“Ah!” I gasped, as much at the sudden bite below my jaw as the memory of sinking to my knees for him in the middle of the park, pulling down the top of my dress, and forcing him to take his pleasure out all over my skin.
No, I had never really cared where we were either.
“Please,” Matthew whispered, his smooth, deep voice croaking slightly; from cold or want, I couldn’t say.
His right hand left my breast, and then I heard the telltale clink and zip of his belt and pants zipper. Then both hands dropped, and my skirt was pulled up my legs, crinkling around my waist so I was bared to him from behind.
In front of me the city glimmered. I closed my eyes, wanting nothing else than to feel his body close.
Matthew slid between my legs, and the slick welcome there might have told him everything he needed to know. Still, he remained poised at the entrance, waiting for my consent.
“Please, Nina.” His voice rumbled at the base of my neck, his stubble scraping over my skin. He wanted me to turn. Wanted me to kiss him. But he was waiting for me to choose. “Say you forgive me, baby. I’m begging you.”
I arched my neck as he sucked deeply over my pulse, like he was eager to take any sign of life from me. Honoring each beat of my heart that was for him.
But the words he wanted…I wasn’t capable of them. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
How could I explain to him the betrayal I still felt? I loved him, yes. I was fairly sure at this point I would love this man always. But in my moment of need…he had failed me. He had believed the other side. Searched for the worst in me instead of taking my best.
But that didn’t mean I didn’t want him. It didn’t mean that right now, on this rooftop, I didn’t need him. In fact, I had never needed anything more.
I reached around and grabbed his hand, then pulled up my dress in the front so he could feel me on both sides. His fingers followed my lead, slipping around to find the bare skin and sleek, groomed remnant of hair, then pressing deeper to find that concentration of pleasure I could almost swear was made for his touch alone.
My clit. Yes, my clit, I thought to myself. No more euphemisms. No more veiled language. I didn’t want to be afraid of my own body anymore, of my own pleasure. Matthew’s fingers were on my clit, and they were rubbing and pinching and moving in that rhythm that I had thought at one time only he could find, but now I knew I could find on my own too, maybe teach someone else, another man, someone worthy of me, someone who loved me, someone who would never hurt me…
The idea sliced. I groaned. No, I couldn’t think about that. Right here, right now, there was only Matthew, and how badly I needed his touch, even if I couldn’t accept his love.
“Do you feel that?” he asked. “Do you feel how badly I need you, Nina?”
His cock slipped between my thighs, back out, and in again. Another word I whispered silently to myself, embracing the crass, carnal beauty of what we were doing, what we were about to do.
Cock.
Pussy.
Ass.
Clit.
I wanted them all. I wanted him to take them all. I wanted all of him, and I wanted him everywhere.
And so I straightened my arms against the railing, pressing myself back into him, allowing him to take a solid grab of my hips with both hands and slowly, slowly, to press his considerable length deep inside me.
“Matthew!” I choked as he filled me completely.
He was not a small man, and it always took a moment to adjust. He waited patiently, bending over my upper body to whisper dirty nothings into my ear, hum lightly, let me feel his warmth through my back, my legs, arms, all parts he touched.
And then he stood straight again and really began to move.
“Oh!” Each moan erupted from me in time with his unforgiving, deliciously harsh thrusts.
“Does that feel good?” he asked as he urged me to brace myself against the rails. Then he took my hand and guided it back around his neck, urging my fingernails to dig into his skin. Matthew loved a little punishment. He loved a little pain when he took me.
When he fucked me, I corrected myself.
I raked down the side of his neck. He hissed, then stood up, and suddenly, his palm met my ass with a slap that echoed off the sides of the buildings behind us and across the street.
I jerked forward, shocked by the sudden arrows of desire that shot through me with each harsh blow.
“Is that what you want?” he demanded as he pummeled forward. He spanked me again. “Just like that?”
