25. Nova
Isuppose the warning signs that your marriage is coming to an end start off as small things in a lot of cases. Less time. Less sex. Less words spoken between each other.
Before Jack and I got married, we had sex all the time. By the time our wedding rolled around, we’d fallen into a comfortable rhythm that gradually dwindled as time wore on. He’d stop watching me change with that ornery sense of wonder I’d grown so used to having. That same look that made me feel desired. Attractive.
My friends told me it was normal.
My gut told me otherwise.
When Jack and I wrecked, we’d been fighting so much that our sex life had suddenly reached all new heights in the form of makeup sex. The kind that feels desperate. Like trying to hold onto something melting through your fingers.
With Jack, it was a rollercoaster of emotions rising and falling with our relationship since the very beginning. With Reid, it’s a steady climb to the top that has me questioning just how high we can go before this thing between us turns volatile.
I’m not comparing the two men. Just myself with either of them and my experience with the all of two men that I’ve slept with. Both were good. Both are bad. Just in their own ways.
I’ve never had a line drawn in the sand so clearly for me as I do with Reid. In the outside world, we’re just two people. No one’s in charge. No one’s got the control.
In the bedroom . . . that’s a different story.
I like Reid in charge. I like the idea that he is driving the sex between us. I like that I can put my trust in him to make me feel things I’ve never felt before and give myself over to the idea of my own sexuality without having to worry about what position my body should be in or how I should be moaning.
With what he does to me, I literally don’t have to think.
And it’s fucking freeing.
Reid and I fall into an easy routine over the next week. He goes out, rents a boat with Al or stays at the inn, fixing little things that need repaired and otherwise playing our surrogate maintenance man. I teach my art class or go about my daily duties at the inn. Sometimes he corners me and drags me into an empty closet or the third floor.
No one would suspect that every night ends with me moaning his name.
It’s only a few stolen hours every night, but each one is like a little diamond, sparkling brilliantly in the sun. We eat dinner, we talk about life and all its problems. I end up on his lap, kissing him feverishly until I feel like I won’t be able to breathe if he doesn’t touch me. He’s warm, powerful, groaning my name in a way that makes my body tight with need.
Unfortunately . . . that’s where it ends.
Each night ends, before the grinding and heavy petting can get too far, with him gritting his teeth and pulling away with a husky, “Get some sleep, little bird. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He doesn’t stay the night—not that I want him to. That would go against this . . . arrangement between us. Doesn’t mean that sleeping beside him the first time wasn’t magical.
Waking up next to a naked Reid is something I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
I spend most of the first night after he leaves embarrassingly optimistic under the guise that oh, he’s probably just tired.
The next night I spent confused and a little hurt at his abrupt departure, wondering if there’s something wrong with me.
The third night, I laid in bed, hot and bothered until I drifted off into a fitful night’s sleep filled with dirty sex dreams that cast Reid as the main character and left me angry the next day.
By the fifth night, I refuse to unlock the door when he arrives.
“Nope. You’re being weird.”
Reid chuckles darkly, a sound that goes straight to my core and sets up the scene for the raunchiest of dirty fantasies. He leans forward, his forearm on the doorframe of the screen door, and looms over me. Even with the screen to divide us, it gives me a front row seat to the gun show of his biceps bulging in the black t-shirt he’s wearing and does nothing to curb my need for him.
“Let me in, little bird,” he murmurs, like a vampire trying to glamor his way into my bed.
If only that were the case. Maybe it would explain the warmth between my thighs at that growly voice.
And also why I open the door and let him enter.
By the final night, I know what he’s doing. And I don’t like it.
So, when he arrives at the cottage, I decide to play a game of my own. I dress in the shorts I know he likes—the ones I wore that night on the boat. I pair it with the same strappy top I wore when I asked him to dance at the bar. The first night he touched me.
When he steps through the front door, he watches me, eyes hot as they travel up from the new blue polish on my toes, all the way up to my eyes, burning my skin in their wake.
I stay back, standing at the foot of the stairs so I can bolt if needed, and challenge him. He gets it, judging by the hard set of his shoulders and the way his gaze turns hungry, deliciously dark.
“Why won’t you touch me?”
His jaw clenches and the air seems to hum with electricity as his eyes turn to two pools of melted chocolate.
“Is that what you want, little bird?”
God, he’s so damned stubborn.
