Chapter 23
his touch
LEXI
“Close your eyes,” Nicolai whispered, his breath warm on my bare shoulder, and then he kissed me there.
My eyelids fluttered, black blinking shut over the white ceiling and glittering chandelier hanging near the foot of the bed. “But what are you going to—”
“No questions. Lie back. Don’t think. You said you wanted to learn. Tell me if you want to stop, but until then, feel.”
The comforter was velvety against my bare back and calves where my skirt rode up my legs.
Despite my earlier protests that I had completely sobered up, I was a little tipsy from the champagne and strong vodka tonics, just enough to allow my trouble-antennae to retract instead of constantly quivering to detect danger before someone exploded into violence.
My body rested on the bed, heavy, leaden. Nicolai smoothed his hand over the silk of my dress from the bodice to my hip, pressing me down.
He kissed under my jaw, his mouth moving down my neck.
The remnants of his cologne wafted from his skin, fresh wood, spice, and warm, deep scents like a wooden treasure chest from the eighteen hundreds, filled with things only the wealthiest could enjoy, cinnamon and tea, and light glinting in amber, and the glow of gold.
I turned my head to follow the warmth of his breath, trying to kiss him, but his hand splayed over my jaw and lifted my chin so he could more thoroughly use his mouth on my throat.
My head spun, and I lifted my back from the bed, trying to press myself against him.
His low chuckle on my shoulder turned into his voice saying, “Down.”
Coiling energy suffused my body. “Please—”
“I know.” He kissed the base of my throat. “Oh, I know, my angel. The hunger. But wait. Don’t anticipate. Don’t rush. Feel what I’m doing to you.”
I was. The trickle of his fingertips over my shoulder, moving my gown’s untied straps aside so his lips could caress my collarbones had my undivided attention.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he whispered as his mouth trailed lower along the neckline of the dress, and then cool air brushed the top of my breast as he peeled the dress down. “This thing under here, this black thing, the korsett, this bustier, it’s so damn sexy. Smooth satin like your angelic skin.”
I stretched my hands over my head, the anticipation making me tremble.
“It’s sexy as hell. I am undone.”
He grabbed one of my hands and yanked us both up to sitting, and I laughed with the shock and opened my eyes.
Nicolai crawled backward down my body, his hands reaching under my skirt and stroking from my knees up to my thighs.
The warmth and strength of his hands on my legs dragged my skirt out from under my behind and up to my hips and then yanked it over my head and off of me.
The copper silk billowed over the side of the bed.
He stood on his knees as his eyes raked down my body. When his eyes met mine again, he was smiling and a little breathless. “Damn.”
The admiration in his eyes was stunning.
Jimmy’s utter rejection of me in the middle of our wedding had injured a core part of myself, a part that had quantified my value as my attractiveness to men.
Yeah, yeah. I know. Should I have thought that?
Probably not.
But Jimmy’s church had told me in a million different ways to wear longer skirts and sleeves and higher necklines because my very presence was a temptation men couldn’t resist, that I was the prize if I was meek enough, that I was more valuable than rubies if I followed their rules, that I would be wanted if I did what they said.
And, you know, TV advertising and every post on social media slammed those thoughts home.
Data churned in my mind all the time.
It messed with my head.
I’d tried.
I’d tried so hard, but Jimmy hadn’t prized me. No matter how much I’d crammed and stuffed my round, jiggly self into that square hole, he’d walked away without a backward glance.
Being. Thrown. Away.
Hurt.
And Nicolai’s reluctance, or his strategic maneuvering or whatever, but every time he’d casually brushed me off had been a hard prod at that crushed spot in my soul.
Bright excitement filled his eyes, and his teeth pressed his lip as he looked at me.
Jimmy had leered at me, even gotten grabby, but it always felt like he was mocking me while he did it, like he was such a manly-man that any woman, even me, tempted him.
I don’t think Jimmy had ever looked at me with real desire like this, and I’d tried so hard to be everything he’d said he wanted.
The hunger in Nicolai’s eyes felt real, like that was a real reaction from deep in his body, like he really, really liked what he saw.
And he saw me.
Before I even knew what I was doing, I reached with both hands, grabbed his shirt, and dragged Nicolai right down on top of me.
His whole muscular body pressed mine into the mattress.
He caught himself with both hands just outside my shoulders, but his mouth plundered mine in a lavish, panting kiss.
