Sam loosened his shoulders, drew in a quick breath. It had to be done. “Sorry,” he muttered to Mike. “I was way out of line.”
Mike dipped his head, eyes fixed on Sam’s face. “She means something to you.”
Well, duh. Of course Nicole meant something to him, though he’d bite his tongue before he said it out loud. Sam didn’t want to say anything because saying it out loud somehow…nailed it down. Made it real and raw and scary. Articulating what were batshit crazy feelings he barely understood himself.
“Well, let’s just say I don’t want her beaten up by the fuckheads across the street.”
That shut Mike up. Harry too. They’d both seen lots of brutality toward women in their lives. They knew what a beaten-up woman looked like. No one wanted to see a black-and-blue Nicole, with swollen eyes and broken bones.
“Yeah.” Harry’s jaw muscles worked. Sam knew he was thinking of his mother and sister, lost to violence. He turned to Mike. “Do what you need to do to keep her safe.”
Mike nodded curtly. “I’ll stop by a couple of times. Make sure they see me. Make sure they know who they’d be messing with.”
Goddamn US law enforcement, that’s who.
Mike put the glass down. “So. Any messages you want me to give her? Anything I should say from you?”
Answer your phone, goddammit. Don’t shut me out. Talk to me. I want to see you again tonight, and the night after that and the night after that. I haven’t even begun to get you out of my system.
Sam’s jaw clamped shut on the words. His throat was tight and dry. He couldn’t have spoken if he wanted to.
He shook his head and Mike left. With an odd glance at Sam’s face, Harry left, too. Without saying anything, or over-analyzing the situation, which was a miracle.
Sam was alone. Alone in his big, expensive office that he’d worked so hard for. Alone with at least three urgent reports and requests for ten quotes for new business. Alone with his fucking thoughts.
He was behind in everything. He should be diving into work and instead here he was, playing with his dick.
He winced.
Do not think of your dick.
Too late.
It rose, urgently, as if he hadn’t fucked his brains out last night.
Oh Jesus, just the memory of her was enough to set him off. That face, under his, moving slightly up and down on the bed in time with his thrusts. Those huge cobalt eyes gazing into his. He’d never seen eyes that color before, a blue so intense it glowed.
Nicole Pearce was, hands down, the most beautiful woman he’d ever fucked. The most beautiful woman he’d ever even seen. But there had been something else in the bed with them. Some kind of…connection, however crazy that sounded. There’d been intensity, yes, of a kind he’d never experienced before. But there had been other things, too. Things he had no word for, really, because they were new. But if you put a gun to his head and forced him to find a word, one might beaffection.
Though that was crazy, because they had spent the night fucking like bunnies.
However much they’d fucked, though, it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t even in the same ballpark as being enough.
He missed her, fiercely. Missed her smell, fresh and clean at first. Afterward, she’d smelled of sex, of course. But somehow, her juices and his mixed together smelled good, real good. He missed her smile, her intelligence. She got him, got everything he said. There hadn’t been even one of those awkward moments Sam often experienced on first dates where the woman had no clue what he was talking about. He’d always put them down to those man-woman differences all the books went on and on about.
His Y chromosome made him say things the woman’s two X’s didn’t equip her to get. And oh man, vice versa. Sam couldn’t count the times he’d listened, baffled, as the date du jour went on and on about things he barely understood and couldn’t care less about.
Nothing like that with Nicole. Even blasted by lust over dinner, Sam found what Nicole had to say interesting. She’dunderstoodLebanon, a country he loved. Her caring so intensely for her father made perfect sense to him.
In bed, it was as if she had been tailor-made for him, moving lithely to his rhythms. Not one awkward moment, just sex so intense he thought he’d pass out at times and yet fun at the same time and…his mind skittered away from any further definition of the feelings he had.
This was way too much introspection for him. Bottom line—he missed her, he wanted her, he wasn’t in any way ready to let her go.
If he’d done something, he would apologize.
If she was reticent, he’d convince her.
Giving her up wasn’t an option, not even close.
