Chapter 29 #2
She grabbed her clutch bag off the table and did not spare Niko a glance as she headed out the side door of the ballroom.
As she walked out, her back to the crowded room, she felt like everyone was looking at her, watching her, and that they knew what she’d done.
She pushed the door open and glanced over her shoulder and saw that only one person was looking her way.
Niko. He definitely knew what she’d done.
And from the look in his eye, they might not be done.
As badly as Niko wanted to get up and follow her, he couldn’t, not without the entire table seeing just how much he enjoyed what just happened. Also, there was a chance he’d knock the entire table over with the wood he was rocking.
“Do you think she’ll be okay?” Jessie asked, clearly concerned because Tiana appeared feverish, her cheeks flushed.
“Yeah.” He nodded confidently and thought about the most unsexy things one could think of.
After a minute or two he managed to get himself down to half chub, he grabbed his coat from behind his chair, placed it strategically in front of him as he stood, and excused himself to go outside and return a call.
In reality he was going to find the woman whose juices were on his fingers.
He walked out the same exit she had and looked both ways down the hall, it was empty.
There was an exit to outside, he opened it.
There was nothing but a small cement area and a dumpster.
He closed that and went down the hall. He opened one door and saw that there was a side room that looked like it could be used for meetings.
There was a side hall, he walked down to the end and opened the door and found a storage closet.
The venue Jessie booked for the fundraiser was an old concert hall that was built in the ’50s and shut down in the ’80s. It was recently renovated, and this was the inaugural event, so Niko wasn’t familiar with the layout.
He continued down and found the restrooms. He was just about to check in the women’s restroom when the door opened and two women exited.
“Ladies.” He nodded as he held the door for them.
They both smiled up at him, one of their smiles was a little friendlier than the other and was accompanied by a run of her hand down his bicep as she passed him.
He ignored it. Instead, he was focused on Tiana, who he saw in the reflection of the mirrors.
She was standing at the sinks with her head down.
He would have gone in, but he could hear other occupants inside.
So, he closed the door and did all he could do, he waited.
After four more women left and six more women came, finally the door opened and Tiana emerged.
“Niko,” she said his name on a gasp, her lips parting and her eyes doubling in size. “What are you—”
Cutting her off mid-question, he grabbed her wrist and basically dragged her along with him.
He wasn’t sure exactly what had come over him.
All he knew was that he needed to get her alone.
Now. He’d missed her so much, and when he’d sensed her anxiety, all he’d wanted to do was calm her down, but as soon as he put his hand on her leg and touched her bare thigh, it was like his hand was drawn to her pussy like a magnet.
His strides were long and purposeful, and she had to speed-walk to keep pace beside him.
He heard her let out a breathless laugh as she clung to his forearm with her free hand.
He was halfway down the hall when he looked up and saw Jenna and Deacon at the end of it by the exit door that led out to the concrete and dumpster.
He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it looked intense.
They both stopped up short. He glanced over at Tiana, and could see she looked concerned. “Do you want to go check on her?”
He looked back, and Deacon had taken a step forward. Jenna was looking up at him, and the conversation looked…intimate.
“No, I think she’s good.”
“Good,” Niko said under his breath and pulled her down the side hall with the storage closet at the end.
The storage room was still unlocked, he pulled her inside, slammed the door behind them with an echoing boom, and in the same movement he twisted the old-fashioned deadbolt, sealing them in a capsule of lemon-scented darkness and anticipation.
Niko didn’t hesitate, Tiana had barely enough time to draw a breath before he pressed her up hard against the door.
His jacket slid to the ground as his hands skated up her torso and pinned her there, his mouth landing on hers in a collision that tasted of hunger, sweat, and the molten anticipation of denied pleasure.
Her body radiated heat as he caged her in.
He could feel the wild thundering of her pulse through every point of contact: her ribs, her hips, her thighs, and the line of her jaw.
His lips crashed to hers, mouths open, teeth grazing, tongues desperate.
He devoured her, kissing her with a passion that unlocked a primitive drive in him.
She mirrored his urges, her fingers clawing at his shoulders, pulling him closer and closer, as if she couldn’t get him close enough.
His thigh shoved between hers, prying her open, and she let him, pressing back, grinding against the hardness that strained at his zipper. She hooked her leg around his hip, and her dress bunched up, her skin vibrating with desperate electricity.
“I really like this slit in your dress,” he said against her mouth.
He could feel her smile as his hand gripped her bare hip, and he ground into her. The pressure of his erection was urgent and insistent, a silent demand. She gasped into his mouth.
Niko’s hand slid down, trailing up her thigh, fingers searching, finding the bare skin at the V of her thighs and the damp lace of her panties. His other hand settled at the base of her throat, thumb stroking under her jaw as he kissed her again, less feral now, but impossibly, infinitely deeper.
Her hands fumbled with the waistband of his suit pants, working blindly between their bodies.
The button popped free, the zipper followed, and her hand slid inside.
