30. Rome
Nikki frownedat her phone screen as she waited for me on the couch in my office. I took my glasses off and pushed away from my desk and asked, “Is something wrong?”
She glanced up, brows arched. “Oh! No. Well, yes. It’s my friend. She’s going through a breakup, and I’m worried about her.”
I nodded. My own friend Arlo was torn up about his former nanny, a willowy blonde with whom he’d become entangled. As I watched Nikki stand and turn to me, her hands smoothing down her clothes to straighten them, I felt a pang of sympathy. If Nikki walked away from me, I’d be a wreck too.
I crossed the space between us and indulged my urge to wrap Nikki in my arms. She sank into me, resting her head against my shoulder with a sigh.
“Is your friend okay?”
She shrugged. “She’s pregnant, and the guy is a jerk.” She pulled away, eyes narrowing on me. “He was her boss.”
I took her chin in a gentle hold, brushing my lips against hers. “Are you worried about us?”
“Sometimes,” she admitted.
“Why? I’m taking you to my family Thanksgiving, after all.”
She gave me a flat look, and it made me want to push her down to the couch and spread those thighs apart so I could watch her expression transform to something softer. “That’s my job, Rome.”
“Ouch.”
She rolled her eyes and grinned at me. “I’m sure your ego will recover.”
My nose brushed the side of hers as I said, “Maybe you should make it up to me.” I let my hand slip down to squeeze the curve of her ass and was rewarded with the slight catch in Nikki’s breath.
“Do you ever worry about what happens to us after?”
“After what?”
She pulled away, her hands on my shoulders as she frowned at me. “We can’t go on like this forever, Rome. You must know that.”
My throat was tight when I said, “I try not to think too far ahead.”
She pursed her lips, and I nipped at them to make them soften. I couldn’t stop touching her. If she was in the same room as me, I wanted my arms around her. If there was a frown on her forehead, I wanted to kiss it away. If she gave me any kind of sass, I fought the urge to fuck her until she smiled for me.
I pulled her onto the couch on top of me so she straddled me, her skirt falling around us in a flutter of fabric. She sat back on my thighs and plucked at a stray thread on my collar, a deep fold between her brows. I touched the spot, and she smoothed it.
“When I’m with you, I can’t think straight,” she admitted, lifting her gaze to meet mine.
I huffed, my hands on her hips. “I know the feeling.”
That made her lips kick, and a tightness in my chest eased.
“What do you want, Nikki? Do you”—I cleared my throat—“want to stop…”
“Having sex with you?” She arched a brow.
I jerked my chin down in a rough movement.
“No,” she admitted, “and that’s the problem.”
My hands slid up her thighs, relishing the warmth of her skin. She closed her eyes briefly, and I rumbled in satisfaction. “Good,” I answered. “Because neither do I. And I don’t think it’s a problem.”
“What are we, Rome?” Nikki asked, eyes wide. “What is this between us?”
“You need a label?” My hands found the line of her panties where they cut into her hips. I dipped my thumbs under the elastic, stroking softly. “What’s that going to change, Nikki?”
Her lids fluttered at my touch. “It would make this make sense,” she whispered. “And then maybe I wouldn’t be so scared.”
“Scared of me?” My voice was rough. I was struggling to understand what she needed, and I didn’t like the pinch in my chest at the thought that she wanted to end this. But she was on top of me, and it didn’t feel like she wanted to pull away. Did she want to be my girlfriend? She basically was. Did she want to stop working for my company? Quit?
That made the pinch in my chest turn painful. She was here because she worked for me, but if she wanted to walk away…
How would I be sure she would stay by my side? How could I ever be sure she wouldn’t abandon me entirely? She was employed by my company, and that meant she’d be here. That was all that mattered. That was what I wanted—what I was sure she wanted too.
“I’m not scared of you,” she said softly, brushing her lips over mine. “I’m scared of my feelings for you. Scared that you’ll wake up and realize you don’t want me, and you’ll just shake me off like a stray piece of lint.”
