Beautiful Secret (Beautiful Bastard #4) (39 page)

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“I don’t relish making love to you on the floor again.”

Sucking at his neck, I said, “Is that what we’re going to do?”

He nodded. “All night, and a good portion of tomorrow.”

I hadn’t really taken the time to examine his bedroom before, having woken up in the room and fleeing almost immediately. The windows were wide and tall, walls white and stark but for a few framed photographs of Ansel Adams prints.
Signed
. I felt my eyes go wide before looking around at the rest. His bed was enormous, neatly made with dark sheets and a dark blanket. A small bathroom came off at the far end of the room, and a single light was illuminated on a table near the bed. It was a masculine room, not overly decorated.

Niall came up behind me, his hands smoothing from my shoulders down to my naked hips before he pressed his bare chest against my naked back. “Get on the bed.” His quiet command was softened by the kiss he pressed to my neck.

I climbed on the bed and watched him follow me in a predatory crawl, and he settled again between my thighs.

“Come kiss me,” I quietly urged.

“Soon.”

He bent, sliding his tongue between my
legs again. It was so different than before, his kisses were slow and gentle, more tender and expressive than directed.

“Either you really like doing this or you’re feeling
deeply
apologetic.”

“It feels a little wicked, still,” he admitted, kissing the inside of my thigh. “Like it’s naughty to stare at your tits, very naughty to watch you masturbate, exceedingly naughty to put my fingers inside you, but to actually put my tongue just here?” He licked me, humming, “This sweet place only I can see? Well, that feels sublimely naughty.”

“I think you mean possessive.”

“That as well. I admit I like the idea that this body belongs to me.”

“Technically it belongs to me.”

“Whatever you say, my love.”

“Careful,” I teased. “You don’t want to veer into the L-word territory.” Could he feel just then how much I needed him to say it?

“Don’t I?” he asked, looking up the length of my body at me. “Did you not hear me say that I love you every time I spoke into your skin just now?”

I smiled, opening my mouth to crack a joke before I realized he wasn’t teasing. And he had. He’d whispered
I love you
over and over on the floor, with reverence.

“Oh.”

His smile was unreal: teasing and mischievous. “Did you need it spoken directly into your
ear?”

I bit my lip, shrugging down at him. “I like where your mouth is right now, but I have to admit I wouldn’t exactly mind hearing you say that a little closer . . .”

He kissed up my body, his lips wet from me, hands squeezing, teeth grazing. Every single touch echoed the words.

He was so long, enormous above, blocking out everything else and the safety I felt beneath Niall was unlike anything. He’d seen me at my craziest and my most grounded—both states had been caused by my feelings for him. In the months I loved him from afar and the four short weeks I loved him up close, he’d become more than lover; he was my new best friend.

“I always felt like the only person in my life who didn’t know his own mind from the moment he was born. My siblings—they came out knowing exactly who they were. Not me. But I do with you. I want to trust that.
Need
to, rather. So yes, it only took a month after we officially met in the elevator”—he smiled down at me—“and I ruined it stupidly and you ran away from me perhaps even more stupidly . . . but here we are. And I love you.”

I felt goose bumps spread along my arms.

“I love you,” he repeated in a whisper and kissed my ear lobe. “I
adore
you.”

I unfastened his belt, and he helped me push his pants down his hips far enough for him to kick them off the end of the bed. I didn’t want to wait anymore; I had this flushed aching need to be with
him, filled of him. Wherever it touched mine, his skin was warm and smooth, the soft hair on his legs brushed against my thighs, his chest pressed against my breasts as he climbed over me.

“You feel so good,” I whispered.

“I know. This . . .” He shook his head. “I feel like I didn’t pay enough attention the first time we were intimate like this,” he admitted, kissing me. “I was too focused on not freaking out. I want to feel every second.”

I reached between us, stroking him and watching his face. His mouth opened, eyes grew heavy.

“You’re still on birth control?” he asked, bending to kiss my neck.

“Yes.”

“And you haven’t . . .” He paused, his breath catching as he met my eyes. “You haven’t been with . . . ?”

My heart jerked to a stop. “I’ve barely left my apartment except for work. Is that a serious question?”

