Chapter 16 #2
Victor takes my hand in his and slips the ring onto my finger. I look across to Anton as Victor places a chaste kiss against my cheek.
My uncle gives me a sad smile. "Looks like we have a wedding to plan. Congratulations, anima mia."
When you consider that dinner included another surprise proposal, the rest of it was alarmingly uneventful. Everyone was quiet. Even Alexei. Not even Isla's arrival outshone the fact that there's a DeMarco-Rushkoff wedding to plan.
Victor offers to escort me back to my room, and Nic allows it so he can stay behind to talk with Anton and Freddie.
The fact that he's letting Victor take my hand and lead me away from the dining room guts me.
It's as if he's finally handing me over to Victor and my fragile heart can't handle it. I can't ignore my aching want for him.
Is this what it looks like when Nicholas Prince gives up?
All because of a gaping diamond on my finger.
We reach the bottom of the stairs. "I can escort myself back to my own room."
"Prince doesn't seem to think so," Victor says, waggling his eyebrows. Nic has cemented himself firmly in bodyguard status and the men are having a riot teasing him about it. Okay, I enjoy teasing him about it too.
I stifle a smile as I groan. "Yes, he doesn't seem to think I'm capable of much now."
"Well, it is your house. So I'll leave you here."
"Thank you," I say.
We stare at each other for a moment and I tense as I wonder if he's waiting for some show of affection from me. We're going to be married, probably soon if tradition has anything to say about it. A hearty pat on the shoulder as goodbye feels like it'd be the wrong thing to do.
Victor either senses my discomfort or doesn't care, chuckling as he leans over and plucks a kiss on my cheek. He lingers with his lips against my skin, tearing them away slowly as his beard lightly scratches at my cheek.
My eyes shutter as I look back at him. He smirks, saying goodnight before he walks away.
It's strange, how different he feels, and I curse my luck. Nic makes me feel warm inside, and Alexei's touch heats me to my core. But with Victor, I feel nothing but the ache of a place where something is missing.
I shake my head of the strange encounter.
The longer this goes on, the less sure I am of anything I thought I knew before.
I climb the stairs in quiet contemplation.
All I wanted was a little freedom. Not to be guarded.
But since my father's death all the pieces I thought were in play have left me perplexed.
So much so that I'm not even sure I know the game being played anymore.
When I reach the top of the stairs I hear hushed voices. Turning, I find Isla and Alexei are deep in conversation down the hall from me, standing intimately close. He appears angry, but when doesn't he? Isla laughs each time his eyes bulge like he's fighting to keep control of his demons.
If there was any doubt left, it's all gone now. This girl must be his girlfriend.
And he's parading her around for what?
They're standing in front of one of the doors to the guest bedrooms. The room isn't Alexei's. Or any room that had been assigned for that matter.
So it must be hers. But why would she need a separate room?
She pats his arm once and he relaxes again. She opens the door behind her and together they go into her room.
Well, that answers that question. But it also poses another.
Alexei has been hot-headed, distrustful and vague. Unlike all the other pieces of my life that have changed shape, molded to something new, he's the one I never really saw coming. The only piece on the board that isn't meant to be there, and I can't decide if he's pawn or king.
It's only a split second decision that makes me decide that tonight I should try to plant the cloning device on Alexei's stuff, rather than his brother's. Tonight. While he's distracted by his annoyingly beautiful girlfriend.
"Sage?"
I turn around and find Nic jogging up the stairs behind me. He stops a short distance away from me. Putting much more space between us than was between Isla and Alexei.
"Can we talk?" he asks.
I scrunch my brows but nod anyway, pointing a thumb over my shoulder in the direction of my bedroom. I walk inside and sit on the end of my bed, only hearing as Nic gently closes the door behind us and comes to stand in front of me.
When I look to him, his arms are folded over his chest and his face raggedly torn. I've never seen this much raw emotion on him before. It feels like nails scraping on my skin.
"Nic, what-"
"Are you really pursuing Victor? Really considering it?"
I close my eyes and look away. God dammit. He's asking for much more of my hand than I'm willing to give away.
