21. Nash
21
NASH
“ B oss, we have a problem at the bar,” Jose says over the phone.
Fuck.
I curse as I rush out of my home and down the sandy pathway toward the bar. When I rush in, the first thing I see is fucking Ellie Clark dancing on top of my bar, drunk, in a dress that is barely covering anything on her gorgeous body. I close my eyes for a moment and count to ten as I try to suppress the anger and possessiveness that seems to have grown inside me since last night. Watching her fuck Manuel while I touched myself was hot, not because she was fucking someone else but because of how beautiful she looked. She truly did look like a goddess come to life with how she moved, and the way she dirtily dared me to join her as if she needed me in that moment. And like a fool with a crush, I gave into my basic needs. This morning, I had to go for a run because I couldn’t jerk off another time to images of her naked, my dick was fucking raw. Then the temptress walks out in a barely-there bikini and confesses that she touched herself thinking of me jerking off to her. My dick was hard as steel beneath and water, and I knew I couldn’t cross that line. She has a job to do and she’s obviously very good at it. Knocking out a cartel member so she could clone his phone and then make him think he passed out due to sex. I mean, if her lips were wrapped around my cock and I woke up to her sucking me, telling me that I had passed out because of what we had done I would have believed her, too. I’ve never met a woman who has twisted me into knots before. She’s come into my perfectly constructed life like a wrecking ball and is determined to smash down my walls with every interaction. There’s a reason I keep myself locked away. Why I keep my relationships convenient. I can’t take the chance.
“What the fuck is happening?” I glare over at Jose who is clapping and smiling up at her as she wiggles her ass in his face.
“Shit, um … here is your problem,” he says with a smirk.
“Urgh. Jose, I thought we were friends. Why did you have to call him?” Ellie whines.
“You’re going to have a sore head in the morning,” Jose tells her.
“I don’t care. I just want to forget. I can never forget. But these drinks are making me forget for the first time in my life,” she tells him.
Jose looks over at me, his brows pulled together, and concern written on his face.
“I’ll take care of her,” I tell him.
“I like her. Please make sure she is okay,” Jose whispers.
Of course, he likes her and now he is going to question me about her the next time I see him. Reaching up, I grab Ellie and haul her over my shoulder, the rest of the patrons boo and hiss at me.
“Show’s over,” I yell at them. They grumble and go back to their conversations.
“Let go of me, I was having fun,” Ellie says, slapping my ass. “I never get to have fun.” I ignore her as I walk out of the bar and head back home.
“What the hell were you thinking?” I yell at her as I walk along the path.
“I wasn’t. That’s the thing, it was the first time in my life I wasn’t.” Her fists stop thumping against me, and she goes slack.
Slowly, I place her on unsteady feet and hold her, there are tears in her eyes. “Why can’t I be normal?” she asks me as the first tear falls down her cheeks while we stand in the darkness outside the bar.
“There’s nothing normal about you,” I tell her, my thumb wiping the tear from her cheek.
“Yeah, because I’m a monster,” she says, pulling herself from my grasp. Ellie wraps her arms around herself and starts to walk back to my home.
She thinks she’s a monster. “Ellie, wait.”
“I’m fine, Nash. Go back to the bar and apologize for me. I’m sorry I embarrassed you. I won’t ever let that happen again,” she says, ignoring me as we continue to walk the path home.
“I won’t apologize for you.”
Ellie stops and turns around. “You’re right, I’ll go and apologize in the morning, it should come from me.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Ellie frowns at me. “You don’t have to apologize for anything. I was surprised, that’s all. Didn’t think someone like you would ever get drunk.”
“I don’t,” she mumbles.
I raise a brow at her. “What made you think tonight was the night to try it?”
She shrugs but refuses to look at me. Is she drinking because of me?
“Ellie, look at me,” I command, touching her chin and lifting it so she will look me in the eyes. She swallows and I can see she’s uncomfortable. This woman is never uncomfortable. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” she confesses, looking confused.
“Did something happen with Manuel?” I ask.
Her brows pull together and then she shakes her head. “No.”
“Is it me?” Ellie doesn’t answer. It’s me. I did this to her. “What did I do?”
“It’s what you didn’t do.” She stills as if those words weren’t supposed to come out of her mouth.
“What didn’t I do?” I question her.
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.” She shrugs, moving away from me as she wobbles toward home.
“For some fucking reason I am worried about you,” I tell her. This makes her stop, and she slowly turns around, those blue eyes glistening with emotion.
“I wonder what my life would have been like if I could have been who I wanted to be.” She shakes her head. “Does alcohol make you sad?”
