Chapter 36
Always
JULIETTE
At seven exactly, Nick stood on my front porch.
My house had never looked smaller, and it had never felt more mine. White stucco, soft palms, bougainvillea brushing the side gate, one stubborn porch light I kept meaning to replace because it buzzed when the air turned humid.
He noticed the buzz, because Nick Mercer apparently registered every small thing a room tried to hide.
Of course he did.
I opened the door before he could knock twice.
His eyes dropped from my face to the deep emerald dress I had chosen after rejecting six others. The silk moved softly against my skin, and the wrap over my shoulders made a brave, useless argument for October.
Nick’s hand flexed once at his side.
Worth it.
“You’re early,” I said.
“It’s seven.”
“I was establishing dominance.”
“How’s that going?”
“Poorly.”
His mouth curved.
I grabbed my clutch and stepped out before my house could become a crime scene. Nick’s palm settled at my lower back on the walk to his rental SUV, warm through the thin silk and steady enough to make my fingers useless. At the passenger door, he released me only long enough to open it.
Mar Azul sat on the water where the bay caught the last of the day in strips of copper and violet, with palms moving in the warm breeze and a boat engine humming low beyond the patio.
Nick took the chair with his back to the wall, and when I lifted an eyebrow, he lifted one back. Fine.
The server poured water. The glasses sweated instantly. Lime and salt and grilled fish threaded through the air, mixed with expensive perfume from the next table and the briny sweetness of the Gulf.
He ordered the wine without asking me to choose, which should have annoyed me and absolutely did not.
He told me about Sofia’s homecoming without making it sentimental: the black dress because “school spirit shouldn’t require chromatic surrender,” the approved jacket, the two permitted photos, and the parking-lot hug she protested before holding on longer than either of them expected.
Nick said that last part while looking at his water glass.
I took a sip of wine and gave him the privacy of not answering too quickly.
“She sounds like you,” I said.
“Her mother would object.”
“Would she be wrong?”
“No.”
A smile pulled at my mouth. He watched it happen, then looked down at his glass, turning the stem once between his fingers.
“If you were looking for a rental in Maris Key,” he said, “where would you start?”
My pulse changed. Not fast. Not dramatic. Just aware.
“For you?”
“Yes.”
The single word landed with more weight than one syllable had any right to carry.
“Close to the office,” I said carefully. “But not too close.”
His eyes came back to mine. “That was my thought.”
“Room for Sofia.”
“Yes.”
“And close enough to make Tampa easy when Sofia flies in.”
“Yes.”
I set my glass down. “You’ve thought this through.”
“I have.”
“Of course you have.” I paused, because the next words felt larger than real estate. “I know a few places that might work. And someone who can help you find the right one.”
His gaze held mine. “Good.”
Then it flicked to my mouth. “I’ve thought through more than where I’m going to live, Juliette.”
My fingers went still on the stem of my glass. A perfectly respectable snapper sat in front of me, and I had no memory of chewing it.
We didn't linger over dessert.
There were several excellent reasons to stay seated like a civilized adult. The wine was good. The view was better. My entrée deserved closure.
None of those reasons survived Nick’s hand at the small of my back.
He guided me through the restaurant with one hand at my back and enough quiet control to make every private thought dangerously easy.
At my front door, Nick waited while I unlocked it, not crowding me or touching me, but standing close enough for the heat of him to argue with every intelligent decision I had made that day.
“Juliette.”
His gaze dropped to my mouth, then came back to my eyes.
“Open the damn door.”
Inside, the house held the faint scent of lemon polish, old paper, and the jasmine candle I had blown out before leaving. Moonlight fell across the entryway tile. My strappy heels sounded too loud.
Nick stepped in behind me and closed the door. I set my clutch and keys on the console table, turned, and found his hand resting on the deadbolt. He looked too large in my hallway, too steady and too real, no longer a voice on the phone or a memory from South Africa.
After that, the house, the evening, and the last month narrowed to his mouth. I walked back to him, close enough to see the pulse move at the base of his throat. “Lock it.”
His hand went still.
“Juliette.”
“You said you wanted me behind a door you were allowed to lock.”
The click of the deadbolt sounded obscene in my quiet house.
A breath left him.
