Chapter 43
Nika
It was like a headache that had moved into my bones. Every ache and throb had its own address, its own specific complaint. The cramp had grown stronger but there was brief relief when it ebbed—those small windows of almost-normal that only made the return worse.
I glared at him as he brought more bags into my bedroom.
Why wasn’t he suffering? He should be suffering. He was the cause of all of this. Standing there looking completely composed, carrying things in from the corridor like this was a perfectly ordinary Tuesday, like I wasn’t lying here wanting to peel my own skin off.
I turned away and buried my face into my pillow.
Wrong. All wrong. The fabric conditioner I’d used for two years, the scent I’d always found comforting—it grated now. Synthetic. Thin. Nothing like—
I picked it up and threw it at his head.
He caught it. One hand. Without looking.
I stared at the ceiling and said nothing because there were no words adequate to the situation.
Before I could locate any, another cramp began to build. Slow this time. Deliberate. The kind that gathered itself before it arrived, that made you aware of every second of its approach. My breath caught at the back of my throat.
“Here.” His voice was calm. “Throw it again. I won’t catch it.”
I opened one eye.
He was holding the pillow out to me. Steady. Patient. Not a trace of the smugness I wanted to punish him for.
“Get me a brick,” I said.
He sat carefully on the edge of the bed—the mattress dipping slightly with his weight, that small shift in the air between us that my body registered before my brain did.
“If you knock me out cold,” he said reasonably, “how exactly do I help you?”
I was about to answer.
Then he shifted slightly closer and the words dissolved entirely.
He smelled so good.
You knew this was going to happen. You could have warned me how bad it was going to be, I said to Bad Girl.
How was I supposed to know? It’s never happened before. It isn’t fun for me either. A pause. He does smell so good though. We could do worse.
She wasn’t wrong.
I edged a little closer to him and grabbed his elbow, pressing my nose to his shirt without any pretence of dignity. I was so hot. Getting hotter by the minute, the warmth of him making it worse and better at the same time in a way I didn’t have the capacity to examine right now.
“Here.” He reached down to the floor beside him. “I brought you something.”
He placed a bundle of clothes next to me on the bed.
I lifted a pale blue shirt and covered my face with it.
His cologne. A woody undertone. And beneath both of them the warmth of his skin—layered into something that had no name except his. Like that was all I needed to breathe. Like the air in the room had been wrong until this moment and this was the correction.
The cramp eased.
I rubbed the soft cotton against my cheek.
Inhaled.
And again.
So good.
There was more. Another bundle. Then another.
I smiled and hugged the pile and got to work arranging his scent all around me.
??
??
??
It was bad.
Like really bad.
The pain had spread to my lower back—a deep, grinding ache that had no interest in being reasonable. But as soon as it ebbed the need that replaced it was unlike anything I’d ever felt. A different kind of unbearable. Worse, almost, because it had a direction.
Bad Girl had vanished like a guilty party, deserting me entirely in my hour of need.
No. She was there.
I felt her eye roll.
You’re fine, she didn’t say. The silence was extremely unsympathetic.
And then there was Conrí—pacing, occasionally talking to himself or possibly Kael, I couldn’t focus on the words. My entire attention was committed to the far more pressing task of surrounding myself with his clothing. He’d brought a considerable amount. There were even ties in there.
Mm.
Silky. Cool against my fingers. I wrapped one around my neck and lay back against the pile, toying with the material, enjoying the slide of it against my skin.
He stopped pacing.
He didn’t look well.
Then his eyes dropped to the tie.
My grip tightened instinctively.
He could try.
“Nika,” he rasped, his voice low and deep.
I clenched my thighs together at the sound of it. Licked my lips. My name on his lips tasted like victory in some way I couldn’t quite comprehend and didn’t have the capacity to examine right now.
I let the tie dangle around my neck and sat up.
My fingers found the buttons of my plum blouse and began to work through them. It clashed magnificently with his dark green tie. He’d probably matched it to his eyes deliberately. To attract females. Very calculated of him.
I paused.
My eyes flicked up.
His expression was earnest. Focused. Slightly pained in a way that suggested significant internal negotiation.
“Have you ever been involved with anyone at work?”
His gaze was on my hands.
“What?”
I glanced down. The cerise bra was showing. I closed the blouse.
“What?” he repeated. This time the green eyes met mine properly.
“Have you ever been involved with anyone at work?”
“No,” he said, with the indignation of a man who found the question genuinely offensive. “That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
They’re ours, Bad Girl said. I think he is very aware of what would happen if he touched another female.
I worked on the remaining button.
The smile died on my lips when another rush of heat came. Deeper this time. It rose from my belly and spread upward until it settled in my chest—not painful exactly, more like pressure looking for somewhere to go.
I considered the word.
Ours.
Not his. Not the bond’s. Not fate’s.
Ours.
He would take away this misery. That was the practical reality of the situation and I was adult enough to acknowledge it.
But that wasn’t the whole of it.
I was tempted to claim him. To make it so that the thought of another female never crossed his mind again.
Not because the heat demanded it—because I did.
Because somewhere between the dinner and the rose garden and the pale blue shirt pressed against my cheek, this had stopped being biology and started being something else entirely.
Something I didn’t have a name for yet.
Something Bad Girl had apparently known for considerably longer than I had.
I reached out of my cocoon and patted the bed.
“I think it’s time.”
I blinked.
He moved in a blur.
I had not previously known that a man could undress that quickly.