Can't Hold Back (12 page)

He was kissing her again. And he was hard already, and as if she hadn’t just come, ridiculously intensely,
twice,
she was turning toward him and trying to press herself against him. And it was getting more and more difficult to convince herself that this was something that had happened accidentally, something that wouldn’t happen again, something she could call it quits on anytime, before more harm was done.

Because she wanted to do it again. As many times as he wanted her to, she would be ready to give him what he needed. It was a little bit of a problem, actually.

A little bit of a Nate addiction.

And Jake had been worried about
his
bad judgment.

Oh, man.

It was probably not even possible to catalog the number of ways having sex with him had been a bad idea.

Add to all the others, the fact that the past refused to stay put. That he was still thinking about her original betrayal, still trying to sort out how much she’d interfered with his relationship with Becca. And the messages had been a low moment. Not the lowest, maybe, but damn low.

She’d had a terrible evening that night. For once, her date—an online match—was the same age he claimed, the same weight he’d appeared in his photo, and possessing the same degree of employment he’d mentioned in his profile. He was even attractive, attractive enough that she’d felt a flare of optimism when he’d met her in the lobby of the restaurant. But it turned out he was angry and bitter, raging against politicians and various ethnic groups and working moms—pretty much no one was immune. Finally, she’d extricated herself, begged off dessert—which told you something about the degree of her desperation—and fought off his unwanted good-night advance.

By then she’d been quite drunk. She almost never drank much, but it had been her only defense against his awfulness. She had let herself into the apartment that she and Becca were sharing—it was before Becca had moved out and found her own place—and, in the dark and quiet, began to cry.

Not just about the awful date. Also about how in just a few days, when his flight finally came through, Nate was going to come home and Becca was going to tell him the truth and it was going to be over. For good.

About missed chances and bad choices, good intentions sliding down the ravine to hell, and the loneliness of knowing that you’d fallen in love with someone who didn’t know who you were.

Across the room, the desktop computer, which they shared, pinged. Alia crossed the room and wiggled the mouse.

There was an instant message window up on the screen.

NateRiordan199: Still waiting. They say probably tomorrow. I’m dying of boredom. Please tell me you’re awake.

She could feel his disquiet. The long hours, the adrenaline he could never quite burn off. How itchy it must make him. How bored, and how lonely.

I still know you. Even if you don’t know me.

It was, oddly enough, a small comfort. The fact that she could feel him, across all this distance. Across her own mistakes and regrets.

She knew she was woozy. She knew her judgment was impaired by both drink and fatigue—it had been a hell of a week at work.

What she didn’t count on was her own boredom and loneliness. Matching his.

MenInUni242: What are you doing to kill time?

There wasn’t really any harm to
chatting,
right? All the damage had been done.

NateRiordan199: Playing cards. Reading magazines. Playing with my RainGlobe. Wishing I had more Cow Chip cookies. Reading the same books again. I’ve read
Gone Girl
three times.

MenInUni242: Ouch.

NateRiordan199: And, you know, jerking off. Number one boredom killer.

“Oh!” said Alia, aloud. She’d felt it in the pit of her stomach. No. Truth. Her whole body had flared warm, a sweet, melting burn.

He was not just bored, but desperate, then. A guy alone in a dry and mountainous country, surrounded by men who were buddies but not friends, bored out of his mind, needing contact. Needing—escape. Release.

She tried, unsuccessfully, not to think of his hand on his cock, of the skin taut—

It was sad. And oddly sweet. And hot. And Alia felt all of that, and more, moving underneath her skin, in her chest and belly,
lower.

Now would be a good time to walk away. But Alia’s head was full of the words. The words Nate needed. Soft words, slippery words, sticky words. Achy words. Broken, reaching, yearning, sweet, raw words.

Her head hurt. Her chest hurt.

MenInUni242: Need any help with that?

NateRiordan199: I wouldn’t refuse that offer.

MenInUni242: How can I be of assistance?

NateRiordan199: Pretend I’m there. Tell me what you want.

Oh.

Ohhhh.

She’d never been particularly good at that, but she was dying to now. Dying. All achy through and through, and worst of all in her fingertips because of how much she wanted to tell him. Tell him everything.

Maybe it was easier because it was dark. Because she was alone. Because the bad week and the bad night had reduced her resistance to zero. Because she wasn’t herself.

MenInUni242: I want your tongue all over me.

The room was dark, the glow of the computer screen the only light. She felt floaty and unreal, unmoored.

NateRiordan199: What else? What else do you want?

MenInUni242: I want you to pin me down.

A long silence, her imagination more vivid than the blue glue of the screen. His weight on her, his hands on her wrists, his hips pressing hers down, as real as the smooth keys under her fingertips. More real.

