Tempting (9 page)

I
t was déjà vu
, walking down the gleaming hallway toward my office, Adele leaning up against the wall next to my door. But this time there was no gloating smile, no teasing glint in her eye. She did not want to be here, and I couldn’t blame her in the slightest.

I unlocked the door and gestured for her to go in, which she did, arms crossed tightly over her ribs. The door shut with an unassuming click and I stared at her rigid back when she didn’t turn to face me. In the quiet office, it struck me that I hadn’t really studied her, save that first night when we danced.

“You had no right, Nathan,” she whispered.

I rubbed at the back of my neck, willing her to turn around and look at me.

“That was the best thing I’ve seen all semester, from anyone in that class. And if you were brave enough to submit the assignment—”

Adele shifted so I could see her profile, and she glanced over her shoulder. “But that was
private
. I didn’t need those judgmental assholes trying to figure out who has daddy issues.”

Moving around her so I could face her, I sat back on my desk and gripped the edge with both hands. Touching wasn’t part of this equation, but the more she shut down about this, the more she fascinated me. I shook my head, watching her take a step back so we weren’t so close.

“Look, I shouldn’t have said what I did. You’re not a stupid—”

“Don’t,” she said, blinking rapidly and shifting her eyes up to the ceiling. “I don’t need this.”

I straightened and stood, dipping my head so I could catch her gaze, which she reluctantly gave me. The sheen of tears made the green of her irises look otherworldly, and when she blinked again, one tear spilled onto her cheek. She pressed a hand to her cheek, mouth dropping open like she was surprised by its existence.

“Maybe
I
need this, Adele.” I lifted a hand to, what? Touching was out. Right? She searched my face while my stupid hand hovered an inch away from her cheek. “You think you’re the only one who’s felt ignored by the man you should look up to more than anyone in the world? You’re not.”

Another blink, another tear hit her cheekbone and I cupped her face, touching my thumb to the drop of water, rubbing it into her silk-soft skin. Her eyes pinched shut and she inhaled in through her nose, trying so damn hard to keep it together. I moved the hand on her cheek and speared it through her hair, cupping the back of her head and pulling her into my arms. I wrapped the other arm around her shaking shoulders and gripped her to me as tightly as I could manage. It only took a second for her arms to come around my waist and her hands to fist into my shirt, like she was keeping me from pulling away.

The thought never crossed my mind, not when I made soothing noises and rubbed up and down her back, or rested my cheek on the top of her cool, blonde hair. The rawness that she was feeling chafed at me, because I knew the part I had played in it. When her tears finally quieted, I pressed my lips onto her hair, not in a kiss, just breathing her in.

The simple act of a hug was so benign; one of those things you might take for granted if you lived a life with normal, kind parents and a spouse who was actually alive. But for me, aside from the brief moments of anger-tinged passion with Adele in the past month, I hadn’t felt this in years. Comfort for comfort’s sake. No ulterior motives or agendas. Just an exchange of hurt and compassion.

I think that hug, that simple circle of arms, moved me more than any of our previous exchanges. And the terror of that realization knocked down one of the bricks that I’d set down years ago to barricade my heart.

“When I think about what I said to you, I could rip my tongue out. Because the thought of making you feel for one second what my father has made me feel my whole life, and I wager yours has as well, is unforgivable. But I’m going to apologize all the same.” Adele sniffed and tightened her arms, pressing her forehead into my collarbone. I moved my head down so that the sides of our faces brushed, and she took a shuddering breath. “I am truly sorry.”

Her arms loosened just enough so she could pull back to look at me. Her cheeks were damp from tears and the skin around her eyes was slightly red and puffy. She looked terrible. And I felt like I was finally seeing
Adele
.

“Why are you doing this? I was
gone
, Nathan.”

Instead of answering, I pulled my arms from around her and used my thumbs to dry her cheeks. Her eyelids fell shut at the simple sweeps of skin, like she was as parched for this as I was. One hand stayed on her cheek and the other drifted down until my thumb rested on the corner of her mouth. I dragged it across her bottom lip, the smooth skin pulling in the wake of my thumb.

