The Other Man (Rose Gold Book 1)

by Nicole French

  I turned to Nina. “Is this—fuck, which elevator did we get on?”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “The right or the left?” I shook my head. I was so fuckin’ upset with her, I didn’t even keep track of which car we’d gotten on. “Is this the good elevator or the fritz elevator?”

  “What fritz elevator?” Nina’s voice rose with panic.

  “You know, the one Bridget told us not to use.”

  “Bridget didn’t tell me anything of the sort. I took the stairs down.” Her eyes widened. “Is there something wrong with this elevator?”

  “What the fuck do you think?” I jabbed at an emergency call button next to an intercom.

  All we heard was fuzzy static.

  “Goddammit,” I muttered as I pulled out my phone. No service, of course, not even Wi-Fi. I turned back to the console and continued pressing different buttons, trying to get a response.

  “St-stop that,” Nina chided. “You’re going to break it.”

  “If you hadn’t noticed, doll, it’s already broken.” I pushed another. The elevator jolted once more, and then all of the lights flickered off, encasing us in darkness. “Fuck!”

  Almost immediately, a row of orange-tinted emergency lights flickered on around the floor’s perimeter. I turned around to find Nina pressing her head into the metal paneling in the far corner.

  “Everything all right over there?” I asked.

  I didn’t want to be nice. But she looked…off. The last thing from the proud woman I generally knew. Even when she was going nuts stalking me around New York City, Nina never totally lost that queenly self-assurance.

  Until now.

  She turned slightly. Her eyes were tightly shut, though one tear had escaped down a pink, round cheek.

  Every bit of anger I felt evaporated instantly.

  “Oh, fuck. Are you—shit, baby, are you claustrophobic?”

  Nina was trembling now as she grasped the handrail. “I–yes,” she managed. “Y-yes, I suppose I am.”

  “But I’ve—you’ve ridden in an elevator. I’ve seen you do it.” I blinked, thinking of the night we had spent together at the Grace.

  The look on her face told me exactly why it hadn’t bothered her that night. She had been far too preoccupied to think about anything else besides us.

  “What about your building? I’m assuming you don’t live on the ground floor.”

  “The twentieth,” she said between her teeth. “And I take the stairs.”

  “You walk twenty flights of stairs every single day?”

  She slid to the floor, then pulled her knees to her chest so she could bury her face in her skirt.

  “Well,” I said more to myself than to her, “that explains why your legs look like that.”

  “Oh God, oh God,” she muttered, rocking back and forth. “You’re not here, not here, not here.”

  “Hey, it’s going to be all right, honey—”

  “Do not call me that,” she said. “If you think using the same bloody name you use to address every other woman in New York is going to make me feel better, you are v-very mistaken!”

  “Whoa, okay. Okay, doll, you got it.” I was speaking in a low voice now, crooning like she was a wounded animal. “You just need something else to focus on.” I sank to the floor beside her. “Do some, ah, mental visualizing. Like your ideal house. The best place you could ever live.”

  “I already have the best place I could ever live,” Nina snapped. “It’s ten blocks away, awaiting my return!”

  “How about the best person, then? Your daughter. Think of Olivia, Nina. Imagine she’s there, she’s waiting for you.”

  Her face fell into her hands. “My daughter is nine years old and lives in Massachusetts, Matthew. And even if she were there, do you really think being separated from my child would calm me down?”

  I ground my teeth, but rubbed her shoulder. “Fine, then. Your husband. Think about him.”

  The eyes peering through her fingers sharpened even more. “You are trying to make this worse, aren’t you?”

  If she wasn’t so visibly upset, I might have laughed. “All right, then. Who? Tell me who to visualize, doll, and I’ll help you do it.”

  The hands at her face dropped a bit. Her eyes shone, gray and wide under the dim emergency lights. As they dragged over my face and eventually down the rest of me, her breathing calmed and the shaking abated. A little. Not enough, but it was something.

  “W-who would you think of?” she asked softly.

  I exhaled through my nose. “Nina.”

  “P-please. J-just tell me.”