“Uhhhh, yesssss!” I hissed back.
But he didn’t give me more. Instead, he fell over me again, insistent on proximity as he pounded into me. His grunts were animalistic, his teeth on my neck carnivorous. Matthew devoured me with every harsh thrust, and I took it, I cried out for it, I shook through every deep, penetrative motion.
My orgasm overtook me with a jolt, forcing my mouth open in a long silent scream as I spasmed in his arms. Matthew slipped an arm around my waist and hauled me up to his chest so I was sheltered over the railing in his arms while we both shook together.
“Oh God,” he muttered over and over again. “Oh God, oh God.”
He started murmuring something else into the back of my hair, something unintelligible, peppered occasionally with words like “grace” and “sinners.” Before I could stop them, tears welled up and just as quickly slipped down my face.
Our bodies seized together as we fell apart completely. And then, maybe a few minutes later, maybe hours, they eventually softened into nothing.
I collapsed against the railing, and Matthew fell too, catching himself only on his arms on either side of me as he slipped out. My skirt fell, no doubt a wrinkled mess. His jacket had long fallen from my shoulders to the ground, but it wasn’t until he stooped to pick it up again that I felt truly cold.
“I need—I need to go,” I stuttered as I stepped away, doing my best to smooth my skirt back into place. Suddenly I felt terrible. This wasn’t me. Or maybe it was—and perhaps that was even worse.
Matthew looked up from where he was trying to redo his tie and vest. When had I torn those off? At some point, I realized vaguely, it had happened. But I had no memory of anything other than my desire.
And now my shame.
My eyes were bleary. His were sharp, yet unfocused.
“What?” he asked as he struggled with a few buttons. “Nina, just wait a goddamn minute, all right?”
But I couldn’t. I shook my head, letting my newly shorn hair tousle around my face like a limp curtain. Heat was rising, an uncomfortable, humiliated flush chasing away all the beautiful pleasure that had been there before.
“No,” I whispered as I backed quickly toward the door. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
Chapter Nine
Matthew
The sound of the door slamming behind her jerked me out of the trance I didn’t even know I was in. Two seconds ago I had been whispering Hail Marys just because I had never felt so equally blessed and damned at the same time. Now I was alone under the night sky, my dick all but hanging out in the freezing cold wind. And all from loving and wanting and fucking this woman.
And now, once again, she was running away.
“Not this fucking time,” I growled.
I yanked up my zipper and trotted toward the door, no longer caring that my vest was flapping open or that my shirt was only half tucked in and probably missing a few buttons. Those rich pricks downstairs could see my bare ass for all I cared. I wasn’t letting Nina de Vries get away.
I sprinted back to the main floor, but instead of a party full of New York’s elite, I found the catering staff busy cleaning up. Frankie was gone, along with Xavier and the other hundred or so people who had crowded themselves into the townhouse.
Jesus. How long had we been on the roof?
“A woman,” I said to a girl carrying a tray full of empty glasses. “Just came running down here. Tall, blonde, stunning, in a black and white dress. Did she
leave?”
“Ummm…”
The waitress faltered, though through her confusion she still managed to eye my undone shirt and tie. Interest sparked. I huffed and rolled my eyes. Move it along, sweetheart. This ain’t for you.
“She’s downstairs with Eric and Jane,” Tony spoke up behind me. One brow rose as he took in my appearance.
I was too busy to notice. Finally, a break. “Thanks, man.”
He nodded as I dashed around him toward the stairs.
The bottom floor of the townhouse was the last space of the building that hadn’t fully been remodeled. What was once one of the great Gilded Age houses of New York had served as an apartment building for years. Eric and Jane had initially bought the top floor until Eric purchased the rest of it late last spring. At first I’d been surprised they even wanted to stay here after everything that happened—after all, when you shoot the man who’s persecuted your family for years and he bleeds out on your living room floor, maybe you don’t want to stay there anymore. But more and more, I understood. You can’t really run away from your ghosts and demons. You have to exorcise them instead. Eric had just done it with drywall instead of a priest.
