Chapter 29
NOLAN
Nolan swallowed a Xanax, then chased it with wine.
A poor combination, but fitting for the shitshow of a day he’d had.
He hated confrontation. Dreaded it. For weeks, he’d known deep down that he should have shown Marielle the door, but it had seemed easier to just run out the clock, to let her finish the contract and disappear back to Mason’s Hill, no confrontation required.
Alexa had done half the job for him, but he still felt queasy.
First the fiasco in the forest, then dealing with Donna, and finally firing Marielle had sent his stress levels skyrocketing.
And that wasn’t his only problem. Watching Alexa light Marielle on fire while wearing nothing but a damp towel had triggered an involuntary response, one that was highly inappropriate given the circumstances.
He glanced down and willed his dick to deflate.
It didn’t.
“Nolan?” Alexa called, and he heard soft footsteps on the stairs.
Fuck.
“Give me a minute.”
She didn’t give him a minute.
“Just checking she didn’t cut out your heart before she left. Or, you know, any other parts of your anatomy.” Her gaze dropped, and her eyes widened. “Is that normal?”
“Turns out I get turned on by you cussing out Juno’s enemies.”
“Huh. So I should do it more often?”
“Not unless you want to suffer the consequences.”
“Hypothetically, what kind of consequences are we talking?”
She was two feet away now, looking up with those blue eyes that were his kryptonite, and she smelled faintly of vanilla. Before he could stop himself, he bent to flick away a drop of water that had fallen from her hair and begun rolling down the swell of her breast.
With his tongue.
She gasped.
“Hypothetically? Hypothetically, I’d untuck the edge of that towel and let it fall to your feet. Then I’d lift you onto the counter, spread your legs, and feast.”
She didn’t say anything, but when he trailed kisses up her neck, the flutter of her pulse gave away at least some of her thoughts.
“Isn’t that icky?” she whispered.
“No.”
“Does it involve sticking anything inside of me?”
“No.”
“Or biting?”
“No.”
“Won’t dinner get cold?”
“I can reheat it. Or pick up a fresh order. Or cook from scratch.”
Was she actually saying yes to his crazy suggestion?
“Then I guess you could try it.” She bit her lip. “But if I say stop, you have to stop, okay?”
In that moment, he saw the child in her, the scared little girl who’d been abused by a predator from her own family. That alone made his dick soften, and instead of lifting Alexa onto the counter, he wrapped her up in a hug.
“I’ll always stop if you want me to. You hold all the power.”
“Sometimes…sometimes, it doesn’t feel that way.”
Years had passed since he saw a chink this wide in Alexa’s armour, but he wasn’t going to take advantage of it.
“We don’t have to do this now.”
“I’d rather just get it over with. It’s not as if I’ll enjoy it.”
She made it sound like such a chore that he chuckled against her hair.
“It won’t be that bad.”
“Oh, you think?” she muttered and wriggled free of his arms. The towel fell open as she hopped onto the counter, and Nolan turned to granite again.
“Ow, it’s freezing,” she squeaked as she lay back on the cool marble and gave an exaggerated shiver.
“You’ll be grateful for that later.”
Alexa had high, firm breasts, each one a perfect handful, with pink nipples that hardened into peaks whether she liked it or not.
She trimmed but didn’t wax, and he was relieved to see the blonde curls because he didn’t need her looking any younger.
He took a moment to gaze appreciatively at what she normally kept hidden.
“Are you just going to stare, or…?”
“Yeah, I am.”
The tan lines said she’d spent time on a beach somewhere, and he pictured her lying on a towel on white sand, undoubtedly with a laptop beside her and Chase hovering in the background.
The biggest surprise was the tattoo. A tiny jellyfish, low enough on her stomach that even if she was wearing a bikini, you wouldn’t see it. He traced it with a fingertip.
“I lost a bet with Jez, okay?”
“What was the bet?”
“Uh, so I can’t go into the details.”
Which meant Nolan probably didn’t want to know them.
“At least you didn’t end up with ‘asshole’ inked on your ass in Chinese,” he said, referencing a bet Brax had lost to Jerry in their Blackstone House days. “You think Jez really didn’t know what those symbols meant?”
She’d always sworn the tattoo artist said it meant “strong,” and Brax had only found out the true meaning when he hooked up with a Chinese girl who’d just about died laughing.
Alexa snorted. “Of course she knew.”
“Glad I never lost a bet with her, although I can’t say I hate the jellyfish.”
“You should—it’s an Irukandji. The tattoo is life-size, and it can kill a man in minutes.”
“Your spirit animal?” Nolan joked.
“You have no idea how many times I’ve fantasised about dumping a bunch of them in Uncle Porter’s swimming pool.
But chlorinated water would kill them, so it would be quite the logistical challenge.
We’d have to engineer him into hiring a new pool guy and install a system for salt electrolysis, plus his pool’s the wrong shape for jellyfish.
They need a Kreisel tank—one that maintains a smooth, circular flow to stop them from bumping into the walls, because they’re basically just a sack of water that can break really easily, and—”
“Alexa?” Nolan wasn’t sure whether to be proud or horrified about how much she’d thought this through.