NateRiordan199: More.

MenInUni242: I want your cock in my mouth. As much as I can hold.

NateRiordan199: Fuck thats hot.

He was a careful typist, usually. Everything well punctuated, correctly spelled, grammatically assembled. So she noticed the omitted apostrophe.

MenInUni242: Having trouble typing?

NateRiordan199: 1 hand.

MenInUni242: Where’s the other hand?

NateRiordan199: Whr d u thk?

She didn’t touch herself. Not yet. The words were intense enough, the ragged syntax. Her breath ragged, too, rapid and uneven in the quiet room. The anticipation, like something expanding in her chest.

And then there was another sound. Barely louder than her breathing, but real. The sound of a bed frame creaking softly as someone turned over and resettled in the other room.

Becca.

Alia had forgotten her completely. She’d been in a trance, the rest of the world fallen away. She’d forgotten
herself,
who she was—and wasn’t.

Oh, God,
what had she done?

Whatever it was, she had to undo it as best and as quickly as humanly possible.

MenInUni242: I have to go.

NateRiordan199: What!?

Punctuation. He was using both hands again.

MenInUni242: I’m so sorry. More later—

Except, of course, there wouldn’t be. Not later, not ever.

“Alia?” Becca came blinking out of the bedroom. “How was your date?”

The full impact of what she’d done was bearing down on her. Lied, pretended, deceived, and—worst—betrayed.

“Oh,
God,
Becca—”

Becca’s face was creased with sleep and confusion. “Really bad date?”

And then the tears spilled down Alia’s face, the words from her mouth—
I’ve done something terrible…I’ve made things so much more complicated. I’ve made your breakup harder…I’ve betrayed you.

Three days later, Nate’s flight landed.

A day after that, Becca came home to the apartment after their date and sat heavily on the couch beside her sister.

“I think you were right,” Becca said heavily. “This isn’t the kind of story with a happily-ever-after.” And then: “It was the care package that made him angriest. He kept wanting to know why I’d let you put it together, and I couldn’t—I just couldn’t tell him it was because I didn’t care enough.”

It meant a ton to me to feel like someone out there
gets
me.

I’m still out here,
she wanted to call to him.

But she’d done enough damage.

And now he knew she’d written those messages.

It probably wouldn’t be long until he’d put two and two together and realize the rest of the truth. That she’d written those messages because she’d felt them, felt every last word. Because she’d wanted him. Because she’d
loved
him. Maybe from the beginning. Certainly from that letter, the one right before the care package, where he’d told her in such beautiful, intricate detail what he loved in the world.

So similar to what she loved in the world.

She didn’t want him to know. She never wanted him to know. Because this had to be temporary, and it would make the inevitable end so much more humiliating if Nate knew how she felt. How long and how deeply she’d felt it.

She pulled away. Looked into his eyes, hoping to see his trepidation peering back at her. But all she saw was that
look.
The one he’d given her when she’d gotten naked for him, the one that said he was thinking about how to glory in the treasure that he’d uncovered. His eyes were hot and dark and his mouth was wet from their kiss and she wanted to lick his lower lip.

But she made herself say what needed to be said.

“You should probably go.”

He shook his head. “I know you’re a little wigged out by this—”

“Not wigged out. But—realizing we have a problem.”

“We don’t,” he said sternly. “We do
not
have a problem. We have chemistry. We have amazing sex. We don’t have a problem.”

Chemistry. Amazing sex.
Very flattering, but not what she’d most wanted him to say.

“But we will have a problem if you stay and someone sees you leaving in the morning.”

“Will we? Will we really?”

Not the most terrible problem on earth, but it was so much easier to make this all about Jake and the job than to dig into the mess of the past.
I’ve loved you for so long. From the beginning. I was the one who fell for you. That night, those messages—I wanted to tell you everything about how I felt and what I wanted. This isn’t just sex for me, and I know it can’t be anything more than that for you—

And why? So he could give her a pitying look and remind her, again, that he had people to take care of?

Instead, she stuck with the simplest of all the truths she knew. “I promised Jake I wasn’t interested in anything with you.”

“You apparently lied.”

She loved that cocky grin, and it wore down her resistance. Sad, but true.

“I misjudged.”

“You lied. Admit it.”

He gave her a stern, dark look, and she looked back, something inside her unwinding and melting in the heat of his gaze, and then he was kissing her again, and she was kissing him, too. Like they’d kissed earlier, like there would be no stopping this thing. He was moving his body weight on top of hers, and her breasts tightened and her hips lifted and she pressed her pubic bone against the length of him, and he was reaching for a condom and Oh. My. God. She was swollen from before and so wet and he was bigger than anyone she’d ever been with. He filled her and stretched her and maybe it was how primed she was from the other two orgasms, but she could swear she was going to come again, and it wasn’t going to take much.

