The Other Man (Rose Gold Book 1)

by Nicole French

  I shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot as I stared down at the shirt that was clinging to my torso having been splattered with plaster dust and then dirt and water. “If you give me a minute, I’ll run upstairs to clean up.”

  At the last two words, her gaze found mine again and focused.

  “Nina?” I asked. “Hey. Are you all right?”

  She blinked. And then, to my complete and utter fuckin’ surprise, she lunged.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The door slammed heavily behind her as we toppled into the hallway. Nina shoved me against the plaster hard enough that my head knocked against the wall with a thud.

  “Nina,” I managed between her ruthless attacks of kisses.

  It was hard. Oh fuck, it was hard. But not as hard as not knowing what the fuck was going on.

  “Nina!”

  With gladiator-level effort, I managed to get my hands on her shoulders and set her away from me. Her rosebud mouth hung open, wet from mine while her chest moved up and down.

  “Please.”

  Her voice was hoarse with want. Her eyes, red-rimmed, flew all over me wildly, desire coloring their deep gray depths. It wasn’t a request, but even in the throes of lust, Nina de Vries was ever the lady.

  It was everything I could do not to literally drag her down to the floor. Down to my level.

  “What are you doing?” I was struggling to catch my own breath.

  “I had to see you.” She pressed a hand to her chest. “I don’t want to talk. I just—I needed—I needed you, Matthew.”

  I licked my lips. She didn’t want to know how easy it was for a man like me to lose myself in a woman when I felt like this. With this one, I felt like I was falling most of the time just thinking about her.

  And now, for the first time, she was basically writing me a blank check to cash in all my frustrations. To release all the feral rage, lust that we had both been keeping pent up.

  For months, I’d tried to be a gentleman for her sake.

  But today, when I still had visions of justice and a man’s blood on my mind, I couldn’t do it.

  “You—you don’t know what you’re asking,” I growled.

  “Yes, I do.” She swallowed, the movement rippling her swan-like neck. “I saw Jane. I saw Eric. Heather told me they came to her house, but only after I saw theirs first. I arrived this morning, when people were…cleaning up.”

  I winced. I could easily imagine her in her speckless glory, stumbling upon the crime scene when it was still half a war zone. Seeing the bloody remnants of Eric’s vengeance splattered over the walls, the fine furniture. Absorbing what happens when a man does what’s necessary to protect his own.

  “I saw the b-body of that man when they carried him out. He was covered with a sheet, but there was still blood…and something in me…just…snapped.”

  She mimed the motion with her fingers, though I could see she was shaking from the memory. So was I. Just the thought of her anywhere close to what had happened in that room…I shuddered. I had wondered myself, what would I have done had it been her? I was no stranger to vigilante justice. And with Nina, I had a feeling that the instinct I kept buried deep would fly out of control in the space of a second.

  “I saw that man,” she whispered. “And then I thought of you there. Maybe even when he died. And I realized…I might never see you again.”

  “I thought we covered that at the museum.”

  She shook her head. “For some reason, that’s when it sank in. And I couldn’t breathe. I just knew I had to come here. I had to f-find you. Matthew, I was wrong. About us. About everything. I always was. It just took me this long to realize it.”

  I closed my eyes and rubbed my face. How many times had I prayed for her to say exactly this? Come to the same epiphany I’d been having again and again like regular, painful clockwork.

  But.

  Catharsis only got you so far.

  I had a feeling it was too late.

  “I can’t be a good man for you today, Nina,” I said. “Honestly, doll? I’m not sure I ever could.”

  She closed the space between us again, and with one quivering finger, traced the line of my jaw. Her light touch had every hair on my body standing up straight. With her this close, I stopped being a man. I was an animal caged by the tattered remnants of my own inhibitions. And here she was, trying to break the lock.

  “I don’t need a good man,” she whispered as her lips hovered over mine. “I just need you.”