She wrapped her fingers around his straining shaft, and he twitched and thickened in her grasp.
He felt his blood rushing to meet her touch.
He groaned, a low, involuntary sound, and his lips never left her skin, trailing down her jaw and her neck, biting the edge of her shoulder as she stroked him.
The next instant, his fingers slipped beneath the edge of her panties.
He tore them aside with a single, practiced motion, and then he was inside her, two fingers, then three, filling her.
Her inner walls clenched around him. He curled the tips of his fingers and pulsed in just the right spot he knew would drive her crazy.
He continued his ministrations until she was shaking, whimpering against his mouth, and clutching at his shoulders.
While her inner muscles were still spasming, he withdrew his hand, lifted her by the hips, and she wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck.
He pushed his boxer shorts and pants down and lined up his cock against her slick entrance, and with one slow, inexorable thrust, he filled her to the hilt.
She choked on a sound, half whimper, half sob, and he swallowed it in a kiss.
His hand clamped at her nape, the other palming her breast through the thin fabric of her dress.
He rolled her nipple between thumb and finger, pinched, and twisted, and she shattered against him, gasping his name into the dark.
He moved inside her, slow at first, then hard, then harder, the rhythm desperate, frantic.
Their bodies collided, flesh against flesh, the slap and slide of sweat and skin filling the air, drowning out the faint sounds of the party beyond the walls of their closet.
He kissed her shoulder, her neck, and the soft spot behind her ear.
She clawed at his back, raked her nails down his spine, dug in her heels to bring him deeper, deeper, her inner walls pulsing around him.
As he drove into her completely over and over again, he buried his face in her neck, inhaled the scent of her, and whispered against her skin, “I love you.”
The words seemed to hover, suspended, the world paused for a single heartbeat. She froze, her body locked around him. He felt her tense, her breath catch, and her hands go slack for a split second.
Niko hadn’t meant to say it, not like that, not in this place, not while he was fucking her in a storage closet at a fundraiser.
He felt like an asshole, but the truth was out, and he couldn’t take it back.
It was as if the words had been hiding, waiting, and now they spilled into the world, raw and irretractable.
He lifted his head and pressed his forehead to hers, panting, and tried to apologize, but it came out as a strangled groan. “I’m sorry.”
Tiana shook her head, her eyes wide and too bright. “No, I’m—” Her voice broke, and she tried again. “You don’t have to say it. I know this isn’t—” She trailed off, closed her eyes, and pressed her lips together.
Fuck, that wasn’t what he meant. His cock was pulsing wildly inside of her, not understanding what this intermission was for, demanding he come now and explain later, but that was not going to happen.
He gently cupped her face in his hand, tilting her head up, forcing her to look at him, to see the truth in his eyes.
“I wasn’t apologizing because I didn’t mean it.
” His voice was rough, barely a whisper.
“I was apologizing because this is a shitty place to tell the woman I love, the woman I want to marry, the woman I want to grow old with, fuck, the woman I want to have kids and grandkids and great-grandkids with, that I love her, for the first time, in a storage closet.”
Fear. That was what he saw in her eyes as they searched his. She was uncertain, trying to find the catch, the punchline, the reason not to believe him. She could look all she wanted, but there was nothing but honesty, stripped bare and offered up with his whole heart.
Finally, she released a shaky exhale, and she kissed him, slow and tender.
It wasn’t a declaration of love, but he’d take it.
Niko was so overwhelmed by the rush of emotion that he’d finally told Tiana how he felt that his muscles trembled with the effort of holding her up.
He gripped her tighter, pressed into her, and moved in a rhythm that was no longer frantic but purposeful, reverent even.
His mouth worshipped her skin, trailing soft kisses down her neck, her collarbone, and the rise of her breast. He tugged the straps of her dress down and groaned at the sight of her, perfect and bare, without a bra.
He licked and sucked, his lips sealing around her nipple, drawing it into his mouth in long, slow pulls, and she arched into him, offering herself up to be devoured.
The pleasure built, slow at first, then faster, a crescendo of sensation that threatened to tear them both apart.
Niko angled his hips, shifting her weight, and found the spot inside her that made her whimper, made her clutch him, and made her beg for more.
He gave it to her, every ounce of strength and longing and love, until the pressure in his own body coiled tight, his balls drawing up, the need to come an actual physical ache.
Tiana’s hands fisted in his hair, pulling him to her mouth, biting his bottom lip as she came apart.
Her orgasm hit her in waves, shuddering through her from the inside out, and she clung to him like he was the only thing tethering her to the world.
He felt it, the way she squeezed him, the way her body trembled, and he let himself go, allowed the pleasure to rip through him, raw and devastating.
He pumped into her once, twice, and then he was gone, exploding inside her, all of the tension of the past weeks evaporating in pulsing bursts of pleasure.
He held her, braced her, as their bodies came down from the high, breathless and shaking in the musty half-light of the closet. The air was thick with the scent of sex and lemon cleaner and the knowledge that nothing between them would ever be the same.