“I don’t
know
why I’m doing this,” I admitted. Her eyes popped open at my honesty. “I shouldn’t be; I do know that.”

Adele extracted herself from my grasp and ran a hand over her hair. “I need to go.”

I wrapped a hand around her bicep, feeling a twinge of panic. And confusion.

“Hang on a second—”

“No, Nathan. I can’t do this back and forth bullshit with you.” Her voice wavered, still raw from the last couple hours. “I can’t.” She pressed a hand to her chest and looked up at me, eyes so wide that if I looked hard enough, I might understand what she was trying to get out. “It’s too hard to keep doing this. It’s fucking with my head and I don’t like it.”

Her voice rose in pitch and color finally started filling her cheeks again. She was so beautiful, and I was the jackass who hadn’t really appreciated it until right now.

I didn’t think.

Taking advantage of her silence, I gripped the sides of her face and pulled her up on her toes, fitting my mouth over hers. Not the painful, clashing kisses we’d shared before. This was softer, a way that I could finally let myself memorize the texture of her lips. Adele slid her hands up my chest and up around my neck, weaving her fingers into the hair at the base of my skull.

She let out the tiniest whimper when I briefly touched my tongue to hers, just a slow lick. It was the spark that detonated us both. Hands started gripping harder, hers on my scalp and mine around her waist, one hand cupping her ass and fitting her tight against my aching erection.

This felt so different, so authentic. Just Nathan kissing Adele, regardless of who we were or what we might want to acquire from each other. It wasn’t fueled by desperation like it had been for me that first night, that gluttonous give and take of orgasms, the first from anything other than my hand in almost four long years. I spun us around and hefted her onto my desk, her legs immediately wrapping around my hips. I hitched my hand around one of her thighs and pulled it higher around me so I could grind myself against her core.

Her mouth broke away and she dropped her head back. “Oh fuck, that feels good.”

I latched my mouth onto the skin beneath her ear and sucked hard. My hand slid up underneath her shirt, and while I had no intention of actually undressing her in my office, as I wasn’t a complete imbecile, I wanted to feel the parts of her that might be the softest. And the patch of skin just beneath the clasp of her bra was sleek and smooth where it wrapped over her spine. I desperately wanted to spend hours just feeling every inch of her, so badly that my hands felt like they were about to start shaking. I wanted the intimacy with her.

Adele wedged her hand between us and tried to make quick work of my belt.

“Woah, hang on. Not in my office. It’s too risky.”

She pushed out her bottom lip in a slight pout, using her clever fingers to wrap around my cock. I groaned and dropped my head onto her shoulder, tilting my hips into her grip. That rocking movement took me straight from craving intimacy to wanting to fuck her until she lost her voice from screaming. Until she couldn’t walk for days. Get inside her so deeply that neither one of us felt like we could pull away. That feeling was top-of-the-roller-coaster scary.

“Oh come on,” she whispered, lips grazing the shell of my ear. “I’ll just take the edge off now, then we can go somewhere else.”

I lifted my head, still grappling for control, but losing whenever she tightened her hand and my hips pitched forward in response.

“How far away is your place?” I asked in a rough voice.

Adele smiled. “Don’t you remember?”

“Hey, I was a little busy trying not to fuck you against a wall in the alley. Cut me some slack, okay?”

She kept her lips pressed closed and hummed in response, taking her hand away. I tried not to curse, honestly I did.

“I guess it depends on what you want to happen next?”

I was too busy watching the movements of her lips, finally snapping my eyes up to hers when I realized she was waiting for an answer.

“Next, what?”

The soft pink tip of her tongue swept across her bottom lip and then she smiled again. There it was, that victorious, slow widening of her mouth. She damn well knew she had me.

“Where do you want to be?” She leaned forward, dragging her tongue up the side of my neck, only stopping when she sucked my earlobe into her mouth. “When you come next?”

“Uhhhh,” was the most articulate response I could come up with. I felt so fucking out of my depth. It was foreign and terrifying and exhilarating.

