“You love me?”
“How are you sounding shocked right now? I’ve always loved you, you know that!”
She felt that familiar warm sense of completion in the pit of her stomach; bliss settling over her skin, but somehow, she still couldn’t say the words in return.
“You’re um, you’re sure this time?” she asked quietly, drawing her hands back into her lap, watching the fingers wring together nervously. What if history repeated itself? Could she survive losing him all over again?
“I’ve always been sure,” he was glancing across at her, in between watching the road, trying to gage her reaction while navigating through the traffic, why the hell had he chosen to tell her like this? She deserved candles, and moonlight – rose petals scattered over the bed, for God’s sake – not hasty glances over the dashboard! “I was sure then! I thought we’d been through this already? I thought you knew what I was saying?”
“I get it,” she nodded softly, before turning to look out of the passenger window – a thousand scenes streaming past that she never saw, “I do. But you’re still in that life Nate, I can’t see how anything has changed? You’re still working with those people, why now?”
How much of a lovesick fool did it make her to jump back into his arms because he said he’d lied? She’d lost everything when he turned away from her.
“Because not having you at my side has been too hard,” he rasped out, “I can’t go on without you next to me, there’s just no point. And evidently, none of this has protected you anyway, you’re still dragged into this shit regardless! At this rate, I risk losing you for good, and I won’t take that.”
“But, by that reckoning, it could have been any time? What, are you expecting me to believe you just woke up and decided you wanted to try again?”
It all seemed too sudden for her, nothing had really changed between the two of them before he started all this again. Maybe it was all just because he envied Tor and Jayden, and she was the easiest target because of what they’d had ...
“Jay’s been out of the game for nearly four years ... he quit just after my parents died for the most part, he still had contacts and stuff with Franchetti, but he got out to concentrate on the garages and the clubs,” he sighed resolutely, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel restlessly, “When Sebastienne came along and started digging through this shit, I realised that we’re never truly out of it – four years later it’s as if he was never free. I can’t wait that long, and seeing what you suffered, knowing I’ve not been protecting you at all, I just won’t wait any more. Does that make sense?”
She watched the cords in his throat ripple in convulsions nervously – a muscle twitching in his clenched jaw.
“I just want what belongs to me,” he said hoarsely, “I don’t want any more or any less than you. We can deal with all the shit that comes with it, we could have dealt with it then if I hadn’t have been such a pigheaded idiot. But when Mum and Dad died so soon after Caleb, and I was all that Tori had left, I didn’t see a way out. How the hell was I supposed to know that she’d go off on some fairytale romance with my best mate, and leave me in the cold anyway?”
“So it is jealousy? It’s loneliness that brings you here, not actual ...” Her heart lurched into her throat, she prayed she was right.
“No,” he groaned, driving into a lay by and stopping the car, his eyes ablaze with need as he turned to look at her, “It’s you, Shan! Stop analyzing! It’s about feeling completely out of place in every room I step into, looking into your eyes and seeing that same restlessness reflected back at me. I can’t stand to look at the woman I love looking around for some place to belong!”
He laid his forehead to hers, giving her no room to look away, no space to run to as he met her dark, bottomless gaze.
“You had that place babe, you had it with me. And I was fucking stupid thinking I could let it go – even temporarily. It’s not about Tori, or Jayden, this is about you and me,” he dropped his lips to hers gently, just for a second, as if he couldn’t resist the temptation for a moment longer, “Look at where we’ve come to this week, look at us – as we are now – and tell me if anyone could get here after everything we’ve lost on our way? It’s completely fucking epic the way that I love you, I can’t believe you’d ever doubt it for a millisecond!”
“I don’t,” her voice choked on a sob, she felt cornered with his words, rushed into giving him the response she wasn’t ready for, and she knew that she was fighting him because of it, but she couldn’t help herself. There were still questions to be answered, and shadowed corners that they still needed to throw a flame into, “I just ... wanted to know why now. And you answered it, but please, I can’t ... I asked you not to rush me. I wouldn’t live through losing you again, Nate, as pathetic as that makes me, I can’t do it!”
His lips on hers were almost violent; there was no restraint in his anger as he bruised her lips against his, forcing his way into her mouth to take possession of her. His breaths were panting and hoarse as he pulled away, and started up the car again.