So maybe it was fitting that in the last empty space of the house, my own personal demon was standing by the window waiting for me.
Alone.
“What the fuck, Nina,” I spluttered as I toppled into the room. “Are we really back to this again? We finally get somewhere, and you just take off? Really?”
But she didn’t answer, just continued to gaze through the back windows that looked out to a small garden behind the townhouse—tiny by most standards, but a massive luxury on the Upper West Side. Nothing says wealth like a backyard in Manhattan.
“Just look at them,” Nina murmured, pulling aside the gauzy curtain.
Through the window, Jane and Eric were standing together, arms wrapped around each other as they gazed at a fountain in the middle of the garden, clearly enjoying a moment of solitude after the evening’s reverie. Every so often, Eric would kiss his wife tenderly on top of her head, and she would nuzzle against his shoulder.
My chest ached at the sight.
“Nina,” I started again, but she kept talking.
“We are such fools, Matthew. We can’t stay away from each other, but together we are miserable, aren’t we?”
“Speak for yourself, duchess,” I said, unable to curb the acidity in my voice. I couldn’t lie. Her words stung. Suddenly I made her miserable? How could that be when touching her made me feel like I was God himself?
“I do,” she said. “Because no matter how much we might want it, we are never going to be that. And it really is torture.”
I frowned. It took me a moment to figure out why her words bothered me so much. After all, it had been months since that night in Boston when we had stared at each other in the dark, equally convinced the other was lying. Fewer still since I’d divulged the particulars of our relationship to my boss and accepted leave before watching Nina’s disappointment in me clang like a hammer to a bell. I’d lived with the separation. Tended bar. Moved through this city like a ghost. I had been mourning my own life like it was already over.
But as I looked at her now, I knew that deep down in my gut, I hadn’t confessed to my boss like he was my priest because I was trying to keep my job. I was doing it because loving her, even when I hated her, was more essential to me than any career. This wasn’t the afterlife—it was limbo until I realized what was really going to happen. Leave or no leave, I’d known the second I stepped into Cardozo’s office that morning that my career at the Brooklyn district attorney’s office was over.
And that one day, after the dust had settled, Nina and I would find our way back to each other. Because we had to. There was no other way.
How could she not know that?
“You’re just scared,” I said bitterly. “Like you always are. We dance around each other like wildcats, but when we finally do what our bodies and minds are screaming for, you run off like a scared little bunny who can’t face the music.”
Nina whirled around, tossing my jacket to the floor. Tracks of tears streamed down her porcelain cheeks.
“I am not scared!” she snapped. “And kindly fuck you for saying so!”
I was stunned—I’d never heard her talk like that before. But my shock didn’t last long.
“Fuck me?” I retorted. “How about fuck you for running off for, what, the fifteenth time since we met? You once accused me of using you, but I’m starting to think it’s the other way around. Think you’ll ever stick around after I make you scream my name, sweetheart? You might be surprised by what happens.”
“Why?” In wild, jerky movements, she swiped a few more angry tears off her cheek. “So you can accuse me of more heinous crimes? Spy on me for another secret investigation?”
“Don’t do that,” I said. “I swear to God, Nina, I was always on your side. I was just confused for one fucking minute when I saw that video.”
“Confused? You mistook another woman for me! You actually believed I was capable of forcing children into prostitution, Matthew!”
“It was a mistake!” I shouted. “And believe me, baby, I am paying for it. Every fuckin’ day, I am paying for it. I have plenty of regrets in my life, Nina, but none so much as not taking a second look at that clip. Just…please!”
“Please what? What do you want from me?”
“EVERYTHING!” I roared.
