by JC Harroway
But it’s his fault. I was overcome by the arousal I always feel in his presence. I roll my shoulders back and jut out my chin. ‘They’re just kissing,’ I whisper. ‘In public, I might add.’
I should have known he’d come searching for me. How long has he been there, silently watching with his brooding stare? Fear trickles through my blood. Just like Dave who, as it transpired, had no integrity or sense of decency, Nick could expose how he caught me watching another couple if he wanted. Sell a sordid story to the gossip mongers. Offer me up to social media trolls who think they know me because my body is used to sell clothes.
I’m aware that I tend to overreact when it comes to keeping my private life out of the tabloids. But growing up, everything my sister and I did reflected on our politician father, although my sister’s inconspicuous adult life as a mother and librarian gives her layers of protective anonymity.
And after the Dave scandal, the last thing I want is for my parents to learn along with the rest of the world that their daughter has a wild side and enjoys watching.
But Nick is nothing like my ex. Instinct tells me he’d never sell me out.
I turn to face him, keeping my voice hushed. ‘I’m pretty sure the crime of voyeurism involves nakedness and sexual acts.’ Having his eyes on me laces my blood with the fizz of excitement.
Perhaps subconsciously I knew he’d find me. Perhaps I wanted to make something happen beyond our designated roles of client and protector. Perhaps he’ll see my sexy side. See that I’m more than a cardboard cut-out plastered on a billboard. Of course, he doesn’t know that I was fantasising about him instead of watching the kissing, but maybe now he’ll be forced to see me as more than the public Brooke Madden.
He’s looking at me as if I’m a fascinating stranger. Watching me with that intense look, so familiar but also cloaked in newness. Is Nick enthralled by my little act of rebellious voyeurism?
My body sags with relief. At last something more from him than detachment and indifference. It makes me want to continue where I left off when he interrupted. Perform just for him so that I can hold onto that elusive thread of his rapt and penetrating attention. Tie myself up in it until he’s forced to admit he feels the same pull. Until he’s forced to act on the desire he hides so well behind those dark, unreadable stares.
‘How long have you been there?’ I ask, my throat so tight with longing that talking is painful. Should I tell him that it was him I saw behind my closed eyes? His kiss that I imagined? His touch that I craved?
‘Long enough,’ he replies, tightness in his square jaw.
I appraise his lazy slouch against the wall, searching for that rigid indifference he wears as well as those dark jeans that hug his thick thighs and toned backside. But it’s not there. He’s trying to look unaffected, but his broad chest moves with rapid, shallow breaths. He’s excited. Intrigued.
Finally...
‘Don’t you think that this behaviour is reckless for someone in your position?’ he asks. ‘Even for someone who likes to push the boundaries as you do, it’s surely a step too far? For the second time today I’ve crept up on you. I could be anyone walking in here to see you turned on, snooping. I saw you touch yourself.’
Despite his cautionary reprimand, his voice is thick, heat banked in his dark eyes. And he’s still across the corridor. Watching me.
This is my chance to bring the sexual undercurrents between us to the surface. ‘I only watched them for a few seconds—I had my eyes closed when you interrupted. I was thinking about...something else. But I’m not ashamed of my desires. And no one saw me... Except you.’
‘Except me,’ he iterates, calm and controlled, where I feel like I’m about to combust because, despite his lecture, this tense moment is the most intimate one we’ve shared.
Why is that? Why is a man of the world, as Nick most certainly is, fighting so fiercely? It’s way beyond professional ethics. The look he gave me at the pool this afternoon burned my bikini to ash––the same look he’s shooting me now. I swallow hard and press my thighs together to ease the ferocious throb of arousal.
‘What were you thinking about?’ he probes, voicing the curiosity to which he’s previously seemed immune.
My heart kicks at my ribs in a rush. His personal question frees me to be completely honest. To take that leap I promised myself when I made that stupid pact with my friends.
‘You.’ My confession echoes across the space between us.
