Terms of Surrender (23 page)

Usually, he didn't cuddle after sex, too eager to leave a woman's apartment before the light of day and avoid any inherent misunderstandings about permanence that came with physical closeness and an overnight stay.

He didn't mind holding Slany, though—liked the way she made him feel powerless and empowered at the same time. He liked the easiness they shared, that he felt no need to rush or hurry her from his apartment, liked that he was comfortable with her in his space, and she was comfortable being here and herself.

The things you do to me…the way you make me feel…

Excitement and apprehension warred in him at the memory of her confession, because it mimicked his own sentiment. Because she scared the crap out of him as he seemed to scare her.

She wove a spell, had been weaving it the moment he'd kissed her in his office and discovered what she was. She had been insinuating herself, her smile, her sense of humor, and her opinions and principles into the very fabric of his existence.

Since they’d had sex, his desire for her, his interest in her as a person—foibles, strengths, and everything in between—showed no signs of dwindling.

He wanted more. He wanted it all.

By his own calculations, he should have been tired of her by now, his relationships with women until now casual, based in the physical, never reaching a stage where he wanted to see 123

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the woman outside of sex. Never reaching a point where he cared one way or the other what a woman thought of him.

With Slany, he cared—way too much. He cared about what she thought, how she felt about him, about them, and he found himself wanting to please her. Not just physically, but emotionally, intellectually.

Trouble. Danger. He was in deep shit and sinking fast.

Damn.

Nick unconsciously moaned and put a hand over his eyes, as if to stave off inevitability and all the implications of his openness so far. As if to deny all the rules he'd broken in letting Slany into his domain with a view of his outside interests and passions.

He'd never let any woman into his home, much less revealed a creative side of himself that only his closest friends—of which there were admittedly few—and family had so far seen.

Yet, Nick was nowhere near eager to get rid of Slany, actually had visions of them spending the day together, eating breakfast, getting dressed, showering again, doing the things couples did together and on the weekends.

He glanced down at her rich, dark auburn waves, wondered if she were as weak and tired as he was after their last session of lovemaking, or did she always snore like two freight trains colliding?

He grinned and pulled her closer. She sighed against him. He remembered how she'd explored his body with the soap beneath the hot spray of the shower before he'd taken her against the tiled wall with enough force to make him question his own level of humanity.

Hell, she brought out sides of him he'd never known existed, the tender, the brutal, the curious and hungry sides of him no woman before now had experienced.

Before this moment, he'd never realized how wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am he had been in the past, how secretive and aloof. It made him wonder why any woman would want to deal with him at all. Made him wonder why someone like Kate had stuck with him as long as she had.

Slany smacked her lips in her sleep, and Nick chuckled as she opened her eyes to glance up at him.

"What's tickled your funny bone?" she asked.

"I never thought chewing cud was sexy before, but on you…"

She gasped and covered her mouth.

"Too late, babe. I've already seen and heard it all."

"Seen and heard what?" she mumbled behind her hand.

"The horror."

She playfully punched his rib cage, and he flipped her onto her back, imprisoning her wrists over her head with one hand as he straddled her hips.

"What were you dreaming about to make you lick your chops like that?"

"That's for me to know and you to find out."

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He groaned at her words and the wicked grin accompanying them, his dick already reacting to the idea of her lips wrapped around it and suckling.

"What's on the agenda for the day?" she asked, bursting his bubble.

"Don't try to change the subject."

"What was the subject?"

"The inhuman noises you make in your sleep."

"I do not!"

"I don't know who you've been listening to on the subject, but you have been sorely misinformed if you are unaware of your snoring."

"You really should think about building furniture for a living."

"You're mind works in mysterious ways, woman."

"Not really. It's been on my mind since I saw your stuff."

"You're not suggesting I give up the rat race, are you?"

"Not that I'm an expert, but you could. Your pieces are that good to me."

"You sound like my brother."

"He sounds like a smart man."

Nick nodded, chest suddenly filling with pride. "He left the rat race years ago to pursue his writing and never looked back."

"What did he do before?"

He grinned at her, waggled his eyebrows. "Give you one guess."

"No way! There were two of you in the business?"

"Two of us?" He wondered what she meant: two Vegas? Two smart alecks? Two Dominants?

Slany wiggled beneath him, bumping her pubis against his balls in an erotic way that made his sore, but his already hardening shaft twitched with eagerness.

He was on the verge of asking her to clarify her remark when he saw her eyes light up.

"Your brother's the writer! EJ Vega?"

Damn, not her, too.

He'd seen that look of recognition before, heard that star-struck tone of awe and admiration, and immediately regretted bringing up his brother.

"Yeah, that would be him." Nick felt bitterness creeping into his tone, despite his valiant effort to tamp down the green-eyed monster to nether regions where it belonged.

He hated feeling this way about his own flesh and blood— his biggest satisfaction and cross was the simultaneous pride and envy he'd harbored for EJ since they'd been boys—but he surrendered to the double-edge sword of fondness and jealousy, anyway.

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He didn't hate his brother by any means, would have killed or died for him, for any of his siblings if the need arose. But where his relationship with EJ was concerned, he had a special ambivalence that sometimes went beyond the parameters of sibling rivalry. And the fact that EJ

was the total antithesis of everything that made up Nick didn't help matters.

“Why did you sound so…gloomy when you answered just now?” Slany asked.

“Did I?”

“You can’t hide from me, Nick Vega. What’s up?”

He shrugged, thinking more deeply about the differences between him and EJ, almost becoming jealous wondering whether Slany would prefer EJ’s easygoing quietness and engaging flirtatiousness over Nick’s outgoing energy and moody seriousness.

Their differences had been apparent from as far back as Nick could remember.