  I inhaled deeply. It was like I couldn’t get the oxygen into my lungs. “And Calvin?” I could barely say the name without spitting. I had never had so much hatred for someone I had never actually met. That alone would probably be my ticket to hell in the end.

  “It’s over.” Nina’s hand floated up and touched her lip. “He doesn’t know it yet. But I can’t—not anymore.” Like me, she inhaled deeply. “Please, Matthew.” She was begging now, threatening tears turning her gray eyes silver. “I c-can’t breathe, I need you so much.”

  I sucked in a harsh breath. “I don’t think you understand. You’re not the only one fucked up by what happened in that apartment. Today…right now? Nina, if I cross this line, I ain’t coming back, baby. That’s it. Point of no fuckin’ return.”

  I couldn’t stop staring. At her mouth. Her neck. The hint of breasts just below her shirt collar.

  Slowly, Nina set her hand on my shoulder and leaned in so her lips brushed my ear.

  “Then take me,” she whispered. “I was yours from the start.”

  I remained frozen for all of a half-second more. And then, once her words finally sank in, I was all action.

  Take me, she said.

  No fuckin’ problem.

  My hand snaked around her neck and yanked her to me for another soul-searing kiss. Not the kind that warms your heart. The kind that fuckin’ burns.

  I slipped my other hand around her waist to pull our bodies flush. Her mouth opened, and she groaned as our tongues met, twisting, tangling, tasting every bit of the delicious forbidden fruit we were together.

  I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t even think. And I didn’t need to, because this was all instinct. Nina was a live wire, mouth open, finger clawing, lips sucking, legs around my waist as she jumped into my willing arms.

  “Fuck,” I grunted as I flipped her around so her back was to the wall.

  She moaned before taking my lower lip between her teeth. She bit. I growled. She knew what a little pain did for someone like me. She knew exactly what it released.

  “You better be careful, princess,” I rumbled as I ground into her. “You scratch the wolf, you bring out the beast.”

  Her hand found my face with a sharp slap, and then she grabbed my chin, forcing me to look at her. Her sharp eyes shone with a metallic gleam—that ruthless knife-edge that only I seemed to bring out like this.

  My girl.

  “Don’t call me that,” she said, even though her voice was thick with desire. “Not unless you want to get slapped again.”

  I smirked. “Promise?”

  Before she could answer, my hands found her ass and squeezed hard. There was no way she couldn’t feel my cock pressing against my pants, just a few measly pieces of fabric between it and the promised land. Nina moaned louder even as she bared her teeth. We were both animals now, wild and lost to our feral natures. Her legs were vises around my hips, so I released her ass long enough to take hold of her shirt and tear. Buttons shot across the room like bullets.

  “Yes,” she hissed as she took a handful of my hair and yanked. “Rip it off, Matthew. Ruin all of it.”

  I wasn’t sure what she meant. I didn’t give a shit either. Because I just needed this woman naked, nothing between us. Pure and bare and laid out for me and only me.

  For now.

  For fuckin’ ever.

  And I didn’t care how many shirts I had to destroy to make it happen.

  Her feet dropped to the floor, allowing me to attack her jeans
as well, peeling the denim and her silk panties down her long, smooth limbs.

  “Take it off,” I ordered, staring at her still bra-covered breasts.

  Nina bit her lip, then reached behind her back to unlatch the garment. The movement forced her chest out, nipples erect as the silk fluttered to the floor.

  “Vixen,” I said.

  She shuddered, then opened her legs an inch or two. I stared, momentarily entranced by the groomed thatch of dark blonde. Then I took it as the invitation it was and went to work.

  She tasted like heaven. A succulent world I’d never stop trying to discover, but also one I knew in the depths of my warped sinner’s soul. Nina wrapped one leg around my neck and buried a hand in my hair, urging me deeper with my lips, tongue, fingers that slipped into her slick heat.

  “Matthew!”

  She didn’t even try to stifle her cry. And I didn’t want her to. I would do this to her anywhere she liked. And I’d want her to scream as loud as she fuckin’ pleased.

