Chapter 7 #2
Sam forced him to come into work and it did Harry good. He was even starting to put some weight back on, though the sleep thing wasn’t going well, to judge by the huge blue-black bruises under his eyes.
Harry was the poster child for messed up. If he was double-tagging with Mike, it meant they thought Sam was more messed up than Harry.
Well, hell.
Harry fixed him with his fierce yellow-brown gaze. “Would this be the same Nicole Pearce you’ve been calling every five minutes all morning?”
Sam gritted his teeth.
“And the one whose office doorbell you’ve been ringing every quarter of an hour?”
Sam sank even lower into the sofa.
She hadn’t come into work this morning. That was the thing that was driving him crazy. He could barely stay in the same room with the thoughts that were exploding in his head like grenades.
There was no good spin to put on Nicole Pearce not showing up for work, none.
Every single option he could think of was bad.
The worst, the very worst was—he’d hurt her.
She was lying in bed in her home or was—God!
—in a doctor’s office or hospital. He talked himself down from that one because he knew he couldn’t possibly have hurt her enough for medical care, but like a rabid dog, it was a thought he couldn’t keep away.
It kept circling back at him, snarling and snapping.
There were times last night when he hadn’t been gentle. And his memory wasn’t always clear.
Sam had an excellent memory, a native ability that had been honed by training. He could remember a map he’d seen once well enough to navigate by it, he could remember a face no matter how long ago he’d seen it; once he’d driven a route, he never forgot it.
But bits of last night were shrouded in such heat and electricity it was as if he’d shorted parts of his brain.
He remembered his dick plowing her endlessly, but he couldn’t remember what his hands had been doing.
Holding her down? He had strong hands, all of him was strong.
Had he somehow used that strength against her?
He’d never muscled a woman before, but he’d never before in his life been as excited. Had he somehow hurt her? The thought made his insides roil.
Second in his little list of nightmares was that he hadn’t hurt her but had somehow…
disgusted her. Because otherwise, why was she avoiding him?
Those little blackout moments might not have been violent, but maybe she thought he was some kind of sex maniac or sex addict.
The kind you read about on the internet. The kind who go to 12-step programs.
Hello, my name is Sam and I can’t keep it down.
Because, well, if she thought he was a sex maniac, he could understand why. His dick hadn’t gone down once all night. Not even a bit. It was like he was plugged into her and as long as she was around, he was aroused.
Neither thought was a happy one, though having her believe he was sex crazy was marginally better than having her think he was violent.
“Because if it is,” Harry continued in his calm voice, “if this is the same woman, then you’re pretty much the dickhead I always suspected you were.
Because clearly, the lady isn’t answering.
Her phone or the door. And she might not be answering because you’re calling every five minutes.
” He shrugged and spread his hands in a “don’t knock the logic” gesture.
Mike’s sharp gaze went from Harry, then back to Sam. “So…the mission is to protect the hottie from across the hall. Who’s not talking to you. Looks like fucking her once wasn’t enough…”
The rest of the sentence was choked in Mike’s throat, right behind Sam’s forearm, pressing him against the wall with it.
It had happened without any thought, without any planning, in an instant out of time.
The words came out of Mike’s mouth and Sam launched himself.
He hadn’t even felt his feet as he jumped Mike, throwing him so hard against the wall his head bounced.
It wasn’t planned or premeditated. He just found himself trying to punch Mike through the wall by his arm across Mike’s throat.
Dimly, he was aware of Mike turning red, his hard punches that had no effect, Harry’s shouting, Harry pulling at his arm…
The noises grew louder, finally penetrating the wild static in his head. Bits of him were coming back. He started feeling Mike’s punches, Harry’s hold.
They wouldn’t have made any difference except for the fact that a little sense was seeping back into his head together with the voices, and he realized that he was doing his damnedest to throttle his own brother.
He dropped his arm, stepped back.
“Hey man,” Mike wheezed, voice raw. He bent forward, hands on his knees, drawing in breaths in loud whoops.
“Sam…” Harry growled. Harry shook him once, then released him. All three of them had spent their childhoods gauging men on a rampage. Harry instinctively knew the storm had passed and that a little bit of sense had come back into Sam’s head.
Jesus.
Sam’s hands were shaking. What the fuck was he doing? This was Mike, his brother. And he’d wanted to kill him.