He was in no hurry this time, though. And that was a good thing. Slow, long strokes, and because she was so aroused already, she could feel the whole length of each one, all slick and glittery-feeling, setting off nerves that she didn’t think had ever fired before, nerves whose other ends were everywhere in her body so it felt like he was touching her breasts, too, her hands, her feet, her belly—
gah.
And then he
was
touching her all over, mouth on her nipples, alternating, smiling at her in between, moving slowly from one to the other, light at first and then firmer and firmer as she arched her back under him and rose to meet him, as his strokes got longer and slicker and sweeter and deeper, as they found new parts of her that swelled and squeezed and clenched and
craved.
Until he was pulling so hard on one nipple that it was one long continuous tug deep into her core, until it felt like her nipple
was
her clit and she was coming, saying his name, loudly enough that if someone had been passing in the hallway they would have heard her.

But he didn’t stop then. He kept thrusting in, drawing out, her hand on his ass now so she could feel the bunch of muscle, and the ins and the outs started blending together, those boundaries getting lost, the boundaries between her mouth and his, too, between his breath and hers, between the heat of him inside her and the heat of her, cradling him, holding him, and finally between his cries and hers.

Several minutes later he raised his head and said, “Wow.”

She had lost the power of speech. Or even sound.

“Two more,” he said proudly. “Now. You were saying?”

She watched him get up and dispose of the condom. He came back and lay down and wrapped her up. She liked that he did that. That he cuddled. He didn’t seem, on the surface, like he’d be a cuddler, although she supposed she had already known about him that he liked to be touched. That he liked it a lot.

She sighed. “I have to tell Jake. Before he finds out from someone else. Before someone sees us together or sees you leaving here.”

“Why do you have to tell him? I’m not your client. It’s not his business who you sleep with.”

“I wish it were that simple. But for one thing, like I said, I told him this wasn’t going to happen. So I think I owe it to him, at least, not to be lying to him. Purposely or not. And the truth is, even though you’re not my client, you were, and it’s not really the image that I think Jake wants R-and-R to project. It’s a little too much the whole massage-with-a-happy-ending thing.”

“What do you think he’ll say?”

“I think—” Her heart clenched at the thought. “I think there’s at least a good possibility he’ll tell me he can’t seriously consider giving me the job.”

Nate looked gratifyingly appalled at that. “Do you really think that?”

“He’s a pretty upright guy. And he really loves this place. I could see him wanting to avoid even the appearance of wrongdoing.”

“God, I hope not. I’ll feel like shit if that happens.”

“I’ll make the best argument I can that he should still take me on.” She sighed. She should be angrier at herself. Angrier at both of them. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to regret what had passed between them. Not while she could still feel the imprint of his touch all over her body. Inside. “And—” She hesitated, knowing she was laying down a gauntlet of sorts. “I’ll tell him that I’ll leave R-and-R until you’re gone.”

“Wait. What do you mean you’ll leave?”

“So there’s less chance of someone seeing us together, even just talking or flirting. Less chance that someone will make too much of something.”

“Do you mean like leave leave? Like, we won’t…have sex again?”

Unless he was faking it, he
really
didn’t like that possibility. And, okay, that made hope brim in her chest, which she was going to have to crush flat before he did it for her.

“What were you expecting? You’ve got J.J.’s family. I’ve got my work. And what is this, anyway? I mean, really? It’s good sex.”

“Great sex,” he corrected. “Make that phenomenal sex.”

That made her smile. “Phenomenal sex,” she admitted, loving the grin he gave her in return. “But you’re not in any kind of a place for anything serious, and neither am I. So doesn’t it make sense for us to call it what it is, get everything out in the open with Jake, and quit before someone gets hurt?”

“Sure, yeah—I guess—but right away? Do we have to tell him immediately?” There was a little-boy innocence about the question, like he was negotiating for one more cookie at dessert. And the conjunction of that and the not-so-little-boy way he was looking at her made her want to agree to what he was proposing. Secrecy. Stolen time. More, more, more of his mouth on her nipples, his hands in her hair, that rhythm he knew
exactly
how to set between her legs.

But it would come back to bite her in the end. Because in the scheme of things that could break her heart, not getting the R&R job wasn’t the worst. “I think we should tell him.”

“And you think he’ll definitely want you to leave.”

“I think…I think it’s the most likely outcome.”

He was quiet for a moment, his gaze distant. Then he turned back to her, grinning again, and
damn,
she liked that grin way too much. “Well, let’s wait and see what he says. Maybe it won’t be as dire as all that.”