“Do you want to come in my mouth?” A kiss under my ear. “In my pussy?” Another kiss at the side of my mouth. I turned to capture her lips and she pulled back. “On my tits?”

“You little fucking tease,” I ground out, then devoured her waiting mouth, sweeping my tongue against hers. I pulled back, smirking when she followed after me with her kiss-reddened lips. “I choose all of the above. I’ll meet you at your place in ten minutes. And you better not make me wait a second longer.”

A
fter slamming
the door of my apartment, I ran around the room, shoving the pile of used tissues under the couch, the dirty dishes into the sink, and throwing the comforter I’d left on the floor back on my bed. I straightened the wrinkles, fluffed the pillows and wiggled out of the jacket I was wearing.

Looking around my apartment, I suddenly had the oddest of doubts. What would he think upon seeing my apartment in the light of day, with my threadbare thrift store sofa, my mismatched bar stools and my scratched and dented computer desk? I’d seen his home, taken in his things. His walls weren’t covered in patches from previous tenants; his floors didn’t look dull from age and neglect.

“He’s a man, Adele. He’s not going to give a shit if you have fine china because he’ll hopefully be too busy banging you into tomorrow.”

It was precisely the kind of pep-talk I needed, and not a minute too soon when I heard the knock on my door, signaling his arrival.

Fuck
. I hadn’t thought to change my underwear. I mentally catalogued what I was wearing that day and swore again.

“Let me in,” he said against the door, his voice low. Shivering from the way his words excited me, I took five long strides to the door and twisted the handle open.

His eyes latched on mine immediately, the steel blue warmed from his concentration. He had his hands braced on either side of the door frame, leaning in enough to bring his after shave, something spicy and sinful, into my air.

I was nervous, something I didn’t expect. When I’d brought him home the first night, after the bar, it had been dark. Now it wasn’t even three in the afternoon, illuminating not only the melancholy state of my apartment, but also—and more startling—me. Under the cloak of the darkness, I’d felt sexy, powerful. In the bright light of the day, with this man I wanted down to my marrow, I felt transparent; a big fat phony.

“Come in,” I said, tucking my hair behind my ear. He walked past me and I placed my palms flat on the door, closing it slowly. Without turning around, I closed my eyes a beat, imagining him taking in my apartment.

“I … uh, haven’t been here long,” I began, still not turning around. “I’ve been meaning to add more, but seeing as it’s just me—”

Before I could finish the thought, I felt him at my back, the heat emanating from his body so all-consuming that I forgot what I was going to say. I waited, my blood a thunder in my ears, for him to do something. Anything. To touch me, to turn me around, to tell me to stop talking.

But he didn’t need to tell me to stop talking; my body shut the hell up as soon he invaded my air space. I turned my head slightly over my left shoulder, wanting to see his face out of the corner of my eye, but then I felt his fingers on my right shoulder. Just the tips, pushing gently into my flesh, tapping slowly down my shoulder to my arm, as if he was playing piano scales on my skin.

Another hand came up, pushing my hair over my left shoulder. His fingers brushed my back as he pushed all the hair away and I nearly trembled. Just from the brush of his fingers.

His lips pressed a kiss to the spot where my neck met my back, his mouth warming a trail down my spine. This was tenderer than I was expecting and it was throwing me off.

“Nathan…” but I didn’t finish.

“Shh,” he murmured against my back, rubbing the lightest stubble over my skin. His hands came to my hips, teasing the skin above my jeans with his thumbs. His fingers wrapped around my hips, sliding under my tank and brushing my lower belly with gentle strokes.

He leaned in, his front against my back and I pushed back, needing the pressure. Gripping more tightly to my hips, he squeezed and put a little distance between us. It was a long, slow tease, one that was beginning to make me squirm in my own skin.

He kissed the side of my neck he’d pushed the hair from. Soft, open mouth kisses raining from my ear to where my neck met shoulder.

“Nathan…” I didn’t know what to do with slow, with soft. I wanted hard, fast, biting, punishing sex.