“No,” he admitted. “I guess I just wanted to hear it. I’ve been a mess, Ruby. Thinking of you seeing someone else while we were apart . . . it was horribly painful.”

He hovered above me, blocking out all of the light in the room so the only thing I could see or feel or smell was his skin.

“I thought you might make love to Portia that night,” I told him. And why was this conversation so much easier when I could feel the warm, thick slide of him over me, just an inch from where he could slip inside? “I left your office and it was the only thing I could
imagine, that you would be with her that night. I don’t think I’ve ever cried that hard.”

“Ruby—”

“It just took me a while to be able to get it out of my head. To not be mad, or feel betrayed. To not worry that every time I was with you I would need you to reassure me.”

He opened his mouth but I stopped his words with a finger to his lips. “I don’t need you to reassure me. You had a
lot
of history with her, and practically no history with me. I want to move on from that night.”

His voice came out thin and tight: “I wish I’d never gone there.”

“Me, too.”

He winced and bent to press his face to my neck. “Ruby, fuck, sorry . . . I know we’re talking . . . but I’m going to come if you don’t stop stroking my cock.”

I let go of him immediately, barking out a laugh. “Oh my God! Niall! I’ve been being all serious and expecting you to listen while I’m giving you a hand job and rubbing you all over my—”

He cut me off with a kiss that didn’t even start sweet at all. It was immediately deep, searching and the movement of his hips causing him to slide up and over my clit told me that the conversation was done.

I moved my hands up his stomach, to his chest, feeling the smooth, firm skin, the muscles tensing beneath as he rubbed over me, faster, with more
pressure, until I felt the hint of sweat on his chest, the telltale tightness of his breath.

“I’m close,” he whispered, squeezing his eyes closed.

“Me, too.”

He looked down between us, feeding himself slowly into me and hissing out an “Oh, Christ. Oh,
fuck
,” when his hips were fully pressed to my thighs.

I’d forgotten how it felt, and held my hands on his waist, silently asking him to give my body a second to get used to him.

“All right?” he whispered, arms shaking where they were braced beside my head.

“Yeah.” I stretched to kiss his throat and then rolled my hips under him, feeling my heart take off in a sprint as he pulled back and then started to move. Slow at first, and then when he could tell I was okay, when he slid so easily out and back in, he sped up and his sounds . . .
oh
, the sounds. His quiet grunts and exhales, fragmented words that made me feel possessed and urgent.

His eyes moved over my face, and down to my chest to follow the movement of my breasts with every snap of his hips. “Ah, fuck, love.”

He bent, kissing me, but it wasn’t really a kiss. It was his mouth, soft and distracted, open and sliding over mine. It was his breath, warm across my lips, my tongue.

“I love you.” I was in so deep with him. I felt like I’d been destined to love Niall Stella.

His hand covered my breast, squeezing
gently as he bent to suck before sliding his palm down my ribs to my hip, my ass, my thigh to pull my leg higher up his waist. He was impatient, clearly lost to sensation, with eyes open but so glazed over I felt high with the power of it.

I squeezed him and his eyes rolled closed as a deep groan fell from his lips.

“Tell me,” he gasped. “Tell me what to do.”

“Faster.”

His hips pivoted with intent, hard snaps into me, his hand gripping the back of my knee so tightly I could feel the pressure of each fingertip.

“Let me see you.”

Niall blinked, long dark lashes brushing against his cheeks before he looked up at me, pulling from me as soon as he understood. I felt every inch of him withdraw.

He was wet, so hard he was jutting straight out, and I reached between us to touch him, to bring the crown against my clit and use the thick edge of him to circle and circle and circle over me. I didn’t want his fingers or mouth. I wanted the soft skin, the rigid flesh of him to get me there.

At the edge, when sensation seemed to pool between my legs, waiting to overflow and pull me under, I slid him back inside and felt his groan, felt the frenzy of it. As soon as his hips met mine he lost it, pulling back and giving me exactly what I’d wanted: to be fucked—
hard
—in his bed.

It was several seconds before I realized the screaming I heard was
me
, that the skin I felt pinched beneath
my nails was
his
and that he was moving so hard his bed was roughly cracking into the wall.