Then he was on me.
He didn’t rush, because even hungry, Nick was never careless. His hands framed my face, palms rough against my skin, as his mouth took mine with a month of wanting behind it. He pushed me back until my spine met the plaster wall beside the door.
Even now, he stopped short of pinning me. He held himself back in the inch of space between our bodies and in the way his breath hit my skin, hot and uneven. One hand braced against the wall beside my head, fingers sliding into my hair but never trapping me.
The last inch was a choice.
I grabbed his shirt and dragged him across the line.
That control held for one more breath, and then it snapped.
The kiss went deeper, rougher, as his weight finally settled against me.
One hand dropped to my waist, anchoring me, while the other remained white-knuckled against the wall.
The house shrank to the heat of his palm through my dress, the rough glide of his jaw against my skin, and the salt-wine taste of his mouth.
A sound left me, half gasp and half his name, as his hands closed around my thighs and lifted. My back scraped the wall, and then I was eye-level with him, my dress rucked to my hips, my legs parting on instinct.
He didn't set me down. Instead, he shifted my weight and hooked one leg over his shoulder, then the other. “Nick—”
He answered with a low, deliberate look, dark and steady, before he lowered his mouth to my center.
His shoulders were broad under my calves, steady as the rest of him, and he held me there like I weighed nothing.
The shock of it ran parallel to the shock of his tongue—firm, unhurried, knowing exactly where to press and circle and pause until my hips jerked against the wall.
He made a sound against me, approval or encouragement, and his fingers dug into the backs of my thighs, holding me open, holding me up.
I pressed the heel of my palm to my own mouth, breath coming in thin, broken rhythms, because he was still so controlled, still so careful, and I was coming undone anyway.
“Mine.”
The word was a growl against my skin, and the vibration of it sent a tremor through my thighs.
He pulled back just long enough to look up at me, his eyes deep blue in the dim light, his mouth slick, his breath hot with sweet mint, and the hunger he was still trying to control unraveled me completely.
Then he was moving.
Still holding me, still buried between my legs, he pushed off from the wall and carried me down the hall.
“Left,” I managed.
“I’ve got it.” He didn’t lift his head. The man had mapped my hallway with his mouth full.
The bedroom door was half-open.
He shouldered through it without breaking rhythm, and when the backs of my knees hit the mattress, he eased me down.
For one suspended second, nothing moved except the rise and fall of his chest.
At the foot of the bed, he watched me sprawled across the sheets with my dress open and my thighs still trembling. His hands found his belt. The metal clinked.
“Knees,” he said, low and calm. “Hands on the bed.”
I didn't think. I just moved, crawling back on the mattress until I could turn and kneel facing him, the dress pooling around my hips. My hair fell across my face. I didn't push it away.
Nick undressed without hurry and without hesitation, shirt first, then slacks, then the last thin barrier between patience and everything after.
When he came onto the bed, he looked like a man who had already decided exactly how he wanted me.
His hands found my waist, turned me, pulled me back against his chest so my spine curved into him and my head fell against his shoulder.
One arm banded across my ribs, holding me upright. The other hand slid between my legs.
"You're shaking," he said against my ear.
“You’re—” I couldn’t finish. His fingers found where his mouth had been, slow and certain, and I bucked forward into nothing. He caught me, arm tightening, and began to move his hand in a rhythm that had no mercy in it.
“Tell me you’re mine,” he murmured. His thumb circled, and my vision blurred at the edges. “Let me hear you.”
I turned my face into his neck, bit down on the tendon there just to keep from screaming. “Yours.”
He pushed deeper. “Again.”
“Yours.”
He turned my head with his free hand, kissed me once, hard enough to steal the sound out of my throat, and then his fingers left me empty. I made a sound I didn't recognize.
“Good,” he said, and laid me back on the pillows. “Now stay there.”
He caught the hem of my dress and dragged it up slowly, not because the fabric required patience, but because apparently he did. The silk whispered over my ribs, my breasts, my arms, and then it was gone, tossed somewhere near the foot of the bed with the rest of my ability to appear composed.
His gaze stopped.
The black lace had been for him. All of it.
Nick’s hand closed around my ankle.
“For me?”
I swallowed. “Always for you, Nick.”