Nicolai whispered against my lips, a kiss punctuating every pause, “Lexi, if I wasn’t already planning, to make you scream my name, pulling me down like that, would make me wild.”
And his words made me feral. I twisted my hands in his shirt’s fabric, holding him, as he lowered himself to his forearms and kissed me until I was breathless.
“Nicolai,” I whispered against his lips, needing more and yet, dammit, not knowing what I wanted.
“Yes, you’ll say it just like that, with that sexy little catch in your voice, but louder,” he whispered and buried his face under my chin, mouthing and just barely scraping his teeth over my throat.
The anticipation, the need, coiled inside me, and I stretched my arms above my head and pointed my toes, trying to dispel the clench between my legs and inside my body.
Nicolai’s hand raced up my arm and captured both my wrists above my head, pinning my hands to the bedspread while he was kissing me.
Oh, wow, that was a lot. My heart raced to a frantic gallop against my ribs, and I broke off the kiss to stare at my wrists where he was holding me down.
“Oh, angel, your eyes,” he whispered as his hand retreated, caressing down my arm. “I have to remember to take things slowly.”
I wrapped my arms around his shoulders because I should remember not to tempt him to do too much. “It was fine. I’m fine. Really, I’m sort of freaky. I was, you know, in the theatre. Cast parties. I can handle anything you can dish out,” I blustered.
He chuckled against my shoulder as he kissed me. “Oh, yes. I sensed that about you, that you must be terribly kinky.” He kissed farther up my neck. “Depraved.” He pressed his lips over my pulse. “You scare me.”
His patronizing tone made me want to flip him over and jump on him, but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure of what to do with him once I jumped him, so I didn’t.
I mean, I knew. Health class hadn’t been that much help. But I’d seen diagrams. And the internet.
But I didn’t know.
I just knew that Nicolai’s strong, muscular body moving over mine reduced my rationalizing to rubble.
He easily pressed himself off me like a push-up, leaving one of his knees between my legs. His eyes sparkled with amusement.
His knee dividing my thighs, not even close to the apex, was a jarring intrusion like he was forcing my legs apart, even though I’d moved my legs to the sides on purpose because he needed somewhere to rest his knee so that he wasn’t hovering over me on his fingertips and toes.
My legs were spread.
The hard muscle of his leg pressed against my inner thighs.
That part of me was accessible to him.
It was different from when I’d been sitting on his legs in the car, when I’d been in control.
My body was vulnerable.
He leaned on one arm beside my head, using his other to squeeze the top few hooks down the black satin front of my bustier, expertly popping them open and giving me more room to breathe with each release.
But I couldn’t seem to gasp enough air.
My heartbeat thundered like I was fighting either him or myself.
Nicolai glanced up at me again, his gaze moving between my eyes, and his smile softened. “Lexi. Angel.”
He stopped unhooking my bustier and kissed me softly on my lips again, then down to my chest, another slow and sweet kiss to my mouth, then the curve of my breast, and he alternated, soothing my fears and yet tightening my desire. “What do you say if you want me to stop?” he murmured.
I slipped my hands under his collar. The skin of his neck and shoulders warmed my palms, and a little more of his cologne puffed from inside his shirt. “I would say red. But I’m not saying it.”
He lifted his head and looked me in the eyes again, his hands still. “And what do you say to keep going?”
“Yes. I say yes. Yes.”
“That’s my girl.”
Longing wafted like smoke through my heart.
His mouth was on the top of my breast, going lower. With the bustier loosened at the top, he folded the bra cup to the side and breathed on the peak, humid and warm, and then he was tonguing and sucking it into his mouth.
Heat shot through me, and my back bowed off the bed as the tension in my stomach and between my legs clenched into an ache. “Oh.”
My arms twined around him, and my bare heels slipped on the velvet comforter as I pushed, trying to feel more.
Slipping my fingers and palm through his hair was another exploration, the silken strands curling loosely around my fingers as I threaded them through.
It wasn’t enough, though. His lips and the skin on his cheeks touched my chest, but more, more, rushed in my blood.
I plucked at the soft fabric of his shirt. My voice was breathless and a squeak. “Take this off?”
Nicolai lifted his head. His eyes were liquid, and his breathing ragged. He watched me, deciding. “Okay.”
He stood on his knees, yanking his shirt out of his belted pants. With one arm, he reached down his back, biceps and triceps bulging as his arm folded, and dragged his dress shirt and undershirt over his head with one smooth motion.