by LJ Evans
I hadn’t seen Nash since the incident this morning, but it was still rolling like credits at the end of a movie in the back of my brain while I worked. There was only one way to get them out. That was to find out what had happened. What he and Maribelle were both hiding. I was good at eking out secrets from people who didn’t want to share them.
I was just closing down my computer when Carson entered the room, an unlit cigar in between his lips. He stopped in the doorway, and I scrambled to pull together my items.
“I’m so sorry; you probably want your desk,” I said.
“No, not at all. I was just surprised to see someone there.”
“I should have asked. It was just the perfect place to spread out.”
“You’re more than welcome to work there. I spend my time these days at the corporate office attached to our general store,” he said. His gaze was so much like Nash’s that it was uncanny. Deep. Considering. Taking you apart.
“If you’re sure?”
“I am.”
I set my stuff back down before heading for the door.
“You don’t have to run out. Would you like to play again?” he asked, referring to the chessboard.
“I’d love another chance, but maybe after dinner? I have to talk to Nash,” I said, smiling so he knew I meant it.
He returned my smile with one of his own. “I’ll hold you to it.”
I went in search of the broody man who’d done a good job of avoiding me all day. My position in the library should have afforded me a view of him coming or going up the main staircase, but it seemed he was as good at slinking around the house as he was at sneaking up on me. While I hadn’t seen him, I had seen a whole host of people who’d come through: cleaning people and handymen in charge of keeping the place in pristine condition. I didn’t want to think about the amount of money it must cost to keep a place this size running.
In the kitchen, Maribelle was working on yet another meal.
“You’re going to make me feel bad if you keep cooking. I might be the worst cook in the world, but I could still help,” I told her.
She smiled. “I love to cook. That and knitting are the only ways I can relax. I don’t get to cook as much with just Carson and me here. It’s nice to be feeding four again.”
Once she’d said the words, she winced as if she’d released a confidence into the air.
“Have you seen Nash?” I asked.
She tilted her head toward the back door. “I believe he’s in the pool.”
I went to the French doors. I could barely see the edge of the water over the veranda with its carved balustrade. But I saw enough to see a hand slice through the water.
“Perfect. You’re sure you don’t need help?”
“Absolutely!”
I hurried up the stairs, found my swimsuit I was grateful I’d thrown into my bag at the last minute, and tossed my sundress over it as a cover-up before making my way down the back stairs, through the conservatory, and out to the pool. It was almost too cool for a swim, but it hadn’t seemed to dissuade Nash. He was swimming laps—facedown, barely ever breaking his head out of the water to breathe, holding his breath so much longer than the average human being. But that was the SEALs for you. They didn’t do anything normal. Not even break down.
I waited for him to be heading away from me before leaving my dress on a lounge chair and diving in. He was already heading back toward me by the time I was only halfway across. His hands stalled upon seeing me but then kept going.
I ignored him just like he was ignoring me. He did two or three times as many laps as me with ease. Eventually, he got out, and I could feel him watching me as he sat on the edge of the pool, feet dangling in the water. I kept going until my body started to ache and object. Then, I forced myself to do a few more rounds before pulling myself up next to him on the side. Our feet swayed in the water, occasionally bumping into each other as the silence settled over us.
“In training, they pretty much waterboard you,” he said, breaking the silence with words that startled me into looking at him. He wasn’t looking at me, however. Instead, his gaze was toward the trees and the fields. “You get used to being surrounded and invaded by water, swallowing enough of it that your lungs scream, and your entire body fights against death. There’s always a sense that it’s right there waiting for you if you stop moving.”
My hand went over the top of his, trying to give him some comfort like I’d tried to do this morning. He didn’t even seem to notice it as he continued talking.
“Every time it happened, all I could think was, this is what my mom felt. But instead of fighting, she let herself sink into it. She gave in. She let the water take her.” His voice got scratchy as he said the words, and he swallowed hard, as if holding back emotions. My heart thudded.
His mom had died. Had drowned in the water.
“I was the one to find her that night. At the pond. Pretty much where you were today.”
Sorrow hit me at the same time the guilt did.
“Oh, God. I’m so sorry, Nash.” I leaned my head on his shoulder, wrapping my arm into his and drawing us closer as I wondered if our times together would ever not be filled with regret. “What happened?”
He didn’t exactly lean into me, but I felt his muscles give just a little, as if he was letting go of some of the tightness which always resided in him.
“I don’t know, really. In my early childhood, she was so happy it was like skating on a cloud to be around her. She and my dad traveled a lot, hunting the world for unique flowers and plants to add to the farm’s collection. When I was ten, there was a freak accident with one of the tractors; the bucket fell on top of my dad and killed him.”
My breath caught. A boy losing his dad and his mom. So much heartache.
“After that, she just sort of withered away. Like she couldn’t survive without him.”
My mind flew to Tristan. To another widow unable to move on. And Nash’s need to take care of her took on a whole new dimension. It wasn’t just because of Darren and the culpability he felt. It was because he was trying to save Tristan when he hadn’t saved his mom.
