I dedicate this chapter to one of my silent readers: the sweet @Sunflower0999 ❤ Your messages on Insta after each new chapter always warm up my little heart, now I dare you (and all the shy little silent readers) to speak up here 😉 Never be shy with me! I LOVE to hear from all of you, my little rays of sunshine 😘
'I got a new phone!
I'm sorry for earlier. Maybe we can talk later today?'
Anastasia's heart skips another beat as Nathaniel's text appears on her phone. Just when she has finally managed to slow down her heart rate from the frenzy he has put it in a few hours ago, it is going back to the same uneven rhythm, and it won't steady as she stares at the words on her screen, trying to decipher their meaning.
A part of her, somewhere inside her chest, is fluttering at the fact that he is already texting her after he has got a new phone. Yet her stomach is knotting with question marks. '
Sorry'? Sorry for what? Is he regretting what they have done again? Is she, herself? And talk about what? Is it a good idea, knowing their records of 'talking', 'agreeing' and 'breaching'?
Should she reply immediately or wait a little?
If someone sees her looking at her phone like a ticking bomb holding her fate, they will probably think she is crazy, among other things, and she herself shakes her head at how ridiculous she is being when she has work to finish. Her shift ends in less than one hour; this can wait.
Yet the questions aren't shaken away, and she barely has grabbed her broom that she stops. Is he waiting for her answer?
A protective, caring instinct blooms in her stomach, resembling a lot the concern she has felt yesterday, and she jumps back on her phone, forgetting her doubts and questions.
'That's okay, no worries.
But shouldn't you be resting right now?
We can talk another time'
A smile tickles Nate's lips at the words she's replied, and the fact that she cares about his well-being isn't only tingling and warming his cheeks actually.
'Okay, I'll go to sleep.
I guess I'll see you tomorrow'
And he will probably dream of her, but that, Nate doesn't write it.
He shakes his head, dropping his phone on the passenger seat next to him and starting his car with still the same grin. Though it doesn't last as he takes the direction of his house, and not the turn to the Army center like he's planned to do.
It's safer and wiser in many ways, as the tiredness is gaining his eyelids. Yet his sleep-deprived brain is fully awake and already over-working at the perspective of facing Pamela and having to come up with another lie, or just another distortion of the truth.
He is ready to turn back when the new unfamiliar ringing of his phone echoes around, and he jumps on the new shiny device so fast that he almost forgets to put the automatic pilot on. But his smile, his hope, and the warmth the simple text has created in his stomach all drop at the sight of Darrell's number.
He puts the call on voicemail instantly, going back to focus on the road as the voice of his best friend is sounding through his new phone.
"Hey dude, I'm sure you already got a new phone, and if not I will call you back later to be sure you're not avoiding me!" His friend's sarcasm is easily traveling through the new device to reach the knots in Nate's stomach, and the underlying hint of worry is even worse.
"You were weird earlier – weirder than usual. You took off before I could see you! Are you OK? Why were you late for the report? You better call me, dude!"
If he knew... Nate will call him later, after a good sleep – if he manages to find sleep, of course. He is in no state right now to lie to his best friend, who knows him by heart.
***
Nate almost leaps when the cleaners' locker room door opens and a petite silhouette, which he knows by heart every edge and curve, gets out of it. But he stops in his tracks as he notices the middle-aged woman following and talking cheerily to a quiet Anastasia.
He pretends to look down at his new phone, yet he discreetly peeps at the two women, his eyes only glued to the young, blond-haired woman, and when their gazes finally meet, his attention catches the breath she sucks in.
Anastasia is unable to hear another word from Vera. She keeps glancing at the strong figure leaning against the wall on the other side of the hallway. Is he waiting for her?
She doesn't know if the bubbling in her stomach is out of nervousness or excitement, surely a mix of both, and although there is a pinch of guilt for rushing Vera off as she has been talking about the health costs for her children, the strong beats of her heart are engulfing everything else, including Vera's words.
She just catches the 'goodbye' before her colleague walks away, and then, her heart leaps when Nathaniel joins her.
"Hi..." Their surroundings and the awkwardness of their situation, once more, are making his whisper more strained than what he's intended.
Since he has left her yesterday morning, he's been thinking about talking to Anastasia. That's why, even if he is on rest duty with only a few hours of meetings and reports, he has stayed a little bit more than necessary, and as soon as he has spotted her angelic silhouette entering the locker room, he's waited patiently for her.
"Hi." She smiles shyly, though it's quickly shadowed with a light frown as she nods at his bandage, now hidden under his gray sweater. "How are you? Are you feeling better?"
"I'm fine. I followed your prescription: I rested." He offers her a crooked grin, trying to dissipate the uneasy atmosphere and find back their cozy complicity, and it indeed floats back easily with her full smile. "And you?"
"I'm good."
"About yesterday..." Here's the elephant in the room, the anchor hovering to crash the atmosphere, and it's even more dangerous as some people are passing by. So he continues his whisper lower, "I'm sorry I walked off so quickly."