His back was slick with sweat and his teeth were bared, pressed to my shoulder as pleasure filled me, pushed deep with his body. Just as I started to come down, he began to come, his fingers digging into my thighs as he made a hoarse sound of relief I’d never heard from him before, and which I knew I would spend every night for the rest of our lives trying to elicit again.

Slowly, he caught his breath, sliding lazily in and out, his lips pressed to my jaw.

“That was some bloody good fucking.”

I made some unintelligible sound of agreement.

“It’s yours, you know.”

Blinking up to the ceiling, I asked, “What is?”

“My heart, of course, but also my body.” He struggled to catch his breath. “My hands, my lips, my cock. I trust you with all of it more than I even trust myself.”

My chest seemed to clench so tight I lost my breath. Even more intimate than the sound of his coming was the way he spoke so plainly, so crudely, after he’d already finished. “I liked when you used it to play with your body. The idea of you coming because you’re rubbing me all over you?”

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Fuck. I love it. And how you wanted it harder, too. I want you to push me to be a little filthy.”

“Only a little?” I asked playfully.

He looked directly into my eyes, and I caught the vulnerability there. I knew this conversation felt like a completely new language to him.

I stretched to kiss him, desperate to take the tone of teasing out of the moment. “What do you want to try?”

“Everything,” he admitted in a whisper. “But I think mostly I’m . . . a bit wrapped up in what it’s like to be intimate while being in love. I don’t want to hide from it anymore. This is so new to me, and it’s a bit mind-boggling how different it feels.”

“You mean physically?”

“I mean all of it. To speak openly while we’re making love. The way it
feels
to make love.”

He was still over me, inside me, asking for what he needed and for a long moment, I couldn’t really catch my breath. We were doing this. He was all in. We were in his bed, in his flat, and he’d said
yes
.

“What are you thinking?” he asked, kissing my neck.

“Just . . . so relieved that we’re back together, I might explode.”

“I rather like you in one piece, particularly beneath me, naked, and wet as a lake.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck. “Then I’ll just have to keep you on top of me all night.”

He laughed, and then kissed me. “I love you, Ruby.”

Number of Times Niall Stella Used My Name When He Said He Loved Me:

One, and counting.

Some books roll off our fingers easily, while others seem to require some combination of the following: (1) rocking in a corner, (2) cake, (3) chaining self to computer, (4) tears, (5) bloodletting, (6) hard liquor, (7) starfishing on the floor, (8) Ryan Gosling and/or, (9) virgin sacrifice.

We’re not saying
Beautiful Secret
required most of these strategies, but we’re not
not
saying it, either.

So, thank you first and foremost to our editor, Adam Wilson, and our agent, Holly Root, for helping us whip this one into shape. Without the two of you, there would be no CLo, and not a day passes where we don’t feel it. This book happened only with the best kind of team effort.

To Kristin, our Precious, our rock, our rogue. Thank you for listening to it all, keeping our crazy at bay with Honest Trailers, and helping get all of these books in the right hands. You are
so good
to us.

Thank you, Erin, for always, always, always making sure we get it right. Thank you, Tonya, for your honest reads, necessary feedback, and porny gifs on demand. Thank you, Sarah J. Maas, for the enthusiasm that let us
exhale and the final pointers that put the polish on the pages. Thank you to our Captain Hookers—Alice Clayton and Nina Bocci—for keeping us insane, ugly selfies, and the text box that gets us through even the most stressful times. Thank you, Drew, for staying on top of Team CLo duties every day; Jen, for the best promo hookups two gals could ever ask for; Helen, for help with our British dialogue and London geography; and Heather Dawn, for being the Goddess of Graphics.

To our Gallery family: Thank you to Jen Bergstrom, Louise Burke, and Carolyn Reidy for being the Greatest Champions Ever for Ladies Writin’ Smart Sexy Books. Thank you, Jen Robinson, Liz Psaltis, Diana Velasquez, Trey WASSUP Bidinger, John Vairos, Lisa Litwack, Ed Schlesinger, Abby Zidle, Jean Anne Rose, Lauren McKenna, Stephanie DeLuca, and—even though you’ve left us—Jules Horbachevsky and Mary McCue: we hope you feel our adoration. Truthfully, it takes a lot of effort to be this creepy, but you’re all worth it.