Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CORMAC
“Cookie, go to your room,” I say, unable to pull my eyes off Nora.
Cookie doesn’t budge from our feet, just gives an exploratory bark.
Without a second’s hesitation, I scoop her up and run her into the spare bedroom, depositing her onto her dog bed with a chew toy. I shut the door behind me and rush back into the living room.
Nora grins. “You ran back in here like an Olympic vaulter.”
Vaulters jump, but who gives a shit about accuracy right now?
“I did,” I say. “Promises were made.”
“And they’ll be fulfilled,” she says, getting to her feet.
Every cell in my body is attuned to her as she strides toward me with the grace of a cat.
“You’re going to kill me,” I say, thinking again about my first impression of her. Beautiful and dangerous.
Not because she’d hurt me directly, or purposefully.
But because I know, I’ve always known, that if I let myself worship her, I’ll never want another woman.
I swallow against my dry throat as she comes to a stop in front of me.
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” I admit.
“And you look very good in those glasses. But I’m going to have to take them away from you.”
I shake my head as she lifts her hand to my face. “Not yet,” I say. “Not if you’re going to suck my dick. I’d like to see that with perfect clarity.”
This seems to please her for reasons I’m too turned on to analyze. She gives me a radiant smile and leans up on her toes to kiss me. Then she gets down on her knees.
“Does this remind you of anything?” she asks as she wraps her fingers around one side of my shorts.
“My mind isn’t working, sorry. You’ll have to step away from my dick if you want it to, and I’d prefer if you didn’t.”
She shifts slightly, peering up at me, and then the memory hits—Nora, radiant in that ugly green dress, on her knees in front of me.
“It was how our fake relationship began,” I say.
“Were you thinking about this then?” she asks, her gaze full of mischief as she finally tugs down my shorts and my underwear.
My dick strains toward her.
She wraps her soft hand around it, a little roughly, which only makes me harder.
“You know I was,” I manage through my teeth. “You wanted me to be.”
“Maybe a little,” she agrees. Then she runs her tongue up the side of my shaft before wrapping those perfect red lips around the head, running her tongue around it.
Holy shit. I’m not going to last. I’m going to be embarrassingly fast, and she’ll tell her friends, and they’ll tell my friends, and I’ll never hear the end of it.
I cradle the back of her head in my hand, her silky dark hair spilling through my fingers, and she glances up at me, the tip of my dick still in her mouth, and watches me as she takes me in deeper.
And I know with the clarity usually reserved for the moments before death that this is the best thing I’ve ever seen.
Probably the best thing I will ever see.
“Jesus, Nora,” I say, my voice hoarse. “That feels so good.”
She starts up a rhythm, taking me in and out, pausing every now and then to play with me with her tongue.
I start to count by nines in my head. Nine. Eighteen. Twenty-seven. Thirty-six. Forty-five…
But it doesn’t get me very far, because I’m standing in my living room, and the most alluring woman in the world is sucking me off. Every part of me is in ecstasy.
I feel it happening. My lower back is tingling, and the pleasure is overpowering, so I grip her hair slightly, wanting to get her attention. “I’m going to come. I know what you said, but you don’t have to. I—”
She sucks stronger, and all my control is lost. I come in her mouth, and she swallows my release without hesitation.
“You were saying?” she asks, grinning up at me.
I can only shake my head and reach down to help her up before pulling up my shorts.
Wrapping an arm around her, I say, “I should offer to call disagreeable strangers more often.”
Laughing, she leads the way into the kitchen.
“Wait, don’t you want me to make you—”
“Oh, you will. Later.” She winks and then grabs a couple of ginger beers out of the fridge.
Shit, I should have thought of that. The least you can do when a beautiful woman sucks you down is provide her with a beverage.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I should have offered.”
She smiles as she opens one of the bottles and hands it to me.
“I’m happy to help myself.” She opens the second bottle for herself and says, “Speaking about disagreeable strangers, what do you say we look up people in your yearbook and reminisce about all the assholes we went to school with? We can look them up on social media.”
My heart beats faster, my mind fixing on the old, yellowed note tucked between the pages of our senior yearbook.
The proof.
Leave it to me to hold on to a letter a woman wrote under duress.
“No, that’s okay,” I say quickly, wrapping an arm around her to keep her in the kitchen. “I kept in touch with everyone I wanted to keep in touch with.”
“Who?”
“Kenji, and now you.”
