Shameless (13 page)

He plundered the depths of her mouth, bruising her lips. Nina sighed against him, hot tears welling behind her closed eyelids.

She’d been so afraid that this part of their relationship was over—that they might not even be able to find their way back to anything, let alone friendship—that the relief that suffused her muscles was almost overwhelming.

Kevin moved his right hand from the wall and grasped her breast through the thick jacket. Frustrated by the clothing, he yanked the zipper down and pulled the coat over her shoulder before clamping his hand back over the hypersensitive flesh through her shirt. Nina shivered at his branding touch, shrugging to rid herself of the garment completely and letting it fall to the floor.

Kevin moved in closer, pressing his hard length against her stomach before shoving his knee between hers and lifting her until only he and the wall held her upright. She grasped his shoulders and moaned, his leg pushing into her womanhood with insistent urgency. She curved her hands under his arms and gripped his shoulders from behind, needing him closer yet, wanting him to claim her in whatever manner he desired even as she tried to reconcile the unrelenting man making love to her now to the gentle, passionate man from before.

He tugged on her hair from the back and she dropped her head, giving him access to her neck. His stubble burned her skin as he kissed her fervently, seeming to need to hurt her and love her equally.

Nina slid her hands from his shoulders, following his spine down to the waist of his jeans where she wasted no time pulling his T-shirt out and tunneling her fingers underneath, dragging them against his warm skin even as he reclaimed her mouth.

The leg between hers disappeared, as did his mouth. Nina blinked open her eyes to find him standing a couple of feet away from her, breathing deeply and staring darkly at her from under his tousled hair. He resembled a wild animal on the first day of spring, and she felt like a mating female trapped by his gaze.

Nina flattened her palms against the wall behind her, fighting to catch her own breath, to gather her wits about her.

Was that it? Was he going to ask her to leave? Tell her never to come back?

She saw that he wanted to. Wanted to ban her from his life.

She also saw that he wanted her to stay.

“Damn it, Nina,” he ground out between clenched teeth. “I don’t want to want you. Not anymore.”

She blinked, unclear as to his meaning.

Did that mean that he had always wanted her?

She didn’t dare ask for fear that she would nudge him in a direction she didn’t want him to go.

His gaze raked her from head to toe and then slowly back up again. Nina felt as if she were on the auction block and it was too late to make herself more attractive to her buyer. She could only stand there and allow him to look his fill, come to whatever conclusion he would.

“Don’t,” he said.

She hadn’t realized she’d taken a step forward until he held up his hand to ward her off.

“I’m sorry,” she said, so softly she nearly didn’t hear her own words. “I’m so sorry, Kevin. I…”

His eyes narrowed to sharp slits.

“I don’t know what I can possibly say to make any of this better. But I know I need to try.”

“For the business?”

“For us.”

“There is no us.” His expression was fierce, accusing.

“But wasn’t that the entire point of this whole stupid plan?” she asked. “That I wouldn’t know which one of you I spent the night with? So I wouldn’t confuse sex with intimacy?”

“I never should have done it.”

“But you did.”

He nodded. “Yes, I did. And now you’ve slept with both of us.”

“I never intended for that to be the case.”

“Didn’t you?”

“Of course not!”

He was like a statue fixed to a specific spot on the floor while she moved ever forward toward him.

“Is that what you think?” she whispered.

He didn’t blink. Then he ran his hand over his face as if trying to wake himself from a bad dream. “I don’t know what to think anymore.”

Nina forced her gaze away from him to the staircase beyond. She felt like the gutted house around her, her exterior layers stripped away, leaving her raw and vulnerable.

Then again, he had been renovating a house that didn’t need to be changed.

She squinted at Kevin, wondering if she was still thinking about a house.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” she said quietly. “We agreed to this so I wouldn’t confuse sex with a relationship.” She tilted her head, making sure she had his attention. “But now it’s you who’s doing that.”

His anger seemed to return tenfold and he moved the two steps required to bring him to stand directly in front of her. “What?”

Nina shrugged, trying for nonchalance. Instead, she quaked inside, every inch of her aware of his nearness, of the conflict that raged inside of him. “I thought I was making love to you,” she finally whispered.

