Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
MAGNUS
Imeant to stop.
That is the truth I will carry for the rest of my life.
That when I hit the emergency stop and took her face in my hands, I had a plan.
The plan had an endpoint. The endpoint was somewhere in the next thirty seconds where I would find the discipline that had been the organizing principle of my entire adult life.
The plan lasted approximately as long as it took for her to make that sound.
Not a moan. Just a small, involuntary catch of breath when I deepened the kiss. The sound of a woman whose body had just confirmed something her mind had been arguing about. She collapsed into me like a live wire that zapped me from my sternum to my spine and took every plan I had with it.
I kissed her until I couldn't remember what I had been planning to stop for. Still didn't remember.
Nell tasted like wine and my mother's cooking. Two of my favorite things in one bite.
Fuck, do not bite this woman. That much I did remember. Though the reason was hazy.
My hands moved through her locs. The silk of them slid between my fingers. My wolf made a sound that was not a growl and not a purr. Something in between that I had no previous experience with.
I wanted to drown in her.
That was the thought that arrived fully formed and refused to be managed.
Not I want her in the timed and containable way that I'd had every woman since I was sixteen after I had to break my first girlfriend's heart.
I wanted to submerge myself in Nell. I wanted to stay under where there was no surface to swim back to.
I wanted to be inside her scent and her warmth and the sound of her breathing, and I wanted to stay there.
I wanted to press my face into her hair and roll in her the way my wolf had rolled in the sheets back in the guest room and in the cabin.
I pulled back from the kiss just enough to breathe.
My forehead rested against hers. My hands were still in her hair.
She looked up at me. Her pupils were blown wide.
Her lips parted. The amber light of the elevator caught the brown of her skin.
I understood with useless clarity that I was not going to be satisfied by one time.
I was going to think about this woman for the rest of my life.
I was going to meet Rosalind Lobo in a matter of days.
Marry her in a matter of months. I wasn't going to be faithful to her.
Physically, yes, because Blackwood men were faithful.
And because I had said I would. But I was going to think about Nell Odhiambo for every year of our marriage, which would be for the rest of my life.
I had already cheated on the wife I hadn't given vows to yet.
Not with my hands, not with my body. But with this; with the way I was holding Nell's face right now.
With the way I was memorizing each of her hundreds of locked tendrils radiating from her scalp.
With the knowledge that this woman had already moved into a room inside me that was going to be hers whether I furnished it or not.
Petronella Odhiambo was going to haunt me.
No, that's not true.
Ghosts are unwanted. I wanted the vision of Nell to stay crystal clear in my mind. I was going to worship the thought of this woman. I was going to kneel at the altar of the memory of what I was about to do to her. I would make me a cheating husband.
That knowledge did not make me stop.
My hands moved from her face to the hem of her shirt. My fingers slid underneath the silk to find the warmth of her lower back. She made a sound against my mouth.
Not the catch of breath from before. It was a sound that meant yes, keep going in a language that required no translation. I walked her back two steps until her shoulders met the elevator wall.
My fingers found the button of her jeans. I undid the button. The zip. Her breath came out in a rush. Her head fell back against the wall. I watched her face as I slid my hand past the fabric of her underwear, past the warm, soft skin below, through the short curls, and found her.
She mewled.
The sound hit me at the base of my spine.
Nell was warm and soft and already so wet.
The first slide of my fingers pulled a low purr from my own throat.
She bit her lower lip. Her hands came up to grip my shoulders.
Her hips tilted forward to offer me more.
I gave her more, sliding a second finger in alongside the first, feeling the heat of her close around them.
"Oh, God," she breathed.
I crooked my fingers. Her nails bit into my shoulders. She repeated her prayer.
I pumped my fingers slowly, then faster as she found the rhythm. Her hips moved in small circles. Her head was still back against the wall, her throat exposed and her eyes closed. I drank in the face I was going to see behind my eyelids for the rest of my days and nights.
"Please." It was barely a word, more a shape her mouth made.
With my middle and index fingers crooked inside her, I pressed my thumb to her clit. She came apart.
Her whole body arched. Her spine left the wall. Her hands pulled at my shoulders for balance. A low, broken sound climbed out of her that she was clearly not in control of and clearly did not care.
I held her through it. My fingers worked her through every tremor. My other arm around her waist, took her weight as her legs made their assessment of the situation and decided reliability was optional. When the last shudder worked its way through her, she went soft against my chest.
I held her. My face was in her hair. Her breath was slow against my throat.
Her hands released my shoulders and were now just resting there; palms flat, with the peaceful weight of a woman who had arrived at a precipice and taken the leap.
I felt immensely proud that she'd let me push her and trusted that I would catch her.
It felt right. I could stay here forever. I could stay in this elevator in this building between these floors with this woman's weight against my chest and her scent in my lungs and never hit the ground button.
From below us, someone tried the elevator door.
The sound of it — the handle, the mechanism, the impatient human noise of a person waiting for a box to come down — was the sound of my life arriving back online. My family. My pack. The Lobo wedding on the calendar.
I pressed my lips to the top of Nell's head once more. Then I straightened.
My hands moved with the efficient care of a man who had caused this and was going to put it right — her underwear, her jeans, the button, the zip, her shirt tucked back in. Each piece returned to its correct position with the impersonal care of someone doing damage control.
She let me do it. Her eyes were on my face the whole time. I did not meet her gaze I knew what I would find there. I did not have anything to give it right now.
I hit the release button that would take us back down to Earth.
The elevator resumed.
The lobby arrived.
The doors opened.
Nell's detail was there, flanking the car. The men who never left her side waiting to take her home. I walked her out with my hand at her back — the automatic gesture, the courtesy — and opened the rear door of the car.
She stopped before getting in. She looked at me with those clear, direct eyes. "Are you coming home with me?"
"No, Ms. Odhiambo. Hopefully that got the need for sex out of your system and you'll get back to work."
Something in her face went very still and very quiet in a way that was worse than anger. That look told me I'd chosen the exact right insult.
"Understood, Mr. Blackwood. Thanks for the ride."
She got in the car.
I closed the door.
I watched the car pull away from the curb and merge into traffic. It disappeared around the corner with the red of the taillights shrinking to nothing.
I stood on the sidewalk.
My fingers still felt the heat of her. My chest still held the shape of her weight against it. The room inside my mind that was already hers was very full right now. I had just told the woman who lived in it that she was a mistake.
I straightened my jacket. I walked to my car. I brought my fingers to my mouth. At least I would carry her scent for a few more days.