couldn’t see her wan reflection in the fogged mirror.
Self-pity is not a good look, as her mother would say. Men are drawn to confidence.
Right. She had a performance to get through, she thought with a ripple of misplaced hysterical humor. She reached for her makeup case, determined to hide her pained wistfulness from Nic.
His perfunctory knock a few minutes later shattered her efforts at gathering her composure, but he was only informing her they’d leave as soon as she was ready. “We’ll dress at my apartment. I need a suit,” he said through the door.
“Okay,” she called back.
The impersonal exchange burned from her constricted throat all the way into the pit of her stomach. She’d told him the timing was wrong, but that wasn’t true. The body was wrong. Underweight. Infertile. Not uncommon in her former world of over-training and under-eating. She had never let it bother her, but it suddenly seemed like one more way she fell short, and that was too much to bear when she already felt like he hated her.
Thankfully, Nic didn’t seem to want to talk when she eventually faced him. Locking himself away physically wasn’t possible, so he did it mentally, acting like the sex hadn’t happened. He hustled her into the helicopter on the lawn and waited until they reached Athens to ask about the service. Where and when was it being held? Who was speaking?
She answered numbly, thinking about how anxious she’d been as she made the arrangements, dreading his anger, dreading attending alone. Now it was overshadowed by a chilly tension that had nothing to do with her going against his wishes.