Chapter 20
Nic
What the actual fuck is happening here? How is Avery standing in my hallway, a mere few inches of space separating our bodies, her lips dangerously close to my ear? What is she saying? It shouldn’t matter, but it does. Oh, how it does.
Why am I not pushing her away? Have I asked her to leave? Her smell is intoxicating and her words… her words make me feel like I’m ten feet tall while I should be feeling like the smallest person in the world.
The truth is I had no defense against her last week and I still don’t have one now. I’m completely smitten and she knows it.
Did she really just say that she can’t stop thinking about me?
“I’m not giving up without a fight,” she repeats and her lips are still so close to my ear, her breath hot against my skin, and it feels as though she has kissed me already.
As though the very thing I should be preventing has already happened.
So why can’t I just let it happen, then?
If there’s nothing I want more in the world? Not even a career, it would seem.
I avert my gaze in order to find an ounce of sanity inside myself. To dig up a tiny morsel of resistance. But my gaze lands on her bag and all I can think is whether she brought a strap-on. That’s how I know I won’t resist. I don’t want to.
“Can I kiss your neck?” she breathes into my ear and my legs turn to liquid.
I nod as I pull her toward me. As I give in.
As I let this madness take me and, worse, guide me.
I let her kiss me. First, on my neck, where she draws a tantalizing line down to my throat.
Then, up to my cheek. She takes her time before kissing me on the lips—of course she does.
She only delivers the slightest of pecks, leaving me wanting so much more, before she pulls back and looks me in the eye.
Her gaze is blazing fire—with desire, for me.
As it turns out, Avery didn’t have to put up much of a fight at all.
She only had to show up in all her delicious, irresistible glory.
“I want you so much,” she says, because, of course, she hasn’t just come here to kiss me. She’s come to fuck me—and undo me again in the process. There’s nothing I want more. I’m already halfway there.
Then, she presses her lips to mine properly, making all her intentions known. With her body, she pushes me firmly against the wall, reaches for my wrists, and pins them above my head.
“Do whatever you want with me,” I say, and I don’t recognize myself. This is not what I’m like. Yet, with her, I am. She has unearthed this new version of me that perhaps didn’t exist before. This different iteration of Nic Forbes that has emerged from a cocoon of grief.
“Oh, I will,” Avery says, her voice dripping with a sensational combination of lust and control.
Like she can’t help herself when she’s with me.
Like she just has to top me like this. “We are going to need all the lube in Los Angeles.” She grins at me and it’s that grin she flashes in Queer Girl Summer before her character transforms into a midsummer night sex goddess and, suddenly, I feel like I’m wearing too many clothes.
Like all I want is to be naked with her doing to me whatever she has in mind—and I know it will be naughty in the best way possible.
It’s no wonder I can’t resist Avery. She holds the key that has unlocked the deepest part of me.
The part of me that clung to who I used to be until my fingers cramped and my muscles solidified into deadweight.
But I’m no longer the Nic from Nic and Lois.
As much as I tried to hold on to that Nic, she can no longer exist. It’s time for this new version of me to come out—and have all the fun I missed all those years.
I don’t care that, in order to be New Nic, I have to lose my mind a little—something that, perhaps, I could only ever do with Avery Hall. Because of who she is, to the world and to me, at this exact moment in time. And what does it even matter how we met?
“Come on.” As though this is her house, she takes me by the hand and leads me up the stairs. She’s most certainly the boss in my home right now.
I follow her upstairs, taking a good look at her jeans-clad behind. At how her strong muscles move underneath her tight T-shirt.
“You’re so beautiful,” Avery says as she stands before me in my bedroom and I believe her effortlessly. Maybe because she’s one hell of an actor or maybe because it’s the simple truth. Either way, she wouldn’t be here if she didn’t think me beautiful.
She brushes a strand of hair behind my ears. “I’m not here to play games. To mess with your feelings. I need you to know that.”
She’s definitely messing with my feelings, but I don’t care. I just want her. My body is all aching need for her touch—for her promise.
“I know,” I whisper. We can talk later—or not. Again, right now, it doesn’t matter. I’m totally in this moment of madness—these few hours where I cease to be the old Nic. Because Old Nic has suffered. But I’m done with the pain. I’m ready for something else. I’m ready for this.
Avery takes a step back and hoists her T-shirt over her head. She’s not wearing a bra. I hadn’t even noticed, but—oh, fuck me. To have her stand in front of me like this is definitely a dream I didn’t dare to have. But reality can be so much better than any dream you dare or dare not to have.
Instinctively, I reach for her, but she swats my hand away.
“Nuh-uh.” She shakes her head.
Next, she toes off her shoes, unbuttons her jeans and slides them down those gorgeous, endless legs of hers.
She might be wearing panties, but not for long.
She steps out of them, then stands in front of me completely naked.
For a moment, I think I must be in a dream—how else is this possible?
But she came here, for me. To do this. She’s barely been in the house ten minutes and she’s already stark naked.
That is the power Avery holds over me. That is the kind of reckless woman she makes me be.
Her gaze rests on me. How I wish she’d reach for her bag next and surprise me once again by pulling out a toy, but not even Avery is that audacious.
At least I have plenty of lube in the house.
Although how she made me wet her fingers last week is still very fresh in my mind.
My clit throbs at the memory—and what I see in front of me.
The only way I ever stood a chance of resisting her was if she forgot about me. By Avery ignoring my existence. But she chose not to do that. And here we are.
“Take off your dress,” she says.
A frisson of excitement rushes up my spine.
