Beautiful Secret

by Christina Lauren

  Keep it simple, I thought. Lay it all out there and let him decide.

  I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be home yet when I got there, but rang his flat just in case. When there was no answer, I stared blankly at the steps for a few breaths before sitting down, prepared to wait, repeating my opener.

  Hi. I’m sure it’s really weird to find me here on your steps and I’m sorry for not calling, but I wanted to see you. I missed you. I love you.

  The sun fell in the sky slowly, reluctantly. Cars drove by, or parked, neighbors climbed out and went into their flats after studying me with curiosity for the most brief and British amount of time. The post-work-hours movement slowed almost abruptly, and then lights went on inside. Dinner smells drifted onto the street. And still, no Niall.

  Every time I began to think that I should leave—maybe he was out for the night with the guys?—I then thought, but what if he walks up a minute after I’ve left?

  I expected him maybe a half hour after I arrived, but I sat for an hour, and then two, three, and finally I’d been sitting waiting for four hours without any sign of him when it occurred to me: Niall could be on a date.

  The thought was so sour, I actually groaned. Resting my arms on my knees and pressing my forehead there, I focused on breathing in. Breathing out.

  I may have stayed like that for another half hour or even three more, I don’t really know. But when I looked up, it was because of some odd awareness, some change in the atmosphere. The sound all around me dipped and then I could hear it: the faint click of men’s dress shoes on pavement. The steady, long strides of Niall Stella.

  The Number of Times I Have Listened for Niall Stella’s Footfalls: infinite.

  I turned my head down the street and saw the long shape of him. What happened inside me had to be described in a medical text somewhere under “lovesick”: my heart evaporated and then returned as some beastly enormous thing that seemed to beat far too fast and with too much force. It pulsed in my ears, rushed blood to warm into my hands and feet until they tingled. I was dizzy, narrowing my eyes to see him through blurred vision, and fairly sure I was going to be sick.

  He was wearing his navy suit—I could see in the distance, under the regularly intervaled light from streetlamps—and looked . . . amazing. Strong and confident and walking with his trademark posture: shoulders back, arms at his sides, head straight.

  Until he was about twenty feet away and saw me sitting on his steps.

  And then he stopped, his chest jerking back slightly, one hand reaching up to touch the back of his neck.

  On shaking legs, I stood, wiping my hands down my skirt. If my outfit was wrinkled earlier from work, I couldn’t imagine how it would look after sitting on a set of concrete steps for over four hours in the humid June air.

  When he took a step forward, the movement was hesitant enough to make me move toward him, too. It nearly hurt to see him I loved him so much. I loved his carved features and miles-long legs. I loved the wide expanse of his chest, his deep brown eyes, and the kissable, smooth lips. I loved his hands that were bigger than my head and his arms that could wrap many times around me. I loved that he looked freshly pressed after ten at night, and that I could set a metronome by the pace of his stride.

  I wanted to run into his arms and tell him I’d had enough time, and I wanted him.

  Hi. I’m sure it’s really weird to find me here on your steps and I’m sorry for not calling, but I wanted to see you. I missed you. I love you.

  He moved slowly, I moved slowly, and then we were only a couple of feet apart and my heart was beating so hard I didn’t know what could possibly be holding my ribs together.

  “Ruby?”

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.” He swallowed, and only now, up close, could I see that he looked a bit thinner, a bit more drawn. There was more hollow in his jaw, more darkness beneath his eyes. Could he see it in my eyes, too? That I missed him so much I’d felt physically sick for the last two months?

  I’m sure it’s really weird to find me here on your steps and I’m sorry for not calling, but I wanted to see you. I missed you. I love you.

  But before I could say my preamble, he asked, “What are you doing here?” and I couldn’t read his tone.

  It was controlled—he was controlled—and I swallowed nervously before answering.

  “I . . . I’m sure it’s really weird to find me here on your steps.”

  What was the rest of it?

  He glanced behind me, asking, “How long have you been here?”