  She came with a shout that echoed through the halls of my small house, and for a moment, I wondered if the neighbors could hear her. My tenant downstairs. The people next door. Across the street.

  I wondered if anyone else knew that I was about to bury myself in Nina de Vries in every fucking way possible.

  The idea turned me on that much more.

  “Oh, God,” she breathed as her voice returned. Her body still vibrated with the last of her orgasm.

  I stood and kissed her, letting her taste herself on my lips. Then, before she could stop me, I bent down and toppled her over my shoulder while I kept an arm wrapped around her knees.

  “Matthew!” she cried.

  I smacked her ass, hard. “Hold still.”

  She jerked, but didn’t argue. I could still smell her desire. So I spanked her again, just for good measure, enjoying the way my palm burned slightly when it made contact with her firm, smooth skin.

  Nina sucked in a breath between her teeth. Yeah, she liked it too.

  I jogged up the stairs while Nina clawed at my back to keep herself from falling. I kicked open the door to my room, paced quickly across the small space, and dumped her unceremoniously onto the bed.

  “You didn’t think we were done, did you?” I kissed her again, letting her taste my urgency. My need was pulsing through every vein, every vessel.

  “Oh, no,” she said as I stood. “I think we have hours still, don’t you?”

  “Hours?” I grabbed a handful of my undershirt behind my back, ripped it over my head, and flung it across the room. “Try a lifetime, baby. And even that won’t be enough.”

  She sank back into my pillows and watched, unabashed, as I stripped off the rest of my clothes. Her golden hair spread behind her like a halo. It didn’t matter where she was. Hotel. Gala. My tiny fuckin’ bedroom.

  Nina de Vries was a fucking queen.

  “You are so goddamn sexy,” I told her as I unbuckled my pants. “Do you have any idea what you do to me?”

  “Tell me.”

  I let my pants drop to the ground. “You shred me, baby. All my self-control. All my better instincts. Gone when I see you.”

  She didn’t reply. Instead, as I removed my boxers, her tongue slipped out, a delicate bit of wet pink, like a child upon spying an ice cream cone on a hot summer day.

  It’s not like she hadn’t seen it before. At the hotel, of course. And the park. And just a few days ago, even.

  But the elevator was dark, and here we were in the light. Here we had the space to stretch out, body to body. To look. Touch.

  Taste.

  Nina sat up and moved to the edge of the bed while I ripped off my boxers kicked them away with the rest. Ignoring the hamper. Ignoring my typical desire to keep everything in its place.

  All I needed right now was her.

  “I forgot how big you are,” she said as she took my cock in her hand.

  “You saw it just a couple of days ago.”

  “It’s a little different up close.” She drifted her lips over the tip. “Now it’s my turn.”

  I watched, hypnotized by my dick disappearing into her mouth. She was as eager as I’d been, as hungry, practically making a meal of me.

  I looked up at the ceiling, trying my hardest not to embarrass myself. Nina had no idea what kinds of depraved thoughts were running through my mind. If she had any clue how I wanted to take her…use her…claim her…she’d run screaming. I knew she would.

  Nina released me. “Am I doing this wrong?”

  I looked down. “What? No, of course not!”

  “Then what are you doing?”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re not moving. Or saying anything.”

  “I…” I gulped. “I’m just enjoying it, I guess.”

  She kissed the very end again. I shivered.

  “Fuck, baby,” I said, unable to help myself as I rocked forward. “Don’t stop there.”

  “Then use me,” she whispered. “I want you to.”

  She opened her mouth again. But she didn’t move. This time, she just waited. For me to take exactly what I wanted.

  I slipped my hand around the back of her head and held her in place as I slowly, carefully began to do as she asked.

  I closed my eyes and tried to imagine about a thousand other things besides exactly what I was doing: fucking Nina de Vries’s pretty little mouth. I had to draw things out. Just a little bit longer.

  I failed.

