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I laugh with him, though inside my nerve endings thrum with anticipation. He leans forward to cup the side of my face in his palm, dragging me toward him for a long, slow kiss. Like always with Nick, just the barest touch, the briefest brush of his lips over mine, sends a rush of adrenaline through my veins. I can’t curb my response to him and there’s a part of me that doesn’t even want to try. I melt, I ache, I want . . . always for this man.
“God, you taste good,” he murmurs against my mouth as he deepens his claim. “I could eat you up right here and now.”
Yes. Yes, please, Nick. I start to say it, ready to give in to him—but at that same instant a cell phone trills with an incoming call. Nick’s phone is on the countertop where it’s been since I arrived. It rings again, vibrating against the black granite.
On a low growl, he slowly pulls away from me to glance at the device. I can’t help looking too—just a reflexive flick of my gaze to the name and photo illuminated on the display.
Lily Fontana.
She’s pretty. Jet black hair and milky white skin. A heart-shaped face that I put around my own age. Her smile is confident, her exuberant expression just as lovely as her name.
“I have to take this,” Nick says, holding the phone toward his chest. “Will you excuse me for a minute?”
I nod, because what else can I do? He walks away, into the living room to speak while I try not to feel awkward and out of place in his kitchen.
“Hello, Lily. Word travels fast, I see.” His voice is low, but it carries through the penthouse. “Yes, I got in this morning, actually.”
Although his tone with her is authoritative and firm, there is also a familiarity to their conversation—an intimacy—that kindles an unpleasant jealousy in my gut. I force myself to keep nibbling at my breakfast, even though my mouth feels parched and my stomach feels full for the weight of my disappointment.
“No, you’re right,” he tells Lily. “I should’ve called to let you know my plans had changed.” He listens for another moment, then exhales a short sigh. “Ah, damn. That’s tonight? No, I can’t make it. There are other things that I’ve already committed to do.”
As he says this, he walks back into the kitchen where I’m idly pushing my eggs around my plate. Our gazes connect, but I can’t hold his intense stare. Not while he’s got another woman on the other end of the line, pressing him to be somewhere else instead of with me. A very pretty woman whose face is now seared into my mind.
“I understand, but Mayor Holbrook’s gala is the least of my concerns. Tell him I’m still in London. Hell, tell him to make an appointment with me during business hours like everyone else.” Nick stares at me as he speaks to Lily, and there is no mistaking the sensual heat that’s still present in his eyes—all of it focused on me. “I’m sure there will be other opportunities for him to pick my pocket about the upcoming campaign. Well, what’s he going to do, tie up the permits on the rec center? If he does, I’ll just work around any roadblocks as they come.”
Nick pauses to listen some more, then gives Lily instructions to convey his regrets to the mayor and to shuffle a couple of meetings on his calendar for the week ahead. He ends the call and sets the phone back down on the counter.
“My assistant,” he informs me. “Lily likes to run a tight ship. She’s good at keeping me on track, but I don’t always make it easy on her. Needless to say, she isn’t happy that I cut London short without telling her I was back in the States.”
“Oh.” His assistant. I nod, astonished at the depth of my relief. But I can’t pretend I’m not also aware that he has business obligations waiting for him. Ones that evidently involve rubbing elbows with the city’s elite. I finish off the last swallow of my mimosa, feeling the gap between our two worlds more clearly than ever.
“What is it, Avery?”
I glance up at him, unnerved as always by those penetrating oceanic blue eyes that seem so adept at seeing through me. Seeing past the mask I’ve been able to hold up around everyone else. Nick’s sharp gaze sees too clearly. Still, I attempt to deflect him. “What do you mean?”
“Something’s changed in you just now. Was it the call from Lily?” His piercing eyes narrow on me. “You thought she was another woman—someone other than a colleague? Did it make you jealous?”
I shrug, but it’s a weak denial. “She’s very pretty. I didn’t mean to look at your phone when she called, but it was right there on the counter.”
“Lily is attractive,” he admits. “But she’s my employee. I don’t fuck my employees. And anyway, when it comes to beauty, she’s got nothing on you.”
He approaches me where I sit on the counter stool, his fingers threading into my loose hair, then trailing around to cup my nape. His touch enthralls me. My senses fill with the intoxicating scent of him—his warm, bare skin and clean, shower-damp hair. I look up into his bright blue eyes and I’m captivated, holding my breath for the moment I’ll feel his lips brush against mine.
He doesn’t disappoint. Bending toward me, he takes my mouth in a deep, bone-melting kiss. His large hands frame my face, holding me to him as his tongue sweeps past my teeth to stroke, and taste, and tease. I moan with the force of my desire for him. As our kiss turns molten, I wrap my arms around his neck, reveling in the feel of his muscled chest pressed against me, his erection a rigid demand at my hip.
But as good as he feels—as right as we feel together, like this—I am now reminded of the impossibility of us becoming anything more than what exists between us right now. He can touch me and kiss me, pleasure my body in ways no man ever has before, but that’s where Nick and I end. I can’t expect him to invite me into the other parts of his life when I damn well can’t invite him into mine.
I draw back, slowly shaking my head. When I pull in a breath, my lungs constrict as if they’re caught in a vise. “Nick, I’m sorry. I think maybe I should go.”
I watch his gaze narrow on me, his brow furrowing with a scowl. He isn’t pleased with this sudden change in my mood. He may even be suspicious. “Go? You’re mine for the day and the night, remember? You ditched work for me today. I mean to make it worth your while.”
I know all too well how worthwhile he can make it, and I have to work hard to ignore the eager pulse of my body in the wake of his erotic promise. “Nick, if you have somewhere you need to be tonight instead . . . If the mayor—”
“Fuck the mayor.” He draws me closer to him, stroking his hand along my cheek. I tremble with arousal as his fingers skate down onto the swell of my breast. “I am where I need to be,” he insists, his voice thick and rough with need. “Right here, with you.”
“What about the rec center?”
He pulls back and now I see some of the disregard fade from his demeanor. “What about it?”