A long breath eased out of me. She wasn’t leaving. She didn’t want to leave. And she…she cared about me. The thought of her having feelings for me made it hard to breathe, and I didn’t quite know how to deal with the emotion it called up inside me. I didn’t even know what that emotion was.
A few months ago, I would have scoffed at myself. I knew I was better on my own, and I knew that being vulnerable only opened you up to getting hurt. Those were deep, undeniable truths.
But Nikki was vulnerable, and I found myself feeling closer to her than I ever had before. With slight pressure on her hips, I pulled her forward, tilting my face to hers. She followed my lead, tangling her fingers in my hair to press a kiss on my lips. I tongued at her bottom lip and groaned at the taste of her.
“Clara could walk in any minute,” Nikki whispered against my lips, but she didn’t pull away.
“Better be quick, then,” I said, sliding my hand under her panties to get at the wet warmth of her. I groaned as my fingers slid through her slickness, entering her opening with ease. She whimpered and rode my hand until her breaths were pants.
“This is so bad,” she said, voice fracturing on the last word. Her breath was hot on my neck as her head fell forward.
I huffed a laugh, adding a second finger while my thumb found her clit. “Better be a good little girl and come for me then.”
I wondered if this was always how it would be between us. I’d never felt this kind of insatiable desire with anyone before. I’d never been so desperate for a woman in my life, but somehow I couldn’t get enough of Nikki. The only way we knew how to communicate was with sex. She was worried about something, but I didn’t know how to ease those worries in any other way.
Her hips rolled over my hand until I slid my fingers out of her, replacing them with my other hand. There was a frantic, hungry need inside me. A need to claim her, to make sure she knew she was mine. All her fears were unfounded. They had to be. There was no way this connection between us could falter.
Sure, our arrangement was unconventional. And I knew, logically, that it had to end someday. But I couldn’t see the shape of our relationship in any other way. I wasn’t the type of man who could have a wife and kids and a normal life. I wasn’t built that way. I didn’t have the required neural connections in my brain that would give her all she needed in a partner. All she deserved.
But I’d be damned if that meant I’d let her go.
I wrapped my arm around her hip and found her ass with the tip of my finger coated in her arousal. I teased her there, loving the way she ground down on me. She gasped, pupils blown out as she lifted her head, her hands curling into my shoulders as she rode both my hands to a shuddering release.
We were both breathing heavily by the time the trembling in her limbs abated, and I pulled my fingers from her, wishing I could replace them with something else.
Nikki shifted, sliding to her knees on the floor before me. Her hands were at my belt in an instant, eyes darting to the door before meeting mine with a wicked glint.
“You don’t have to?—”
“I know,” she said, and she pulled me free from the confines of my pants before taking me into her mouth in one long suck.
My hips bucked off the couch and my hand flew to the back of her head. She hummed, and my eyes rolled back. The silk of her hair tightened between my fingers as I fisted into it, feeling the sharp daggers of her pointed nails in my thighs as she sucked me off like she was desperate for the taste of me.
When I came, she drank down my release in greedy gulps, and three little words rose to my lips, bursting to come out. She lifted her head and smiled at me, dazed, running a finger along the edge of her lip while her tongue darted out to lick it.
My breath heaved. I stared at this woman, this goddess, at a loss.
“I’d better go fix my makeup,” she said, and she rose to her feet like she hadn’t just shattered something inside me without even trying. I watched her disappear behind the door to my office’s ensuite then stuffed my softening cock back into my underwear before zipping myself up.
A while later, we took the helicopter to my parents’ estate and sat through an excruciating dinner where no one gave thanks for anything. Nikki responded to their chilly formality with a kind of stubborn cheerfulness, smiling at veiled insults and complimenting the food as if my mother had cooked it herself.
At the sight of my mother’s disapproving glare, my lips curled into an unrepentant smile. I found Nikki’s fingers and threaded them through my own, then brought her hand up to my mouth so I could place a kiss on the back of it.
She arched her brows at me, eyes glimmering, and I wished I had the courage to name the feeling trying to burst out of my chest.