He grasped her arm roughly. “You didn’t know who was in your bedroom that night.”

Nina winced. While she knew he would never really hurt her, there were other ways to inflict pain. “I didn’t. Not until it was too late. Which essentially means that I had sex with you both times.”

“You screwed Gauge.”

She shook her head. “No, Kevin, I didn’t. Physically, yes. But psychologically I was with the man I had invited into my bed so many nights before.” She swallowed thickly. “I was making love with you.”

He grabbed her other arm and brought her flush up against him. Nina straightened her shoulders, staring him down, challenging him to deny what she was saying was true.

Instead he kissed her.

He crushed his mouth down over hers, wanting so badly to believe her. To find truth in her words so that he might begin the long journey toward healing himself.

Toward healing them both.

But the fury inside him refused to budge. It was searching for an outlet that he had found temporarily in house renovations. But that wasn’t enough. He wanted…needed to demand his pound of flesh from the woman responsible for the resentment, the pain.

He held her still as he plundered her mouth. She tasted good. Too good.

A part of him had believed their one night together would assuage the desire he’d always harbored for her. Instead, it had only increased it. He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted her before.

Which was, he reasoned, the cause for his visceral reaction to seeing her with another man.

Nina tried to raise her hands to his hips. He instantly released his grip on her arms and crowded her to his chest, holding her tight. He briefly closed his eyes, breathing in the sweet scent of her hair, absorbing the warmth from her soft body.

His own body roared in response.

He stepped forward until her back met with the wall again and reclaimed his hold on her breast, kneading the mound of flesh, feeling the tightness of her nipple through her shirt. He roughly stripped the white cotton from her, following up with her bra, until she stood topless in front of him. Her breath came in shallow gasps, causing her breasts to heave. He grasped both of them in his hands and lowered his head to take the peak of first one, then the other, into his mouth, laving them, sucking on them hungrily.

He’d waited so very long to taste her fragrant flesh. Three years and two months, to be exact. He’d ached with want for her, yearned to wedge himself between her thighs. And for one, sweet night, he’d finally gotten to do it all.

And then he’d allowed fear to take over. Fear that if he told her it was him, she would attach herself to him just like she had attached herself to the other transient men in her life. Fear that he would fall deeper and deeper in love with her, only to be kicked to the curb after six months just like the others.

He hadn’t realized how much of a role fear had played in his life until now. As an only child, he’d been raised to be fearful of everything. Throughout grade school he’d been afraid that if he read aloud, everyone would figure out it took him longer to make out the words than it did the other kids, the diagnosis of dyslexia still to come. In high school, he’d been afraid of hooking up with the wrong girl, of facing his parents’ disapproval, parents who had doted on him, perhaps a little too much, looking at every aspect of his life under a magnifying glass simply because beyond the house he was in they didn’t have much else to consider.

He’d been terrified that if he didn’t choose the right woman he’d be made a fool of. Or, worse, hurt the way he was hurting now.

He switched his attention back up to her mouth, kissing her and then kissing her again, as if seeking to transfer the pain he was experiencing to her. Make her take it because it wasn’t what he wanted.

He reached for the fastener to her jeans and yanked it open, only semi aware of her gasp as she gripped his shoulders. Her reaction emboldened him somehow, rather than deterring him. In small, impatient movements, he pulled off her shoes and socks, her pants and her panties until she stood naked and trembling in front of him.

He pulled back to take in his fill of her.

He’d always known she would be beautiful. High, full breasts, narrow waist, lush hips and soft thighs. What he hadn’t bargained for was the mole near her navel. The small scar on her shoulder, probably from a childhood mishap. Things that made her uniquely Nina.

And all combined to make him want to claim her entirely, completely as his.

She moaned, her juices covering his fingers, lubricating his movements, and he felt her muscles contract as she reached orgasm.

The knowledge that she’d climaxed both pleased and angered him. He looked down, shocked to find he was still dressed. After pulling a condom out of his wallet, he quickly stripped off his clothes until he stood nude before her. He watched her eyes follow his movements, the color in her cheeks high, her pink lips swollen and bruised from his attentions.