“It can.”
She nods. “I’m sorry for making a scene at your bar. I promise tomorrow I’ll fix everything. I’ll be the perfect houseguest from now on. I won’t fight you anymore, Nash.” I don’t want her to stop fighting me. This version of Ellie isn’t right, she’s lost her fight, her claws.
“I don’t need you to be perfect, Ellie.” She stops at the top step and peers down at me, looking confused. “I like fighting with you, actually,” I confess as I slowly walk up the stairs. “I also like pushing your buttons. Watching the way your blue eyes light with fire, I imagine all the imaginative ways you want to kill me.”
“They’re green actually,” she mumbles.
“Excuse me?”
Ellie sighs, leans forward, takes out her contact lenses, and shows me the most mesmerizing sea foam green eyes. “Just thought you should know,” she says with a shrug.
“You’re full of surprises tonight. Anything else I should know?”
Ellie smirks. “It’s true, I do imagine all the ways I could kill you. I’m up to about fifty, but I’m sure I can think of more.”
“Guess coming from Persephone that should be a compliment.” She stills. Shit. That was supposed to be a secret. “Don’t get mad, Brooks assumed you had told me, seeing as you told me everything else. Why didn’t you?”
Ellie looks up into the night sky. “Honestly?” I nod. Those sea-green eyes fall back onto me. “I didn’t want you to see the monster that I truly am.” I swallow upon hearing her confession.
“I don’t think you’re a monster.”
She shakes her head. “You don’t think I wouldn’t go and seduce someone or put a bullet between their eyes if I’m told to? I have no free will. I’m the CIA’s fucking slutty puppet.” Tears well in her eyes again and she angrily shoves them away. “Once I find Pearl, I’m done. I don’t want to be in this life anymore, even if that means I must end it myself to be free.” She turns on her heel and storms into the house.
Fuck.
I stomp into the house, my mind racing at Ellie’s confession, and then I hear a splash in the pool and rush out to watch as Ellie sinks to the bottom and doesn’t resurface.
Fuck.
I shuck off my shoes, socks, jeans, and then my shirt, and jump in after her. Wrapping my arms around her, I pull her up to the surface, but she fights me all the way.
“What the fuck, Nash,” she says, pushing me away from her.
“I thought you were trying to hurt yourself.”
“Please, I would never do it in such a basic kind of way,” she says, glaring at me.
I shake my head. “You scared me, especially after what you just said.”
Her eyes soften as the water drips over her cheeks and slides down between her breasts. That’s when I notice she is in her underwear, my eyes falling on the now see-through fabric exposing her pert nipples to me. I swallow hard as I force myself to look away from them.
“I’m sorry I scared you,” she says, taking a couple of steps toward me, then unclasping her bra, the material falling into the water and floating away.
Her perfect breasts bob free, those pert pink nipples staring right at me. “Ellie,” I growl her name.
“What?” she says coyly.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I ask, through gritted teeth. She shrugs. I take a couple of steps back until my back hits the wall of the pool. The next thing I know she is swinging her G-string above her head and throwing it onto the side. “Ellie, what the …?”
“Sssh,” she says, placing a finger on my lips. “Don’t talk, don’t say a thing. I need this.”
I shake my head. “You’re drunk, I’m not going to take advantage of you like this.”
Ellie grins. “So you’ve thought about taking advantage of me?”
“You know you’re hot.”
“Apparently, so people say.”
“We’re not doing this. I don’t care how much you think you want this. I can guarantee in the morning you’re going to regret it, and honestly, I don’t want you to regret my cock fucking you.”
Ellie bites her bottom lip, and I don’t know how I have the strength, but I halt her affections. “What you need is a shower and bed.”
“Will you stay with me? I … I find it hard to sleep,” she confesses.
“If you want me to, I will.” She nods as her face relaxes and for the first time, she looks sweet, almost innocent, more like her age. “Come here,” I say, holding out my arms for her, she looks like she needs a hug. She steps into my arms and wraps herself around me, holding me tightly. I try to suppress the feeling of her tits against me.
“Thank you,” she says quietly into my chest.
“You’re safe with me, Ellie, I promise.”
“Your dick says otherwise.” She giggles against my bare chest.
“He has no morals that one.” I chuckle.
Ellie stills against me before looking up at me. “Was that a real laugh?”
“Maybe.”
“Wow, and I thought all you did was grunt,” she says, teasing me.
“Don’t get used to it, grunting is my normal setting.” I smile at her.
“And now he smiles, maybe I need to get drunk more often.”
“Please don’t.”