Chapter Sixteen
Much to Bailey’s consternation and Nash’s delight, the rest of the week was more of the same.
He mostly left her alone on Monday, which was both a relief and a worry.
She used her day off to run her usual complement of errands—she stopped by the dry cleaner and the bank, had a short meeting with her accountant to prepare for the upcoming quarterly taxes.
She checked in on Chloe via text, and was reassured that her friend was in good hands with Jesse and Knox.
Back home she caught up on laundry, took a nap, and searched for the most boring podcast she could find.
She finally settled on one called Mathematics for Our Time, a discussion of how people relied too heavily on computers to do advanced math.
But it turned out that boring didn’t help, because her mind just drifted to her full butt and her empty pussy, and she was right back where she didn’t want to be—horny as fuck with nowhere to go with it.
On Tuesday she threw herself into work, grateful for the distraction, and for the first part of the day she was blissfully focused on something other than sex.
But just after lunch she got a text from Nash.
She hesitated to open it, wary of a trick.
She should’ve listened to her instincts, because when she finally clicked on it between clients, she found the filthiest story she’d ever read, a Cinderella retelling where the prince, after finally finding the beautiful maiden he’d fallen in love with, celebrated by sharing her with the entire palace guard.
Twenty men fucking one woman in every way possible, jizz flying everywhere, orgasms galore. And Bailey had to work the rest of the day with her pussy soaking through her jeans.
On Wednesday it wasn’t a story, but two photographs.
The woman was white, with short pink hair, blue eyes, and a pin-up body.
The man had warm bronze skin and dark brown eyes with a charming smile and firm, sleek muscles.
The accompanying text read Ava and T, giving her the faces to add to her sweaty, tangled dreams.
On Thursday it was another sexy story. She tried not to read it, she really did. But she caved, and the hot-wife, free-use scenario had her shaking so badly she had to lock herself in the bathroom at work for a solid half-hour, claiming food poisoning when her staff got worried.
She couldn’t keep going like this. So when she got home that night, she laid down the law.
“I can’t take it anymore, Nash.”
He looked up from the pile of laundry on his bed. She was in the doorway, still holding her purse and keys, all the sexual frustration and madness built up inside her fueling her glare.
“Hey, Bailey.” He set aside the shirt he’d just folded and plucked another one out of the pile. “What’s up?”
“Don’t ‘what’s up’ me,” she flared. She threw her purse to the floor, sent the keys after it with a musical jangle. “I’m done, you hear me?”
He straightened, his brown eyes radiating concern that didn’t quite hide the sadistic glee. “You seem upset, Bay.”
“Upset? Upset?”
Tossing the shirt back on the pile, he sat on the side of the bed. “Did something happen today?”
“Several things,” she ground out. “But not the thing that needs to happen.” Incensed, incandescent with rage and frustration and suppressed lust, she took the three strides to reach him and dug her hands into his T-shirt. “Because you won’t let it!”
“Whoa,” he murmured. “You’re really on edge.”
“You think?” She wanted to shake him until his teeth rattled. “I’m not going to make it to Sunday, Nash. Not like this. Something’s gotta give.”
He stood, nudging her back a step, and put his hands on her shoulders. “Okay, how about you take a deep breath and calm down?”
“Deep breaths don’t help, Nash. I’ve tried. You know what I did today?”
“Uh…”
“I started to prep highlights for someone who came in for a keratin treatment because I was thinking of your little hot-wife story instead of my job.”
“Um. That’s bad, right?”
She tightened her grip on his shirt. “Yes, Nash, that’s very fucking bad. I had to cancel my clients for tomorrow because I don’t trust myself not to fuck up someone’s hair!”
She sucked in a deep breath. “I tried, I really tried to follow your no orgasm rule. But it’s not worth my career.”
“No, it’s not,” he agreed, his hands squeezing her shoulders. “You should go upstairs, take a hot shower.”
Relief weakened her knees, visions of shower-wand-induced orgasms had her nearly salivating. “God, yes. No, wait. Can I use your bathroom?”
“Why?”
“The shower wand in there has a pulse setting,” she explained, nearly dizzy at the thought.
Understanding dawned in his eyes. “You can’t masturbate, Bailey.”
“What?” She sagged in his grip, shock and dismay mixing with desperate, aching need. “Nash, I—”
“I’ll take care of you, Bailey,” he soothed, but his voice was firm, eyes steely. “I promise I will. But only if you don’t make yourself come. Deal?”