  “I’m sorry for not calling,” I blurted, robotically.

  Ignoring this, he took a step closer, asking again, this time more gently, “How long have you been here, Ruby?”

  Shrugging, I answered, “A while.”

  “Since you got off work at Anderson?”

  He knows where I work. He knows what time I leave.

  I blinked back up to his face, but it was a mistake. He was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen, and I knew his face. His was the face I saw when I closed my eyes, when I needed to feel comfort or thrill, grounding or lust. Niall Stella’s face felt like home to me.

  “Yes, since I got off work,” I admitted.

  “That’s . . . hours,” he started, shaking his head. “I didn’t know . . . I mean, I don’t come home very early anymore. There’s no . . .”

  Before he could ask me to leave, or tell me why it was a bad idea for me to be here, or any other one of the hundreds of rejections, I started to speak. “Look, I . . .” I glanced to the side, completely forgetting what it was I was going to say. Something about wanting to see him? “See, the thing is,” I started, looking back up at him before blurting, “I just really, really love you.”

  One minute he was two feet from me and the next he was against me and I was against the side of his building, lifted from the ground with his arms around my waist. I gasped, staring up at him. Niall was looking down at me with a dark intensity that made my chest squeeze painfully.

  “Say it again.”

  “I love you,” I whispered, my throat growing nearly too tight to speak. “I missed you.”

  His face fell as he searched my eyes one more time and then he bent, pressing his face to my neck. His mouth . . . oh, God, with the deepest groan my favorite mouth in the world was on my neck and my jaw and I couldn’t catch my breath, couldn’t stop the tight lump from rising higher in my throat.

  “Niall . . .”

  He spoke into my skin, “Darling, say it again. I’m not sure I can believe this is real.”

  Through a sob, I managed, “I love you.”

  In a pulse of panic, I didn’t know if this was actually happening, either, or I had fallen asleep on his stairs and was having the world’s best dream. But then his lips were moving again: on my jaw, my cheek, and then pressing to mine—the best kind of soft, the best kind of hard—and I choked out another cry as I felt his tongue slide inside and his sounds vibrated against me as he groaned into his kisses.

  With a desperate sort of babble, he gave me his broken thoughts built of my name, and that he missed me so bloody much, that things had been hell, that he thought he’d never see me again. He cupped my face and his kisses alternated between tiny and hard, soft and sucking, and then his thumbs were sweeping at my face and I knew I was a sobbing mess, but I honestly couldn’t find it in me to care.

  “You’re coming inside,” he growled, moving his mouth from mine and over to my ear. “You’re staying with me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Tonight. And every night after.”

  I nodded, smiling as I pressed my face to his neck. “Well. Until I move to Oxford.”

  Pulling back, he let his eyes move over my face. “Yeah? You got your letter from Maggie, then?”

  “I got it last week. I wanted to call you.”

  He smiled a little, seeming to be unable to stop looking at me, even to blink. “You should have.”

  “I figured I wanted to see you more, so I
did that instead.”

  With a little nod, he looked down, intertwining our fingers. “It’s late. You’ve been sitting here for a long time. Are you hungry?”

  “Not really,” I admitted. “I just want to . . .”

  “Get into my bed?” His voice was a gentle growl.

  I whispered, “Yeah. Unless you need to eat.”

  “No. No chance I’m stopping to eat first.”

  It was really that simple, and there wasn’t even a trace of hesitation. I knew I needed to feel him. I needed to be covered in him.

  He turned and led me back to his steps and I followed him inside, up the next flight, and to his front door. He pulled me in front of him, pressing my back to the door as he bent to kiss my jaw. “We’ll talk later, yeah?”

  “Okay.”

  His teeth scraped at my neck. “Good, because I know we need to talk. But right now I want to put my mouth on you and sing ‘God Save the Queen.’ ”

  Finally, a laugh burst from my throat. Oh, the relief of this. I nearly started crying again. “I think you could lose your citizenship for that.”

