24. Nash #2
I should handle this carefully, but I won’t. I don’t do anything the right way where Reva is concerned, it seems.
I step toward her.
She holds her ground for two seconds, then backs up when I do not stop. The brick wall catches her shoulders. Vines frame her on both sides. Her breath catches, and the sound moves through me like a command.
I set one hand on the wall beside her head and lean in.
“I definitely have intentions where you’re concerned.”
Her eyes drop to my mouth. That’s a mistake.
Mine.
Hers.
Both ours.
“What kind of intentions?” she asks. Her voice emerges raspy and breathless and sounds like sex.
I take her chin and make her look at me. “The kind that will make Cal consider murder again if I say them out loud.”
Her lips part. “You’re impossible.”
“You like me.”
“You’re arrogant, too.”
“The best men are.”
“Eavesdropping is rude.”
“It can be useful.”
She shoves at my chest.
I catch her wrist, turn it, and pin it lightly against the brick above her shoulder. Her pulse jumps beneath my fingers.
“You heard what I told him,” I say.
“I heard you being bossy in a more socially acceptable tone.”
“You heard me say I would let you make your own choices.”
Her lashes flicker.
“I heard.”
“Choose, then.”
Her mouth tightens. “That is a dangerous thing to say to me.”
“I know.”
For one second, the garden goes quiet around us. The fountain behind me. The trees. The house. Cal’s retreating footsteps, gone now. Reva’s breath is the only thing I care about.
Then she rises on her toes and kisses me.
That is all the permission I need.
I take her mouth hard, swallowing the small sound she makes when my hand slides into her hair. She tastes like syrup, coffee, and fury. My hand tightens at the back of her head, and she melts for half a second before pushing back, because surrender irritates her even when she wants it.
I bite her lower lip. She gasps.
“Still choosing?” I ask.
“Shut up, Nash.”
I smile against her mouth. Then I turn her.
She faces the garden now, hands braced on the brick, my body at her back. She inhales sharply when I drag my mouth down the side of her neck. I catch the hem of her shirt and pull it over her head, tossing it onto the bench beside us.
Her bra is black.
Simple.
Mine, in the sense that I bought it, which is an indecent satisfaction I do not examine.
My hand closes over one breast, thumb dragging over the lace until she arches back against me.
“Nash.”
“Tell me no.”
She turns her head enough to glare. “No to stopping.”
“Clearer.”
“I want this.”
That works.
I unbutton her jeans and push them down with her underwear. She helps because she is impatient, stepping free of one leg and kicking the denim aside with far less grace than pride would prefer.
The stone bench sits a couple of feet away beneath an oak, old and heavy, its back angled toward the low wall. I guide her to it with my hand at her nape.
She looks over her shoulder.
“What are you doing?”
“Acting on my intentions.”
Her eyes flare.
I bend her over the bench.
She catches herself with both hands on the cool stone, breath leaving her in a rush. I step behind her, spread her legs with my knee, and drag my palm down her spine. Her skin pebbles under my touch. She is already wet when my fingers find her.
My jaw clenches.
“Jesus, Reva.”
“Don’t sound so smug.”
“I’m not smug.”
“Liar.”
I slide two fingers into her and lean over her back, my mouth at her ear. “I am pleased.”
Her laugh breaks into a moan when my thumb finds her clit.
The garden gives us too much cover. The bench, the hedges, the shade of the oak.
Anyone could come around the path if they ignored every survival instinct they have.
The risk sharpens her. I feel it in the way she tightens around my fingers, in the way her breath catches when I tug her hair enough to lift her head.
“Quiet,” I say.
She looks back at me, eyes dark. “Make me.”
Oh, that’s a bad idea.
And a really, really good idea.
I withdraw my fingers, undo my belt, and shove my pants down far enough. Her gaze drops over her shoulder, and the defiance on her face flickers.
I keep one hand in her hair and guide myself to her with the other.
“Last chance.”