She smiles as she takes a swig of her ginger beer. “I never thought I’d hear you say that.”
I feel my brows knit closer together. “Why not?”
“I didn’t think you liked me.”
I nearly laugh out loud. “Yeah. Well, look at us now.” I tug her a little closer, and my heart fills as she leans against me.
I want to tell her how much she means to me, but I’m worried about shooting my shot too soon and ruining everything. So I clear my throat and very suavely change the subject by asking, “What are we going to do about Bradley Ruche?”
“I think we need to fill in José. It’s time for him to know everything.”
I lean back against the kitchen counter, wishing like hell that I could have this thing with Nora without dealing with the attached José and Pansy mess. “She could come up with a reasonable explanation for why she hasn’t told him.”
Nora waves a hand toward the living room. “You heard the guy. Pansy broke up with him using a plagiarized Post-it. That’s cold.”
I take a swig of my drink, savoring the bite of the ginger. “What if she says he was cheating on her?”
“She probably would say something like that,” she responds grumpily.
“And what if he did cheat on her? He seemed kind of—well, you said it best. He’s a douche.”
She puckers her lips. “This sucks.”
“Not necessarily. Maybe you can hire Pansy to work on the bathrooms at The Ginger Station.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Ugh. No. I don’t have a hundred grand to blow on some questionable upgrades, thank you very much.”
“But it won’t get that far. You’ll insist on a background check.”
“You honestly think her two failed engagements will pop on a background check? The worst we’ll get her for is a speeding ticket.”
“They wouldn’t show up on a normal background check, no. But Kenji’s security guys are thorough. We’ll use them.”
She considers this before shaking her head. “Small problem. We never do background checks.”
I scowl. “That’s not safe. You could accidentally hire someone dangerous.”
She smiles at me as if I’ve said something amusing. “You’re worried about me.”
“Now, I am.”
“It’s fine. We call their references.”
“That’s not enough. I’ll run security checks for you from now on.”
She looks taken aback, but she doesn’t outright refuse me. When she finally speaks, she says, “Fine, if it makes you feel better, but we can’t start with her. That would be suspicious.”
“Yes, God forbid.” I shift against the counter and tell her something she won’t want to hear. “Nora, even if he knows everything…he might still want to marry her.”
She tenses her hand around the neck of the ginger beer bottle as if she wants to bludgeon someone with it. “Look, we’re over-engineering this situation.”
“I’ve been accused of it before.”
“Why don’t I just text her anonymously, the way she texted me last year? I won’t be nasty like she was. I’ll send warning texts. I can say I’m Bradley’s buddy, and I know all about what she did to him and the other guys. I might be able to get her to leave José alone.”
I start pacing the kitchen, anxiety forming its tornado spiral inside of me as I consider the possible ramifications. Finally, I pause in front of Nora, shaking my head. “The fact that she sent you those messages to begin with suggests she’s potentially dangerous.”
“So am I,” Nora insists.
“Trust me, I know. I don’t want you getting thrown into jail either.”
She smiles. “Look, I’ll keep it mostly benign. I’m not going to say anything that’ll freak her out or drive her to violence. Then I can drop hints that I’m the one who’s been messaging her while we’re on that double date.”
I shake my head vehemently. “No. I’m not comfortable with that.
” I swallow some ginger beer, then make a counteroffer, which I am also not comfortable with.
It will hopefully save Nora from any danger, however, and is thus worth it.
“I’ll be the one who does it. Leave it to me.
And I’ll see if I can make contact with that guy Dean and also Micah. Strengthen our case.”
“Really?” she asks dubiously.
“Yes. Let’s keep you out of it. If she doesn’t back off, we can slip the marriage licenses under José’s door anonymously or maybe circle back to the background check idea. I’ll pretend I’m hiring her to redecorate the house or something.”
“No way.” She presses a hand to my chest. “I can handle this, Cormac. You don’t have to do all of that. You’ve done too much for me already.”
“It’s like I said. Our parents want us to get along.”
Her half-smile doesn’t quite meet her eyes. “Somehow, I don’t think this is what they had in mind.”
“Then they shouldn’t have tried to push us together. Look, I’m invested now. I want to help you. But I’d like for you to promise me something.”
She raises her severe dark brows, and I can tell her body is practically humming with the need to act. “What?”
“If he wants to marry her anyway, after knowing everything, you’ll back off. You can let them think we’re still together for as long as you need to, but you’ll quit it with the Scooby-Doo business.”