He didn’t waste time with foreplay. Didn’t have the patience to make sure she was ready for him. He sheathed his rock-hard erection and then roughly grasped her right leg, hooking it over his hip as he positioned his shaft against her, and then he thrust into her to the hilt.

A low, rolling moan filled his ear as Nina clutched him, her head next to his. He grasped her hips, tilting them slightly forward as he thrust again, insistently, angrily, seeking something he couldn’t name, refused to define. He thrust again, and again, forcing her up the wall each time he did. His blood surged through him like dark acid, propelling him, drawing his muscles taut, filling him with a brutal desire to show her he wasn’t a man to be toyed with, used, betrayed and then tossed by the wayside.

Long before he’d planned, or expected, he felt his climax build in the pit of his stomach, drawing more and more energy and then exploding in one burst of dark, hot light.

Kevin became slowly aware of two things at once as he fought to catch his breath. One, that Nina had collapsed against him like a rag doll.

Two, that she was crying.

“Jesus,” she heard him grind out.

She found the energy to clutch him, not wanting him to leave her hanging there. If he pulled away from her, surely she would bleed to death.

Instead he grasped her head in his hands, tipping her face to look up into his.

The relief she felt at the concern on his face was more than she could bear, and a sob ripped from her throat.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked, kissing her eyelids one by one, then resting his mouth against her forehead. “Oh, God, did I hurt you?”

Nina found a way to shake her head slightly. “No…not physically….”

They stood there for long minutes, neither of them saying anything, as Nina slowly felt the wild torrent of pain within her begin to subside. She knew a chill, but this time the draughty house had caused it.

Before she had an opportunity to prepare herself for the move, Kevin swept her up into his arms, tucking her head into his neck as he strode toward the stairs.

Despite his previous behavior, she couldn’t help but cling to him, praying that whatever had gone on inside him had lessened. She didn’t think she could handle anything else.

She was concentrating so hard on the line of his jaw and his set expression that she hadn’t realized he’d taken her up to what she assumed was his bedroom until he laid her gently down on top of a king-size bed. It was dark up here and he didn’t turn on a lamp. Instead she watched as he disposed of the used condom. She scooted farther up on the mattress until she reached the pillows. He helped her pull down the jacquard comforter and then climbed into bed with her, cradling her close to his chest.

Nina felt like crying anew at this change in him.

“I must have hurt you more than I knew,” she whispered, stroking her fingertips over the light hair that sprinkled his chest.

His embrace tightened. “That’s no reason to do what I just did,” he said into her hair, his chin resting on the top of her head. “I’m sorry, Nina. I’m so sorry if I caused you any pain.”

Her throat grew tight. “Seems like we just keep hurting each other.”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment. Minutes passed and she began to think he’d fallen asleep, except that she hadn’t detected any change in his breathing.

“You know, I understand now that I lived so much of my life in fear that I never invested myself emotionally in any relationship outside the one I had with my parents.”

Nina stared sightlessly at the opposite wall as she listened to his softly spoken words.

“While I’ve dated, I did it more out of satisfying first my adolescent hormonal needs, and then when I was older, for sexual release. But I never loved any of them. Never allowed myself to.”

She shifted slightly so that she could look into his shadowed face. The light from downstairs made its way up into the hallway and a dim swath cut a path across the bed.

“Why?” she asked.

He shook his head slightly. “I don’t know. Maybe it was because my parents were so much older. They had reached the age where life had become so precious to them that they unknowingly passed on that same caution on to me. Or perhaps because of our love for books, we learned the lessons taught there, so we didn’t learn them through living. I don’t know.” He tucked his chin into his chest and looked at her. She caught her breath at the seriousness of his expression. “What I am coming to understand is that while chronologically I’m thirty-one, psychologically I’m afraid I’ve been acting like an adolescent who just got dumped by my first love.”

Nina’s heart skipped a beat.

She’d recognized earlier her own expanding feelings for him. Knew instinctively to permit him to take whatever liberties he needed to move beyond his anger at her, at their situation. She’d progressed beyond simple attraction and desire. She’d always loved him as a friend; now she was coming to love him as a man.