No one speaks to me this way, but to have her do it so effortlessly is such a thrill.
Maybe this is just a fantasy she has about dominating her therapist—she certainly wouldn’t be the first—but I couldn’t care less.
Old Nic would care, but this Nic doesn’t give a fuck.
I pull my dress over my head and wriggle out of it. When I emerge, Avery’s holding out her hand. She takes the dress from me and studies it, as though she has plans for it, but then discards it on the chair behind her.
Finally, she closes the distance between us and her nipples push against my skin as she kisses me deeply, as her hands slide to my back.
While I lose myself in the kiss, she unclasps my bra—and I bet she has plans for that particular piece of clothing.
She tosses it onto the bed—for later use perhaps—while she keeps on kissing me.
Her tongue is soft and warm and very much exactly the stuff all my dreams are made of.
We fall onto the bed in a soft tangle of limbs.
Of course, I land on my back with Avery on top of me.
This is yet another reason why I can’t get enough of her.
Why I relented the second I let her into my house.
Avery’s not just A-list smoking hot and deliciously irreverent.
The confidence with which she takes the lead both baffles and excites me.
Once a therapist, always a therapist, and I have considered how she is in bed from a psychological perspective and there’s a lot to unearth there—but that’s no longer my job.
I’d better spend my time trying to find out why it thrills me to my core when she simply asks me to undress like that.
Why I’m so utterly entranced by her and how she dares to speak to me.
Avery slips off me, and her hands descend between my legs. I spread for her eagerly. I want her with a hunger that leaves no room for doubt.
She smiles down at me. “Where’s the lube?” she asks.
“Just there.” I point at the nightstand.
If she’d asked me last week, I would have had to think about it because I hadn’t used it in a while.
But our night was so devastatingly hot, the first thing I did when I recovered from the shock of what I did—of what I was capable of—was order a large bottle of lube online in order to relive the hotness of our time together on my own.
Not in a million years had I expected it to happen again.
Avery scoots to the nightstand and finds what she’s looking for.
“Let’s find out how much of me you want,” she says and her words set my skin on fire. I’m not even sure what she means exactly—although it’s hardly rocket science—but the effect that single sentence has on me is unmistakable. A wildness I never knew I had in me takes complete hold of me.
Before she uses the lube, Avery maneuvers herself between my legs.
Her hair tickles the skin of my belly as it fans out.
She kisses my thighs but there’s impatience in her body language.
She’s not about drawing things out today—and I get it.
What we’re doing now is even more forbidden than what we did last week.
Because we’re doing it again and I, at least, can’t plead temporary insanity again.
Although that’s exactly what it feels like.
I’m so crazy for Avery I’m risking everything.
This magnetism between us is taking things up a notch.
Like when you watch a sexy scene in a movie and they go at it immediately, and all you want to scream at the screen is, ‘for crying out loud, whatever happened to foreplay?’ But that’s how it’s like with Avery today.
As though I’m starring in a totally unrealistic movie.
Although my body is all caught up, because words can be very effective foreplay too.
Avery wastes no time approaching my clit. Her tongue swipes along it and the tension in my muscles revs up. Oh, how I’ve dreamed of this. Only every time I closed my eyes this past week. My desire made all the more intense by the fact that I was absolutely certain it would never happen again.
She licks me and thunder rolls through my flesh. If she keeps this up, there will be no use for that lube. Abruptly, she stops. When she looks up at me there’s a recklessness in her gaze I haven’t seen before. Maybe she got a little carried away—lost some of the control she’s so keen to exert.
But it’s as though looking into my eyes acts as a reset button. Her face changes and she reaches for the lube. My clit throbs violently.
Avery shifts until she’s sitting next to me. She bites her bottom lip as she squirts lube into her palm, then distributes it over her fingers until they glisten—until they drip with mischief.
My heart is an untamed animal inside my chest. I no longer have the brain power to ascertain whether my skin is hot or cold—probably both.
My bad for thinking Avery wasn’t into foreplay today.
This is the hottest prelude to sex I’ve ever experienced.
For her to bring her shimmering wet hand between my legs.
She skates her fingers along my opening. In response, I spread my legs as far as my body will allow them to go. A wet finger circles my clit and my breath hitches in my throat. But again, Avery doesn’t dillydally. Two fingers slowly slide inside me.
She lies down next to me, her eyes locked on mine. Her fingers move, gently at first, only stealing a fraction of my breath—and my sanity—but they soon pick up speed. When she slows down, it’s only to add another finger—to spread me wider for her.
Avery fucks me and maybe it’s this exact undoing that I crave. This stepping out of myself and leaving a part of me behind in doing so. I don’t know. I don’t know much anymore. All I know is that I want more.
She fucks me a lot slower, a lot more deliberately, until she stops again. Her fingers retreat, leaving a gaping hole of want inside me.
“Can you take all of me?” she asks.
It’s not a question that requires a response.
Avery adds another finger and I don’t need to take all of her to give all of myself to her.
I’m filled to the brim with Avery as she barely moves inside me but I feel it everywhere.
I feel it in the parts of myself I’ve shut off because they were too painful to live with.
I feel it in the depths of my heart that went stoically cold with loss.
I feel it in my untouched but roaring clit.
I can barely keep my eyes open as the tremor in my muscles start.
As an obliterating climax builds and ravages through me.
I try to look at her, at this divine creature giving me all this unexpected pleasure.
I toss my head back and I clench around Avery’s fingers, as she touches me where I had decided to remain untouched.