“I know.” He said it against my ear lobe, humming the last word right against my cartilage. Again, I squirmed, trying to push harder against him, but was halted with a sharp bite to my lobe.

The jolt caused my head to fall back onto his left shoulder, feeling the bite down to my core. One of his hands left my hips to wrap gently around my neck, rotating my face to his. I finally met his eyes, saw the restraint in them. He knew exactly what he was doing, warming me up to his touch. I watched his eyes move to my mouth, felt his finger pulling down on my lower lip. When the finger let go, his lips descended, finally, thankfully, making contact with my own. The kiss began slowly, with him tasting my lips. God, the man could kiss. His tongue tracing the seam of my lips made me shudder, melting back against him. I brought a hand to his neck, holding him as he explored my mouth with the lightest touch.

He pulled away, but didn’t let go. “Are you ready?” he asked.

Confused, I furrowed my brow. “Ready?”

His eyes narrowed, his hand ran down my chest, brushing against the curve of my breast but not lingering. “We’re not going to stop this time,” he growled.

Fuck. Full on body shudder. I had the sudden urge to squeeze my thighs together, but he still held me so firmly in place that I couldn’t move. There was something uniquely rousing about being at his mercy, at bowing to the demands of his hands. Unable to answer lest I squeak the word, I merely nodded.

“Good,” he said, planting a kiss on my shoulder. His hands moved from my waist, under my shirt, over my stomach, until his palms covered the cups of my bra. He squeezed roughly, causing me to cry out from the second sharp bite of pleasure. I pushed my hips back, feeling his erection against my ass.

He tugged my tank up and threw it behind him before spinning me around, my back now to the door. His hands once again covered my breasts, his fingers wrapping around the curve of the bra and yanking it down. My breasts spilled out of the top, my nipples pointed and aching for his attention.

With a smile curving his full lips, he rolled my nipples between his fingers, scraping the ends of his thumbs against the tips. When he lowered his mouth, he made sure to keep eye contact with me the entire time, sucking one breast into his mouth as he pinched my other nipple with his fingers, twisting just enough to give me another taste of that pleasant kind of pain.

“I like this,” he murmured, his eyes still on mine but his lips now on my nipple ring. Watching his cheeks hollow as he sucked my breast into his mouth in the broad daylight made the pulse heavy in between my legs, an ache blooming there. It felt illicit, to be so exposed with a shaft of light from the window slicing across my body.

His mouth moved down the center of my chest, teeth scraping my ribs, tongue dipping into my belly button. He hooked his fingers into the top of my jeans, running them back and forth over my skin.

I heard the snap of the button on my jeans a half second before his hand dove down, fingers cupping me and squeezing over my panties.

“Shiiiiiiit,” I hissed, bucking against his hand.

“You’re fucking wet.” His fingers dug against the cotton, touching me intimately with them as a barrier. With his free hand, he unzipped the front of my jeans and tugged the back of them down over my ass.

He ran his hand over the back of my panties before gripping my ass in his hand and squeezing—hard enough to bruise. Letting go of my ass, he turned me around but kept his hand on my pussy, fingers stroking just outside of where I wanted him, over and around my lips, but not in between them.

I felt him tug my underwear down from behind, joining my jeans at my knees. His face was so close to my ass that I wanted to turn around, to see what he was doing. But just as I was about to look, two things happened in quick succession: his hand came down and slapped one cheek hard, and a second later he pushed two fingers inside of me, pressing his thumb against my clit.

A mangled noise tore from my throat as I tried to catch up with the shock and shudder that hit me simultaneously. His fingers thrust into me twice before pulling out so slowly that I thought I would break down in sobs. Just when I felt his fingers pull all the way out, he circled my entrance once before thrusting again, rubbing the pad of his thumb in circles over my clit. I was so fucking turned on that I knew it wouldn’t take me long to come all over his hand.

“Nathan,” I whispered, pressing my forehead to the cold door. “I’m close.”

