Resisting Nick (Wicked in Wellington) (21 page)

Nick pulled the bathroom door open. His eyes searched the dim room, and he dropped his handful of clothes onto the floor the instant he saw the gap in the curtains and glimpsed the ghostlike creature outside. The sight of Sammie leaning on the balcony railing, curvy bottom almost visible under a barely there wisp of nothing much had him hardening instantly. He crossed the carpet on bare feet and lifted a condom off the bedside cabinet, remembering the previous night’s intense pleasure when he’d taken her skin to skin. He blew out a frustrated breath. Even though he knew she was on the pill, a man could never be too careful.
 

He peeled it quietly out of its packet, sheathed himself, and made his way outside, pulling the curtain across behind him to ensure darkness.

Sammie started to turn but he stepped behind her and clamped his hands onto her shoulders, holding her in place so he could bend and nip her neck. “I thought you said you didn’t bring anything to wear to bed,” he murmured, letting one hand go wandering to feel the texture of the fabric and to investigate the body it covered.
 

“It comes off before bedtime.” She relaxed down against the railing again as he investigated.
 

His hands cupped her bottom, and his fingers dipped under the hem and up onto bare skin. Sammie caught her breath but made no other sound. Nick thought his own hammering heart was probably louder than the crashing waves.
 

He slipped a hand between her thighs until he found her clit, and began to stroke and circle with the tip of his forefinger. She gave a soft moan and edged her thighs apart. Nick wondered if she had any idea yet that he was naked. He’d avoided touching her with anything but his hands and lips, and he continued to play with her and kiss the side of her neck until he felt the slickness of her invitation.

“Nick,” she whispered, trying to twist towards him.
 

“No. Just like this.” He pushed forward until his cock slid partly inside her.

Sammie jolted upright with an indrawn gasp.

And then they both heard the unmistakable sound of a cigarette being lit on the next balcony.

They froze for long seconds. The smoke drifted past them on the light breeze. No mistake—someone really was just a few feet away.

“Let me in,” Nick muttered, right by her ear.

“I can’t—not now.”
 

He pushed, and gained a little ground. “Yes you can.”

“Nick...” A low desperate plea.

He wrapped an arm around her waist and smoothed his fingers down her belly until he found her wetness again. Despite her breathy objections, it took only a few moments of his expert caresses before he was able to slide further home.
 

“I thought that second warehouse was the best of the properties we saw today,” he said in a conversational tone.

He felt her laugh—delicious small tugging ripples around his half-buried cock.

“That would have been my choice too,” she managed eventually, parting her legs a little further and wriggling her butt back against him.

A curtain swished along a track and a flare of light blazed from next door. They tensed again.

“Are you coming in, Eddie?” a woman’s voice asked.

“Just a couple more puffs.”
 

Sammie clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle her amusement before the curtain obscured the light again.

“Are you coming in, Nick?” she whispered a few seconds later, so quietly he nearly missed it.

“I’ll have to push them on the price,” he suggested, pushing something else altogether.

“You’ll have to push them pretty hard I expect.”

He pulled out a fraction and did as she suggested until he stood buried deep.

“Slippery customers,” he muttered, biting the back of her neck.

“Very slippery.” She braced herself on the railing so he could thrust with more vigor.

Nick glanced sideways. There were solid privacy fences between the balconies. The trellis he’d noticed earlier was only at the front edge. Someone would have to get very suspicious and lean well forward before they’d be able to see. And the angle of the moon lit enough of the balconies on the far wing to assure him no-one lurked there.

He pulled almost entirely out before he eased all the way into her again. God, she was like silk inside. Soft, hotly clinging, and infinitely inviting.
 

“So when do you think the big event will be?” Her query sounded shaky. “Far off?”

“Not far off if things keep progressing like this.” He thrust harder, feeling her muscles starting their now familiar fluttering.

She gave a most gratifying gasp. “Will you be able to keep things quiet when that happens?”

“Have to, given the circumstances.”

“I can’t imagine that being possible.”

