Kiss the Girl (45 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Erik’s chest went hollow
, then filled with a rush
of conflicting emotions.  Chagrin, resignation, terror,
and
guilt, all glued together with a bolt of pure, shining joy. 
God
forgive him, he was
joyful
.  The rogue part of him that wanted her body
apparently
wanted her heart, too.
  Christ.  He was a fool.
 

“Nixie.”  Her name came out more like a prayer than a reproach, and she reached
out
to put a hand on his wrist. 

“I know you don’t want this, Erik.  At least you don’t want to want it.  But love isn’t like that.  We don’t get to pick and choose.  It happens, and maybe it comes with some trouble, but it’s always a gift.”

He slid his wrist away from her fingers.  “You don’t love me, Nixie.”

She
watched him, grave and unsmiling
.  “You don’t know
what I feel
.”

“You can’t love me.”  He
paced to the window and watched the Potomac snaking its lazy way to the Atlantic.  “You’ve known me, what, three weeks?”

“So?  I’m not asking you to marry me.  I’m just asking you to consider me.”

“For what?”

“For your lover.”  She
crossed the thick carpet on silent feet.  He could feel more than hear her coming, and when she wrapped her arms around him from behind and pressed her warm cheek to his back, he had to close his eyes against
a
staggering wave of want
.  “For your love.”

He
drew
in a breath, but it was dry and harsh.  He stepped away from her and said, “
This isn’t going to work, Nixie
.”

“Why not
?”

He forced himself to sigh as if it were his patience rather than his willpower wearing thin. 
God
, she was beautiful.  Skin like alabaster, hair like flame, and a heart so brave and courageous he ached for her.  She had to break it every damn day.

“Y
our heart is like one of your orphans right now
, all right?  B
anged around, beat up and half drowned. 
You told me once you were trying to build yourself a home here, but this is no home.  It’s an orphanage.  A safe place for you to hole up and
heal for a while.  We’ve loved
having you with us, and it’ll be a sad day for us when you go, but you can’t stay here forever. 
And I’m not going with you when you leave
.”

She
smiled at him, and it was pure come-on
.  “
Who’s asking you to?”

Erik stared at her, half baffled, half
aroused
as she slinked towa
rd him, that heart-stopping mouth all curved up in promise
.  He
tried to backpedal but found himself already against her ugly drapes
. 
She stopped a bare breath from touching him,
planted her fists in the drapes on either side of his waist and leaned in.  The scent of lemons floated up to him and he actually felt weak.

“You’ll only hurt yourself,” he said, but when she turned her face up to his, the surge of desire blanked out the rest of his plan
ned speech
.  She studied him, her mouth
pursed into a quizzical rosebud that made him yearn to take a bite.
 

“I won’t
get hurt
, Erik.”

“
Yes, you will
.”  He leaned his head back, tried to get some air that wasn’t full of her so he could think again.  “
You deserve somebody who’ll belong to you
.”

“You could belong to me.” She
pressed her mouth to the column of his throat.
  “We could belong to each other.”
 

He swallowed convulsively.  “
You’re America’s goddamn princess, Nixie.  You already belong to them
.”

Her mouth went still.  “If you start in with the
Nixie Leighton-Brace
thing, I swear to
God
, I’m going to bite you.”

Everything in him flashed hot for an incinerating second and he said, “
But you
are
N--”

He broke off as her teeth, sharp and just short of s
avage, nipped into his neck
under his ear. 
S
he
laved
the sting with her tongue
and for one wild moment, he thought about saying it again
.

“
It won’t work,
” he said instead.
 
“
I can
’t give you what you want
.
”

Her delicate fingers slipped his top
button free and
widened the V of
his shirt.  Her mouth landed on his collar bone, warm and sweet, and a groan rose up in his throat. 

“
You don’t know what I want
,”
she said, but he was beyond listening.  He was caught in the haze of a blinding desire.

“
I think I have a pretty good idea
,” he said, but his hands had found the delicate indent of her waist.  “
I’m nobody’s Prince Charming, Nixie.  You have to understand that
.”

“
I don’t want Prince Charming.  I want you
.”  Another button slipped free and she pressed a kiss directly over his heart.

His hands blazed up her back and he
dug his fingers fiercely into the tumble of her hair
.  Some
dim corner of his mind registered that it was
silky cool.  It
ought to
burn
, he thought
. 

“Do you?” he asked, turning her face up to his. 

She nodded solemnly and pressed her next kiss to his lips, sweet and gentle.  “
Not forever
,” she said.
  “Just for now.”
 

“
For now
.” 
Lust kicked off its chains and he fell into her with something perilously close to
desperation
.

“Now, I can give you.”

Nixie’s entire body sang as h
is arms cam
e around her like steel bands, and her knees sagged with a weird combination of desire and relief.  Not relief that he’d finally given in, though that was part of it.  Being bold
wasn’t the
piece of cake
Sloan made it look like
.  But relief that the choice had finally been made.   

Erik
turned her into the wall, pressed her back against it, and took her mouth
with a
glorious
air of purpose
.
  She nearly smiled under his single-minded carnal assault.  She’d forced him
--
forced them both
--
to confront this thing between them, knowing that once Erik made a decision, it was full-steam-ahead, damn-the-torpedoes.  S
he
gloried in the risky thrill of it, the thread of uncertainty and desperation that ran just under the surface
.
  Maybe they were doing
the right thing, maybe
they weren’t, b
ut she was done waiting around for somebody else to
make the call
.
  She wanted him, and by
God
, she was going to have him.  For once in her life, she was being selfish and it felt wonderful.

She wound her arms around his neck and plastered herself against him, reveling in the hard press of his chest, the possessive cage of his thighs.  His hands were
big
and fast
, one cradling her jaw, the other cupping her behind and pulling her ever deeper into him.

Then he moved lower, dragged a moist kiss up the side of her throat and conscious thought evaporated.  He was so fierce, this Viking doctor of hers
--
aggressive and gentle, demanding and generous.  He’d tried so valiantly to resist her but he wasn’t resisting anything now.  Now he was feasting on her, and her bones went to hot wax under his greed
y
, streaking hands.

She wound her fists into the crisp cotton of his shirt, inhaled the scent of hot man at his collar while his tongue did something knee-weakening and wicked to her ear.  He nudged her
knees apart and put himself there.  He pressed
against
her, pulsed hard and demanding against the epicenter of her want
.  She sucked in a breath as he added these sharp notes of
frantic need to the languid symphony of
desire he was writing on her body.

His hands
moved
down her arms to encircle her wrists,
to slide them slowly
above her head.  He pinned them there
against the wall
in one large hand and a draft of cool air
shivered across
her belly.  She arched,
and h
er t-shirt drifted away
like magic
.  She yanked at his shirt until the tails came loose from his khakis, allowing her hands free access to the smooth muscled planes of his back. 

His skin was warm and just slightly rough
under her palms
.  He felt like a man, she realized.  Not Hollywood’s shaved, waxed and professionally sculpted version, but a real, live man.  The kind with muscle
s
and hair and unapologetic appetites.  A
fierce and
answering hunger rose up in her and she tugged at his shirt until
he
stopped kissing her long enough to tear it off.  She smiled at him, at them both, the way they were pulling and panting and snatching.

“You feel like a man,” she told him.

“Yeah?”  He gave her that
lightning
strike smile of his and she felt it all the way to the bottom of her belly.  “You were expecting something else?”