“Why? To be better armed in taking everything over?” I replied, feeling my chest tighten with anger.
He stopped suddenly and turned to face me, placing his hands on my shoulders. No matter how skeptical I was of him, the touch of a man who looked that good on a night like this was nearly debilitating.
“Delilah, I don’t want to take everything over,” he defended earnestly. “Well, in a way I do...but look, all of this was going to be happening with or without me and my company coming along. If it wasn’t us...somebody else would be in our place. Why can’t I be the one to reap the rewards? And anyway, I promise you I’m not as heartless as some others would be. I want to understand this place and love it the way you do...even if it is changing.”
I didn’t give him the benefit of a response because something about him and it still didn’t sit right with me. Maybe it was my stubborn refusal to believe my hometown would morph into something new and recognizable. Maybe I just wanted a singular man to blame for the whole disaster. But despite all of that, something about Nick’s honesty and sincerity was touching.
“Del,” I offered after a long silence.
“Huh?”
“My friends call me Del.”
He smiled wide. “I like that.”
We kept walking and made the bold choice to stop off into a few of my favorite bars downtown. We certainly didn’t need anything else to drink, but neither of us seemed quite ready for the evening to end. Showing a handsome man around like that was like a date of my dreams...if it had been an actual date and hadn’t been with Nick Ransom. As the night went on, I found myself caving in to his charms.
The smell of his cologne was intoxicating...in a very dangerous and poisonous sort of way. It wafted through me at every turn, mixing in with the sight of his gorgeous smile and his deep, sexy voice. I couldn’t tell if he was a genuinely funny guy, or if the alcohol and my enraptured state was making him seem funnier than he really was. Either way, we were both laughing up a storm to the point of my stomach hurting.
The more we laughed, the more we swayed and stumbled...getting less apologetic about all the touching. I’d use my hand to steady myself against his chest. Or he’d press his palm to the small of my back. We’d lean into each other and linger too long. Each and every accidental touch was like an electric current. By the time we left the last bar, my body was buzzing with desire, and I didn’t know how to make it stop.
But Nick seemed to have an idea of how to make it stop. He definitely had an idea of something as he stopped me in the middle of the street and glued his eyes to mine.
“Del,” he rasped in a low tone that reverberated between my legs.
He put his hands on my shoulder again, only this time any space that remained between us was rapidly vanishing. All at once we went crashing into each other. It was all a blur of alcohol and arousal surging through our veins, and at some point in the night, we seemed to have lost all of our defenses.
His lips must have been sweeping over mine for a few seconds before I even realized it was happening. But once I got a grip on things, I was not complaining. Not at all. My misguided question from when he first proposed this was answered. He was, in fact, a very good kisser. Only apparently my curiosity on the matter wasn’t as pointless as I originally thought.
I didn’t know how long we stood there kissing in the street. I was too caught up in the steady waves of his tongue rolling across mine, and all I could do was tilt my head and open wider, begging him to go deeper. By the time I came up for air, I felt like a puddle around his feet.
“My place?” I asked breathlessly. The words sounded foreign. I didn’t remember ever deciding to say them. They just popped right out.
He nodded and crashed his lips back to mine, vaguely waving with his other hand toward his car that was parked nearby. The driver pulled up beside us and we barely broke the kiss as we tumbled into the backseat.
In the darkness of the car, his hands grabbed at every inch of me. My dress was too tight for him to reach under without taking it off completely, but that didn’t stop him from trying. And it certainly didn’t stop him from running his hands across every inch of green silk, doing his best to feel all the skin and curves that waited for him underneath. I groped him just as desperately, hating the invention of jackets and ties and buttons. More than anything, I hated that the drive back to my place was taking so long. It was like we were two kids just waiting to pounce on a Christmas present to fervently unwrap it. Judging by the bulge that pressed against me, I could tell that it would be a very good present indeed.
In the same way we blindly felt our way into the car, we entered my building and, finally, my apartment. I shuddered to think about the complaints from my older neighbors who would say I came drunkenly stumbling through the halls with a strange man in the middle of the night. I’d deal with that later. For now, we were tucked away into the privacy of my apartment and there was no longer any need for restraint. Even as we went crashing toward my bed, we barely pulled our mouths apart. It was as if we were afraid of breaking the spell and coming to our senses before we got too far off into what was going to happen next.
Thankfully, the spell was never broken and we never came to our senses. Instead, Nick rolled me over on the mattress and slowly pulled down the long zipper of my dress, trailing down my spine with his soft lips the entire way. Once he reached the bottom, he flipped me back over and tossed the dress to the floor. My panties soon followed. And finally, I was met with some relief to the burning desire I had been drowning in for hours.
He sucked me in and licked until I was bucking against his mouth, almost unable to withstand the intensity building inside. But as I pushed back, he pressed in harder until I was erupting into his mouth with a consuming crashing wave of pleasure. I cried out in ways I never had before, and as the sensation faded, I let out a primal laugh. I never thought I’d be grateful to Nick for anything, but in that moment, I wanted to shout out “thank you” over and over again for whatever he had just done to me.
10
Nick
Del melted into my arms and laughed. I was throbbing and hard as a rock, but also three sheets to the wind. And even more drunk on the sight and sounds of her satisfaction. I almost could have crashed down to sleep next to her and been happy with that. But as I lifted up from between her legs, she sprung forward like a wild animal and pulled me back down to her. I could barely get free of her tempting grip long enough to slide on a condom.
I quickly covered myself and crashed back over her. My body responded accordingly, sliding into her with ease. I hissed through the sensation of filling her and the way she tightened around me. With that first thrust and the sounds that spilled from her mouth, I already felt dangerously close.
“I have to take this slow,” I moaned into her neck, pulling out slowly and thrusting forward again just as slowly. The long draw of it was agonizing and amazing all at once.
“Oh Nick,” she purred, trailing her fingers through the hairs on the nape of my neck. “I would have never expected anything slow from a man like you.”
“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do,” I grinned, moving to an even slower pace that was just as tantalizing.