He reached out and stroked her hair, and she felt it then. The shift that had taken place. The hole that had opened up inside her. The realization that a few hours had changed everything. Sex had changed everything for her, had connected her to him in a way that she wasn’t going to be able to easily forget.

The crazy thing about what had passed between her and Nate, both last time and this time, was that she kept breaking her own heart. She couldn’t even blame him for it. She kept putting them in these situations where she was bound to feel more than he did.

Tears came to her eyes. She turned away so he couldn’t see them. She knew she should tell him to go. The longer he stayed, the more her heart would break in the end. But she couldn’t quite say it. Instead, she let him touch her hair, the side of her face, her lower lip, a glancing brush of his finger that sent sensation soaring through her whole body. And when he kissed her again, she let him, and when he opened his arms to her, she curled into them, and she closed off her mind and opened her heart and let herself have this night with him.

Just before dawn, after a few hours of drugged, postcoital sleep, Nate woke with Alia in his arms. He was hard again, and he thought of waking her slowly and sliding into her before she was quite fully aware of him, of what a pleasure it would be to ease her out of drowsiness and into arousal.

She’d still be slick and swollen from the sex earlier, and she’d kiss him sleepily and wrap her arms around his neck. The last time he’d made love to her she’d made these small, soft whimpering noises, and she’d do that again, and those sounds had gotten under his skin so bad it made his chest hurt to think about.

But then after that it would be time for him to go.

He was still hopeful she wouldn’t tell Jake. That her courage would fail her—even though he couldn’t see it—she was so stalwart about so much.

Or that Jake would dismiss it.
He’s not your client. It’s not a big deal.

Something. Something to buy them a little more time. To buy him a little more time to be in her arms, cradled between her thighs, held in the clutch of her body.

But he knew Jake, too, and he knew her assessment was dead-on. That wasn’t a likely outcome. Nate just hadn’t—he hadn’t seen it all the way through in his mind. He hadn’t thought about the fact that once they’d officially, really, without hope of return, crossed this line, she’d feel compelled to confess. And once she confessed, Jake would have no choice but to do something decisive to protect R&R. And even if that didn’t mean taking away the job opportunity from Alia, it almost certainly did mean an end to what was happening right now. To this strange time-out-of-time experience of holing up here with her.

And he didn’t like that.

“Li,” he whispered.

“Mmmmmm?”

The sound dragged across his skin, got his blood up.

“I have to get going. But shower with me first?”

She was adorable, sleepy. Eyes still slitted, shuffling to the shower, turning on the water while half leaning against the wall.

And she was beautiful under the water. Her skin wasn’t the same color all over. It was a dark freckle-dappled gold on her face and her shoulders, a paler color on her neck, legs and arms, where the freckles ran even more riot, and the creamiest white over her breasts and belly.

He washed her first. First her hair, silk in his hands. Then the rest of her, smoothing his hands over her skin, the thin layer of soap letting them skate, the slipperiness jacking up sensation so it was like his fingertips were a direct conduit to his cock. He touched her everywhere, lingering when she closed her eyes and opened her mouth and breathed so deep it was almost a moan. Then he slid his body against hers, her smooth thighs, the satin perfection of her breasts, handfuls of soap-slick ass in his grip, hoping briefly he wasn’t hurting her and then not caring as he hauled her against him.

So. Tempting. To. Just. Slide. In.

Then her hands were on him. Soapy. Startling him with the suddenness, with the glide—yeah, he’d felt it a million times during solo showers, but holy fuck was it different when it was someone else’s hand. Her hand. Startling him, most of all, with her sureness. A good grip, a tight grip, as tight as his own fist, and her pace was good, too, a little faster than he would have started himself out, but it was hot, watching her hand move up and down on him, watching the head emerge from her fingers, swollen and shiny. Watching her watch, too.

Fuck.

“You,” she said.

For a moment he thought that was all she was going to say, but then she said, quietly, almost musing, “You are the perfect size. I mean, exactly.”

Like she’d been thinking about it. And something about that really got to him, so it was like she’d clutched a little tighter and moved a little faster, and he was suddenly having more trouble not giving in completely to her. Just letting go and watching her watch him come all over her hand.

Which would be so hot. And he let himself fantasize a little about it, which made it even harder not to—

He stayed her hand. Slowed her down, a little.

And she said, in that same musing tone, “You’re big enough to
feel
big inside me.” And
shit,
it wasn’t the touch even, it was the words, and the slight slack to her mouth, like she was thinking about putting her lips to him—

“I love the soft-and-hard thing, too. So smooth”—a finger, swirled around the head—“but no give.” She squeezed to demonstrate, and said, “I want it—I want
you
in me again.”