22. NINEAH
NINEAH
ICOULDN’T STOP STARING at his hands. The width of one of them could probably cover my entire belly and that was shamelessly what I thought about because that was exactly the kind of thing you did when you were bruised, battered, and tomorrow’s problems required too much energy to think about.
What had he said again?
Something about giving me what I wanted?
Warmth hit my face.
Could he tell what I was thinking? Was this another tactic? Or did you become so transparent after so many years with someone?
I hoped not.
It was bad enough I was ill-prepared to navigate this terrain.
No training, no intel, not even the illusion of self-assuredness, I was at the largest disadvantage and not because I was four years behind.
But rather, I was trying to play four years’ worth of catch up in four minutes and my brain was still swimming while my body buzzed with sensory overload.
His human male scent.
His voice that wasn’t just deep—because deep could be smooth and his wasn’t—it was dark.
His ridiculously wide body, specifically his torso that seemed to extend the width of three of me.
And his… Nope… I didn’t even want to think about the huge, hard length pushing crudely into my thigh.
So many senses, not enough processing power.
One second, I was terrified. The next, curious. The next, impressed.
What had he said again?
Oh right.
I hid a smile. “I needed a home?” His heart beat steadily, durably under my fingertips, and I decided I liked the sound.
“You showed up at my second job one night, presumably to question me about a security breach, but I saw your eyes. Your costume. Your pretty made-up face… You wanted to be noticed. You wanted me to notice you. And I watched you realize that in real time.”
A strong compulsion to comfort him made my heart ache. He didn’t just speak fondly of me in the past tense, he spoke reverently.
For the first time, I didn’t have a response, so I rose up and leaned in to kiss his cheek instead, but he was so large, I couldn’t quite reach and lost my balance. Abraham steadied me with his hands, but not before his ridiculous erection settled against the seam of my pussy.
Having seen it just this morning—I was never walking into his room again. If he died in his sleep, so be it—it should not have been so shockingly massive and yet, my face could heat a home the way it lit up with embarrassment.
What was even the point of having a dick like this? Last I checked, no woman had an arm-deep vagina. Also, where did he get off on ruining my pussy with that thing?
I opened my mouth to say something but all of the sudden I was aware of the hand that had a death grip on my waist. The other, whose fingertips dug into my thigh so close to the crease where my ass was, moved on its own accord.
“Sorry,” I rushed out in a whisper. “I—”
“I can’t.”
“I know,” I breathed, my cheeks on fire.
“You don’t.”
I nodded. He was all but laying his truth on the table for me because I’d asked and I was making a mockery of his vulnerability. Mortified didn’t begin to cover it. I tried to push away to stand, but he wouldn’t let me leave. Barring me in with his arms, Abraham held me still.
“I know my wife,” he stated, like a guilty admission. “What she likes. What she hates. It’s her boundaries I know. I don’t know yours.”
Irrational jealousy hit my chest at close range. “And that stopped you the first time?”
“The first time, I barely had the condom off before you were halfway to your car, then I didn’t hear from you for a week.”
I swallowed. Every time this man spoke, he revealed another piece of information that scrambled my brain as I desperately tried to place it. The fingers on my thigh grazed my ass. “I know you think it will help. Taking control back, even if it’s with your own body. It won’t.”
“Do you do that a lot?” I asked. “Save me from myself?”
He was incongruously calm with such an angry erection pushing deeper into the cleft of my legging-covered slit. A tiny little voice at the back of my brain grew with every pulse of his heartbeat.
Push him, it said.
“Maybe I should be saving myself, instead,” he said, flatly.
An incessant pressure between my legs made my head spin. “Tu es un soldat qui fait peur. And yet… I am not the one who’s afraid.”
Huge hands gripped both of my wrists and held them behind my back. Transferring them to one hand so he could make me look at him with the other, he gasped my chin and forced my eyes on his.
Under my skin a million little needles pricked me from the inside out as an anxiety both foreign and familiar settled between my thighs.
“Is that what you want?” he asked. “Un soldat?”
Shaking my head, I gave him the truth I hadn’t known before just a few seconds ago. “I want the man who flew across the world for a Jane Doe, who hasn’t taken his wedding band off since, and has my full name permanently marked on the inside of his forearm.”
“You read Russian,” he accused.
“The vowels repeat. Stop deflecting.”
Abraham made a disapproving sound, but he wasn’t annoyed, he was frustrated. And so was I, for that matter. Either this man had superhuman discipline or I was shittier at seduction than I thought. Time to change strategies.
Meeting his hard gaze, looking up at him underneath my lashes, I did something I never did with men—I showed him how insecure I really was.
How afraid. How badly I needed ten seconds where I couldn’t feel the blood moving inside my veins.
Then I placed my finger on the trigger and initiated my version of a kill switch. “You don’t want me?”
Towering me like one of those swaying high rises, Abraham grasped my chin once more, the thin chain dangling from his neck grazing my lips.
I suddenly couldn’t breathe. A surmounting, consuming heat building in the deepest part of me, I didn’t let that intimidate me and matched him stare for stare.
Until finally, he settled his forehead onto mine, cursing in a language I didn’t know.
“You speak as if you know two different men. Like both of them wouldn’t tie your hands to your feet and feed you more dick than you can swallow. ”
Oh fuck.
“Is that what you do?” I asked, breathless.
Abraham snorted. “Is that what I do? she asks…” One hand slipped into the waistband of my leggings and squeezed my ass, making me gasp. “After questioning the validity of our marriage.”
“Don’t pretend you blame me,” I said. “Also, you like me when I’m a bitch. Your eyes give you away.”
“I don’t need a reason to like you. Only to put a belt to your ass.”
I choked out a moan.
Ghosting his mouth over my forehead, my nose, and hovering my lips, he murmured a suggestion I didn’t mistake for anything other than a warning. “You should rest. Go take one of your pills. I’ll bring you something to eat.”
He smelled wonderful, I realized. Peppery and warm like an extended hug that dwarfed your nerves.
It fit him almost too well. Since my enlisted days, I’d always had a love-hate relationship with overt displays of masculinity, but Abraham didn’t use his size or strength to intimidate or flex.
Worse—his brand of protectiveness could lure me off a cliff until I found myself hurtling toward the ground.
Yet, instead of retreating, I found myself prodding him like a kid with a stick. I pouted. “But I’m not tired.”
“Nineah.”
“Abraham,” I murmured.
He glared at me like he wanted to throw me back into the Baltic.
“I’m not stupid,” I told him. “I know it’s little missus perfect you miss, not me.
Just like I know exactly what I’m like when someone pretends to want me, and with you it’s not even pretend, so I can only imagine the self-sacrificing people pleaser you ended up marrying.
But I’m not begging you to fuck my mouth and call me your angel.
I just want to sit on it and see if it hurts. ”
I didn’t think it was humanly possible for him to get any harder, but his dick made a fool of my assumptions as it pushed against my clit. Both of Abraham’s nostrils flaring wildly, his calm cracking, he brought his hand to my nape and squeezed. “Is that right?”
No. I wanted to inhale more of his cologne while he stroked my hair, but I wasn’t nearly brave enough to ask for that. “So long as you’re careful. Apparently, I’m unprotected.”
The implication hung in the air for exactly two seconds. Then he moved.