Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83912 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83912 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Chapter Nine
Faith
Nick laces his fingers with mine and guides me away from the car, shutting the door. Somehow, though, instead of walking forward, we’re standing toe to toe again, and when our eyes meet, there is this flutter that turns into heat radiating across my chest and down my arm to where our fingers touch. To where he holds my hand, and with all I have dared sexually, with good and bad outcomes, with all I know he will dare of me, this is still what affects me.
“You hold on to me like you think I’m going to run,” I murmur. “You wouldn’t be here if that were my plan.”
“I hold on to you like a man who doesn’t want to stop touching you.” He reaches up and caresses my cheek, the touch tender, my body reacting, my breasts heavy, my nipples puckered under the lace of my bra. That flutter in my chest repeats. “Let’s go inside where I don’t have to,” he adds.
“Yes,” I say. “Please.”
His lips curve. “Please.”
“I’m polite, too,” I say, but I don’t add anything about my mother teaching me right, because she did not. My father did.
“I wonder if you’ll be so polite when I finally get you naked.”
“Don’t count on it,” I say, and it’s meant to be playful, but there is this pulse of adrenaline in me that makes it more raspy and needy.
He knows it, too. I see it in the darkening of his eyes. “Come,” he says, draping his arm around my shoulders and turning us toward the door, leaving my hands free to tug his jacket around all my gaping, naked places, while I’m thinking about being truly naked with this man. And with each step we take, I am aware of how our legs move together, hips aligned. How he holds me close, touching me just as he said: like he doesn’t want to stop touching me.
We’ve just reached the eight steps leading to the dimly lit porch when my cellphone rings in his jacket pocket, I’m still wearing and I stop dead in my tracks. “Oh no,” I say, digging in the pocket. “I didn’t send Josh that text. It’s going to be him, and where is my phone? I can’t find it, but I hear it.”
Nick moves to the step in front of me, and he reaches in the opposite pocket from the one I’m struggling with, retrieving my phone, which has stopped ringing. “Thank you,” I say, reaching for it, and I have no idea how this man handing me my cell has turned into something sexual, but he’s holding it and my hand.
“I still don’t have you inside the house,” he murmurs softly, walking backward to lead me to the porch, only steps away from the door. “I still don’t have you naked.”
And that’s when my phone starts to ring again.
Nick sighs. “I’m starting to feel like this is a threesome.” He releases me. “Talk to the man so I can have you to myself.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just be done.”
I nod and answer the call. “Josh.” And then I say that word again: “Sorry. I just saw your text.”
Nick walks to the door and leans on it, and while I intend to walk to the security panel to key in my code, I instead find myself standing just above the steps, embracing my first opportunity to fully appreciate Nick without a suit or tuxedo jacket on. His white shirt stretches across an impressive broad chest, his arms—also impressive, from what I can tell—folded in front of said impressive chest.
He notices my attention, of course, because how can he not when I’m boldly watching him? He arches a brow, the look on his face a wicked invitation. Josh says something about the parking lot followed by, “And I texted and tried to call you,” while I have no idea what else he’s said.
Cutting my gaze from the distraction that is Nick, I reply with, “It didn’t ring,” and cross to the keypad on the wall, right next to the spot Nick leans on.
“And you didn’t think about finding me before leaving?” Josh demands.
“I had car problems I was dealing with.” I key in my code to have it beep in rejection.
“Which means you were leaving without finding me,” he accuses.
Giving up on the code to the door, wishing now that I didn’t let the security company convince me to use this keypad system, I rotate and rest against the wall next to Nick. Focusing now on surviving this conversation with Josh, I say, “You disappeared along with the crowd.”
“Where are you now?” he asks. “Do you need help with your car?”
“I got a ride home.”
“A ride with Nick Rogers,” Josh says, disapproval in his voice.
“Josh—”
“That’s a yes,” he says. “He’s an arrogant bastard who will fuck you and leave you. You know that, right?”