  I worried my jaw. “I think you know the answer to that one too, baby.”

  “That girl?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Annie?”

  “Yes,” she said, though a little too harshly.

  I opened my mouth to say the right thing. The thing I should be feeling.

  Instead, the truth came out. “No.”

  Total, abject failure.

  Nina sucked in a shaky breath and closed her eyes again. She seemed to be trying to block everything out.

  “Do you…would you ever imagine…us?” The words were barely audible.

  I stared at my hands for a long time. When I looked up, she was shivering again. Fuck, she really was having a terrible time.

  “Yes, I would,” I told her honestly. “I do. Sometimes I feel like I never stop.”

  Her eyes still hadn’t opened. But her breathing did ease a bit. “What do you think about?”

  “Nina…”

  The elevator lights flickered on and off again. Her shoulders began to shake.

  “P-please, Matthew,” she said. “I…I’m ten seconds from…it’s the only thing that…”

  “Fuck. Fuck, okay, yes, of course I think about us. You want to know the truth? It’s all I ever think about, as hard as I try not to.”

  “L-like what?” Her hands covered her eyes, and she bit her bottom lip hard enough that the skin around her teeth was turning white. “Please!”

  “I think about you. Me. Living in my house together.” I snorted. “Not that you would ever live there, but still.”

  “I l-liked your house. It didn’t have an elevator.”

  She couldn’t see me, but I had to smile. Even when she was in the middle of a nervous breakdown, Nina wouldn’t stand for me making assumptions about her. And she could still crack jokes.

  “I’m glad,” I said. “I liked how you looked in it too.”

  Below her hands, her mouth curved into a sweet smile. It was too easy to imagine how it would look in her eyes too—that warmth that she only bestowed on a few.

  “I think about us,” she admitted.

  Fuckin’ hell. We really were gluttons for punishment.

  I stared up at the ceiling. “What do you think about?”

  “S-so much. But I w-want to hear more about you.”

  “No, I think it’s your turn.” She needed to get out of her own head. If she talked, she couldn’t think about where we were.

  “I…” She paused long enough for her teeth to chatter. “I think about what might have happened if we had met. In Italy, I mean. Be-before.”

  I swallowed. Hard. Yeah, she didn’t want to know how many times I had thought about that.

  “What do you think that would have been like?” I joked. “Jarhead meets princess? I’m sure your family would have liked that.”

  “They would have liked it more than what did happen.” Her voice was bitter—did she mean her daughter, or Calvin?

  The desolation there, though, was harder to take than I imagined. I could deal with her jealousy. And her misery, even—she brought it on herself.

  But Nina as a hopeless creature?

  It was too much.

  Tentatively, I lifted my hand and set it on her shoulder, rubbing slightly, a small gesture of comfort. Instead of pulling away like I thought she would, Nina turned into me, burying her nose in the hollow between my shou
lder and my neck. I couldn’t help but wrap my arms around her completely. I could be angry at her, but I could never fight the peace that seeped through me whenever this woman was in my arms.

  It was a small mercy, I supposed, to know I had the same effect on her.

  “Do you want to know the truth?” she murmured as she inhaled.

  The shaking had stopped. Her hand still gripped the fabric of my sleeves tightly, but her heart was finding an even rhythm again.

  “Sure, doll,” I murmured as I stroked her hair lightly.

  “You’re my happy place, Matthew. The only one I’ve ever known. You compare me to mythical creatures, but to me, you’re just as dream-worthy. Being with you. L-loving you. That’s my Eden.”

  I squeezed her tightly. It was always the same. This same shitty circle. Admitting how we felt for each other only to yank it back again.

  “Sometimes…” Nina opened her eyes. When she took in the elevator again, she squeezed them shut and pressed her cheek into my arm. “Sometimes I touch myself too. And pretend it’s you.”

  Whoa. Well, that was a little bit different. Just the idea of her doing something like that called up every bit of desire that seemed to be constantly near the surface whenever I was around this woman.

  She looked down, clearly having felt that reaction against her leg. “That doesn’t disappoint you?”