Where EJ had been able to find hours of enjoyment sitting in the garage watching or helping their father restore an old Chevy engine, Nick had wanted to be out and about, running up his parents' medical bills and blood pressure when he went up against the neighborhood bullies or did wild stunts on his bike and skateboard.

Where everything seemed to come easy for EJ—good grades, good behavior, the right friends—Nick had to struggle for every C, work hard to stay out of trouble, or earn a playmate.

Where EJ had been the more thoughtful and sensitive of the brothers, a comparative easy child content to explore the quieter side of his creativity—his brother wondered how he'd made it in the cutthroat ad business as long as he had—Nick had been the more rambunctious and showy of the two. He was always curious, always searching—for attention, for approval, for his father's love—but never quite finding or obtaining, at least not finding the right kind of attention, especially not after he'd been diagnosed with dyslexia.

In EJ's defense, he'd been his brother's staunchest protector when the same kids who bullied Nick teased
him
for being the brother of a "retard". He'd also been Nick's staunchest defender and supporter when their father got on Nick's case, which had been often.

“Does your jealousy have anything to do with that slip you made at the pitch meeting?”

Could he hide anything from her? “Who said anything about jealousy?”

Slany shrugged, unperturbed by his stark tone as she easily returned his glare.

He didn’t know whether to be glad she wasn’t afraid of him or nervous that his commanding voice had no effect on her. “I’m not jealous,” he answered his own question.

“If you say so.”

Christ, she reminded him of his mother.

Mom was a master at reverse psychology, quiet manipulation. She was the voice of reason between his two parents and gave him enough freedom to let him come to his own decisions, which invariably turned out to be the decision
she
would have made for him.

The one area where she had tightened the reins and exercised her protective maternal instincts was when she had collaborated with Nick’s teachers and threw herself into home 126

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schooling him—a move he had hotly resented at the time, since it stigmatized his nine-year-old self more than his condition and took him away from what little friends he'd managed to acquire.

“Do you think your condition makes a difference to me?” Slany whispered.

Nick frowned. “What condition?”

“Your learning disability.”

Nick released her hands and dismounted her to sit cross-legged at her side.

How could she know?

Until now, he had thought his father was a master at denial. But to think that Slany couldn’t see past his act, that she didn’t know something was different and imperfect about him, said that he dwelled deeper in a fool’s paradise than his father ever had.

Unlike Mom, Dad put the blame for what he saw as Nick's shortcomings squarely where he thought they belonged: with his son. He didn't buy into the "learning disability" title. No son of his could possibly be afflicted with "special needs". And as far as the bad behavior and fights in school, Dad was from the old school and attributed these to good old-fashioned rebellion and obstinacy. He'd never been one to listen to Nick's side of a story, not when his son had been protecting a smaller kid from a bigger schoolyard thug, or not when he'd saved a stray mutt from being blown up by some neighborhood boys experimenting with fireworks. To his father's thinking, Nick was always the troublemaker, never the champion or defender.

Slany put a hand on his arm now and rubbed her palm up and down his skin, making him shudder with her tenderness and silent understanding.

Her empathy reminded him of Angela and EJ’s innate abilities.

Her silent comfort reminded him of his mother, ever the peacemaker coming to her son's rescue when he and his father butt heads.

Mom used to try and smooth out Dad’s hard edges, regaling Nick with stories of his father's experiences growing up in a large household, a young immigrant whose own learning disability had been ignored amidst the larger concerns of putting food on the table for ten people and keeping a roof over everyone's head. Nick's mom intimated that the reason her oldest son and husband butt heads so hard and often was because they were so alike.

It was the only time Nick could remember sympathizing with his father, seeing the old man as a kindred spirit instead of a cold-blooded enemy.

Nick swallowed hard at the realizations, the memories. He'd never before analyzed the not-so-secret competition he'd been waging with his baby brother for their father's affections and favor. He never wanted to go that deep into his enmity of either man or lay blame. “How did you know?” he finally murmured.

“That you’re dyslexic?”

Nick nodded, laying back down beside her and smoothing her hair away from her face with the back of a hand.

“My brother’s dyslexic. I recognize some of the…behaviors.”

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“Behaviors?” He stopped himself from smiling to think that she’d had him pegged since they’d met. “Is he a Dominant too?”

“Um, that’s something I wouldn’t know.”

“Right. That would be a little creepy, wouldn’t it?”

She giggled and put her arms around him. “I can tell you that Kieran’s the smartest twenty-something I’ve ever met, despite his dyslexia, or it might even be because of it.”

Again, she sounded like his mother who believed that his condition made him a better, stronger person than if his academic successes had come to him as easily as they had to his brother and all his sisters.

Whenever she affectionately referred to him as her special boy, it did make him feel better and stronger, like she bestowed an accolade on him, one his siblings could never earn, no matter what they did. Her tribute was their secret and special bond no one could take away from them, not even his father.

Nick smiled, and Slany pounced, as if reading his mind, the way she actually had been reading him all morning.

"You must be as proud of your brother as I am of mine."

He admired how she kept steering the conversation back to him and his brother. The woman was sharp. "More than you could know,” he said.

He was more proud than jealous, but the fact that the latter existed at all anymore had him wondering why. Did he want what EJ had and was working towards? A wife and a house full of kids? There had to be more reasons to fall in love and get married than just to procreate.

Nick almost audibly gulped at the direction his thoughts were taking.

"I'd been a fan of your brother’s articles for a long time, then ran out and bought his first book as a birthday present for my dad. It got us through some rough times."

He'd heard similar before, from so many fans and readers. He didn't begrudge his brother all the accolades when it had come at such a high cost, when it had come at the loss of someone EJ had cared for so deeply.