  “It would be worth it, though. Kissing you between your legs is like kissing your mouth but softer somehow.”

  I was tingling from my mouth to my toes. How was it so easy to get back to this place? “Bonus: I orgasm when you kiss me there.”

  Niall pulled back and gave me a look of mock scandal. “You mean to tell me you don’t orgasm from my kisses to your mouth?”

  “It’s been a little while. Maybe you should try?”

  He growled with a predatory smile and here—here—was my playful, sexy man. The version of him only I would get. The world would get his calm, contained exterior. I would get the one here, who reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys, before reaching behind me as he simultaneously bent to kiss me. His hand fumbled with the lock and we laughed against each other’s mouth, teeth knocking, sloppy kissing.

  I heard the lock give and his groan of relief as he nibbled at my bottom lip.

  “Don’t fucking leave me again,” he said, out of breath as his hand hovered on the doorknob. “It was bloody miserable, Ruby.”

  “I didn’t leave you.” I pulled back to meet his eyes. “You did. So if we’re . . .” I shook my head. “Don’t ever go back to Portia.”

  I had to say it. Even if it was absurd, it hadn’t even been a fear, until it was.

  “I never . . .” He closed his eyes, pained. “Please believe me when I say I am devoted. It was a terrible misstep.”

  I gripped his tie and pulled him back down to me, brushing my lips over his. “Okay then.”

  His arm slid around my waist, holding me to him so I wouldn’t fall into his apartment when he opened the door.

  I didn’t fall, but I was on my back nearly immediately once he got it open, Niall over me as he pushed my skirt up my hips, and before I could remind him that he was meant to be kissing my mouth, his fingers were impatiently sliding my underwear to the side so he could press his open mouth to my clit.

  Oh, the wet feel of him, the vibration of the words he said over and over I couldn’t quite make out. The sucking soft kisses and heat of his breath on me. Another jolt of disbelief ran through me and I had to reach down, and dig a hand into his hair to anchor me to this room and this floor and this thing that he was doing with his tongue and lips and—holy fuck—even his teeth.

  The door to his apartment wasn’t even closed, and I realized it only when he kicked at it, groaning loudly into my skin. His eyes were closed, though, fingers digging into my hips as he sucked at me and spoke into my skin, and I had to prop myself up on my elbows to watch. It would have been a crime not to. The only thing better than what he was doing was watching him do it, as if each flick of his tongue and quiet sound of relief unknotted something profound in him. I wanted to tell him, this, right now, is how I know you’re mine. You’re not thinking about anything but this. I’m not even sure you’re doing this for my pleasure.

  But I couldn’t manage a single word let alone a coherent string of them; all of my sounds were gasps or the stilted words of begging for more and like that, and yes, that, and there, and

  oh

  shit

  I’m

  coming

  His groan in reply shook me, and the way he murmured, “I dreamt of the taste,” made me lose any semblance of control. I fell back, arms above my head, pressing my hips into him, rocking and circling until I went stiff and coiled, my orgasm pulling every muscle together until it consumed me, spreading out from where he kissed me and everywhere; to the tingling tips of my fingers, my flushed face, my curling toes.

  I clawed at the back of the suit jacket he hadn’t even bothered to take off, and tried to find the collar to pull him up and over me. I needed him naked and inside. I needed his weight on top, and the feel of his narrow hips between my thighs.

  He sat up, not even bothering to wipe his face as he shrugged out of his jacket, loosened his tie, and removed it, followed by his shirt. From where I lay on the floor, I could see the rise and fall of my chest but it was all in my peripheral vision. I wouldn’t be able to tear my eyes from his face until someone physically removed me from this apartment and this man.

  I was spent. My skin was humming, muscles loose, brain a giant, blissful, thought-free zone. Niall reached to pull my underwear down my hips, and then my skirt, taking the time to undress me, kissing every bit of skin he revealed. I expected him to climb over me, be inside me immediately—I could feel how hard he was when he kissed my neck and pressed into my thigh. But he surprised me, curling one arm beneath my knees and the other around my shoulders so he could lift and carry me down the narrow hall.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “I don’t relish making love to you on the floor again.”