“Try,” he panted, pounding into her. The angle felt amazing, the possibility of an audience heightened every sensation, and he was going to lose it in seconds. He promised himself he’d make it up to her later if he couldn’t hang on, but at that moment Sammie sucked in a huge breath, gave a short sharp exclamation and turned to pulsing liquid around him. His balls convulsed and he came as hard as he ever had, eyes squeezed closed, teeth clamped together, air whistling through them like a jet winding up for take-off.

She collapsed in a fit of giggles, putting him through further torture, and then said softly, “We have lift-off, Commander. Stand by for re-entry.”
 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

They arrived home on Wednesday. Evan Greerson phoned twice that afternoon, and once again on Thursday morning. Time wasting calls, because when Sammie asked if he wanted to speak with Nick, suddenly there was no urgency, no worry, no need to disturb him.

Yeah, right. And the architect’s plans showed the answers you needed anyway.

But, hoping not to rock the boat, she kept her cool, answered pleasantly, tried not to let his unwelcome voice rattle her.
 

“I suspect you’re right about your builder,” she said to Nick as she massaged him in her apartment during their Thursday lunch break. “He thinks he’s God’s gift, doesn’t he.”

“Has he been bothering you?”
 

She loved the way his voice hardened, his expression sharpened, as though he’d become instantly ready to spring to her defense.
 

Not likely when he lay face up on a couple of towels, glistening with oil and looking more ready to ravage her than chase off any competition. Not much hope of getting back to BodyWork in her allotted hour!

“No, not really,” she said, crouching between his knees and kneading the long powerful muscles of his thighs. She slid her thumbs right up into his groin and teased around his balls, which brought a growl of frustrated pleasure.

“Down, boy,” she said, enjoying his reaction. “But Evan sometimes rings and asks things he doesn’t need to. Maybe it’s just an excuse to talk to someone besides Brendan.”

“Maybe it’s just an excuse to talk to
you
.”

“Well I’m prettier than Brendan.”

“Damn right.” He smoothed his hands over her shoulders and drew her down until he could use his mouth on her breasts. “Brendan doesn’t have any of these.”

Sammie sighed as his tongue ran over and around her nipples between deep suckles and tender little nips. How could she leave him? How could she go traveling now she’d found someone so wonderful?

And...how could she desert her parents’ dream for an affair with a workaholic flirt? He’d admitted he was driven and ambitious, planning to sprint up the business ladder for at least another eight years. ‘Work like the devil until I’m thirty-eight or so’—that’s what he’d said in Sydney. The words had clanged around in her brain ever since.

He was there for the short haul as far as women were concerned. As far as
she
was concerned. Tyler had warned her, and she’d seen it for herself from the first day she’d met him.

She inhaled a deep shuddering breath, partly enjoying the almond-scented massage oil, party distracted by the decision she’d soon have to make.

“Come back to me,” Nick murmured. “What’s the problem?”

She looked down into his black eyes. “You, of course.”

“But?”

“Yeah,
big
but.” She pressed her thumbs into his hard torso, sliding either side of the line of soft hair that ran past his belly button right up to his chest.
 

“And?”

“No answer yet. Still thinking.” She spread her fingers and dug them into his pecs, massaging deep and hard until his eyelids drooped.

His contented exhalation was almost a purr. “You could do this for money.”

Which was enough to make her grab her favorite handful of him and give it a long, slow oily squeeze, right from the base of his shaft to the sensitive tip.

Nick gulped a fast breath and his eyes shot wide open, finding and holding hers again.

“Just in case your attention had wandered,” she teased, bending to stroke her tongue over the same almond-fragrant path. “Wouldn’t want you dozing off.”

After a few seconds’ silence he said, “Stay.”

So he’d guessed what she’d been thinking? But what was he really offering? Sammie swallowed, wondering if she dared ask. She used the time to drip out more oil and smooth it over his shoulders. “Why?”
 

“We’re good. We’re great.”

“But for how long?”

