by Lora Leigh
Mikayla stared back at Nik, feeling as though she were going to be sick. Her chest felt tight, her heart straining at the agony resonating through her.
Had anything ever hurt this bad?
No, it hadn’t. It hadn’t even hurt this bad when her uncle had asked her the same question.
It didn’t matter that it was a logical question to ask.
“Strange.” Her voice sounded strangled. “You never asked me about what happened that night. You never even asked me about the possibility that I could have mistaken someone else for Maddix, did you, Nik?”
If he had asked, she could have told him why she was so certain. She could have told him how the sunlight pierced past the shadows, blazed across Maddix’s distinctive face for those few, unforgettable moments.
But Nik hadn’t asked her.
“There was no reason to ask, Mikayla,” he stated; his expression seemed to be filled with pity. “I talked to Maddix, his family, his alibis, and his neighbors. He was at home, exactly as he said he was.”
Mikayla nodded again. Whatever it took to get him out of her house, out of her life. She just wanted to hide and lick the wounds she could feel tearing through her heart.
She had known Nik Steele was a very bad idea. She should have followed her instincts. This would teach her to do exactly that.
She couldn’t believe her heart had led her astray this way. That she had been poised so close to falling for a man who had been essentially lying to her all along.
At least he’d had the decency not to actually seduce her, she told herself. That final humiliation hadn’t been delivered.
“Mikayla, you’re going to have to accept that Maddix didn’t kill Eddie Foreman,” Nik told her, his voice harsh. The longer he stood there, the more forbidding his expression became.
“Hey, I’m agreeing with you.” She was fighting her tears second by second. God help her, if she didn’t get him out of her house then she was going to break down and humiliate herself by losing control of her tears. “You can leave now, Nik. You’ve explained everything. Why, Maddix should have called you earlier to fix this little problem of his.”
She hated Nik. She wanted to hate him. She wanted to hate everything about him rather than to hurt this way. To feel those sharp talons of agony raking across her soul at the subtle lies he had practiced.
His jaw flexed, the muscles working furiously as he obviously held back whatever he wanted to say instead.
“Why don’t you just leave?” she suggested as she walked to the door and jerked it open. “Go, Nik. Pack. Go back where you came from. I didn’t need you before you arrived here and I don’t need you now.”
She didn’t need anyone else to remind her that Maddix Nelson had gotten away with murder. It was shoved in her face daily. It was spray painted on her shop window; it was left in messages on her answering machine at home every night.
The injustice of it boiled inside her like acid. Eddie Foreman might not have been a nice man, but he hadn’t deserved to die like that. And she wasn’t strong enough to bring his killer to justice.
The knowledge that there was nothing she could do about it ate at her mind like acid.
Nik stared at the door, then back to Mikayla.
He wanted to do as she ordered. God knew it was the wisest course of action. He should walk right out that door and be finished with this. It was obvious it was over.
Instead, the need to touch her was rising within him by the second. It would be his last chance to touch her, to taste her. The last chance to experience that incredible pleasure, that almost peace he found in her touch.
He moved for the door as though to follow the order. His gaze remained locked on hers, every cell of his body honed in on the warmth of her.
As he stopped in front of her, his hand gripped the edge of the door, pulled it from her grip, and closed it gently while she watched in shock.
“What now?” she whispered, the anger breaking through for a moment. “Do you still want an answer to that question you asked earlier? A little or a lot?” Her lips tightened, that spark of pain darkening her eyes further. “Guess what, Nik? How about none? Nothing. There’s nothing more that I want from you. No, just leave, so I can forget you ever existed.”
“Why do you think I’m leaving?” His voice was a harsh growl that surprised both of them.
In that tone, he heard what he watched her sense. A hunger such as he had never known in his life. A need that burned in his gut, in his balls, that tightened and engorged his dick to painful hardness.
The need to fuck her was ripping him apart. The need to possess her, to do the impossible, to protect her, tore through him with a power so strong that for a second it tore past the control he had promised himself he would hold on to.
