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  Oh my God, this is mortifying. It really is like I’m in high school again and I’ve forgotten not only how to talk to boys but how to stand in their presence.

  He takes another step toward me, laughing. “Well, for one thing, I thought it might be nice if we had dinner sometime.”

  He has the most ridiculous smile, I realize. It lights up his entire face. You can see it in his eyes, and there’s no pretension. It’s all genuine. Pure sunshine. I’m rendered speechless by it for half a second and I have to ask, “What was that?”

  “Dinner,” he says, that huge-ass grin in full force, taking another step toward me, and now there’s only three feet between us, and I can feel the body heat from him, can remember what it felt like the last time he walked me backwards into a wall and then his body was pressing into me, and his mouth was on me. When his chest was against me, when his cock was pressing into me and my hips—

  I suddenly jump backwards. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.” I look around suddenly to see if anyone’s noticed this exchange yet.

  It’s fine, it’s still fine.

  We’re just two people who work in the same industry who bumped into each other on a Saturday morning and are chatting like people do on Saturday mornings when they bump into each other. While giggling. Totally fine.

  “What are you worried about, Natalia?” He doesn’t chase after me, just stands there looking confident and laid-back. Like a man trying to tempt a scared animal out from hiding. “I mean—I do bite, but most women like it.”

  I smile at that, because I can’t help it, but I duck so he doesn’t see.

  He’s probably so much more experienced than me.

  He’s probably so dirty in the bedroom.

  God, I shouldn’t be thinking about that. “I shouldn’t even be talking to you,” I say, shaking my head. I turn toward my car.

  “No, you shouldn’t be,” he calls from behind me, and I have to actually close my eyes to collect myself because it’s obvious he’s thinking about doing not-talking things. Things like last night. Things like biting.

  Things good girls have no business being so turned on by.

  I tell myself he probably says stuff like that to all the girls who walk away from him.

  But who am I kidding? Who has ever walked away from Nick Ryder? Besides me, I mean. Twice now. I deserve an Oscar for my willpower. That should be a new category.

  “Bye, Nick,” I call as I flee with my coffee.

  Then I step into my car, put my keys in the ignition, and drive away before I lose my senses and change my mind.

  Chapter Four

  Getting Dirty

  Nick

  “I really should’ve brought some gloves,” a voice says from behind me.

  A sweet, girlish voice. A voice I recognize. The voice that has accompanied my jerking off for the past six weeks, the voice I’ve imagined whimpering my name a thousand times.

  I turn around, and I’m not imagining it now. It’s her—Natalia.

  Her hair is thrown up in a ponytail, and it’s pulled through the hole in the back of a baseball cap. Red, for the cause we’re out here supporting today. It’s the annual Heart-Strong Mud Tug, a charity tug-of-war where celebrities battle, all in the name of raising money to help fight against heart disease.

  Mine’s beating faster just at the sight of her.

  It’s amazing what people will donate cash to see. Today it’s entertainers versus reality stars pulling a heavy rope through a big bank of mud.

  I’d rolled my eyes at the massive checks people were writing for the tickets, but the sight in front of me? Natalia Lowen in those short shorts and sports bra, soon to be covered in mud? Yeah, I’d pay good hard cash to see that too.

  But lucky me—it seems like we’re on the same team. I’d come here ready to win and get it over with. Now I’m ready to turn this into an all-day event.

  At the moment, I’d settle for just talking to her again. And she’s given me the perfect opening. It’s only a couple of steps from where I’m standing to where she is, just two steps to start smelling the sweet scent of her hair and admire the way sun glints off of her skin.

  “I don’t know how much they’ll help, but you can wear mine.” I pull my fingerless gloves from my hands and hold them out to her, anticipating the brief moment of contact between us.

  Her eyes seem to sparkle when she recognizes me, and her cheeks pink up just like I remember. She glances down at the items I’m offering before taking them.

  “Well. You have real big hands there, Nick,” she says comparing the size of my glove to her dainty palm. She bites her lip at the unspoken innuendo, and my dick twitches both at the thought of showing her the truth of the saying, and the thought of biting her lip myself.

  The thought of those lips wrapped around my dick. Jesus.

