Chapter 21
Avery
Fuck me. I have never known surrender like this because I’ve never slept with a woman like Nic before. I’m thirty-five years old, but in all my life, sex has never felt like this. There might be many reasons for that, but none of them are of any importance right now.
As gently as I can, I slip my fingers out of her. My clit is clamoring for attention. But it will have to wait. I need to wrap my arms around Nic and tell her—tell her what?
Maybe it’s best if I don’t say anything at all. Because this moment calls for a degree of solemnity—even I can sense that. I swallow any coy remark I could make and just sidle up to her warm body.
“Jesus. Fucking. Christ,” Nic exclaims between breaths. “This is not…” She doesn’t finish her sentence and I don’t urge her to. Instead, I slip an arm beneath her neck and curl the other one around her chest.
We lie in silence for a few minutes while she catches her breath. Until I feel her body shift beneath me.
I push myself up to look at her. Fuck me again. She looks even more beautiful than before. Her face is completely relaxed. Her eyes are a little moist but clear as the sky outside.
“You fight really dirty,” she says, delighting me to my very core.
“Did I win?” I reply.
In response, Nic just shakes her head. Perhaps because we both know there’s no winning the fight I came here for.
“Avery.” She slides on her side and faces me. She strokes my cheek with the back of her hand. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“I can’t explain what it is you do to me,” Nic says, anyway, a hint of desperation in her voice. “It’s like I’m powerless against you.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I gently kiss her on the lips.
“Let’s not talk,” Nic says. “Are you into some receiving today?”
“I’m so fucking hot for you.” A grin breaks on my face.
I don’t have much experience with it but, for a moment, I wonder if this is what falling in love feels like.
This riveting emotion running through you while looking into someone’s eyes.
I shake off the thought. I might have come here for a fight, but what exactly I’m fighting for is still undefined.
Nic grins back and I grow a little addicted to that look on her face. “Good,” she says. She kisses my cheek, then meanders to my ear. “You’re fucking spectacular,” she whispers and then, even though it’s utter madness, I know I’m falling in love. “You make me lose my mind.”
I kiss her and maneuver myself on top of her again—because it’s where I want to be. When I break from the kiss I push myself up until I’m sitting with my legs spread across her belly.
“No lube required,” I say, as I take her hand and bring it to the utter wetness between my legs.
The astounded look on her face is even more addictive.
“Fuck me,” I say, making sure my breath doesn’t hitch in my throat—because I get off on it so much.
While Nic’s fingers slide inside me, her other hand finds my breast. I’m so wet and ready and turned on by fucking her like that earlier, her fingers are like pure instruments of pleasure inside me, hitting all the right spots instantly.
So much for not being good at receiving.
With Nic, I’m very good at a lot of things I usually suck at.
Whether I’ll allow myself to is another matter, but I could most certainly fall for her. Why else am I here?
Nic’s fingers move inside me and all the tension that has built up inside me the past week—after she threw me out of her house—starts to release. All the stress of the premiere and keeping this a secret and just basically being Avery Hall in Hollywood right now.
And I know it’s wrong to think like this, but Nic has seen me at my most vulnerable in her office.
Perhaps to her standards, I wasn’t very emotionally forthcoming, but to mine, I definitely was.
It’s wrong that it’s one of the reasons I’m here—and I can never tell anyone, but luckily, I’m very good at keeping my feelings to myself.
Because she was my therapist, she sees me differently and I would be lying if I said that’s not part of the attraction.
Part of why her fingers inside me make me much more emotional than I’ve ever been during sex.
Her thumb is soft on my nipple. I lean toward her hand and take it in mine.
I suck her finger deep inside my mouth. She’s already given me so much but I just want more, more, more.
Maybe this is an unwinnable fight, but it’s far from over. Because I can’t get enough of her.
I move my other hand toward my throbbing mess of a clit. My finger grazes hers as I circle it and it’s more than enough for my brain to short-circuit and my body to come so hard, I nearly topple off her.
I’m all out of bravado when I crash onto the bed. And what the fuck? Is that a tear running down my cheek. No way. I’m so not doing that. I’m so not crying in front of Nic—I’ve already become one cliché; I refuse to become another.
Nic gathers me in her arms and holds me close. I bury my face in her hair. God, this woman. What the hell have I gotten myself into?
“Are you okay?” she whispers softly after a few minutes.
“No,” I say, holding onto her. “I really don’t want you to kick me out again.”
“I’m far from ready to kick you out,” Nic says.
My heart leaps in my throat. I push myself closer to her warm, intoxicating body.