“By the time I was thirteen, I’d gotten to the point where I couldn’t quite sleep when I knew she was having a bad day. There were times when I’d find her sobbing, sitting on the top of the steps like she couldn’t even gather the energy to go down the stairs. That night, I heard the steps, the squeak on the third one down. The moan as the wood awoke. The house whispering to me. But I’d been out in the fields all day, learning. That was what Carson called it when, really, it was just working like every other laborer. I was exhausted and fell back asleep. Then, something woke me up with a stab to my gut. It had me sitting straight up. To this day, I don’t know what it was.”
Nash pulled my fingers into his. Intimate. Personal. Connected in a way I’d never been with another human being. Feeling his pain as if it were my own.
“I checked the house. I checked the conservatory. I checked the pool, and then I just kept moving. By the time I got to the pond, her body was partly on the shore, glowing in the moonlight in a pale nightgown. I ran over to her, and I didn’t know what to do after I’d pulled her out. I didn’t know CPR, and I didn’t have a cell phone. I started screaming for help and screaming at her.”
My fingers tightened on his, letting him finish on his own terms.
“By the time Carson found me, she’d already been there awhile. He pulled me away from her, back to the house so he could call 9-1-1. I kept wanting to go back, and he kept telling me she was already gone. But he hadn’t even tried to save her.”
He’d replaced his swim goggles with sunglasses when he’d gotten out, and when he bent his head down to look at me, I couldn’t see what was going on in his eyes. He slid back into the pool, facing me and the wall, pushing between my legs. Another intimate move that wasn’t the norm for us but one my body welcomed.
“You asked about my pare
nts. That’s their story. It’s also why, this morning…” He trailed off.
I lifted the sunglasses from his face so I could see his deep-green eyes and the emotions swirling there. The wide-open pain in them made my breath stop. Made my heart twist and turn into a new shape that he marked with his name.
And it hit me. I was fucking in love with Nash Wellsley. I was in love with a man who would never be mine because he was tied to regrets and despair that went way beyond anything I could imagine. A loss he’d grown up with.
I didn’t know what he read in my look. I was hoping it wasn’t the love. But whatever he saw, it was enough to have him groaning and pulling my face to his. It was enough that he put his lips on mine and kissed me with a meaning I didn’t understand. Pushing and tugging on my lips and tongue. Searing himself into my being. Demanding a return I easily gave. My hands trailing from his neck to the sharp bristle of his hair before trailing back to his shoulders and the muscles that covered him even more than the tattoos.
His hands went to my rear, barely covered in a bikini bottom, and pulled me to the edge so that my core ran up against his body. Heat combined with the cool of the water and air, driving sensations I’d never felt before as our hands and tongues explored, demanding and retreating in a beautiful rhythm. The longer the earth-shattering kiss continued, the more the ache of heartbreak turned into the simple ache of desire.
The passion behind the slow lap of his tongue in my mouth had me moaning. Had me tightening my legs around him as a foreign idea filled me. Knowledge that this was the one place I was meant to be—next to this man who drove me crazy, and drove me to drink, and drove me to pleasure.
A door slammed, bringing us back to where we were, but when he pulled his lips away, there wasn’t regret in his eyes. There wasn’t self-hatred; there was only longing. It was more than lust. It was a sensual craving mixed with emotions I’d never received from a man. My body beat out a return answer.
I ran a finger along his lips, and he nipped at it, causing me to smile. It was a new reaction from either of us after any of our intimate moments. There was no remorse, only a yearning for more.
“Are you two going to be done in time for dinner?” Maribelle’s voice reached us from the veranda.
Nash ran a hand along my side all the way from my hip to the curve of my breast before backing away. He grabbed his sunglasses from where I’d placed them next to me, slid them on, and then grinned up at her, the Nash I’d very first encountered coming back. Charming. Teasing. But now I knew it for what it was. It was a Nash who was hiding behind a front.
“Depends on what you’ve made me,” he said.
She tutted. “What do I always make you on the second night you’re here?”
“Red beans and rice followed by beignets.” He grinned.
“It was your daddy’s favorite. But then, that’s what comes from being raised in New Orleans,” she said with a small tease, as if being from New Orleans was the worst offense in the world.
I saw the small tick on Nash’s jaw at the mention of his father after he’d just barely told me what had happened to him. I stood, going to the lounge chair to pull on my sundress.
“You won’t get me to pick his side in this fight with you, Maribelle,” Nash said as he waited for me at the steps. “If I had to choose, it wouldn’t be Louisiana or Georgia.”
When I joined him, we went up together while she stared down at us with her hands on her hips. “No? And just where would you pick?”
“Delaware,” he said without even a moment to think. My insides lurched as I tried to decipher the meaning of his choice, because I wasn’t the only one to live in Delaware. Tristan did, as well, and while she had made it quite clear that they were just friends, he would always feel responsible for her. How could he not after everything he’d just told me? What would that mean for any woman Nash chose to be with? Could he ever truly give his heart to someone when there were so many already hanging from it? Would he ever be able to put them first?