  Sucking at his neck, I said, “Is that what we’re going to do?”

  He nodded. “All night, and a good portion of tomorrow.”

  I hadn’t really taken the time to examine his bedroom before, having woken up in the room and fleeing almost immediately. The windows were wide and tall, walls white and stark but for a few framed photographs of Ansel Adams prints. Signed. I felt my eyes go wide before looking around at the rest. His bed was enormous, neatly made with dark sheets and a dark blanket. A small bathroom came off at the far end of the room, and a single light was illuminated on a table near the bed. It was a masculine room, not overly decorated.

  Niall came up behind me, his hands smoothing from my shoulders down to my naked hips before he pressed his bare chest against my naked back. “Get on the bed.” His quiet command was softened by the kiss he pressed to my neck.

  I climbed on the bed and watched him follow me in a predatory crawl, and he settled again between my thighs.

  “Come kiss me,” I quietly urged.

  “Soon.”

  He bent, sliding his tongue between my legs again. It was so different than before, his kisses were slow and gentle, more tender and expressive than directed.

  “Either you really like doing this or you’re feeling deeply apologetic.”

  “It feels a little wicked, still,” he admitted, kissing the inside of my thigh. “Like it’s naughty to stare at your tits, very naughty to watch you masturbate, exceedingly naughty to put my fingers inside you, but to actually put my tongue just here?” He licked me, humming, “This sweet place only I can see? Well, that feels sublimely naughty.”

  “I think you mean possessive.”

  “That as well. I admit I like the idea that this body belongs to me.”

  “Technically it belongs to me.”

  “Whatever you say, my love.”

  “Careful,” I teased. “You don’t want to veer into the L-word territory.” Could he feel just then how much I needed him to say it?

  “Don’t I?” he asked, looking up the length of my body at me. “Did you not hear me say that I love you every time I spoke into your skin just now?”

  I smile
d, opening my mouth to crack a joke before I realized he wasn’t teasing. And he had. He’d whispered I love you over and over on the floor, with reverence.

  “Oh.”

  His smile was unreal: teasing and mischievous. “Did you need it spoken directly into your ear?”

  I bit my lip, shrugging down at him. “I like where your mouth is right now, but I have to admit I wouldn’t exactly mind hearing you say that a little closer . . .”

  He kissed up my body, his lips wet from me, hands squeezing, teeth grazing. Every single touch echoed the words.

  He was so long, enormous above, blocking out everything else and the safety I felt beneath Niall was unlike anything. He’d seen me at my craziest and my most grounded—both states had been caused by my feelings for him. In the months I loved him from afar and the four short weeks I loved him up close, he’d become more than lover; he was my new best friend.

  “I always felt like the only person in my life who didn’t know his own mind from the moment he was born. My siblings—they came out knowing exactly who they were. Not me. But I do with you. I want to trust that. Need to, rather. So yes, it only took a month after we officially met in the elevator”—he smiled down at me—“and I ruined it stupidly and you ran away from me perhaps even more stupidly . . . but here we are. And I love you.”

  I felt goose bumps spread along my arms.

  “I love you,” he repeated in a whisper and kissed my ear lobe. “I adore you.”

  I unfastened his belt, and he helped me push his pants down his hips far enough for him to kick them off the end of the bed. I didn’t want to wait anymore; I had this flushed aching need to be with him, filled of him. Wherever it touched mine, his skin was warm and smooth, the soft hair on his legs brushed against my thighs, his chest pressed against my breasts as he climbed over me.

  “You feel so good,” I whispered.

  “I know. This . . .” He shook his head. “I feel like I didn’t pay enough attention the first time we were intimate like this,” he admitted, kissing me. “I was too focused on not freaking out. I want to feel every second.”

  I reached between us, stroking him and watching his face. His mouth opened, eyes grew heavy.