"Right. Say no more." He moves away from me to stare out my bedroom window, turning his back on me and therefore the conversation.
I make my way slowly towards him, desperate to turn him back to where we started.
Back before there was no Rushkoffs. No marriage.
No engagement ring and no wedding being planned.
Where we were just a boy and a girl. With flirting and soft touches across my sensitive skin.
"Nicholas," I say, touching my hand to his back.
He shakes the touch away, his eyes hardening after just a fraction of softness that I'm now not sure was only my imagination.
"It's not what you think," I say.
"It clearly doesn't matter what I think," he says, turning to face me with a challenge.
I know there's nothing more I can give him. No answer that will satisfy this curiosity. So I have to leave that statement out there no matter how much it pains me.
"And I suppose it shouldn't," he says, pushing away and heading for the door.
"Please," I say.
I inwardly cringe at myself. The amount of times that I've stood in front of Nicholas Prince and begged him is shameful.
Begged him not just to fuck me, but to fucking love me.
All the times he's rejected me feel as bad as the times he's given in.
Because he's never really given me him. There's a wall between us.
I'm just not sure if it's his or mine anymore.
"I can't do this with you," he says, his jaw hardening.
My heart cracks. Love me, please. All I've ever wanted was for you to love me. "Why?" I say, my voice coming out as barely more than a squeak.
"Why?" he repeats, whirling to face me, his hands restless and his eyes wilder than I've ever seen them.
This isn't what it looks like when Nicholas Prince gives up.
It's what he looks like when he becomes unhinged.
"I want you so fucking bad, you know that?
You torture me. You like to torture me. Until all I can think about is getting back inside you.
You have made my life a living hell every single day I've worked here, Sage. "
Oh.
Ouch.
"A living fucking hell." Suddenly he's in my face, eyes wild.
"I worked for your father and yet every single day all I could think about was you.
Parading around trying to get me to come to bed with you.
Fuck, if I were a better man I'd have had some self-control.
" He runs his fingers through his hair as he takes a step back.
"You had perfect self-control." My voices goes hard. "You've turned me down. Just as many times as you've said yes, you've said no more." I turn my pleading eyes up to his, but he doesn't return my gaze.
"It was not from lack of wanting to." Nicholas clenches his teeth. "Never from lack of wanting to."
"You know how I feel. I've never exactly hidden it," I say.
That lights some kind of fire inside him.
His eyes snap back to mine and he grips me roughly by the shoulders.
Before I know what hits me, his lips are on mine.
They are hard, bruising even, and they devour me.
He kisses me like his life depends on it, so hard and rough that I'm afraid he will swallow me whole, or I him.
Just as quickly as he started it, he uses his grip on my arm to pull me away from him, as if he has to physically push me away from him because his lips refuse to disconnect. "I know how you feel," he says. "You want to give me your body, when I have always wanted so much more."
For a moment, I'm stunned into silence, before his words sink in.
I give a disbelieving scoff. "You're an absolute fucking moron, Nicholas Prince."
I kiss him again, jumping up into his arms and deepening the kiss. He grabs my hips as my legs wrap around his waist. We're in my bedroom, but somehow going to the bed still feels too intimate. Too close to what we really want to say.
Nicholas backs me towards the dresser, balancing me in one arm as he swipes the contents off the top and sits me on the wood. Our hands are blurry with speed, shaking as I tug on his belt and he pulls at my panties.
We keep bumping into each other, our hands blocking one another as we try desperately to undress so we can connect where we most want to.
Nicholas drops to his knees with a growl. "Are these fucking panties sewn on?" He tugs my panties, searing my skin as he rips them from my body and throws them across the room.
He pushes my dress up my thighs, hands squeezing as he goes. Settling his hands on my hips, he presses his nose to my center and inhales. He's right there, so close, and I just want him to touch me. To take me.
I feel his tongue swipe across my slit and I buck up wildly. My hands pull and scrape across his skull, tugging at his hair. Each time he tries to move away I thrust my hips up and push him back into me harder.
He rips away from me suddenly, cringing with hesitation, and I swear I could throttle him. His indecision threatens to destroy me, especially when I'm on the cusp of an orgasm.