Chapter 31 Nate
NATE
The television was on, but I had no idea what was playing.
Something with sirens and screeching tires and a lot of yelling that didn’t register, because my brain had checked out approximately ten days ago and showed no signs of returning.
Ten days since the river. Ten days of dinners and drives and Maya’s legs across my lap on her couch, her laugh filling every moment. Ten days of kissing her goodnight at her front door, then walking back to my truck with my hands shaking and my jaw clenched so tight it ached by the time I got home.
Ten days of being a goddamn gentleman while her ribs healed and her ankle strengthened, because I wanted to do this right. To be patient. Careful. Steady.
I was going to lose my fucking mind.
With Nancy and John out to dinner, the house was too quiet, and the quiet made everything louder inside my head. I’d been on this couch for an hour, agonizing over Thursday night, when I’d driven Maya home and kissed her at the door and left.
Then sat in Nancy and John’s driveway with my forehead on the steering wheel, calling myself every kind of idiot.
The restraint wasn’t noble anymore. It was just stupid.
The sound of a truck pulling into the driveway cut through the noise on the screen.
I frowned. Nancy and John weren’t due back for hours. The engine cut off. A door opened and closed, and then footsteps hit the front porch, quick and purposeful. They belonged to someone who had somewhere to be and no patience for anything standing in their way.
The front door swung open without a knock.
Maya walked in. Green eyes blazing, cheeks flushed. Her hair loose around her shoulders. Her chin set at an angle that told me everything I needed to know about how this conversation was going to go.
My heart stopped. Then it kicked in so hard I could feel it in my throat.
I stood up, because whatever was coming, I wasn’t going to take it sitting down.
“I know you think you’re being noble,” she said, not breaking stride, closing the distance between us until she was right there, close enough to touch, close enough that the scent of her hit me like a fist. “And I’m here to tell you that you’re not.”
“No?”
“No. Because you haven’t thought about what I want.
What I deserve.” She jabbed a finger at my chest, her eyes locked on mine.
“I know you’re waiting. I understand why.
But I am a grown woman and I can make my own choices, and I don’t see why you get to decide when this is going to happen. That’s not fair, Nate.”
My mouth opened. Nothing useful came out.
“On top of that, I know you’re leaving. I want us to be together for the time that you’re here.
” Her voice was steady, her gaze unwavering.
“I want to sleep with you every night. I want to hang out with you during the day, at work, out with friends, all of it. And I want to start all of that right now. Also, I’m on birth control, so we’re doing this bare, if that’s okay with you. ”
She stared me down as she reached for her shirt and pulled it over her head.
Black lace. A bra so sheer it was barely a suggestion, cupping her breasts like it had been designed specifically to end me. The air left my lungs in a rush and every coherent thought I’d ever had scattered like birds from a gunshot.
She wasn’t done. Her fingers went to the button of her jeans, popping it open, and she shimmied them down her hips and stepped out of them. A matching black lace thong that covered absolutely nothing and left every gorgeous inch of her on display.
My brain shorted out. Completely. Whatever wiring connected rational thought to speech to action just melted. All that was left was the roaring in my blood and the woman standing in front of me with her hands on her hips and fire in her eyes.
Her gaze dropped to the front of my jeans, where the evidence of exactly what she was doing to me was impossible to miss. The corner of her mouth curved up.
“And right now, Nate O’Hare, I want you to stop being gentle with me and do all the things I know you’ve been thinking about.”
That was it. Whatever thread I’d been clinging to, whatever noble, patient, careful bullshit I’d been telling myself for the past ten days, snapped clean in half.
I stepped forward and cupped her face with both hands. “All the things?”
“All of them.”
“At once?”
“Yes.”
“It could kill you.”
Her eyes darkened. “I can take it.”
I crushed my mouth to hers.
She kissed me back with everything she had, her fingers fisting in my shirt, pulling me closer as her tongue pushed past my lips.
The taste of her flooded my senses, and a groan spilled out of me.
My hands dropped from her face to her waist, gripping bare skin, and her body arched into mine so hard we stumbled backward.
I caught us. Barely. My arm banded around her and I lifted her off the ground, her legs wrapping around my hips instantly, and I carried her down the hallway with her mouth still hot and desperate on mine.
Her back hit the wall once, twice, because I kept stopping to kiss her deeper, to drag my teeth along her jaw, to press my mouth against the spot below her ear that made her gasp and tighten her legs around me.
Her bedroom door was already open. I carried her through it and kicked it shut behind us, then turned and pressed her against it. Her shoulders hit the wood, and she made a sound, low and breathless, that went straight to my cock.
“One of the girls said giving me orgasms was noble,” she said against my mouth, her chest heaving. “Just so you know.”
A laugh broke out of me, rough and half-wrecked. “That so?”
“Consider it a public service.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
My hands slid up her back, careful of her healing ribs as I unclasped her bra.
She let it fall, and the sight of her bare breasts nearly buckled my knees.
A faint shadow of a bruise still lingered on her side, but she was pressing against me with so much heat I knew she was fine.
More than fine. I cupped her breasts, more heat surging through me when her nipples hardened against my palms.
She let out a shaky breath when I bent my head and closed my mouth around one nipple, teasing it with my tongue until she was whimpering, her fingers raking through my hair.
Then I moved to the other, giving it the same slow, deliberate attention while her hips rolled against me and her breathing fell apart.
I lowered her feet to the floor so I could kiss my way down her stomach. Her abs tensed under my lips and her fingers tightened in my hair as I sank to my knees in front of her.
She stared down at me, her eyes dark and heavy-lidded, her breathing heavy. I held her gaze as I hooked my fingers into the lace at her hips and dragged it down her legs.
The scent of her hit me and my mouth watered.
I lifted her leg over my shoulder, pressed my mouth against her inner thigh, revelling in the shiver that rippled through her. Without warning, I dragged my tongue through her folds. She cried out, her head falling back against the door with a thud.
She tasted incredible, heavenly. I pushed a finger inside her, then two, curling them as my tongue worked her clit in slow, firm circles.
Her fingers pulled at my hair, her hips rocking against my mouth, and every sound she made stripped another layer off me until there was nothing left but her.
The taste of her, the heat of her, the way her whole body trembled as I pushed her higher.
“Nate, oh god, that feels so good.”
I sucked her clit between my lips and drove my fingers deeper, faster, and she shattered.
Her whole body seized, her back arching off the door.
A ragged cry tore from her throat as she pulsed around my fingers and her legs gave out completely.
I caught her, one arm banding around her waist, holding her up while the aftershocks rolled through her.
I rose to my feet with my arm still around her, letting her collapse against my chest. Her breathing was wrecked, her hands trembling against my shirt, and the satisfaction of having done that to her burned through me like wildfire.