“Good.” It came out as a grunt just as he whipped me back around, so I faced him again. He dove his hand into my hair and pulled the strands just as he removed his fingers to thrust them again. I squirmed, trying to hump his hand in my need to get off.

It continued on and on, Nathan alternating between tugging my hair, biting my lip, slapping my ass, and pinching my nipple right before each rough thrust.

I was spiraling upward, straining for release. I was panting, riding his hand closer and closer to the finish. Finally, his fingers curled inside of me as he pressed hard against my clit and I shouted something unintelligible before crumpling against the door.

My legs shook and my breaths came erratically. “Thank you,” I whispered, unthinking. I hadn’t known how badly I’d needed that release until the moment Nathan picked me up because my legs were too wobbly to hold myself up.

I barely registered him carrying me to the kitchen, only coming to my senses once he’d plopped me onto the counter, the cold surface a startling contrast to my warmed ass. My jeans and panties were scrunched around my knees and my tits hung out over my bra, and Nathan was still completely dressed. I kicked my jeans and panties off, letting them plop on the floor, out of our way.

Reaching behind me, I unclasped my bra, noted his eyes tracing the full curves of my breasts. “You’re a little overdressed for this party,” I said, feeling my heart rate start to subside. Reaching forward, I clasped my hands on his shirt and started undoing the buttons, one by one. I deliberately took my time unbuttoning his shirt, teasing him as he’d teased me. But by the third button, his hand covered mine.

“I can’t go slowly,” he said. It was only then that I took in his appearance, blue eyes engulfed in need, tick in his jaw. I knew that if I put my hand on his dick, he’d come undone.

So that was exactly what I did. Once he let go of my hand, I reached down, squeezing him through his pants. His eyes closed and he bit out a curse word. “Then don’t go slowly.” I spread my legs on the edge of the counter and squeezed him harder in my hand. “I’ll take whatever you can give me.”

I wasn’t sure how he did it, but his pants were down to his ankles and a condom was in his hand a heartbeat later. He put the wrapper to his teeth as if to rip it open, but I clasped his hands with mine and leaned forward, placing my mouth on the edge of the wrapper. I paused, breathing into his mouth as he breathed into mine, until the hands clasped with mine gripped tightly, impatiently. With my teeth on the wrapper, I pulled, opening the wrapper with our mouths.

His eyes flashed a look that told me how fucking hot that was—because fucking hell, it was—and he rolled the condom down his impressive dick. His hand cupped the back of my head as his other hand gripped my thigh and pulled me, bringing my pussy to the edge of the counter.

“Watch,” he said, twisting his hand in my hair to hold me taut, angling my head down to his dick, watching as he rubbed its head against my pussy, rubbing it through my folds, before aligning it to my entrance and slamming forward.

I couldn’t help it, I was so sensitive from having just come spectacularly that the way he filled me ripped a scream from my throat. He didn’t let up for even a second, hammering into me swiftly, so relentless that I felt his balls smack my ass. I wrapped my legs around his waist and ripped open the rest of his shirt, needing to see more of his golden skin, desperate to touch him as he pounded tirelessly into me.

My body warmed, my muscles fluid with each thrust, and I knew I would come again. I felt the quake in my arms as he pushed into me, over and over, with a rhythm that was almost punishing in its increasing speed. I alternated between succumbing to the climb and focusing on helping him get there, but in the end I did both by running my nails down his chest, over his nipples and abs. Fuck, watching his stomach clench with his thrusts was enough to push me completely off the ledge.

His hand came between us, flicking my clit. “Ahhh,” I moaned, my head falling back, but still supported by his hand.

He leaned forward and licked up the curve of my breast, his fingers pressing into my scalp. He didn’t ask me if I was close, but he seemed to sense it as he closed his lips around my nipple, tonguing my piercing, before biting down hard enough to send a shockwave throughout my entire body.

It was the shove I needed to throw me over the edge and into a mind-numbing orgasm; an avalanche of ecstasy carried me from the high, my body limp and my breaths quick. He clutched me to him as he grunted his release, fingers digging into my skin—keeping me from floating away completely.