  “You know what they say about large hands,” I tease, taking a step closer to her. I wait until she raises her brows expectantly, waiting for the more juvenile answer. “The larger the hand, the better the tug.”

  A smile melts onto her lips. They aren’t glossed this time, but they’re just as sexy. Her natural beauty shines as much in the mud as it did in the club. At the thought, the memory of kissing her flashes through my body physically. I don’t just remember it in my head. I remember it in every part of me—in my fingers, in my chest, in the way my blood sings. In my cock that’s now stretching toward her.

  It’s not like my bed has been empty since that night at the club, but my thoughts have kept coming back to her, wondering how she’d respond if it were her under the sheets with me. Closing my eyes at the end, to pretend it was her. Wondering what could’ve happened if we saw each other again.

  This chance meeting today is only making those questions I’ve tried to bury float nearer to the surface.

  What is it like to really know her? What does she think about at night before she falls asleep? What would she look like under me? Could I make her cries turn into music when she comes?

  A whistle blows, and that’s our cue, thank God, to take our places at the rope. The exertion of the activity will take my mind off of what I want to do to her body. Or maybe not, but I’m less likely to end up with a raging hard-on in the middle of this field when I’m focused on competing. She hands me back my gloves, which were laughably big for her. I convince her to trade me places so I am standing behind her, a better anchor when the other team pulls.

  I have ulterior motives.

  Selfishly, I’m hoping she’ll lean back far enough that I can feel her again, just the brush of her against me. I want it desperately, as much as I’ve ever wanted to get my dick wet in a woman. I want to be just a little too close to Natalia.

  A referee comes out and explains the rules, then calls us to our marks. When the whistle blows again, the game is on. We pull and pull, and in the beginning, our side is performing the best. We gain a foot in ground, as Natalia leans into me. Then another. My arms strain against the pull, but I dig in my heels and hold on tight. The problem with being behind her is that she can’t appreciate how the veins are popping out on my arms.

  The work is hard, but I can feel the victory nearing us. I don’t like to lose.

  It’s my fault, though, when we do. She leans back again, and I hear her groan with effort. The sound is pure sex. I lose my grip, and we slide half a foot forward. We gain it back, only to lose it again. Then we lose a full yard. My arms are burning, all my focus and effort on this one task, and still I’m sliding and there’s nothing I can do but enjoy the sight of the woman in front of me.

  I relax for just one second, and in that space of time it seems my entire team takes the same breath, and all of us slip into defeat, as the other team pulls us one at a time into the bank of mud between us. I brace myself so I don’t fall onto her, but the result is a giant splash of mud that does land directly on her.

  There’s groans, cries of frustration, and then the exhausted laugh of relief from everyone behind us. We fo
ught a good war and raised money for a good cause.

  But all I can see right now is her.

  Natalia Lowen looks pretty fucking good all covered in mud.

  I can’t stop grinning, can’t take my eyes off the mud spattered across her chest. Somehow she managed even to get it on her face, and she looks all the more beautiful for it. I have to remind myself that it would be very inappropriate to push her back down in the pit for an old-fashioned wrestling match. The smile slowly fades into a frown, and I wonder if she can read my thoughts.

  I wonder if I should just tell them to her.

  But she’s looking at her fingers, wincing, and I take her hands gently in mine to look at her injuries.

  “That’s some pretty serious rope burn,” I say, softly tracing the red marks on both of her palms and fingers. “There’s a first aid tent over there. We could—”

  “No,” she laughs. “This isn’t serious. It just stings. I’ll take care of it when I get home.”

  I’m still holding her hands, and she hasn’t tried to pull them away from me.

  “At least we should clean the mud off them.” An impossible task considering we are both covered in the stuff. I pull off my own glove, turn it inside out and use the clean lining to dab off her wounds. She hisses once, but doesn’t flinch, even though it must hurt.

  She moves nearer to me, perhaps to make the task easier, but I can feel the same chemistry that was there the night we met, that intense electricity pulling us close. Closer. She looks at my lips, then my eyes, back at my lips. I’m torn between wanting to close the distance between us and wanting her to make a move. I wait a beat too long, and then as though she’s embarrassed she might’ve been caught staring, she looks down at my hands and her brows wrinkle.

  “What’s this?” she asks rubbing her thumb along the callous on my fingers sending a jolt of electricity down my spine.