"No, no, it's okay... you were... I understand." She glances around and then down, anywhere but his eyes.
Just with his apologetic words, he has invited back the awkwardness between them.
"I don't want–"
"Ana?! You're still here?"
If her heart has been flailing everywhere inside her ribcage with just those few words from Nathaniel, here, it freezes as Vera pops in from nowhere, and it has trouble starting again at the possibility they could have been caught.
Luckily Nathaniel and she haven't been face to face, as she has been avoiding his gaze, and since there is a notice screen next to them, Vera might not have remarked they have been intimately talking. That's what she is praying for as the blood slowly comes back to her face, and she turns to her colleague.
"Er... yeah... I just dropped my keys!" She waves her keys in her hand, almost impressed with her reaction faster than her heart.
It is surely thanks to all the practice she has now that the lies are coming out more easily, yet their acid taste never sweetens in her mouth.
"Oh, and I forgot my phone! It must be contagious!" Vera shakes her head, disappearing inside the locker room with the same cheerful attitude as always, although for once, she is completely unaware of the situation around and the two sighs of relief following once the door closes again.
"I don't think that's the best place to talk about that." Anastasia barely takes the time to breathe as her gaze is wandering everywhere around except on her left, where Nathaniel is still standing too close.
"Maybe I can drive you home?" he suggests, and she snaps her head back towards him, forgetting for an instant where they are as the shine in his teddy brown eyes tickles something inside her chest, like a pull drawing her toward him.
From the way his hand is lifting towards hers and stopping just an inch away, she can guess she isn't the only one feeling it, though she still isn't sure if it should reassure her or scare her more as she nods.
She follows him anyway, after counting to three to not catch attention, and also to try to regulate her heart rate.
She knows it is a bad idea with every step to his car, and even more inside the immaculate, shiny car. Yet the thought of turning back doesn't cross her mind one second.
She tries to convince herself that it is because they need to talk. But when he starts his engine in silence, and she still doesn't open her mouth, it is obvious that there is more.
It is this 'more' that is prickling her skin as her gaze is absorbing every move of his hands on the steering wheel and every tensed feature of his face.
"I'm sorry for leaving so fast yesterday... I don't want you to think that-that I used you..." he breaks the crackling silence with his hoarse voice, finally letting out the words that have been spinning in his mind and in his heart since he's left her, along with the images of her glistening body and soft gaze inked in both places too.
He hasn't wanted to leave her like that, vulnerable and naked in many ways. It has been the safest, but it feels so wrong to him. It's been the last thing he's wanted to do. He would have pampered her with tender kisses to soothe her if he could have stayed, and he's still tempted to when she turns to face him with her determined gaze.
"Once again, you didn't use me. We are two conscious adults who... broke the law again." She swallows on her last words, their weight thickening the air. "And I'm the one who jumped at your neck," she adds, her cheeks blossoming with pink.
"Still," he mumbles.
'I was so scared', her words are still echoing in him. It constricts his ribcage to ever see her scared or worried, though the fact that she has been concerned for him makes his heart swell. The two sensations are contradictory, yet well coexisting in his chest.
She doesn't raise his quiet mumble, as it holds too many emotions for her to ever win this argument, and she prefers to just observe him in the silence of the small space instead.
His brown curls are free and messed today, which she definitely likes better on him. His jaw is clenching slightly, and it looks like he hasn't bothered to shave this morning, the scratchy stubble shadowing and accentuating the sharp angles of his face. His chocolate eyes are clouded with many questions he seems to be battling, and all of this makes him more mysterious, yet more vulnerable at the same time.
Her heart is falling into a new rhythm of strong thuds as her gaze follows each detail of his face, then down his strong shoulders and neck covered with a black scarf, where a deep red mark is popping out from the dark fabric. Just when she has managed to regulate her heart rate...
"Do you know they announce scorching out tomorrow?"
His faraway look comes back to her in a confused frown, though the realization and a shaky breath quickly smoothen it as her fingers tug at his scarf, exposing his neck.
"You will keep wearing a scarf?"
Her question might be playful, but it does nothing to lessen the seriousness of the situation, and her eyes widen as she can see how passionate she has been.
The more she is staring at those deep red marks, the more flashes of his sweaty skin under her lips come back to her memory, and the more she feels her cheeks taking the same tint. She pulls her finger away before she reaches the hollow of his shoulder, which she remembers too well without even looking.
The fresh yet burning memories are still playing before her eyes as she lets them trail away, and she needs a few seconds to realize they aren't flying anymore.
He has parked the car in a quiet area, a few streets before her house. She recognizes the empty road, the well-kept gardens, and the few houses a little farther, all forming angular shapes that could be from any other area in the falling darkness if she didn't know this way almost by heart.