  Nina’s shoulders sank with relief and pleasure, even as she starting stroking her my base along with my rhythm. A low hum in the back of her throat created a mild vibration as I moved. Using her, just like she said. Just like, God help us both, she wanted.

  “Fuck!” I hissed, then pulled out.

  “What?” she asked again. “Why did you stop?”

  “Because I need more,” I snapped. “And I need it right fuckin’ now.”

  I yanked her up and threw her back on the bed, this time crawling over her low, the way I used to crawl the obstacle course, all the way back in basic training. I slid between her legs with clear intent.

  “Are you ready for me, baby?” I asked, though I could feel the answer clear enough. She was soaked.

  I brushed her hair away from her face, framing its gorgeous shape with my hands. We were so different from this angle. My skin was darker, beaten, weathered even from years of abuse. Hers was smooth and pristine. Did she really want me to mar all this perfection?

  “I meant what I said, Nina.” I was poised at her entrance, her legs splayed under me. But I wouldn’t move. I needed to hear it one more time. “Point of no return. Are you sure that’s what you want?”

  With sure, even movements, Nina slid her hands over my shoulders and wrapped her long legs around my waist.

  “I wanted this before I ever met you,” she whispered. “Give me everything you have, Matthew. I already belong to you.”

  That was all I needed as I shoved into her with a loud groan. She was tight. I was ready. And it took only moments for the two of us to find the natural rhythm that pulsed between us no matter what.

  “Is that what you wanted?” I asked her. “Me inside you? Claiming you?”

  I didn’t wait for her to answer, just took her mouth again. She bit hard enough that I tasted blood, but it only reminded me of hers. So, of course, I bit right back.

  Animal.

  Barbarian.

  Fucking Nina de Vries. Loving Nina de Vries. It was all the same in moments like this. Everything coalesced into one thing: instinct.

  “Will you take me again?” she said as our bodies moved furiously. Slick with sweat and hunger. “Every-everywhere?”

  It took me a moment to understand what she meant.

  “You mean here?” I slipped a hand under her ass and dragged a fingertip over her puckered bud. “Like last time?”

  Nina shuddered violently. “Ummmmm yes.”

  A wicked smile spread across my face before
I kissed her again, the kind of kiss that left us both breathless. “Your mouth. Your pussy. Your tits. Your ass. Nina de Vries, I will fuck you anywhere and everywhere. Because this body belongs to me, baby. Don’t you forget it.”

  “Ah!”

  She was starting to lose it. My finger continued to tease her, just a little, while I thrust harder. God, I wanted to split her in two.

  “I’m close,” she cried, back arching toward the ceiling. Her nipples, pebbled with desire, were twin works of art. “Oh, Matthew, I’m so close.”

  Thank fucking God. I was right behind her.

  “Where do you want it now?” I asked.

  She liked it when I finished on her. She liked seeing it, just like I did. Physical evidence of the way we fell apart together.

  But instead, Nina grabbed my hips and urged me even deeper. “I want you here,” she whispered. “As deep as you can go. And, Matthew?”

  She pulled me close, and her lips brushed mine again.

  “What, baby?”

  “I want it now.”

  The legs around my waist squeezed, showing me just how much she meant it.

  “Oh God.” As my self-control fled, I barely knew my own name.

  But I still knew hers.

  “Nina!” I cried as my entire body flexed. “Oh JesusFUCKINGChristNINA!”

  “MATTHEW!”

  Our names mingled, desperate animal cries echoing off the walls like bells tolling from far away. Nina came with a shriek, me with a howl. I collapsed on top of her, and she welcomed me with bites and scratches. But I thrust home, home, home again, trusting my instincts as they too tolled with the knowledge I’d carry with me always.

  This woman.

  This union.

  This is where you belong.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Just like I remembered, the woman was voracious. We went again, and again, making use of the extra hours we had, making up for the months lost together. I tried to take a shower, but she followed me right in. An hour later, she did the same—I was her shadow. I tried to go downstairs to get us water, but she tracked me to the kitchen like a damn lioness and pounced on me against the fridge.