He makes no move or reaction. But his stare probes mine, each second slamming through me with deafening force. This is my opportunity to test his resolve. To finally lay my desires out there so he can no longer pretend he’s ignorant of my interest.
‘Not the two women outside?’ he asks.
I shake my head. ‘I’m bisexual, and they’re beautiful. I couldn’t help but watch them for a few seconds.’ I shrug.
Spoken aloud, my admission that I felt fascinated by the couple’s abandon jolts through me, leaving me exposed and vulnerable. But I feel safe with Nick. I want to allow him into my private world and be myself.
I drag in a bolstering breath. For me this conversation is cathartic. Heady. Liberating. And, just as I’m revealing the real me, I see the real Nick. See a man hiding from his own demons. And I know all about that defence mechanism.
‘I trust you to be discreet about this,’ I say. ‘And, in answer to your earlier question, no, it didn’t feel reckless. It felt freeing.’
I turn my back on him. The women have progressed from kissing to heavy petting. Time to get out of here and leave them to their privacy.
‘We should go,’ I whisper, because a sixth sense alerts me that he’s moved closer. I feel him in the disturbed currents of air raising the hairs on my arms.
‘Why would you open yourself up to a virtual stranger if discretion is so important to you?’ he asks at my back.
I close my eyes and search the private part of myself, the one tired of hiding the real me behind my public image. Tired of being wary and not knowing who I can trust.
‘Because I sense you don’t care,’ I reply. ‘Because always protecting my private life is exhausting. Because I’m safe with you...aren’t I?’
The last is a whisper. My breath shudders out, tainted with fear. What if I’m wrong? What if I’ve made another colossal error of judgement––trusted someone unworthy the way I mistakenly trusted Dave?
Nick now has the power to expose me to public criticism and opinion.
My mother’s wisdom rings in my ears. Don’t give them any ammunition to fire at you, Brookie. Be the good girl. Be who they want you to be.
‘Yes, you’re safe,’ Nick says on a reluctant sigh, as if he doesn’t want my confidence.
Anticipation hijacks my pulse. Because he’s still here. Still skirting the edge of my personal space as if he’s scared to step over the line but can’t walk away. Can he feel, as I do, how this moment, this conversation, bonds us beyond our professional working relationship? Almost as if we’re becoming friends. But there’s too much heat and spark between us for us ever to be friends.
Yet, where I welcome a closer connection with this complex man who makes me feel that I can be myself, Nick, with his distance and denial, probably feels the opposite. Trapped, maybe. I’ve just confessed I’ve had sexual thoughts about him, after all, and he’s said nothing.
‘I apologise if my confessions have overstepped our professional boundaries.’ I feel his warm breath on the back of my neck. Sense his solid and imposing presence closer than ever before. The hairs at my hairline prickle to attention and my stomach performs cartwheels.
‘Tell me,’ he whispers. ‘Do you want to be one of those women?’ His masculine, all-Nick scent and intoxicating question spin my head. I struggle to breathe through this sexually charged moment that shunts us firmly into new territory.
I shake my head, gl
ance at him over my shoulder, my pulse throbbing between my legs. ‘No. I want to be right here.’
We’ve never had such an intimate conversation. I’ve never been this close to him, so close I could lean back into his touch. It’s overwhelming, as if we’re strapped into the same parachute about to dive from a plane.
His stare bores into mine and I forget the women outside. Forget what we’re talking about. All but forget my own name.
‘Do you want to leave? Go back to the hotel?’ His heat radiates along my back, the air between his body and mine magnetically charged. Why does it feel as if he’s asking something more than his bland question? I don’t want to move a muscle because I don’t want to break this spell. I want him to touch me with his big, strong, capable hands. I want him to spin me round and kiss me. Back me up into the room and against the tables stacked in the corner and not be able to stop himself from losing control and fucking me right here, the way those uninhibited women are helpless to resist their attraction.
Because I’m helpless to resist the urges I have for Nick. I’m done doubting and second-guessing.