She doesn’t kick me out of her bed—or her house—for the rest of the night. But morning always comes and I wake up with a massive pit in my stomach.
Nic’s already awake, looking at me, her glance unreadable. Or maybe my brain’s not working properly after all those orgasms last night. After seeing Nic come for me again and again and—if I’m honest—falling for her a little more with every climax.
“Come to my house next time,” I say, before she can speak. “I have all the toys we need.” After we had some dinner and we came back upstairs, Nic confessed that she wished I’d brought a strap. It was one of the sexiest things anyone has ever said to me.
“Argh,” she groans. “What am I going to do with you?”
She’s far less distant than the previous time we woke up together. I’d better make the most of it.
“Let me fuck you and fuck you and fuck you,” I say.
“You can’t tell Jan about this. That we did it again.” I might have overplayed my hand. Nic is starting to tense up again. I get it. Because she’s the only one who stands to lose something here. “I agreed with her that I wouldn’t see you anymore.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
Nic shakes her head. “But it shouldn’t have to be. I can’t ask you to lie to your new therapist.” She rolls onto her back and covers her face with her hands. “I really have lost my mind.”
“It’s okay,” I say, sounding completely inadequate.
“Nothing about this is okay.” She presses her palms against her eyes. Is she crying?
“Oh, Nic.” I bring my hand to her belly. At least she doesn’t swat it away.
With a sigh, she lowers her hands. Her eyes are red rimmed and puffy. “This is an impossible situation.”
I bite my tongue, because this is no longer my fight. And I’m the one who dropped her right in the middle of this impossible situation.
“I want you, but I can’t have you,” she says. “And that’s not even the worst of it.”
“You can have me.” My hand skates down her side and I pull her close. “You already have me.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do, but… Nic, come on. Isn’t this what life is for? This kind of connection? This once-in-a-lifetime feeling?”
“Only if it’s appropriate.”
“I know this is extremely difficult for you, but, in the end… does it really matter? If we really want to be together?”
“It matters a great deal.”
“Does it really, though?” I dare to push, because I sense that, this morning, Nic is amenable to it. And it beats being kicked out and told we can never see each other again. “When you really think about it.”
“I’ll lose my practice,” Nic says. “My life’s work.” Her tone is harsher, but her face remains mellow. “Would you give up your career for… I don’t know… this?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“Because the answer is no. I would never ask you to make that kind of sacrifice for me. And on top of that, I have to live with the fact that what I did was wrong.”
“It wasn’t wrong.”
“It was, but… your experience is different.”
“All I can say,” I make sure to look her straight in the eye, “is that I want to see you again. I want to keep seeing you. How you make me feel is too precious to give up without a fight.”
“I understand why you would say that.” Her hand finds mine. “I do, but a wish is not a fact. The point of life is also that you can’t have everything you want.”
“I won’t accept that.”
“So you want me to give up my career for you? My reputation? All I’ve worked for the past thirty years?”
Way to metaphorically punch me in the gut. “That’s hardly fair.” I wriggle my hand out from under hers.
“I know it’s not fair, Avery. But these are the facts.
” She scoffs. “We don’t even know what this is.
” I never knew someone scoffing could hurt so much.
“It might very well be just an infatuation. Here today, gone if not tomorrow, then at least in a few weeks. I know it’s unfair, but I need to ask myself these questions.
Even though I shouldn’t even be in this position. Everything about it is just wrong.”
“Then why does it feel so fucking good?”
Nic emits something between a laugh and a sneer. “For some reason, I can’t possibly resist you. I won’t diminish what I feel for you, but the fact is that I can’t be feeling it.”
“The fact is also that you are.”
“God, you’re impossible to talk to.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” I place my hand back on her belly, dangerously close to her breasts, but any sexual desire I feel is obliterated by the deflation running through me.
I’m not stupid, nor heartless—far from it.
I know what she’s asking me. I know what I have to do.
“I—I don’t want to, Nic, but I’ll go. You don’t even have to say it this time. ”
Her hand traps mine again. “Hey,” she says. “You’re very special. You made me feel things I haven’t felt in too long. You made me feel alive again and I will never forget that.” Her voice breaks. “I don’t want to let you go, but we both know why I have to.”
I can only nod while that knot I woke up with earlier solidifies into a rock of cold, hard stone.
“I know.” I bite back my tears—I’m an actor, I can do that. I don’t want Nic to see me cry. I’m not sure she could handle it. “I will never forget you either.”
I kiss her softly on the lips, one final time.