He moved over me, broad and breathing hard, and settled his weight onto his forearms on either side of my head. His hips pressed against the inside of my thighs, not entering, just there, the heat of him promising everything.
“Last chance,” he said, his voice quiet now, almost tender. “Tell me no.”
I reached up and pulled him down by the back of the neck. “I’ve waited thirty days, worn impractical underwear, and survived dinner without climbing you in public. The only thing I’m saying no to is more waiting.”
He entered me with a single, unbroken thrust. My back arched off the bed. My nails raked his shoulders. He buried his face in my throat and groaned, a low, wrecked sound that I felt in my teeth, my spine, somewhere beneath my ribs where no one else had ever reached.
Then he began to move, and the world went white behind my eyes.
He set a pace that felt like him: controlled until it wasn’t, deep and dragging, every movement deliberate enough to ruin me on purpose. My hands slid from his shoulders to the sheets, fisting cotton because there was nowhere else to put all that wanting.
Nick lifted his head, and there he was, the controlled man undone without becoming reckless. Sweat darkened his hair at the temple, his jaw was tight, and his blue eyes stayed on mine with a focus that made my chest ache.
“Look at me,” he said.
I tried. Truly, I deserved credit for the effort.
My eyes kept rolling back, my body dragging me under with every stroke. He slowed, not stopping, never stopping, until I felt every inch of him with unbearable clarity.
“Juliette.” He said my name like he was bringing me back to him. “Look at me.”
I did.
He held my gaze and drove forward, harder and deeper, until the headboard struck the wall and the house gave one startled, useless protest. His hand settled at my throat, not squeezing, only holding the wild beat of my pulse beneath his palm.
“There you are,” he said, softer this time, like he had been waiting for the part of me I never handed over easily.
I came with my eyes open, staring into his, and if there was a name inside the sound I made, it was his. My body clenched around him once, twice, a third time, and his rhythm fractured.
He dropped his forehead to mine, his breath coming in sharp, uneven bursts. Three more thrusts, rough and unguarded, and then he buried himself deep, trembling as the last of his control gave way.
For a long moment, neither of us moved.
Then he shifted his weight off me before I needed to ask, pulled me into the curve of his body, and pressed his lips to the crown of my head. My heart was still hammering. So was his. I could feel it through his chest, against my cheek, slowing in tandem with mine.
“You okay?” he asked, his voice wrecked.
“Ask me again when I have bones.”
His laugh was almost silent against my hair. “Juliette.”
Outside, the wind moved through the palms. Inside, his thumb traced slow circles on my hip, and for once morning could come without turning into goodbye. I objected by tightening my leg around him.
He went still. “Careful,” he said.
“No.”
His mouth touched my shoulder. “You argue a lot for a woman who got what she wanted.”
“I’m still me.”
That earned me the quiet laugh I wanted.
Nick stayed beside me with one hand warm at my lower back, his thumb moving over the ink there as if he had memorized its shape in the dark. His hair was wrecked, and there was a red mark low on his throat that might become a problem if he owned a mirror.
“You’re very easy to fall in love with, Wilder,” he said.
My breath caught where his hand held me.
His eyes held mine. “I half wonder if I'm not already there.”
My hand found his chest. His heart beat hard beneath my palm, steady enough to trust and fast enough to give him away.
“That sounds dangerous,” I said.
My mouth curved before I could stop it.
His thumb moved again, warm over ink and skin and the life I had built before him. “I’m not asking you to get there tonight.”
“Good.”
His eyebrow moved.
I looked at the mark low on his throat, the one I had put there, then back to his eyes. They were steady and tired and entirely too aware of what he had done to my breathing.
“I’d hate to be rushed into admitting you’re not exactly difficult to fall in love with either,” I said.
His hand tightened at my back once before he let his grip ease.
His mouth softened, but his hand stayed warm over the ink at my back.
“I can wait.”
“I know.”
And I did. That was the dangerous part. Nick Mercer knew how to wait. How to stay steady. How to touch me like patience was not distance, but proof.
The fronds shifted overhead as a warm, breathing silence settled over us, and I closed my eyes against his chest.
“When you leave this time,” I said, “come back to me.”
His lips brushed my hair. “Always.”