“I want you to want me.”
He takes a single step toward me that makes me want to take a step back, but I hold my ground.
“You really think I don’t?”
I swallow over the lump in my throat, forcing myself to keep my head held high.
“Well, Mr. Morrison,” I start, slipping my fingers under my top and pulling it off as I go. “I feel great. Sexually starved, but great.”
“Nova,” he warns, voice tight and his eyes like a branding iron when his gaze travels over my bare breasts. I don’t miss the way his jaw feathers or the way he drags his tongue across his teeth like a predator, starving for it’s next meal.
Okay, this man wants me. So, why is he denying us both?
“I’ve been waiting for you, but you aren’t delivering.” By the time I reach for the button on my shorts, my body is humming from the way his stare devours me. “You can sit down here and worry about whatever’s going through your head.” I step toward the stairs. “Or, you can join me.” I take a step up, looking at him over my shoulder so he can get a good view of the black lacy panties I wore. “If not, I’ll do it myself.”
“Nova,” he grits, his voice like a whip cracking as he steps toward the stairs after me.
“Don’t worry, my vibrator’s charged.”
In a flash, I take off up the stairs and giggle at the heavy footfalls of him chasing after me. I beat him to the room and shut the door just as he reaches the top of the landing and lock it.
This cat and mouse game is kind of fun. Hearing Reid banging at my door because he thinks I can get myself off with my vibrator and not him? Even fucking better.
Little does he know, I’ve already tried. It’s him I’m craving.
Just for good measure, I pull it out from the nightstand and cut it on, knowing he can hear the low hum of the vibrations through the door.
“Nova, I swear to fucking god, if you don’t let me in this room . . .” he grits through the door, his voice too calm for comfort.
“Mmmm . . .” I moan, enjoying the way he groans out my name like it’s a curse. “It’s okay, Reid. I can handle it.”
“Nova.” I stifle my nervous laugh with the back of my hand. “Don’t make me take the lock off this door.”
He sounds like a man on the verge of his sanity collapsing. Maybe I should unlock the door, but something keeps me rooted in place because suddenly, he goes silent.
He can’t break the lock. There’s no way.
With a metallic thud, the entire door handle hits the floor and the door sways open, the sound straight out of an old horror movie as a terrifying Reid comes into view.
Oh shit.
Eyes lifting to meet two molten chocolate ones, I press the button on the vibrator, silencing its hum. Silence, thick and sweltering falls over the room as Reid looks at me like the grim reaper, come to collect my soul.
Oh, I really fucked up.
He steps forward and I step back, heart racing until I hear the clank of his belt, as he slides it through the loops on his jeans.
Is he going whip me?
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you aren’t.”
“Reid,” I caution when he takes another step toward me.
“What’s the matter, little bird?” he asks, voice dipping dangerously low. “I thought you wanted me. That’s why you were taunting me, right?”
In a moment of self-preservation, I dart for the door, but he circles my waist with a grunt and spins me around, picking me up like I’m an insignificant sack of potatoes and dropping me on my stomach on the bed.
Before I can raise up, he’s on the bed behind me, gripping my hips and tugging me up to meet the thrust of his erection against my rear.
As if he flipped a switch, heat travels from the base of my spine, down to my core. I’ve missed him. Missed his touch. Hearing the quiet groan leave his lips when he grinds into me. Daringly, I move my hips back to meet his, and Reid growls, the sound low and threatening in my ear.
His hand slides up my spine, tightening in the roots of my hair to tug my head back to meet his hard chest.
“Is this what you want?” he bites, grinding his hips into me from behind. A moan claws up my throat, the friction from his erection exactly what I’ve been craving for days. His free hand leaves my hip, slipping round my stomach and then lower to cup me through my panties.
“Yes,” I pant, voice husky as liquid heat slips through my veins. “Please, Reid.”
“How do you want me?”
“I don’t want to think.”
I want him to take control. We both know what I’m asking for. I want to forget who I am, where I’ve been. I want to erase my past from my mind and just live in this moment. Live in him. Just for a little while.
He chuckles darkly, rolling his hips into me. He’s rough, impatient, but his harsh breathing in my ear when he tugs me back into him is enough to make me vibrate with need.
This is what I want. Reid, raw, unfiltered. Not holding back.