I sucked in breath like I’d just run a marathon. Nina stood with her back flat against the window, eyes wide, left hand pressed to her heart. For a moment, I saw the ring that used to gleam on that hand. Gaudy and big, flashing in the tiniest of lights. And then I saw another, the one buried deep in my bureau at home. The one Nonna had given me the day after my grandfather’s funeral. The one I knew I’d never be able to give to anyone else but the woman standing in front of me.
This was it. She was it for me.
But she’d lost hope in that future, just like I had once. Somehow, some way, I had to make her believe again.
I took a jagged step toward her, then another, and another until finally I was standing just inches from her complete and utter majesty. Even post-coital, wrinkled, and tear-stained, she really was a queen. How anyone could do anything besides worship her, I’d never fucking understand.
And so, more out of instinct than anything else, I sank to my knees. It fit. It really did.
Loving this woman was the greatest sacrament I’d ever known.
Loving her was holy.
Leaving her was the real sin.
“Everything,” I repeated as I pressed my face into her thigh, inhaling the scent of silk and flowers and sex and us as I did. “I want the fucking world with you, Nina. I want you always and forever. A—”
I paused. Was that really the way to end it? Deep down, though, I realized I was saying this prayer every day. Begging God to grant me mercy through this woman’s love.
“Amen,” I whispered with finality, squeezing my eyes shut.
Her hand slipped into my hair, threading fingers so gently through the strands, I nearly started to cry right along with her.
“Oh, Matthew,” Nina said in that sweet, sad tone that broke my heart every time.
Because she only said it when she was sorry. She only said it when she had nothing else to say.
“Please,” I whispered fiercely as I found my way back to my feet. Gently, I placed my palms to her cheeks, cradling her face with reverence. “Please forgive me, Nina. I belong to you. I will never forsake you again. I promise.”
She opened her rose-petal mouth, and for a moment, I considered plundering it. Crushing those petals between my lips, forcing her to succumb the way she always would.
But you can’t force love back to you. It has to come of its own accord.
This I’d finally learned.
And so, I waited. Let the uncomfortable silence settle over us like a cape. I’d wait all night if
that’s what she needed. Hell, I’d wait forever.
Nina opened her mouth. But before she could answer, there was a cautious tap on the glass. I cursed. Nina jumped back. Together we turned to find Jane and Eric peering through the windows, waiting for us to step aside so they could come in.
I sighed and swiped my jacket off the floor while Nina opened the door.
“Everything okay?” Jane asked as Eric shut the door behind them.
Nina drifted further away. I fought the urge to grab her hand and pull her close again. I had nothing to hide. Not anymore.
“Hey,” I said, trying and failing to act as if Nina and I hadn’t just been staring at each other like Rhett and Scarlett. “I, ah, hear congratulations are in order.”
Eric slung an arm around Jane and grinned down at her. “For now. Jane’s kind of mad I told everyone.”
“Because I literally just got the letter!” she protested weakly. The glow on her face said she wasn’t too angry. “It’s just grad school. Not the Nobel Prize.”
Eric just shrugged and kept grinning at her. I didn’t think I’d ever seen the guy smile this much, he was so damn proud of her. He looked looney. And it was catching.
I glanced at Nina with a smile of my own, expecting her to be watching them with the same kind of fondness. But she was turned toward the windows again, staring out to the backyard patio with her back to everyone else.
“So…is everyone friends again?” Jane asked hopefully, looking between me and Nina.
Eric’s smile disappeared, his mouth pressed into a firm line at the question. I got the feeling he preferred to hear about his cousin’s romantic life on a need-to-know basis.
“I hope so,” I said, still watching Nina like a hawk.
But instead of returning my gaze, she turned around with firmly crossed arms and faced Eric and Jane.
“Actually,” she said. “I have some news. This is goodbye for a bit, I’m afraid.”
And just like that, a vise closed around my chest all over again. Goodbye?
Jane’s brow crinkled in confusion. “But you just got here.”
The Honest Affair (Rose Gold Book 3) Page 10