He shrugged. A faint twitch of the same beautiful shoulders under her palms. “No guarantees. You know that.”

“And even less with you.” She ripped her eyes from his and resumed the massage.

Nick’s euphoric mood slowly ebbed away. Damn it to hell, he’d been almost ready to beg. Almost ready to admit she lit up his whole life. Who else was on his side as wonderfully as Sammie?

He’d never felt close to Brian and Gaynor, and for the past fortnight he’d known why. Never been a comfortable older brother to Hal and Tony—and finally knew the reasons behind that, too. He had dozens of friends, but none of the long-termers had ever been female—unless they were the wife of a mate, and therefore out of bounds.
 

No girl shared his bed for longer than a few days...weeks at most. Because then the clinging and cajoling started. The games that deflected his energy away from BodyWork. And BodyWork was his life, his baby, his dream.

For a boy who’d started with very little, he’d been determined to become a man with plenty. And was well on his way to achieving it.

But Sammie didn’t want to stick around and be part of his plan, part of his success.
 

Didn’t trust him to care for her well enough or long enough.
 

As her hands continued to knead and slide on his flesh, his gut began to churn in bitter spirals, and he started to lose the warm relaxed mood her massage had produced. How could he get her to stay?

“Come home to dinner tomorrow?” he asked. “Bonnie’s a great cook, and you can meet Mike properly, too.”

Sammie looked understandably confused by his sudden invitation. “Bonnie your landlady?”

“More like an auntie these days. She’s been throwing out hints she’d like to meet you.”

“Why?”
 

God, why did women have to ask so many questions?

He tried to school his face into an unreadable expression. Best not to give too much away. “I might have mentioned you.”
 

Sammie sent him a skeptical query just by lifting one brow a fraction. “You’ve barely been back at her place to do that.”

“Maybe that’s why she’s curious. Just come, okay?”

“But I thought you were going fishing with your mates for the weekend?”

Why was she objecting? Trying to avoid him? That made no sense when her hands were still all over him.

“Not until crack of dawn on Saturday. Josh can’t get away until then.”

She trailed her fingers back over his chest, down his belly, and rested her weight on his thighs.

“Please?” he asked, pushing her harder than he’d intended. Suddenly it felt important she accepted. That she saw him as part of a ‘family’—because she was a family kind of girl. Parents she’d loved, a brother whose home she stayed in, a grandfather she’d cared for.

“Are you sure she won’t mind cooking for a stranger?”

“You’re not a stranger. You’re my...friend.”

Her green eyes sparked with sudden derision.

He grinned. “Girlfriend then?”
 

“I work for you.”

Sudden fury hit him hard and he reacted too fast. “You’re a damn sight more,” he lashed. “Can’t you see that by now? You’re a friend from the past, Sammie. A lover who I’d really like to stick around. Don’t give me this ‘I work for you’ business.”

“But I do. I’m your P.A.—and only a temporary fill-in P.A. at that.”

“Then make it permanent.”

“What? No!”
 

As her derision turned to outright refusal, Nick’s previously relaxed mood evaporated completely. “Not how I imagined this little scene ending,” he muttered, glancing down at her hands as they caressed his thighs. He was still hard as hell—really wanted to work off his fury. And those busy fingers weren’t helping. “Will a condom stay on after the oil?”
 

She glared at him, but gave his cock a couple of quick swipes with the end of a towel and sheathed him. So she still wanted him, too?

“It damn well better,” she snapped as she straddled him. “The last thing I need is to find myself pregnant on the other side of the world.”
 

She lowered herself over him, but he grabbed her around the waist and prevented her from moving. “Like my bitch of a mother, you mean?”

Her eyes shot to his, and her slight gasp reinforced her next comment. “No Nicky—sorry—I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean anything like her at all.”
 

She tried to struggle away from him, but, using his superior strength, he held her immobile and thrust up with his hips, skewering into her honeyed heat. Far enough to establish who was boss. Never so far as to hurt her.

They stayed frozen, green eyes on black, until he allowed her to slide down by slow delicious degrees.