“You want me to take over?” he asks, nipping at the lobe of my ear with his teeth. I gasp at the sharpness of his bite, but he soothes the sting with a brush of his tongue.
“Please,” I nod, voice barely above a whisper as if the town below can hear me begging the mysterious fisherman to do the dirtiest things to me.
Gran would have a heart attack.
Reid pushes me forward until I’m on my hands and knees, his fingers traveling over my back, then lower, over my ass. “What’s your safe word, Nova?”
I swallow, the sound coming out like a gulp from a cartoon.
“What?”
His hand slips over my ass, pulling my panties down until they fall on the backs of my legs.
“Tell me your safe word. Whatever word you’ll remember that you can say if you feel like it’s too much.”
“I don’t know,” I stammer. It’s hard to think because his fingers slip over the curve of my ass, kneading the flesh in small circles. Slowly, he slips one inside me, hissing between his teeth.
I’m completely exposed to him in ways I don’t think I’ve ever been in my life and the thought makes me feel dirty. Sexy dirty. Like his personal secret.
What is he turning me into?
“Little bird” he rasps, his other hand slipping up my stomach. “You aren’t going to get what you want if you don’t tell me, baby.”
Baby . . . I know it shouldn’t, but it causes my chest to clench painfully every time he says it. I shouldn’t read too much into it, but the way he says it, like it’s a prayer. . . it’s nearly impossible.
It’s also impossible to think.
So, of course, I say the first thing that comes to mind.
“Platonic.”
Reid chuckles, the delicious sound like velvet, slipping straight between my thighs.
“Platonic. If you want me to stop. It hurts. You feel overwhelmed. Fuck, if you’re bored and you want me to get off you, you say that word, okay?”
I nod, breathless, trying to wrap my mind around what’s happening. He pauses the movement of his finger inside me and I could almost cry.
“Say it, Nova.”
“Platonic.”
“Good girl.”
“Reid . . .” My moan ends on a yelp when his hand connects with the swell of my ass, striking me. I gasp, surging away from him, shocked, but he doesn’t give me time to think before dragging his thumb back through my aching folds and starts pumping his finger in and out of me.
“Fuck, sweetheart.” I peek over my shoulder; my fingers clutching the bedding for dear life, and see his eyes transfixed on the sight of his finger moving inside me. “Safe word, Nova.”
I moan, arching my back to allow him to slip deeper, completely forgetting that I’m the girl that’s always embarrassed to take what she wants during sex. Who am I? I’m no longer Nova because Nova would never be making the sounds I am or talking about safe words with someone she just met a couple weeks ago.
No, Nova’s not here right now. This is someone else entirely.
“Are you this wet for me?” Reid asks, breathing heavily as he circles his thumb around my clit.
“Mmmm . . .” I start, but then his hand connects with my bare skin and a painful sting radiates through me, drawing a sharp gasp from my throat. I choke on the air in my lungs when he repeats the motion, but he doesn’t stop.
Safe word. If I want to stop, I just have to use the safe word.
“Fuck, Nova,” he grits, rubbing a calloused palm over the reddening skin. “So fucking perfect, baby.”
His hand connects with my skin again, only this time, instead of just the pain searing into me, something else blossoms, filling me with liquid heat and threatening every ounce of moral dignity I have.
“Tell me how it feels, little bird.”
“Again,” I breathe, my voice barely above a whisper as I wait on bated breath for his next strike.
There’s a momentary pause, but then seconds later, he obliges. The next strike comes down on the other side, just as strong, but this time the pleasure is a lot quicker, especially with Reid’s finger still inside me.
Honestly, even though it stings, it doesn’t hurt. I’ve been hit before. I know what comes with a punishing blow. This is something entirely new, like Reid is reaching into the deepest pits of my body and pulling it to the surface.
Like he’s replacing all those hits I couldn’t stop before.
“Fuck, Nova. That’s it,” Reid rasps and I can feel the tremor move through his palm where it rests on the swell of my ass. “You take this so fucking well. Reach up and rub your clit for me.”
New Nova wastes no time, reaching up and circling my clit with my fingers while Reid pumps his own inside me. The sounds filling the room are absolutely vile, but they only turn me on more when Reid’s palm connects with my skin again.
“More . . .” I whimper when I’m dangling on the edge of insanity. I bury my head in the comforter, my body reeling from the torturous pleasure. “Please, Reid.”
“Who’s in charge?”
