Chapter 22 #2
The fact that my social media friend count had quadrupled in the last few hours because he’d vouched for me to his friends, giving me the opportunity to know them better.
The fact that he’d instantly made a crazy-grand romantic gesture in the middle of a crowded casino, just to piss off my ex for me.
The fact that when I’d straddled him in the car and kissed him, his brilliant eyes had gone sleepy, that his breath had quickened.
But now, his eyes hardened, narrowing with anger. “Pass?”
“Yeah, pass,” I said, wrinkling my nose at him. “I’m an expert at refusing. You couldn’t even. I’ll bet even you couldn’t get me to change my mind.” I stared straight into his bright, narrowed eyes. “I dare you to try.”
“Then tell me to stop.”
Nicolai dipped like he was doing a pushup, and his lips caught mine and he was kissing me.
And I was swept away.
How was kissing Nicolai—the brush of his lips and his sweet breath deeper in my mouth, his tongue delicately touching and then stroking mine, his hand slipping up my neck to the back of my head and strong fingers gripping my hair—how was that such an utterly different experience than battling the mouth-kraken that had been Jimmy?
I floated.
My arms drifted upward to tangle around his shoulders.
The weight of his muscled chest and torso on me felt like I was pressing upward into him against gravity.
Momentum spun all thought away. The heat of his body flowing through his clothes tumbled me, and I was dizzy. The firm pressure of his hand stroked the hourglass curve of my body from the side of my breast to my hip as I gasped.
Nicolai had lifted his head away from me.
Falling, plummeting into the endless sky of the blue of his eyes, and drowning.
He rasped, his voice hoarse like he’d been screaming, and he whispered, “Tell me to stop.”
“No,” I said, steeling myself, and yet I could hear the pleading in my voice. “Don’t stop.”
He pushed himself up on his arms, pulling away.
I almost cried but definitely wanted to grab that oversized bed pillow and smack him upside the head with it. “No!”
He dipped again, kissing me softly. I didn’t know if he was teasing me or himself. “Lexi, no more kisses. No more teasing me like this. You have to stop, because I can’t.”
“Once again, you kissed me.”
“You tempted me into it.”
I rolled my eyes so hard at him that I nearly saw my own brain. “That’s ridiculous! And it’s abdicating your own responsibility!”
“Abdicating is what kept my several-greats grandfather alive during the February Revolution. I’m an expert at that.” He started to rear up, his legs still straddling my hips.
I was losing him.
I grabbed his white dress shirt—dang, that cloth was still crisp after the whole night and yet soft in my fingers—and dragged him right the heck back down on top of me. “Teach me.”
One of his dark eyebrows lifted. “Teach you what?”
“You’ve got me for a year. Teach me what it’s like to be with a guy who’s good in bed. Teach me how to be good in bed, like you.”
He winced and looked away from me. “You don’t actually know whether I am good in bed. You have nothing to compare to. I’m probably just bragging.”
I grabbed him around the neck and dragged him down to kiss me again.
His lips were soft on mine, but then his hand slid around the back of my neck, cradling my skull and holding me in place while he deepened the kiss until it was an absolute assault on my senses, until the room was spinning and I was clinging to him and panting.
I had no idea how both of my arms had gotten twined around his chest and back, but his body was tight against mine, mostly because I was clamped around him like a steel trap.
His body, his pelvis, undulated against my legs and stomach, one sinuous instinctive movement, and a tiny spark of that head-spinning bliss wafted up my spine, a taste of what he’d done to me in the car.
Oh, yeah.
More-more-more.
The smallest push against Nicolai’s shoulder made him rise away from me. His lips were swollen, pinker, and his eyelids were half-mast.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” I demanded. “Those girls weren’t just telling the truth. They weren’t even telling it all, were they?”
His eyelids creased in dismay again. “I don’t know what they said.”
“They said you have a magic dick.”
This time, Nicolai rolled his eyes. “I should put that in my social media bios.”
“That you were the guy everyone wanted to rebound with, that you were that guy in the chat group everyone wanted a taste of.”
One of his eyebrows fell. “That seems outlandish.”
“And now you’re making me think that you’re trying to lower my expectations.”
“Your expectations seem to be fairy wings and magic shadows.”
“My expectations were that I would marry somebody I loved and who loved me, but that didn’t happen.” My voice roughened in my throat. “I expect that nothing matters, that everything hurts, and I just want a little bit of this heart-crushing misery to go away for a while.”
He’d already leaned down close while I was talking, bracing himself on his elbows around my face instead of his extended arms. He stroked my hair back from my temple and watched his fingers and my hair.
“My angel, how could someone do that to you? You’re so sweet, so kind. I could make him disappear.”
“That sounds ominous,” I said.
He chuckled and kissed my forehead, my temple. “I should be careful about saying things like that, but I mean it.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “If I were tsar, I’d have my secret police kidnap him and send him to the frozen depths of Hell on the Russian taiga for what he did to your heart.”
Maybe it was wrong, sinful even, but Nicolai being angry at Jimmy soothed the cracks in my soul. “You sure you don’t harbor secret aspirations to conquer Russia again?”
“Only for you,” he said, gently kissing down my jawline, a caress of his lips that made me inexplicably stretch again. “Only for you, my angel.”
He nipped my shoulder, a quick sting that jolted a surprised gasp out of me, then he caught the bow of my dress’s spaghetti strap between his straight, white teeth and pulled, holding eye contact with me the whole time the loops slowly slid apart.
When the silk cords on that side fell separately on my skin, he leaned over my other shoulder and did it again.
“What are—” I couldn’t seem to breathe properly, the air in my lungs swirling. I held the top of my dress to my chest. “What are you doing?”
“Tell me to stop.”
“. . . No.”
His hint of a smile as he pushed up on his arms was a little devilish. “As long as I’m auditioning for the role of teacher, I might as well do it right. While we’re on the subject, are you on birth control?”
“Yeah. The Pill. Because I was going to get married.”
Wait, was this it? Were we going to do it?
I raised my head and curled into a half-crunch, looking into his eyes. “Are you—” Saying it out loud seemed weird. “Are we—”
Nicolai hovered above me, his head eclipsing the ceiling chandelier. The light haloed his face. “Lie back.”
“I just want to know. I want to . . . prepare myself, or brace myself, or something.”
He rocked forward on his arms and kissed me again, a lingering kiss that promised more.
He retreated just an inch with a sly smile he tried to hide as his gaze flickered between my mouth and my eyes, and he said, “Not tonight. We’ll negotiate later.
But I wouldn’t want to leave you disappointed.
I never leave a woman disappointed. Now lie back. ”
“Right, because this is just an interlude. We don’t want consequences.” My eyes felt huge on my face because even though he’d said no, the way his heavy body was pressing me into the bed felt like he was saying yes. “But I am. On it. The Pill, I mean. I’m on it.”
“Lie back.”
“What does that mean?”
“We’re dancing near the edge of what I crave, angel, but that should be a decision we make together, not an impulsive half-drunken accident.” His voice dropped. “Now, I said, lie back.”
I flopped onto the bed.