She pushes back against me.
It’s answer enough.
I drive into her in one hard thrust.
Her cry tears out before she can stop it. I cover her mouth with my hand, not to silence her completely, just to make her feel the command. Her body clamps around mine, hot and tight, and I have to lock my knees to keep from losing control too fast.
She braces one hand on the bench and reaches the other toward the tree on the far side. Her palm plants against the trunk, fingers digging into bark, and the sight almost ends me.
My girl bent over stone, one hand on the bench, one against the oak, taking me like she was built to turn every rule I have into a weapon.
I pull back and thrust again.
Her sound is muffled against my palm.
“Good,” I say near her ear. “That’s it.”
She shudders.
I set a punishing rhythm, one hand still in her hair, the other locked over her mouth and jaw. The bench bites into the front of her thighs. Her back bows. Her hips meet mine in small, desperate movements that undo any fantasy I have ever had of being reasonable with her.
She reaches back once, nails scraping my hip.
I catch her wrist and pin it to the small of her back.
“Hands where I put them.”
She trembles. Then she obeys, palm returning to the tree with visible effort. Her obedience sparks through me.
So does the fact that it is chosen.
I release her mouth and slide my hand to her throat, holding lightly enough for breath, firmly enough for weight. Her head tips back against my shoulder.
“You asked if I had intentions,” I say.
Her laugh is ruined by the next thrust. “I regret asking.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No,” she pants. “I don’t.”
I kiss the side of her face, rough and open-mouthed, while my hand drops between her legs. She jolts when I touch her clit, and I feel how close she is, how hard she is fighting it.
Still stubborn, even bent over a bench with me inside her.
“Let go.”
Her fingers claw at the bark. “Bossy.”
“And you’re taking every bossy inch so fucking good. Such a good girl, my little wolf.”
She makes a furious sound. I tighten my grip in her hair and drive into her harder.
She comes with her face turned toward the oak, teeth sunk into her lower lip to keep from screaming.
Her body locks down around me in tight, brutal waves, and that pulls me over with her.
I bury myself deep, grip her hips hard enough that I know I’ll see my handprints there later, and come with my forehead against the back of her shoulder.
For several seconds, neither of us moves.
The fountain runs behind us.
A bird calls from somewhere overhead.
Reva’s breathing is ragged beneath me, and my own is not much better.
I ease my hand from her hair first, smoothing over the place I pulled. Then I draw out of her carefully and turn her in my arms before her knees decide to make a scene. She leans into me despite herself, bare legs unsteady, cheek against my chest.
I hold her, my arms around her in the shade of the old oak while the house waits beyond the hedges.
After a moment, she says, “Pretty sure your intentions need supervision.”
I look down at her. Her mouth is trying not to smile.
“They had supervision,” I say.
“Cal does not count.”
“He left.”
“Convenient.”
“Yes.”
She huffs a laugh into my chest, then goes quiet. I feel the shift before she speaks.
“Did you mean it?” she asks.
“What I told him?”
“Yes.”
I tip her chin up. Her eyes are guarded again, but less than before.
“I meant every word.”
She searches my face. Whatever she finds there makes her look away first.
“Okay,” she says.
Just ‘okay.’ A small word, but it’s huge.
I reach for her shirt from the bench and help her into it, then her jeans. She lets me, which is its own kind of surrender. When she is dressed again, I take her hand.
She looks toward the house, then back at me.
“Are we going to talk about Delia?”
“Not yet.”
“Good.”
“Soon.”
She groans. I kiss the top of her head because it irritates her and because I can.
She pulls her hand free and starts down the path ahead of me, walking like her legs are perfectly steady.
They aren’t. She has noodle legs.
My intentions, as Cal called them, are becoming less theoretical by the hour.
Keep her alive.
Give her choice.
Build her a home solid enough to withstand whatever truth tears through it next.
And if anyone tries to take her before she decides she wants that home, I will remind them why Blackwood men built walls in the first place.