Before he could stop himself, he pulled her to him. Before she could protest, he lifted her against him, covered her lips with his, and gave into a need so fierce, so overriding, that it was more animalistic than logical.
And Mikayla couldn’t resist.
As his lips slanted over hers, she couldn’t hold back the need to part her own, to taste him, to feel him, just one more time.
This one last time.
The hold she’d exerted on her tears slipped and the moisture fell from her eyes. The pain brewing inside her found release as the hunger she couldn’t control tore past the barriers she had fought to place between her and this man she couldn’t hold herself back from.
Pleasure raced across her nerve endings, raked through her system. Velvet-lined talons locked into her womb, sending sensation clenching into her sex, swelling her clit tighter and leaving her helpless in his embrace.
He was the bad boy. The heartbreaker. She had sensed it all along, known she couldn’t give in to that temptation, no matter how she wanted to. Ached to.
Her lips parted further, her tongue licking against his as a moan broke free and her hands gripped his shoulders desperately.
He tasted wild and dangerous. His kiss was dark and earthy, filled with dominance and lush ecstasy.
Arching to him, she could only moan as she felt his fingers jerking the hem of her blouse from her skirt. His big hand stroked beneath it, curving around her hips, lifting her against him as his other hand curved around the rounded flesh of her breast.
His thumb stroked her nipple as his fingers delved beneath the edge of her bra and lifted her flesh free. He was moving as he stroked her past reason. Moving her. Before she could process the information, process where she was, she found herself stretched out on the rich material of the microfiber upholstery of the couch, Nik moving over her.
Her blouse was unbuttoned, spread apart. The front clasp of her bra was loosened and his lips were traveling over one breast, licking, kissing, as she stared down at him in shock. She watched in bemusement as his lips parted, covered the tight, hard peak of her breast, and sucked it into the blistering heat of his mouth.
His tongue stroked against the tight bundle of nerve endings, sending fingers of electric pleasure to clench between her thighs as she felt her juices flowing from her inner sex. Her vagina clenched, burned, felt empty as Nik’s hard thigh pressed against the sensitive mound firmly.
She was drowning in sensation. The pleasure swamped her, stilled any protests she could have even thought to have, and wiped away betrayal, hurt, anger, filling her instead with heat and hunger.
She found herself rocking against his thigh as her hands clenched in his hair to hold him to her breast. Her thighs tightened on him, stroking her clit against the denim of his jeans and the silk of her panties as ecstasy threatened to drive her wild.
She couldn’t bear it. The need was ripping through her, rising, pulling her down into an abyss of pure sensation too intense to deny.
She wanted more. She wanted all of it. The hard wedge of his erection free, hot and hard, pressing into her, taking her. She wanted to feel the pleasure/pain of that first possession, wanted to feel the agony of that first orgasm.
“Oh, God. Nik, please …” She twisted against him as his lips moved to the valley between her breasts, his tongue licking, as his hand flattened on her stomach, his fingers stroking against her flesh.
“Mikayla.” The growl of his voice weakened her further, pulled her deeper into the vortex of pleasure.
Her hands pulled at his shirt, the need to touch his flesh a hunger unlike any other she had ever experienced.
“Sweet baby,” he groaned, his thigh easing back, his fingers sliding to her thigh. “Fuck, Mikayla, I need you.”
The admission struck her womb like a sucker punch, causing it to clench, to flex with wild hunger.
She felt dizzy, desperate. Nothing mattered but his touch. The lies were forgotten, the betrayal pushed to the back of her mind.
“Mikayla, baby.” His fingers stroked over the wet center of her body. “I would have loved to have time to convince you to wax this pretty flesh. To let me lick you, taste your sweet pussy.”
She cried out. The pleasure that rushed through her was almost more than she could bear.