“I do love you, you know,” he spoke the words quietly. “I probably have since the first moment I laid eyes on you.”

She closed her eyes and smiled softly, remembering the moment. He’d been awkward and hesitant. She’d been flattered.

And then they’d both met Gauge and she’d forced any romantic thoughts of Kevin aside in exchange for friendship between the three of them.

“Gauge knew that,” Kevin said, surprising her. Not with what he said, but that he’d mentioned Gauge in a way that didn’t include anger. “He knew I was in love with you and practically forced me to go into your apartment that night.”

Nina rubbed her foot against his leg, feeling his rough hair against her sensitive skin. “You didn’t want to come?”

“That was the problem. I wanted it too much.”

He shifted so that they were lying side by side, his gaze capturing hers in the semidarkness.

“I’ve wanted you so badly for so long that I ached with it. I’d watch you from across the store and feel such a longing that I didn’t recognize life without that same longing. It wasn’t just physical.” He kissed her, caressing her arm with long, gentle strokes. He smiled. “Oh, there was definitely that, but somehow it evolved into something much, much more over the years. I wanted to protect you. I wanted to watch you grow old. I wanted to be the source for your smiles, your laughter.”

Nina looked down. While she could attest to her current blossoming love for him, she couldn’t say she’d felt the same way he did. She supposed that part of that might be because there was only one of her and two of them.

Would Kevin feel the same way now had there been another female in the equation?

She blinked to look into his eyes again. Actually, she suspected that he would. Because she believed him, saw the truth in his words. And was able to go back and connect the dots. She could understand why he’d never dated anyone for long, and shunned her attempts to set him up with her friends.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted them. It was that he had wanted her.

“Then why not tell me then?” she asked. “Afterward…during. I don’t care. Why didn’t you tell me you were the one that night?”

Kevin’s small smile made her heart leap. “Because I’d convinced myself that you would do the same to me that you’d done to the other men in your life. You’d fall instantly in love, and things would be great for six months, and then you’d get over me just like all the others.”

Nina curved her arms around him and held him tightly, unable to imagine his fear. His hand softly stroked her back.

“I could have handled anything…but not that. Having you and then being forced to let you go.”

Nina drew back, staring deeply into his eyes. The naked emotion there, the pure love, caused her heart to expand in her chest.

She’d known love. Or thought she had. But never had she been loved in the way Kevin was professing. The way she saw there in the depths of his eyes, warming the very edges of her heart.

She leaned in and kissed him. He kissed her back, the action tender and soft.

Instantly, she melted against him, falling back into the feathery down of sensation. A sensation that he effortlessly created merely by kissing her.

Only there was nothing truly effortless about it, was there? He’d gone through a hell she’d never be able to understand.

But by opening herself up to his love, she knew that she wouldn’t be able to help herself from loving him back as fully as he loved her.

She rubbed the arch of her foot against the top of his, then she hooked her leg over his and lifted it until it lay over his hip. His semi-aroused penis pressed against her stomach. With a roll of his hips, it rested against her thigh, mere millimeters away from where she wanted it most.

Kevin deepened their kiss, as if unable to get enough of her. And she suddenly felt the same urgency, holding on to him tighter than she’d ever held on to anyone before.

He released her to reach toward the nightstand.

“No,” she whispered. “I want…need to feel you….”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment and didn’t respond to her kissing him.

“Nina….”

She kissed either side of his mouth. “Hmm?”

“If you get pregnant…”

She held him tighter and kissed him head-on. “If I get pregnant…I can’t think of anyone’s baby I’d love to have more.”

She felt the tension leave his shoulders but he still wasn’t kissing her back.

“A child is more than a six-month commitment.”

She smiled against his mouth. “I know.”

“Are you saying…”

“Shh,” she said, rubbing her breasts against his chest and her womanhood against his now rock-hard arousal. “Let’s pass that bridge when we come to it….”

He groaned and grabbed her hips, holding her still so he could thrust upward into her to the hilt.

Nina shuddered to the core at the feel of his unsheathed flesh claiming hers.

So, so nice….

He stroked her again…and then again…and she knew that she would do anything, whatever it took, to keep this man loving her.