Except no one talked about Nicole that way, as if she were just some casual fuck. Particularly not Mike, who had women tripping into and out of his bed nightly. Mike was a “love ’em and leave ’em” kind of guy. So was Sam, except for now.
When he’d been loved and left.
Sam and Mike stared at each other, both breathing heavily. Mike owed Sam an apology. And Sam owed him one. Sort of.
Who was going to go first? Their gazes were unwavering, stances hostile. Two old bull moose on a tear. Damned if Sam would be the first to break.
The aroma of good whiskey filled the room.
“The hell with this,” Harry said, thrusting shot glasses of whiskey into their hands. “Back off, both of you, and drink up. Maybe alcohol will knock some sense into your hot heads.”
Mike had relaxed his stance, got his breath back. “But it’s ten o’clock in the morning,” he observed. Mike was a carouser, but he had his standards. No alcohol till after midday, he always said.
“It’s afternoon in New York,” Harry said, and Mike nodded, curling his hand around the heavy crystal glass.
Sam blew a breath out. Another. Looked with disgust at Harry holding the bottle, pouring so fast the whiskey gurgled. “Go easy, man. That stuff costs two hundred bucks a bottle.”
“Yeah?” Harry perked up. “Then I’ll take the bottle home with me. It’s wasted on you two.”
They stood, knocking back the whiskey with satisfied sighs, the tension lowering as the level of liquid dropped in the bottle.
Silence. Mike and Harry looked at Sam. There was no censure in their gaze, no recrimination, which was awful, of course, because Sam had acted like an ass.
And he’d attacked his brother. They should be ganging up on him, chewing his ass off.
But they weren’t. They just stood there, silently, two strong men saying nothing at all, letting Sam stew a little.
Sam loosened his shoulders, drew in a quick breath. It had to be done. “Sorry,” he muttered to Mike. “I was way out of line.”
Mike dipped his head, eyes fixed on Sam’s face. “She means something to you.”
Well, duh. Of course Nicole meant something to him, though he’d bite his tongue before he said it out loud. Sam didn’t want to say anything because saying it out loud somehow…nailed it down. Made it real and raw and scary. Articulating what were batshit crazy feelings he barely understood himself.
“Well, let’s just say I don’t want her beaten up by the fuckheads across the street.”
That shut Mike up. Harry too. They’d both seen lots of brutality toward women in their lives. They knew what a beaten-up woman looked like. No one wanted to see a black-and-blue Nicole, with swollen eyes and broken bones.
“Yeah.” Harry’s jaw muscles worked. Sam knew he was thinking of his mother and sister, lost to violence. He turned to Mike. “Do what you need to do to keep her safe.”
Mike nodded curtly. “I’ll stop by a couple of times. Make sure they see me. Make sure they know who they’d be messing with.”
Goddamn US law enforcement, that’s who.
Mike put the glass down. “So. Any messages you want me to give her? Anything I should say from you?”
Answer your phone, goddammit. Don’t shut me out. Talk to me. I want to see you again tonight, and the night after that and the night after that. I haven’t even begun to get you out of my system.
Sam’s jaw clamped shut on the words. His throat was tight and dry. He couldn’t have spoken if he wanted to.
He shook his head and Mike left. With an odd glance at Sam’s face, Harry left, too. Without saying anything, or over-analyzing the situation, which was a miracle.
Sam was alone. Alone in his big, expensive office that he’d worked so hard for. Alone with at least three urgent reports and requests for ten quotes for new business. Alone with his fucking thoughts.
He was behind in everything. He should be diving into work and instead here he was, playing with his dick.
He winced.
Do not think of your dick.
Too late.
It rose, urgently, as if he hadn’t fucked his brains out last night.
Oh Jesus, just the memory of her was enough to set him off. That face, under his, moving slightly up and down on the bed in time with his thrusts. Those huge cobalt eyes gazing into his. He’d never seen eyes that color before, a blue so intense it glowed.
Nicole Pearce was, hands down, the most beautiful woman he’d ever fucked.
The most beautiful woman he’d ever even seen.
But there had been something else in the bed with them.
Some kind of…connection, however crazy that sounded.
There’d been intensity, yes, of a kind he’d never experienced before.
But there had been other things, too. Things he had no word for, really, because they were new.
But if you put a gun to his head and forced him to find a word, one might be affection.
Though that was crazy, because they had spent the night fucking like bunnies.