“Would you like that, sweetheart?” His lips moved down her body, licking to her belly button, stroking around it as his fingers pressed over her clit. “Do you want my mouth on you? Sucking your sweet clit, licking it? I’d fuck you with my tongue, baby. Drive it so deep inside your sweet pussy.”
Her hips bucked against his hand as she fought to breathe, the images racing through her mind, stoking the hunger.
High enough that she was ready to beg. That she was ready to surrender herself, to surrender her heart to a man who had deceived her. Who had lied by omission.
She felt the tears that fell from her eyes now. Pain rose inside her, matching the hunger. He was going to break her heart. He would take everything.
“Mikayla.” Tortured, broken, his voice drew her gaze back to him as he stared up at her.
His fingers lifted to stroke away the tears.
“I can’t tell you no,” she suddenly sobbed. “I can’t. I need you, Nik, so much.” Her breathing hitched, emotion tearing through her. “What do I do when I have to remember you lied to me? When you have to go? What do I do then?”
CHAPTER 7
Mikayla went to work the next day and hid in her office. She hadn’t slept; she couldn’t concentrate. She didn’t cry, but God, she wanted to. She wanted to break down and scream and rage and curse Nik for ripping her heart from her chest.
By lunch, Deirdre had obviously had enough. When she walked into the office and closed the door behind her, Mikayla looked up from the accounting she wasn’t even trying to focus on.
“I closed the shop for lunch,” her friend informed her. “It’s time we talk.”
Mikayla shook her head. She’d told Deirdre that morning what had happened. Mikayla may have omitted details, but Deirdre knew enough to understand just how close Mikayla had come to giving herself to Nik.
A man she hadn’t even known. One she still knew so very little about. A man who had deceived her.
“He’s leaving this evening?” Deirdre asked when Mikayla said nothing.
“That’s what he said.” She leaned back in her chair and rubbed her hands over her face, knowing she looked like hell.
What the hell was wrong with her anyway? She couldn’t be in love with him, but she was close to feeling something… . All she knew was that it was a good thing he was leaving; otherwise, she would end up begging him to take her.
“You’re going to tell him goodbye,” Deirdre stated, her voice fierce.
Mikayla sat forward slowly. “Have you lost your mind?”
Deirdre had to be crazy. The man’s touch was like a drug. She couldn’t resist. And her best friend thought she was going to tempt that danger further?
“If you don’t, you’ll always be watching for him, Mikayla,” Deirdre stated firmly. “If you don’t say goodbye, if you don’t watch him leave, then you’ll never let go of him, not really. He’ll always be the one that got away. You don’t want that. I watched my mother go through this with Dad. She wouldn’t watch him leave and she never stopped watching for him to return.”
Mikayla shook her head. “I’m not married to him,” she retorted defiantly. “I’m not even in love with him.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Deirdre propped her hands on her hips and glared back at Mikayla. “Listen, I know what I’m talking about here. Go home, shower, put on some makeup, and dress pretty. And tell that son of a bitch goodbye with a smile, even if it’s killing you. I promise you, you’ll sleep better for it tonight.”
Would she? Or would it only hurt more?
Mikayla blew out a hard breath as she crossed her arms on top of the desk and laid her head heavily on them.
“I don’t want to say goodbye,” she muttered, her tone mutinous. “I might cry again.”
How humiliating. She hadn’t had the strength to simply tell him no; she had cried instead. Because she knew he was going to leave. She knew he had lied to her, that he didn’t love her, that he was going to walk away from her whether she allowed him to become her lover or not.
And honestly, it was better that way. She had known from the beginning that he was a heartbreaker. All bad boys were. They broke hearts from the cradle, and if they ever gave their own then it was rare.
She had known that the moment she laid on eyes on him riding down Gina Foreman’s street. The ultimate bad boy. Dangerous, hard-core, sexual, almost illegal.
“Come on, Mikayla, you don’t want to fixate on him after he’s gone, and you don’t want to regret him.” Deirdre sighed. “Go home, get ready, and when he leaves smile and tell him goodbye. Do this for yourself, or you’ll always regret it.”