“You.”
“You’ll take what I give you then.”
I want to complain, but his hand on my ass, delivering a sweet, dangerous heat shuts me up with a moan. Reid grunts his approval, his fingers never slowing down to match my own pace.
Abruptly, he pauses, and I hear the rustling of his zipper being lowered. My body tightens with need when he rubs the head of his cock through my wet folds, hissing at the contact. Seconds later, I don’t have time to react before he slides into me in one full thrust, taking me and claiming me, just like I need him to.
“Fuck,” he shudders, his hand connecting with my ass again. This time, the pain is stronger, my skin angry, but my body says something else entirely.
I gasp, my hips shaking with the strain of taking his size all at once. I force myself to let go, force myself not to worry about the sounds I’m making or if I’m being sexy enough. I just . . . feel him.
I want this. I want it more than words can say and something about letting Reid, the mysterious, lonely fisherman be the one do it for me is enough to have me tightening around him.
“Your pussy takes my cock so fucking well, little bird,” Reid hums, his hips bumping into my ass. “Like it was fucking made for me.”
“Reid, please,” I beg, gripping the comforter below me until I’m sure it will rip. “Please move.”
Instead of reprimanding me, Reid obliges, this time, pulling back enough to lessen the pressure building in my core.
I decide in that moment, when his hand connects with my rear again, that I love this dominating side of Reid. The way he makes me feel—cherished, desired—and how he makes me feel like I can let go and truly abandon my need for constant control of my life.
I can be reckless. I can fall because I know he’ll catch me.
When the next sting lands on my ass, I welcome it. “Yes,” I groan through my teeth, tears welling in my eyes from the onslaught of pleasure rushing through me. If Reid so much as touched my clit right now, I would come.
I can feel the pent-up tension in his hips behind me when they meet my ass, the flesh slick with perspiration and irritating my skin where his hand has been. He’s holding me just on the tipping point, not allowing me to come, but not slowing down, either.
“Feel me filling you, Nova?” He uses his hand on my hip to slam me back on his length “Feel how fucking tight you are? Taking my cock so greedily.”
“Fuck, Reid . . .” He uses his hands on my hips to slam me back onto his length, but I go willingly, thrusting my ass back into him with a dizzying need. “Harder,” I pant, my body scooting up the bed with each of his thrusts. “I’m so full.”
He chuckles, his hand connecting with my ass again and I can feel the welt rising in the soft flesh. Abruptly, he tugs me back to him, arms circling my waist, and pushes me forward until he’s the only thing holding me up. He’s kneeling behind me, his cock still sliding in and out of me as his hand slides over the planes of my stomach and his fingers tease the area around my clit. My fingers dig into his arms, my legs shaking as he crushes me back against his front.
His breath fans over my neck, making me shiver from the rush of adrenaline coursing through me. I’ve never felt so dominated, yet so powerful at the same time. The fact that I can make Reid, this man made of steel, shiver as he enters me, lose his control as he fucks me with barely reined in abandon—that’s true power.
“Who’s in charge, Nova?” he asks, his teeth bared at my ear while his fingers finally find my clit, working it in circles to match the pace of his cock entering me.
“You,” I stammer, my voice shaky and light.
Just a little harder and I’ll come. I can feel the first strings of my orgasm just past my reach.
“No,” he rasps, nipping at my ear lobe. “You, little bird. You have the control. All you had to do was tell me you wanted me, and I would have been at your feet, worshipping you.”
“You stopped it every time . . .” I pant, my voice barely recognizable.
He chuckles darkly, bending over my back and pressing his lips to my ear. “I’m always ready for you, little bird. You just weren’t ready for me.”
His words settle in my core and my body tightens to a breaking point. “Reid. Please, I’m going to come.”
“Come for me, Nova.”
He adds just a hair more pressure with his thumb and I lose it, my orgasm ripping me to shreds until I can’t breathe and I’m clinging to him desperately for something to ground myself.
“Fuck, yes,” he groans, flipping me onto my back and slipping his cock out while my orgasm is still raging inside me. I cry out from the loss of him, but it’s quickly strangled out by a sob when his tongue meets my clit, prolonging the pleasure until I’m sure I’m losing my mind.
Reid works at my body, a hungry groan leaving his mouth and vibrating through my core.