“Yes?”
“Stop talking.”
She gasped as he ran his tongue through her folds, and her hands balled at her sides. Tense, so tense. And when he circled her clit, she gave a little yelp that could have been shock or pleasure, but she didn’t tell him to stop.
So he kept going. It was up to him to show her that not all sex was dirty, that not every man brought horror and heartache.
Alexa was a natural pessimist—she’d gone into this assuming it would be disappointing at best and downright unpleasant at worst, and he was determined to prove her wrong. No pressure.
She’d never mentioned her likes or dislikes, and he wasn’t sure she even knew.
This was a voyage of discovery for both of them.
He picked up on the cues she offered, the quiet whimpers, the way her breathing sped up when he hit the right spot.
Her hands relaxed, then she forgot she was supposed to hate sex and tangled them in his hair.
He tasted her wetness as her body betrayed her mind.
Those slim hips began bucking, thrusting up to meet his tongue, and he paused.
Kissed his way up her body.
Waited for the fireworks.
He got them.
“What? Why’d you stop?”
“Just enjoying the prospect of you eating your words. You still want to get it over with?”
“No. Yes! I don’t freaking know. Go back to whatever you were doing.”
“So you like it now?”
He sucked a nipple into his mouth, and she made a choking sound.
“You’re an asshole.”
“And you didn’t answer the question.”
“It’s not as bad as I thought it would be.”
He moved to the other breast.
“Fine! I like it, okay? Do that thing with your tongue again.”
Alexa was close to the edge, and it didn’t take much to push her over it. Her back arched as she came with a strangled cry, curses dripping from her lips, her eyes screwed shut, her breathing heavy. She was trembling as Nolan leaned over her and brushed hair away from her face.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” she demanded when she could speak again. “Why didn’t anyone tell me it could be like that?”
“Would you have listened?”
“Probably not,” she conceded after a long moment of consideration.
The towel was still damp, her hair too, and a sheen of sweat highlighted her smooth skin. Nolan didn’t want her to get cold, so he scooped her into his arms and headed up the stairs.
“I need another shower,” she mumbled.
“I like you this way. Hair mussed, face flushed, smelling of sex.”
“We didn’t have sex yet.”
“I’m still counting oral,” he said firmly.
“Maybe we could—”
“I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but no. We’re not rushing things.”
“When I was watching your video—I mean monitoring for your video…” A Freudian slip? “I saw some of the others on those sites. Most of them were gross.” She shuddered. “But I’m pretty adventurous when it comes to trying new things to eat. Just saying.”
Nolan’s cock was already aching, and that didn’t help.
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea, not tonight.”
“Come on, it can’t be that hard.”
“It definitely is. Really fucking hard.”
“Look, I ate a tarantula in Cambodia, hakarl in Iceland—which was absolutely disgusting, by the way—grasshoppers in Uganda, and Rocky Mountain oysters. The locals in Morocco tried to get me to eat a sheep’s brain, but I’d just attended a seminar on the use of prions as bioweapons, so I passed on that. ”
“Babe, you’re not exactly selling this.”
She crinkled her nose. “How about if I just promise not to bite?”
They reached the top of the stairs. The smart move would have been to help Alexa into a pair of pyjamas, settle her under the quilt, and bring her a few snacks before she fell asleep.
But Nolan had proven time and time again that he wasn’t all that smart.
Case in point: he’d accidentally made a porn video.
“Deal.”
In the bedroom, he freed his erection and sat on the edge of the bed, holding his breath as Alexa sank to her knees before him.
“That’s bigger than before.”
“Yup.”
“Looks uncomfortable.”
“Yup.”
“Evolution is a bitch.”
She gave the tip a delicate lick, and Nolan realised he had a bigger problem than discomfort.
He was going to last about ten seconds with Alexa’s mouth on him, and if she’d been getting her sex-ed from porn videos, she’d know that wasn’t normal.
He leaned back on his hands, his heart racing, focusing on a mark on the ceiling that he should clean when he got the time.
Hot damn.
Alexa went to work, using her hands as well as her mouth, making breathy little moans that tested the limits of his self-control. He managed to hold out for almost five minutes before his balls tightened irreversibly.
“I’m gonna come,” he choked out, but instead of backing off, she took him into her throat and gagged as his cock pulsed.
“Fuuuuck.”
She swallowed and wiped her mouth with her hand. “I guess it’s better than Mongolian horse milk.”
Was that a compliment?
As Nolan lay in bed that night with Alexa in his arms, he googled Mongolian horse milk, and no, it wasn’t a compliment, not unless her palate was faulty. But despite the rough start to the day, he couldn’t fault the ending. Hey, maybe someday, he’d even thank Marielle for showing up in bitch mode?
If he’d realised that he’d never get the chance, known just how badly things were about to unravel, he’d have loaded Alexa onto an airplane and gone to sample the Mongolian milk in person. But ignorance was bliss, and Nolan’s mind was too blown to think straight. Too tired to see the red flags.
So he closed his eyes and dreamed of his girl.