Sitting up, she stared back at Deirdre, knowing how her father’s desertion of her and her mother had affected her. She and Mikayla had been friends forever. They shared a passion for clothes and a passion for business. They had their separate dreams and their separate lives, and they were each other’s support network.
And Deirdre was probably right. She and her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Drake, had had more than a tumultuous relationship. Drake had broken Deirdre’s heart more times than Mikayla could count. If anyone knew how bad it hurt to be unable to walk away, then it was Deirdre.
“Think about it,” she urged her friend. “Don’t let him hurt you more than he already has, sweetie.”
With that, Deirdre opened the door and returned to the front of the shop. Likely to her lunch as well.
Mikayla just wished she had an appetite. Her stomach protested at the very idea of food at this point. She didn’t want to tell Nik goodbye. She didn’t want him to leave. She wanted to return to the evening past, before she had ever known why he was there and what he was doing.
To the time when, in the back of her mind, she had wondered if she was enough to tame a bad boy.
The thought caused her to pause. God, she had known better than that; she had to have known better. She had never allowed herself to be interested in the bad boys, the charmers, the heartbreakers. She had focused on the nice, steady guys instead. Only to learn that many of them weren’t so steady after all.
She was twenty-six and still living that child’s dream of giving her virginity, that gift that she could give only once, to the man she would share the rest of her life with.
Unrealistic. No one could accuse Mikayla Martin of being a hard-nosed realist, could they?
Shaking her head, she rose to her feet as she heard the low, melodic sound of the bell over the door tinkling delicately. Deirdre had reopened the shop rather than waiting for the lunch hour to end.
It didn’t matter. Mikayla was going home. She was going to take her best friend’s advice and hope she knew what she was talking about.
After Mikayla gathered her papers together and refiled them, she turned to grab her purse and leave. The office door opened, and she stepped back in surprise as Deirdre followed the familiar male into the office.
“Talk about freakin’ child
ish,” Deirdre sneered at Luke Nelson as he glared back at her. “He just comes right in like he owns the damned place.”
“If it hadn’t been for my family she wouldn’t have this shop,” Luke retorted petulantly. She hadn’t seen this side of him until she had made the mistake of actually going out with him a few times.
Luke was selfish, self-involved, and, as far as he was concerned, all-important.
Mikayla had never considered Luke quite so important, and had managed to garner his undying scorn in turn.
“What do you want, Luke?” Mikayla propped a hand on her hip and stared back at him in irritation. “I have things to do today and I don’t have time to deal with you.”
“Things like Nikolai Steele?” Luke snapped. “God, I thought you had more sense than to fool with such a lowlife.”
Behind Luke, Deirdre’s expression slackened in outrage as Mikayla stared at him in shock.
“She went out with you,” Deirdre shot back at him. “Nik Steele can’t be anything but a step up.”
Luke glared at her again as she rolled her eyes and leaned against the door frame, obviously refusing to leave.
“Luke, what I do or who I see is none of your business,” Mikayla informed him.
“Are you aware the bastard is no more than a criminal?” Luke told her, his gaze raking over her insultingly. “I thought better of you and your Miss Goody Two-shoes act.”
Her Miss Goody Two-shoes act?
“It’s not an act,” Deirdre muttered defiantly behind Luke’s back as she crossed her arms over her breasts and glared at him.
“Give me a break.” Mikayla rolled her eyes at both of them. “What the hell do you want, Luke? I don’t have time to deal with you.”
“She said ‘hell.’ ” Deirdre’s eyes widened as she and Luke both stared at Mikayla as though she had committed a crime.
She always said “hell.” Just never aloud. Her brothers had the corner on vulgar language. Mikayla had claimed the corner on not using it. That didn’t mean she didn’t think it.
“Luke, what’s your problem?” She shook her head, uncertain how to handle either of them now.