Yet there is still something unfamiliar around, and her stomach shrivels little by little until her gaze comes back to him. She isn't scared of Nathaniel; she never would. It's the shadows coming with the conversation they need to have that are crippling her, and just as they are invading her chest, she asks in a breathless whisper,
"What if your wife sees it? What if someone finds out about... that?"
'That', here they are again with no word to put on what they do, what they are, or what they have.
"Don't worry, I'm careful. No one will know."
He isn't sure of what he's talking about exactly, too distracted by the feather-like tickles her fingers have left behind and just wanting to ease the pensive crease between her eyebrows. Yet it seems impossible when they talk about 'that', and he's one second away from smoothing it himself, with his fingers or his lips – he hasn't decided – when she abruptly moves away, diving her head into her bag and rummaging determinately until she pulls out two beige tubes.
"Here, use this to hide them."
He looks at the tubes in her hands like she is holding an enigma, exactly the same look as when he has been face to face with the make-bed machine, and she smiles at his cute confused frown, although his gaze becomes less cute when he lingers to her neck.
"Here... I'll show you how to use it." Her voice is hoarser than she expects it, but she shakes it off. "First, you apply the base." She puts a small knob of blue cream on the tip of her index finger while his gaze flicks between her finger and the exposed skin of her neck.
So this is the responsible for hiding all the red marks he's possessively claimed? His mouth is tickling to redden her pearly skin again and follow the path under her clothes that he knows she doesn't conceal.
But his train of thoughts is put to a stop – and maybe his heart rate too – before spinning faster, when she starts applying the cold cream on his marks. Are they his or hers though, since she's imprinted them on his skin? He comes to the conclusion that these marks are hers as the light touch of one of her fingers awakes all the nerve endings there in a trail of goosebumps.
"Puis, you apply the foundation lighter than your complexion." Her voice is wavering as, under her pads, she can feel his heart thudding, and it is sending hers in the same restless rhythm.
The simple action of spreading the cream becomes harder than solving an impossible riddle when his intoxicating perfume is invading her lungs and his whole aura is overwhelming her, and it requires all her concentration for her shaky fingers to stay on the red marks
Luckily they have approximatively the same skin tone, so quickly the red marks disappear under the beige mixture, except for the darkest mark near his shoulder.
"I'm sorry..." she whispers, not daring to move her gaze from the beige mixture on the tip of her finger.
"Don't." He wouldn't trade these marks and the feelings her lips have sent through all his nerves for anything, and the thrill is rushing back in his veins just at the memories of her plump lips sucking his skin.
But he can't tell her that.
"I think I've left you quite some too..."
She laughs lightly under her breath, tickling his skin from how close she is, and he still doesn't grasp how they can keep this light complicity when the tension in the small space is pressuring them until their cores.
"You're just really good at hiding them." Again, his words are light, but his breathless tone is giving them a double-edge, especially as his gaze travels back to her spotless neck.
He's close enough to catch the trail of goosebumps forming there, the only thing standing out on the pearly skin along with her silver necklace, and the lightness is one second away from being completely annihilated with the thought of brushing away the tiny unevennesses when she pulls away.
Though even the small distance she's put between them might not be enough to erase the thought lingering from his brain to his fingers by way of his lungs and lips, and he forces himself to avert his gaze away from her smooth neck, turning to admire the results of her fine work in the rearview mirror, while trying to catch his breath and find back some lightness.
"Do you learn this at your law school?"
He has a way to build a burning pressure in her, yet also make her melt smoothly.
"No, and luckily because make-up is clearly not my specialty! It's my friends who taught me this."
She shakes her head with an amused grin that hopefully can conceal the way she is fighting to keep herself together. But when his penetrating eyes are glued to her neck, tingling her skin even from afar, she is sure no amount of make-up or build-up facade can hide the warmth rushing as much to her restless legs as to her cheeks.
"Here, keep it." She almost adds 'if you need it again', and not only thinking about the marks she has just concealed as she hands him the two plastic tubes.
Their fingers brush with this simple gesture, and with it, the pressure strains back sharply, crushing against their skins. They both become aware of the distance between them, smaller than they have thought, yet too large for the pull attracting their bodies.
His brown eyes are fixed on her hypnotizing hazel ones, and the gray shades, accentuated by the white surroundings, are like a magnet drawing him closer as she's leaning in at the same torturously slow pace.
Her gaze falls on his rosy lips, plumper and seemingly softer now. She wonders what they taste like today, the unique, intoxicating savor of him of course, but what else? Coffee? Peppermint? Cinnamon? A touch of sweaty-salty? Or whatever he has snacked this afternoon? She wants to feel it too, and the curiosity is titillating her stomach as his lips become within inch reach.
But it all drops when movements behind catch her eyes, right before she can solve this mystery.
Cliffhanger!!! 😁 Please don't hate me! And tell me who/what do you think it is? I bet you'll never guess 😉😈
Tell me what you think of this chapter, their talk and the make-up advice! 😅😉
BTW for the ones who don't know French, Puis = then 😊
And if you liked this chapter and want to read more, don't forget to vote! 😉❤