  “That a beautiful woman gets off thinking about me? Ah, no. Not disappointing at all.”

  “Is that all I am to you, then? Just some beautiful woman?” She sniffed. “I could be anybody, couldn’t I? Like C-Caitlyn.”

  I tipped her face up. “They might as well have all been you. I was thinking of you every time anyway.”

  “I don’t know if I should find that insulting or flattering.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe both?”

  I could feel her cringe against my shoulder. I couldn’t help but chuckle. It was nice, in a fucked-up way, to know I frustrated her too.

  “If we—if we could—when you think of it—what do we do?”

  I stopped stroking her hair and allowed her to roll off me so we could look at each other.

  “Nina, do you really want to talk about this?”

  “Please. I—I’ve finally stopped shaking.”

  It was true. She had. And considering that I had no fuckin’ clue when we were getting out of here, I was willing to do just about anything to prevent a panic attack.

  “Fine,” I said. “I think about kissing you, first of all. When I close my eyes and I kiss their lips, I pretend they’re yours.

  “But they aren’t me,” she whispered. In the dim, dark car, her eyes looked like stars.

  I shook my head. “Not even fuckin’ close, baby. No one holds a candle.”

  She stared at me for a long time. With tear-stained cheeks and hair tousled over her shoulders, she had honestly never been more alluring. What did it say about me that I found her most attractive when I had messed her up?

  I didn’t have time to ponder the question anymore, because Nina reached down. And began to unbutton her blouse.

  My eyes bugged out. “Nina. Shit. Um, what—what are you doing?”

  She looked down, then back up at me. “What does it look like? I’m d-distracting us.”

  “But—shit, what if—” I could hardly talk. Honestly, I could hardly believe what I was seeing. “There are cameras in here, aren’t there?”

  She shook her head, but continued to speak calmly. “The cameras are being replaced.” She glanced up at the bare corners and shuddered. “The museum director mentioned it at the board meeting last week.” She finished with the last button and her blouse fell open, revealing a nude-colored lace bra through which the outlines of her nipples showed clearly.

  I knew that bra. It was the same one she had been wearing…that night. Sleek. Subtle. Completely demure, but at the same time, completely seductive.

  “Fuuuuccckk.” The word came out like a groan. In less than a second, my pants were so tight it was painful.

  Nina closed her eyes, shutting out the room, then cupped her breast.

  I reached out eagerly. “Let me do that.”

  But to my disappointment, she shook her head, eyes still closed. “We can’t. You know we can’t.”

  “Are you kidding? What is this, some kind of fucked-up striptease?”

  “It’s better than a panic attack,” said Nina, her voice sharpening again in a way that said she wasn’t quite as in control as she seemed. It was nuts, the way the de Vrieses could turn on a dime like that. Mercurial creatures, all of them.

  To be honest, it was almost worse. Being trapped in here with the woman l wanted more than anything but couldn’t have, and then, by some insane twist of fate, being forced to watch her pleasure herself while I…just sat by?

  Fuck that. I was no spectator.

  “You can watch me,” she said in that eerie way she had of reading my mind. It was annoying, really. Her eyes were still closed. “And I…could watch you.”

  Wait…what?

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  At first, she cupped her breast, then toyed with her nipple through her bra. Swift, sure movements with the efficiency of a woman used to taking care of herself this way.

  She leaned against the wall and undid the zipper of her skirt, then pulled the fabric apart over her hips. Nude-colored lace peeked over the top, and I watched, transfixed, as she slipped her hand under its edge and between her legs while the other returned to her breast. Even in the dim light, I could see the way Nina’s forehead smoothed as she worked herself into a more relaxed state.

  A few minutes later, her eyes opened.

  “Go on,” she beckoned, her voice light and breathy.

  In response, my hands moved to my own belt, though I barely sensed what was happening. She was touching herself. In front of me. In the bottom of the Met, on the floor of an elevator, Nina de Vries was pleasuring herself while she thought of us. Together.