“I thought I made it clear that losing me wasn’t an option,” he said tersely, his words clipped and raw.
**********************************************
It took some persuading, but Nate took her back to the cottage rather than his place that night.
She felt like she needed some space after his declarations in the car – he’d been quiet and clipped for the rest of the drive, obviously brooding on her response.
He’d basically torn out her soul and laid it open on the dashboard for her to scavenge through – all that talk about restlessness, and belonging, and protecting her – she just couldn’t breathe with the intensity of everything he was throwing at her.
She felt the same way, of course she did, but it had been less than a week since they’d talked about Molly, and little more than that since they’d first began hashing through her issues.
In breaking open old scars, could you really cleanse them? Or would she just be left bleeding and hurting if it was too late?
She threw her face wipe into the waste bin, crawling into the cold and empty bed wearing one of Nate’s old hoodies.
She’d kept it after she left for London, having not many comfortable clothes to her name. It was always what she turned to for comfort, always what she wore when she needed to feel home. It didn’t escape her notice – the irony that she’d turned him away, asking for space, and immediately gone home to wear his old clothes.
She tossed and turned in the cold sheets, feeling them cling around her body in a way that they never would if Nate was with her. His broad, masculine frame would cocoon her – she barely felt the rasp of cotton against her skin when she shared a bed with him.
Her mobile started to vibrate softly against the sheets next to her, and she smiled, rolling over to answer it with a hoarse, raspy voice that belayed her anxiety and her silence.
“Hey kitten,” she heard him sigh, his voice just as coarse as her own with the lack of sleep, “I can’t rest knowing you’re still mad at me ...”
“I’m not mad,” she frowned softly, “I just ... it all feels too much sometimes, you know?”
“I know, I’m sorry,” she heard his palm rubbing at his features – could see the purse of his lips in her mind as he did it, “I can’t help it, and I know I should be trying to respect that you want to take it slow, but I just ... there’s just so much to say, you know?”
She nodded vacantly, he was completely right, she knew that. Somehow it seemed that the last four years would take decades to make up to each other – to explain. Realising he couldn’t see her, she quietly cleared her throat and agreed in a small, wavering voice.
“I promise I won’t push you again. Nothing else really matters, beyond the fact that I love you, I want you – just you, however you come to me, and I need you there, next to me. I can cherish you, like I promised, but I need you to ask me for that, now. I can’t take you pulling away from me. Not again. I’ll try to respect the fact that you need a little emotional space ... just don’t forget that you’re mine, and don’t deny it either...”
The intensity in his deep, drawling voice was quite hypnotising, but she needed to lighten the mood somehow – steer them away from these endless murky waters that they were dragging themselves into, the sound of his passionate words stirring her parched body for just a part of him ... any part of him ... that it could savour.
“Yes Sir,” she purred down the handset, turning onto her flat stomach and resting her ear on the phone.
“I think you just made me hard... Which is maybe a miracle considering how miserable I felt before hearing your voice ...” a choked laugh burst from his throat, “But that’s not a surprise is it?” She heard the rustle of fabric down the receiver, and anticipation shivered over her flesh, so that she kicked her own covers away from her body with the rising heat that was simmering in the pit of her stomach. When his voice came back on the line, it was deepened with arousal – hunger a living, breathing presence behind each word, “What are you wearing?”
“Your hoodie,” she murmured, knowing he was expecting her to tell him nothing at all, knowing as well how much she was revealing with that one simple statement.
“That shouldn’t sound as sexy to me as it does,” he muttered hoarsely, “How does it feel?”
“How does it feel?” she repeated softly, closing her eyes to savour the sensations of the fleece material on the inside against her smooth bare skin, “It feels like a hoodie ... warm, safe... and I can smell you, although I doubt that’s the material ...”
“No, that’ll be me ... all over your skin,” he said gruffly, “Fuck, I wish I was with you ...”
For a split second, she thought about reneging on her earlier words, and the space she’d thought she so desperately needed, as she imagined his body over hers – her naked flesh writhing against his, his body filling hers - and her breaths raced through her parted lips, skin sensitized to the point of aching with the need for sensual fulfilment.