“Reid,” I gasp when he doesn’t slow down after my orgasm leaves me. “I’m so sensitive.”
My fingers wind in his hair, tugging on the strands to pull him up, but he fixes me with a dark stare. A warning.
Safe word.
It dawns on me, then, that I don’t want to stop.
His tongue devouring me, his hands gripping my hips tightly to hold me to his mouth—it all combines to bring the treacherous lust I felt for him back to the surface.
I can’t stop the desperate, small, uneven rolls of my hips to meet his mouth, any more than I can stop myself from ricocheting off the edge a second time.
When I come this time, Reid tongues me through it, murmuring curses against my flesh that I can’t hear through the ringing in my ears.
When he’s wrung my orgasm dry, he stands up, fully removing his jeans before settling back over me on the bed. I swear the muscles of his arms are bigger than my thigh when he places them on either side of my head, caging me in while he looks down at me with a fire in his gaze that burns me to a crisp.
He presses kisses to my face just like he did the first night we had sex, but instead of gentle and sweet, they’re harsh and rough, demanding my attention and pulling me back into him. Reaching between us, he takes his cock in his hands, a sight that makes my mind flare with all sorts of dirty ideas for later and slips back inside me in one fluid motion.
When he’s deep enough to border pain, he moves, pulling out of me before slamming back in enough to jostle the headboard against the wall.
“You want me, I’m there. Fuck, I’ll drop anything to come home and keep this perfect little cunt satisfied.”
Home. Something about that word leaving Reid’s lips makes my heart flutter dangerously in my chest.
“You make the decisions, Nova.” He enunciates each word with a punishing thrust of his hips that continuously beat the headboard against the wall.
I remind myself to check for marks later, because the way he’s fucking me, I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t knock a hole into the side of the house.
I cry out when he reaches up and lands a slap against my hardened nipple, one that has me soaring toward the heavens and arching my back off the bed with a sharp cry. Tears leak from my eyes and I have no idea why. Perhaps it’s the emotional release; the feeling of being accepted by someone who really owes me nothing. If anything, I owe him the world.
“See how pretty you cry for me, Nova?” Reid grunts, slamming into me. “Do you feel yourself breaking?”
Truthfully, I was broken a long time ago. Before I ever knew Reid existed. Part of me died that night in the Mississippi, right along with Jack. I’ve been struggling to get it back, ever since and somehow, being with Reid has made that possible. I don’t know if it’s the crude, unadulterated way he shows how much he wants me or if it’s the fact that when he goes, he’ll have changed me on a deeper level. Either way, I know I won’t ever meet another person quite like Reid Morrison.
“Christ,” he grits. “You’re such a fucking good girl.” Reaching back, he takes my leg locked around his hip and lifts it over his shoulder. It allows him to align his hips and slip further inside me until I feel like I’m going to be split in half. “I’m going to come, Nova. Come for me again.”
I shake my head, fighting off another orgasm that I know I won’t survive.
“Yes, baby.” He pounds into me, gripping my hips so tight in his hands, I’m sure I’ll have bruises from his fingers tomorrow. A bead of sweat slips down his abs and he’s so handsome, it’s hard not to do as he asks. Like a God coming to you in the middle of the night and stealing you away. “Come for me.”
This orgasm is different, whether it’s because the air between us has shifted or how many times he’s made me come tonight, I don’t know. The pleasure is so intense that I let out a shrill cry, my head thrashing back against the pillows and my body clamping down on his greedily.
“Fuck, Nova,” Reid growls. He comes with a roar, clutching me against his chest so tight, neither of us can move, save for small, jerky movements when he grinds into me, filling me with his come.
I blink up at the ceiling, my vision slowly returning to normal as the aftershocks of my orgasm send jolts of electricity through my body.
“Holy shit,” he breathes, laying his damp forehead on my chest. His breathing is ragged and tiny shivers ghost through him. I can feel his heart racing against me, matching the uneven rhythm of my own. When he raises his eyes to mine, he looks haunted, like that was just as intense for him as it was for me.
Reaching up, I gently brush the hair back from his face, my mind running rampant with bad ideas and whispers that I would rather not dwell on right now. Something in my heart aches. Aches to be with him like this all the time and even though I know it can’t happen, there’s still that girlish part of me that wishes it could be different.
But it’s not.
It’ll never be different and someday, I’ll have to say goodbye to him, even if it breaks me.