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He hadn’t anticipated that taboo sex could feel so good. Just lying here next to her made his erection begin to stir back into enthusiastic life.
Women had always been so predictable. Grace, though...in a heartbeat, things had changed between them. It felt as though bit by gradual bit he had peeled away layers of her and the more he peeled away, the more he sensed there was to discover.
Was it any wonder that he wasn’t quite ready to relinquish the challenge of digging deeper?
Would it get complicated once they returned to work? Weren’t there exceptions to every rule? Besides, if he lost control physically, he never would in any other area. That just wasn’t the man he had conditioned himself to be.
He could think out of the box... Wouldn’t he wean himself off this by carrying on? Wean thembothoff this...by not killing what they had prematurely?
Nico luxuriated in multiple scenarios in which what they had might carry on until such time as inevitable boredom seeped in.
Having never had to put himself out when it came to holding onto a woman, he surprised himself with the number of creative reasons he could now come up with to justify hanging onto what they had started.
The disgruntlement he had felt when she had broached the topic of their mission here coming to a close disappeared. He quietly congratulated himself on being able to see everything from all possible angles, thereby finding a solution to whatever thorny issue was at hand.
On this occasion, the thorny issue of them not having reached the natural conclusion to this affair.
‘Don’t talk,’ he purred. Before she could protest, he was silencing her with a gentle finger over her lips. ‘Let me do the talking.’
He leapt off the sofa, turned around and held out his hand, which Grace took, though she seemed reluctant. He pulled her to her feet and then to him, so that their bodies were pressed against one another, and he cupped her rear with his hands and gently massaged until she could feel the thoughts draining out of her head.
‘Nico...’
‘You raise a good point. We have to talk. And we will...just as soon as we have a nice, long shower and get dressed and come back down here to prepare something to eat. Don’t forget, I’ve just swum the equivalent of the Channel crossing...’
‘At the very least...’
He was already leading her out of the kitchen and she followed him without resistance. Nico, holding her hand, was brimming over with the exultation of having found a way to quieten his frustration at reality beckoning.
He idly glanced around him as they headed through the small boutique hotel up to the suite where they had taken up residence together.
Of course, he had become accustomed to these surroundings. To start with, he had barely noticed them. He had arrived to do a job and doing the job hadn’t included appreciation of what his uncle had done. In truth, he had been so prejudiced against Sander that he had come fully prepared to scorn everything his uncle had touched.
Nico didn’t know how and when things had changed but, as Grace had mused on a couple of occasions, the hotel and everything that went with it, from the successful fishing business to the loyalty of all his employees, spoke of a guy who had landed on the island as a confused and washed-up man only to find purpose and direction and a reason for living.
Now, Nico thought that it might have been okay to have known this guy his uncle had become.
He would never have had time for the man who had wasted his youth and recklessly threatened the future of the family business but, yes, he would have had time for the man who had found his way.
Nico was vaguely aware that Grace wasn’t her usual self. He felt that she wasn’t a woman who lived in the moment. He felt that sleeping with him would have been her biggest break with caution. With London looming she would thinking ahead to them going their separate ways and if she felt the way he did, then she would be at war with herself, wanting more yet uneasily aware of the siren call of common sense. He knew her so well. Well enough to realise that she would never throw herself at him and plead for more, but she wouldn’t have to. He would hold out his hand, she would take it and they would return to London and finish what they’d started.
He coaxed her in the wet room with expert hands that soaped her all over...and he murmured just the right words to have her smiling and then laughing as they headed back down to the kitchen, and when she hesitantly looked at him with a question in her eyes and something close to anxiety shadowing her delicate features, he distracted her by talking about Sander and the thoughts that had come to him as they had walked through the hotel earlier.
She was a good listener. She rarely interrupted and she never threw her opinions into the mix or else, if she did, then they were always opinions he was interested in hearing.
Shegothim and that was one of the reasons why he was so confident that when the time came they would remain...friends.
Beyond that...
He frowned, because there could never be anything beyond that. She had told him that her life had been normal. He’d never expected otherwise. For a few moments, he wondered what would happen if he didn’t define what they had with timelines, if he gave it a chance, waited to see where it would lead. Almost as fast, he dismissed the notion. She would always deserve better than a man trained to put work ahead of everything else.
‘You were saying,’ Nico revived the conversation begun earlier, ‘that things we came to do here have been done.’ He watched as delicate colour crawled into her face although she didn’t turn to meet his eyes.
He could read what was going through her head and he savoured the anticipation of dispelling all her unasked questions.
Filled with a sense of intense satisfaction, he stopped the chopping, dumped the knife on the counter and swivelled so that he was looking at her, hip against the counter, legs lightly crossed.
Grace stiffened, but eventually she couldn’t kid herself that he wasn’t staring at her.