“Why?” she asked softly, lazily running her fingers across her lower abdomen teasingly, the skin so responsive that even that small physical contact mixed with her desires was enough to put her on a razor’s edge of need.
“Well, to be perfectly sure that you smell like sex all day tomorrow ... so that my scent lingers on your skin ... I really need to be touching you, needing you ... ravishing you all night long.”
“I don’t know about you lingering on me tomorrow, I probably won’t be able to function all day tomorrow at the rate we’re going ...” she said wryly, closing her eyes to see the last week of making love with him – waking up in his arms, and going to sleep with his body still nestled inside hers. She hadn’t had an uninterrupted night of sleep in almost a week! But she wouldn’t – couldn’t – complain.
“I think you just killed the romance there ...” he chuckled dryly.
“What’s romantic about phone sex?” she whispered, and he groaned softly.
“You asked for it, remember that,” he drawled in his dark, commanding voice, “Lie on your back, with one hand at your side, and keep the other on the phone. If I can’t touch you, then you can’t either.”
She acquiesced, arousal dancing over her flesh like glitter at the sound of his orders – there was nothing more sensual than being under Nate’s control – nothing that could race her pulse like his voice in her ear – authoritative and dark – urging her to abandon herself to him; to trust him to take her body however he wanted it.
“I’m watching a film right now, while I’m talking to you,” he started softly, “It’s only really background noise – it’s your heavy breathing that’s doing the trick for me. The woman on the screen is on all fours – bound and gagged and being mercilessly fucked by her master. She’s screaming for more, not like you, silently begging me with nothing but the little catches in your breath...” He must have turned up the sound to his television, because she could hear masculine grunts of satisfaction, and the pounding slap of flesh on flesh, as well as muffled screams of feminine pleasure, all behind his coaxing, crude words.
She clenched her thighs together, moaning pitifully when she couldn’t get the right friction without moving her hands, and arching her neck into the mattress as though he was with her – standing over her, and watching her torment.
“Frustrated, are you, kitten?” he murmured, “Are you wishing I was there, running my hands over your beautiful body?”
“Yes, Sir ...”
“Imagine my fingers, sliding into your drenched pussy ... making sure you’re ready for my cock.”
Her hips jerked from the bed, doing just as she said, her body clenching around empty space under the bewitching spell that he was casting with his crude words. Her left hand fisted into the bed sheets, dragging with the impulse to disobey at the light cotton, clawing into the thin material. Her blood pounding in her veins, the pulse points so viciously pulverized that she could hear the beat behind her smooth skin, the sweatshirt suddenly leaving her unbearably hot with all the perspiration that beaded her flesh.
“I’m hot,” she moaned, “Nate, I’m so hot ...”
“That’s my body covering you,” he murmured, “My skin rubbing against yours while I get ready to take you; while I get ready to pound into you, and feel you squeezing down on me.”
She felt that simmering lust in the pit of her stomach – that climactic bundle of heat that lay just outside of her grasp. One touch - that would be all that she’d need ... just one single brush of flesh against her core would send her spiralling into oblivion, and screaming his name into the dark, empty room.
“Can you feel it?” he whispered, softly, “Even though there’s nothing touching you ... you can, can’t you? I’ve got my hand on my cock, wishing I was inside you ...”
“Oh, God, Nate, I need you!” she moaned softly, her eyes clenched shut as her head rocked back and forth against the pillows. His fantasies playing out behind her eyes, his words bringing her body to a peak.
“And I’d have you clenching down on me so hard,” he rasped out, “Riding my cock like your life depended on it ...”
Frustration was biting into her arousal – the need for a physical touch of some sort against her skin taunting her, and leaving her on the precipice. The fleece was brushing teasingly against her taut nipples – back and forth across her skin, but the smooth covering – without pressure or friction – was nothing but a torment to her heated flesh.
“Fuck, I need to come,” his coarse words burst into her thoughts so that she moaned incoherently in agreement, and he chuckled lightly in response, “You can touch yourself, kitten, as long as you’re coming for me ...”
With one slight pressure on the distraught bundle of nerves at her core, she was arching and moaning his name into the handset – waves of tortured pleasure crashing over her violently as she heard his answering groan in her ears, and his soothing, murmuring words of endearment.
“Sweet dreams,” he whispered, as he sensed her falling quietly asleep before the call ended.