♫ ♫ ♫
After another wonderful dinner, we adjourned to the library where Carson beat me at chess once again. Instead of snorting and making deprecating noises, Nash was watching me with an entirely different look. A look that was all hunter―sniper―and instead of threatening my being, it was threatening the heart I’d somehow tossed stupidly in his direction just like I’d once tossed my clothes.
Regardless of the danger to my well-being, it was a look that had my insides quivering and my mind forgetting which step I had planned.
Carson won in half the steps he’d won the night before.
“You were distracted tonight,” he said, even though he had his back to the person to blame for my distraction.
“I was,” I told Carson, and Nash gave me a charming, knowing grin followed by a wicked wink.
“You’ll never learn that way,” Carson said with a defeated sigh.
“I think I’m just tired. It’s been a long week.” I stood, and much like the night before, Nash joined me in saying goodnight.
We walked up the stairs in a silence that felt expectant.
When we got to his door, he threaded his fingers through mine and pulled me into his room. I went willingly. I wanted to feel the fire and burn and collision of our bodies again. After my feelings had revealed themselves to me at the pool, I wanted to lose myself in him for a few hours. To feel like this was something real. Something beyond the mirage we’d stepped into since driving onto the estate. I wanted to pretend there was a love in his touch that matched my own.
I barely got a sense of red, white, and blue before his lips crashed down onto me. Everything else went out of my head. Just lips and tongues and bodies straining to be closer. The heart he’d twisted and shaped and marked was trying to escape its confines.
Nash pulled at my sundress until he found the hem, lifting it as his hands slid over my thighs to my butt which he squeezed in the most delicious way. His touch continued, bunching the material as the slow trail of his fingers cruised over my body until he was removing the dress and flinging it into the recesses of the room. My hands mirrored the action with his shirt, sending it in the same direction my dress had gone.
He picked me up and carried me to the large sleigh bed that took up the majority of the room where we shed the remainder of our clothes. Completely and unashamedly naked, I paused, kneeling on the mattress, to take in the corded muscles rippling over every ounce of his body. The tattoos and scars scoring him. Last time we’d done this, it had been fast and furious due to the tension we’d built over the long game of strip poker. I hadn’t been able to see all of his grooves and valleys. Like the small scar above his heart that I caressed gently.
He stood next to the bed, absorbing the details of me as I absorbed him. I had a feeling he saw more than I did, his sniper training capturing every single ounce of me. When he finally reached out to touch me, starting with one pink tip, it was tantalizingly slow. Drawn out as if to make each second last a lifetime. Every time I got desperate enough to attempt increasing the speed, he would push away and do the opposite. Go even slower.
He wrapped his arms around me, laying me down so gently it stunned me. His body joined mine, partially covering me, knotting our legs together. But even once we were entangled, he didn’t increase the pace. He just continued moving his fingers and mouth over me languidly, as if he was now memorizing with a touch what he’d already memorized with his eyes. Every curve, every dimple, every mole was stamped in a way no man had ever tried to do before. Each stroke, each kiss, each nip of his teeth turned me into a pool of weak limbs when I wasn’t weak. I wouldn’t be weak.
I pulled away, twisting our bodies so I straddled him, my legs shaking as he continued to score me with his fingers and lips, their path both beautiful and torturous. My hands surrounded the erection that pushed between us, copying his deliberate movements until I found myself overwhelmed with the need to have him inside me.
&nb
sp; “Condom?” I asked, looking down into eyes so dark a green they appeared black.
His hands stilled momentarily before starting their tormenting whisper of pressure along my inner thigh once more.
“Is this what happens with the other men?” He said the words as if they were a tease, but there was no quirk to his lips or sparkle in his eyes. “Does Daniella come out and control everything? I wonder what would happen if you trusted someone enough to let them take control. Trusted me enough to give you what you need.”
The words bit at me, making my brain scream to pull away while my body was still screaming with need. I should have been angry enough to slug him and get out of his bed, but I couldn’t, because he was already proving the truth of his words with the feathering of his hands on my skin.
He flipped me back over, and I closed my eyes as he leaned in to kiss me on the lips. A tender kiss, as if he was somehow speaking to me in a different language I had yet to learn. And then he began his trail of fingers and lips and tongue all over again as if punishing me for having interrupted his path so he had to start over. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that Nash was a man who knew every inch on a woman that would make her keen like a wild animal. He’d been equal parts womanizer and SEAL before he’d lost Darren and devoted his life to his friend’s family. I closed my mind to any of those thoughts, concentrating instead on his lips tracing their path slowly down to where I was aching for his tongue to land.
Quietly, he said, “Open your eyes, Athena. Watch me. Trust me. Let me give you everything you crave.”
God, did I want that? Him knowing what I needed? Knowing every place to touch me that would make me pant and call his name? My body quivered a response long before my eyes opened to meet his. I gave in, letting him take control in a place I’d never let go before.
When he finally reached for a condom from the drawer in the table next to the bed, the scent of lemon filled the air from the flowers in the vase there, and I knew I’d forever associate that scent with him instead of an island a world away.