She stared at him for a moment, torn. She could get herself off so fast, and with the hot water and the steam of the shower he’d never know. But oh, it would be so much better if she waited, and he knew she knew it.
She tightened her grip on his shirt. “Do you swear on your mother’s collection of Princess Diana commemorative plates?”
Humor warmed his eyes and his grin flashed, the dimple popping in his cheek. “Going for the big guns, huh?”
“Do you swear?” she demanded.
“I swear.” He grabbed her hands and peeled them gently away from his shirt, then lifted them to his lips. “I swear on the plates, on my bike, on the Cleveland Guardians’ hopes for the pennant and my immortal soul, you will get to come.”
Mollified, she nodded. “Okay.”
He pressed another kiss to her knuckles, then walked with her to the door. “Go, take a shower. Wash your hair, shave anything you need to shave, do the enema. Then put on a robe and come back down.”
She walked down the hall to the stairs, watching him over her shoulder.
“I swear,” he repeated, his eyes sober, his expression serious, and she nodded and went up the stairs, taking them two at a time, eager to do what she needed to do and get back to the promise in his eyes.
Nash waited until he heard the water turn on, then went back into his room and picked up the phone. He dialed quickly, sweeping the bed clear of his laundry while he waited for the call to connect. When it did, he took a deep breath and mentally crossed his fingers.
“Sawyer, it’s Nash. There’s been a change of plans.”
* * * *
When Bailey came downstairs half an hour later, Nash had the unfolded laundry shoved in the closet, the sheets changed and the shades drawn, cutting out the late afternoon sun and casting the room in shadow.
He’d found half a dozen tealights in the stash of emergency candles in the laundry room, and lined up on the dresser they added a faint, romantic glow.
He’d managed a quick scrub-down in the shower—possibly the fastest one he’d ever taken—and had redressed in clean boxers and shorts, leaving his torso bare. When she walked into the room with damp hair and bare feet, wrapped in a short terry-cloth robe, he was waiting for her beside the bed.
She was all dewy skin and wide eyes—eyes that still held the colored contacts she’d worn to work. And that just would not do.
He crossed the room, lifting one hand to brush a lock of damp hair off her forehead. “You’re still wearing your contacts.”
“I…forgot.”
Her voice was thin, her breathing already rough. He could see the pulse fluttering like a mad thing in her throat.
He shifted his hand there, wanting to feel it. “I want them gone. Do you have to go back upstairs?”
She hesitated a moment, then shook her head. “They’re disposable. I can just throw them away.”
He held out his hand, palm up, and after a moment’s pause, she plucked them out and dropped them into his hand.
He crossed to the waste basket next to the bed and dropped them in, then turned back. She hadn’t moved from the doorway, and seemed impossibly small there in the short robe, her eyes wide and vulnerable, the gold flecks in the hazel bright in the candlelight.
He held out a hand, his heart leaping when she moved immediately to take it.
Saying nothing, he laid his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face the side of the bed. “I know this week has been hard, Bailey,” he crooned. He stroked his hands down her arms to her hands and back up again, moving slowly, sensually. “And you’ve been such a good girl.”
She let out a sound, somewhere between a whimper and a moan, low in her throat. “Don’t tease me, Nash.”
He grinned into her hair. “I’m not teasing you, I’m praising you. You have been good. You didn’t have to follow my rules, but you did it anyway.”
She shifted restlessly, knees flexing, arms twitching. “Don’t remind me.”
“Why did you?” he asked quietly, shifting his hands to brush her hair back. His fingertips grazed her neck, and she shivered. “I know you didn’t want to.”
“Because,” she began, then cut herself off with a gasp when he reached around her waist for the tie of her robe.
“Because?” he prompted, deftly untying the strip of terrycloth holding the robe together. He let it drop, then shifted his hands to the lapels.
“It was part of the game,” she said, breath hitching as he drew the robe off her shoulders.
“Is that the only reason?” he asked and let the robe fall to the floor.
Fuck, she was gorgeous. The soft length of her back, the dip of her waist flowing into that plump, dimpled ass followed by thick thighs. He bent his head to her shoulder, wanting her scent and to watch her breasts, her belly, quiver with her breathing.
He wanted his hands on them, on her, but he wanted an answer first. “Is it?”
“I don’t know.”
He put his hands on her then, sliding one across her chest to palm a breast and the other around her waist. He took a moment to caress that sweet little belly before sliding down, down through damp curls to the hot, wet flesh below.