  “I…” My hands stilled on the zipper of my pants. I wanted to. Good Christ, I wanted to. But suddenly, something held me back. “You know, doll, I don’t know if I should.”

  Her eyes opened finally, and met mine, straight and true. “Matthew.”

  “I…I don’t want you to do something…else…we might regret.”

  Hurt crossed her delicate features—because of what I had said last night? I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

  The hand at her breast reached toward me, and her other stopped what it was doing. She slipped two fingers under my shirt collar so she could pull out the necklace underneath.

  “You added something,” Nina murmured as she looked at the small medallion that clinked against the crucifix.

  “A gift,” I said. “From Nonna.” Who would be very fuckin’ disappointed if she knew what I was doing right now.

  Nina’s thumb brushed over the tiny visage. “A saint?”

  “San Gennaro.”

  Her mouth quirked. “Like the festival. I’ve been, actually.”

  “On Mulberry Street?” I knew she hadn’t been to the one in Belmont.

  She shook her head. “In Naples. When I…” She drifted off, but it was clear she was referring to the year she had spent in Italy. Her eyes lost focus, and when they refocused on me, it was with laser intent. She was still blocking out where we were. How closed-in. How trapped.

  “He’s the patron saint of blood,” I said in a hurry. “Did you know that, baby?”

  She looked at the medallion again, and it was clear that we were both thinking about the blood I had sucked from her finger in my room. The salty-sweet taste. The drop of her that I had taken inside me.

  “Nonna said he wanted me to have it,” I went on, my tongue thick with desire. It was a little weird, sitting here talking about my dead grandfather. But a reminder too. An important one. “He always knew I was a little too hot-blooded.”

  Like right now. When the feel of her breath this close to mine was making it hard t
o think, let alone speak.

  “It’s a good thing. For you. For—” I cleared my throat. “For your soul.”

  “But it’s not just my soul that’s worth protecting,” Nina said softly as she cradled the two pendants in her palm.

  “Ah, doll, you don’t have to worry about me.”

  She inhaled deeply, then leaned closer and gently rubbed her nose against mine. “Don’t I, my love?”

  I didn’t know what to say. This lust-filled moment had become something else. Actually, who was I kidding? It was always something else with her, from the second I saw her in the bar that first night. I never wanted to admit that Nina de Vries was possibly my soulmate, if there was such a thing. Because if she was, fate had other plans, giving her to another man.

  Now, in the dark, in this tiny cramped box, she wanted to fuck with that fate?

  Fine.

  I was all out of fight. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever had it in me to begin with.

  I looked at the cross in her hand. “All right then, worry.”

  She was pulling slightly, the weight of her hand causing the chain to bite into my neck. It was a pain I needed. A pain I deserved.

  “If you want my soul, baby, you better take care of it.”

  The hand around the cross closed tightly. Nina looked down to where my pants were half unzipped.

  “Let me see you.”

  It wasn’t a command. But it wasn’t quite a request, either.

  Slowly, I finished opening the button and zipper of my pants. Then I pulled the waistband of my boxers down enough to reveal at least an inch of what she said she wanted.

  Nina shook her head. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “What, you want more than just the tip?” I joked.

  The hand on the chain tightened. The sudden bite made my dick harden even more.

  “I want all of it,” Nina whispered. “All the time. All the time. You have no idea, Matthew.”

  Now it was my turn to shudder. Our lips were less than an inch apart. “Don’t I, baby?”

  “But since I can’t have it, I want to look. I want to watch. I—” Her eyes flickered around the car as if to remind herself of the circumstances. The reason for breaking her own creed. “Please, Matthew. I n-need it.”

  Her frank admission—the need that matched my own—was my undoing. I pushed the band of the boxers down completely. I was hard. Really, really fuckin’ hard. I had been at half-mast ever since Nina walked into that fuckin’ room, but the second she uttered the word “need,” I was like a piece of the stone that made up the museum. It didn’t matter that I was still so confused. Frustrated. Even angry, deep down. Who the fuck cared? Sometimes angry sex—or whatever this was—could be the best anyway.