‘No. I want to kiss you.’ I bite down on my lip as the shock of what I’ve said registers. Adrenaline buzzes through me until I want to run from the words I’ve just confessed to a man in my employment. But then follows a flood of relief in my veins. The truth is out at last.
Silence beats in time with a countdown roaring through my head. I hover, desperate to know what the expressionless mask on his face means, to know if he’s ready to acknowledge our relentless chemistry. Instead I close my eyes once more, suspended in the delicious possibility of this moment of honesty. If this one charged encounter is all we ever share, I’ll take it.
Then my heart stops altogether. Nick’s warm fingers encircle my right wrist. A gasp escapes my throat and I immediately want to re-absorb the tell-tale sound. It’s the first time he’s touched me beyond professional handshakes. Just as with the gasp, I’m helpless in the face of the tendrils of delight that zap through my body, which sways drunkenly at the euphoric contact. I want to rest back against his broad chest and firm muscles.
But I don’t want this momentous moment to end. I sense that Nick wants to keep hold of his control, because he’s always controlled. Why would this be any different? But, oh, how I’d love to see inside his head...
I try to relax under his touch but his loose grip feels like a welcome shackle—alien but loaded with possibility.
Nick firmly directs my pliant and willing hand back between my own legs. I gasp at the contact of my own fingers on my heated, swollen flesh through my jeans.
‘Open your eyes, Lady Madden’ His breath tickles my neck, a strand of his hair brushing my cheek. ‘You’re missing the good bit.’
I obey his thrilling command and blink my vision into focus. The women are still there, only now the blonde’s hand is under the brunette’s skirt. Both women look our way. I hold my breath, shock and shame paralysing me. Nick’s grip intensifies on my wrist. But then they’re kissing again, lost in themselves, seemingly uncaring of our presence.
My heart re-starts and I collapse against the wall of Nick at my back. I’d fall without his solid sureness guiding me to be this reckless. To trust him and my own instincts. To snatch this illicit moment.
‘How long have they known we’re here?’ I ask.
I feel his shrug. ‘They don’t seem to care that we’re watching. Maybe they even want us to watch.’ His seductive words are whispered against my neck, his breath hot. I want his lips there, tasting my skin, but given the way I feel—like a wire strung taut to snapping point—I’m not sure I’d survive the fulfilment of all my Nick fantasies.
I bite my lip to hold in a moan at his participation in this decidedly erotic sexual encounter. I twist my head so I can see his face.
‘Rub yourself,’ he instructs, looking down at me with all the lust I wanted to see ablaze in his dark eyes. Like his puppet, I comply. ‘That’s it,’ he says, his free hand coming round to pop the button on my jeans and slide down the zip. I sway, my head light with longing for his touch.
I’ve never done anything like this before, but now I’m wondering if Nick has.
Silently, he urges my own hand inside my underwear. It’s hotter than if he were touching me directly, although that greedy part of me still craves his abandonment and loss of restraint. A slither of awareness, disappointment, splits the heady cloud of arousal in which I’m suspended. Even now, when we share this unexpected and erotic interlude, he’s withdrawn and controlled.
But he can’t hide the heat his body generates or the rapid thud of his heart against my back. It’s not indifference, but something else that keeps him in check. And, now I sense his passion, feel it coiled in him like leashed power, I intend to learn all there is to know about Nick Rivers.
But for now I’m too weak with need to stop. Too desperate to take any scrap of himself he’s willing to give. I glide my fingers between my legs, my head spinning with triumph when Nick continues to hold my wrist, still part of this but also maintaining a degree of that distance and detachment he’s perfected.
My backside is nestled against his steely thighs and the thick rod of his erection prods the small of my back. I’m so turned on that I’m slick and swollen.
‘Watch them,’ he says, his voice rough. I glance sideways. Nick’s stare follows the movements of my hand inside my underwear, his breath ragged, his body pressed to mine. He’s with me, turned on, trapped in this carnal moment, the most liberating and honest of my life.
This isn’t about the couple outside; it’s about us.
