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Gorgeous brown eyes held mine as a slow smile spread across his beautiful lips. "Oh baby, I'm more than okay," he responded.
It took me a moment to figure out why. But when Nikolai dropped a considerable amount of his weight on top of my body, I realized he was enjoying the new position. I found myself grinning. "You're crazy," I said.
His smile faded a little bit, making me think I’d upset him. But his next words were proof that I hadn’t.
"You're beautiful."
My breath caught in my throat at his declaration because I could tell by the look in his eyes that he meant it. Not in the "wow you’re hot" sense, but in a way that ran deeper… much, much deeper.
Nikolai dropped his head and brushed his lips over mine. I opened my mouth in invitation, but he didn't take me up on it. Instead, he used his left arm to brace himself so he was covering most of my lower body but wasn't putting the full weight of his upper body on mine. He used his free hand to continue with the soft, delectable caresses that made my chest hurt in a good way.
“Tell me about Hayes," Nikolai murmured.
"Right," I responded. It took my rattled brain a moment to catch up.
"The reason Patricia took me to see Cliff was because she wanted…” I paused before saying, "Nikolai, some of the stuff about Cliff is really personal. Personal as in, only like five people on the planet know about it."
Nikolai nodded in understanding but when he stopped tracing his finger along my jawline, fear skated through me. "It's not that I don't want to tell you or that I don't trust you—"
Nikolai's finger came up to cover my mouth to silence me. He remained quiet for several long seconds before saying, "First off, I don't expect you to blindly trust me, at least not when it comes to matters of the heart. When and if that day ever does come… God, Jude, I'll cherish that, and I’ll never give you cause to doubt your decision to grace me with it. Second, your loyalty to Hayes is unquestionable and I would never, ever put you in a position where you had to choose between that and me. However you two came to be friends, it's clear to me that he's as important to you as Patricia was. So tell me as much or as little as you feel comfortable with, okay?"
God, he really was going to do it. He really was going to ruin me for other men. No one would ever be able to measure up to Nikolai. Not in bed, and most definitely not outside of it. I was terrified of what that meant and so I forced it away and focused on what was right in front of me.
I did trust Nikolai.
Implicitly.
"Cliff faced a lot of the same learning challenges that I did. Patricia wanted me to see a living, breathing example of someone who had not only overcome those challenges but had thrived in spite of them. When I realized that Cliff had done the very thing I’d believed to be impossible, I was stunned. He didn't really talk much about what he'd gone through as a kid, but he did something I never would've expected. Not from him. Not from anyone."
I paused for a moment as I remembered that day. That day which had literally changed my entire life. That day when I'd discovered that people weren’t always what they appeared to be.
"He offered me a job," I said softly. "He told me that once I got my undergraduate degree, he'd get me a job at his company in New York. An entry-level job, but something where I could climb the corporate ladder if I put the work in."
"So, you did it," Nikolai said.
I shook my head. "Yes and no. The more I thought about it, the more I knew an entry-level job with a mediocre climb up the corporate ladder wouldn't be enough to give me what I really wanted."
“What did you want?"
I let my eyes stray over Nikolai's arm before I forced myself to look at him. "Did you know that when you turn eighteen in foster care, on that actual day, the state hands you a few bucks and sends you on your way? If you're lucky enough to have belongings, they give you a garbage bag or spare box for you to put them in." I couldn't help the anger that bubbled up as I recalled the moment where I’d been discarded like the garbage that had belonged in the trash bag I’d been given.
Nikolai's eyes softened but luckily, he didn't respond with useless apologies. "No, I didn't know that," he murmured.
"That was what I wanted. To never be left standing at the corner of a couple of no-name streets in a place I'd never truly been able to call home with a fucking garbage bag carrying shit that other people had gotten for me. The second I realized that I had a chance to be like Clifton Hayes, that was all it took. But I didn't want a handout. I didn't want the job just because he knew Patricia."