I nod, although I’m more aroused by him watching me, by the knowledge that, despite his previous denial and fight, we’re in this together.
My arousal spikes, hot and insistent. My orgasm builds even before I’ve had a chance to find any sort of rhythm.
‘Don’t stop,’ he says, his command soft but with the power of a bellow, because I’m lost, alive, soaring. Bound to his whim by my own freeing abandon, the craving for him that I’ve spent months ignoring and the sinful little secret we’re sharing.
The brunette comes seconds before me, but I’m too engrossed in Nick and my own pleasure to spare more than a cursory glance at the women. He surrounds me with his powerful, solid aura, his gruff, commanding voice and rough breaths and his low grunt of triumphant encouragement as I stifle my own climax-induced cries against the back of my hand.
It’s so hot. I’m melting in an inferno. Stunned. Speechless.
But it’s over as abruptly as it began. The last spasm barely dissipates before Nick wordlessly removes his hand from my wrist. He steadies me, his hands on my hips, and then steps away.
My body sways, searching the heat of his once more, but I’m reeling alone.
‘What’s the matter?’ I spin on him, confusion a hot ball in my chest. Every muscle in my body has been stripped of the lovely languid sensation of seconds ago. I convulse, shivering. ‘Are we done?’
I try to pull myself back together after such an abrupt withdrawal, but rejection is ice in my veins.
‘I’ll wait for you in the car,’ he says, his gruff voice clawing its way back to professional. Distant. And full of denial.
CHAPTER FOUR
Nick
THE IMPRINT OF her sublime body, weakened and uninhibited, is a brand on my skin. My dick hates me for the venomous, unfulfilled ache. The atmosphere in the car is tense with the unspoken. I force my stare to the road and away from Brooke beside me in the passenger seat. I can’t bear to see her confusion. Her hurt. Or the questions I’m sure fill her unguarded eyes. That doesn’t mean I don’t feel those questions like blows to the side of my head.
And I deserve every one.
I grip the steering wheel as I manoeuvre the narrow cobbled streets behind the Palazzo Giorno. A litany of warnings pounds through my head, fi
rst and foremost my single professional rule: no fucking the clients.
What the hell possessed me to touch her? I curse my weakness. My indulgence.
But I couldn’t stop. She looked so ethereal and...lonely standing there in that darkened room, her desire to watch so honest. Something about her earlier confession of how she can’t date and the hesitant way she hid in the shadows drew me into the scene. She ceased being an untouchable and remote caricature and became a hot-blooded woman.
Delicious and dangerous.
When she embraced a spot of voyeurism, it forced to the front of my mind everything I’ve tried to ignore since my first assignment for her. The way she owned her pleasure... Her honest vulnerability... Her bravery in confronting this rampant chemistry, there since our very first meeting. It shifted something inside me, rattled one of my self-imposed shackles.
Need roared through me, shattering the zen-like calm I’ve spent years perfecting and which I wear as armour against my former life. Years spent locking down the reckless part of me that allowed emotion, raging hormones and some twisted sense of maleness make my decisions.
In one moment of perfect candour, with one privileged glimpse of her inner desires—a part of her no one else gets to see—Brooke managed to shake the rock-solid foundations of everything I thought I knew about her. Superficial, fabricated things I used to restrain my feral attraction to her. But now, with the scent of her arousal still lingering in my nostrils, my previously tried and tested convictions snap. The snarling beast in me rips at the chains that I’ve worn for so long, I’ve grown accustomed to their weight. But I’ll never again allow emotion to dictate my actions like I did seventeen years ago. The fallout is too damaging. The consequences too painful. Lust is just another emotion to be tamed and managed, and I’ve had years of practice.
And I never asked for Brooke’s trust. She just handed it to me. The last time I allowed someone close enough to earn their trust, I destroyed it. Destroyed her. Destroyed myself. I clench my jaw in frustration, ignoring the physical discomfort in my groin while I patch my control back together. Just because I participated back there, nothing’s changed.