  “It’s from playing guitar,” I say. She’s so soft where I’m rough, and thanks to the sports bra she’s wearing, I can see her breath catch in her chest as the eroticism of it occurs to her too. Our hands are moving together now, almost caressing, finding new configurations to touch in. Our original goal of removing the mud has fallen by the wayside.

  We are wiping it all over our palms and fingers and it’s sexy and dirty—literally—and I can’t decide if I want to pull her back into the mud puddle with me or invite her back home to shower, but either way—I want to get filthy with her.

  Really fucking filthy.

  I know what she said last time. I heard her. But I see it in her eyes too, that she’s feeling the same tension, the same chemistry, the same sparks. I’ve had enough women in my bed to know when they’re into me and when they’re not, and I know she’s into me—it’s not a question.

  Besides, she never said she didn’t want it. She just said she shouldn’t.

  I take another step toward her, the last step there is to take. My body dwarfs hers, and I follow the trail of goosebumps as they rise on her arm at my proximity. “Natalia, I want to see you.”

  She flushes and stares everywhere but at my face. But she doesn’t move away. “You’re seeing me right now,” she says, her words high-pitched and breathy.

  Fuck, what it does to me like that. The thought of that sweet, girlish voice sharing all her deepest, darkest fantasies has me ready to eat her all up.

  “I want to see more of you,” I tell her, my pitch low, and I’m certain she knows what I’m telling her. Certain I’m not wrong that she wants it too. She inches closer to me, her eyes dragging up my chest, breath coming rapidly, and I know that by the time she looks at me, her pupils will be dilated.

  I have her. She’s mine.

  But just as I open my mouth to ask for her number or a date or fifteen minutes in the backseat of my Bugatti, someone calls her name from across the field.

  She startles like a frightened bunny, and in the next instant, she drops my hands and steps away.

  “I forgot,” she says, blinking. “I have an interview right now. I’ve got to go.”

  “Nat,” I call, as she’s backing away from me, not wanting her to walk away again.

  “Bye, Nick!” she yells back over her shoulder as she turns and jogs off in one direction as I turn in another, slipping through my hands once more as inevitably as the rope.

  Chapter Five

  I’d Hit That

  Natalia

  “He is so swoony hot,” Hadley says, practically humping her popcorn bucket over Christian Grey on the big screen in Rowan’s home theater.

  She’s not wrong.

  I’ve suddenly developed a taste for alpha males, even though I’m exclusively exploring it in fiction. That is not the kind of thing you just tell people. Because this is exactly the sort of BDSM situation they picture.

  How do I explain that I think I’d like being made to feel like all my unspoken desires would be fulfilled before I even knew I had them? That I’d been given a taste of what that might be like and it was mind-blowing?

  It was just kissing, really.

  There’s no need to discuss anything with anyone.

  It’s girls’ night, four days after the Mud Tug. My blisters would be mostly healed by now if I could stop rubbing over them with my thumb, remembering the way it felt when Nick rubbed his fingers over the sores, cleaning and massaging them as he eye-fucked me. His touch, soft in pressure and rough in texture, even in memory had me hotter than anything we’ve seen in this movie so far.

  We are halfway through, and I realize I’ve been thinking about Nick Ryder more than about what’s been happening on the screen. We had chosen Fifty Shades of Grey because we thought we should enjoy some vicarious sex, since none of us were having it.

  “Speak for yourselves,” Rowan had said. We amended it to sex where both people’s last names were known quantities.

  Honestly, the vicarious sex has been nice, but would maybe be less of a problem if I could stop imagining it with a younger man’s face, a younger man’s body. The same undeniable charisma, though, the same surety and confidence. I have always thought of myself as confident, too, for the most part. And a bit misunderstood. I know who I am, despite what the press says. I’m a strong, independent woman.

  Who kind of wonders what it might be like to stop being so damn good.

  “Personally,” Rowan says now, “I’m more turned on by Anastasia. That chick is all-caps HAWT.”

  I laugh, but study the actress. She’s naked, her hands tied above her head, a blindfold over her eyes while Christian brushes a duster type instrument down her body. I’ve never been into pain, but whatever this is that he’s doing to her, it sure doesn’t look painful. She’s shuddering in delight, and trusting that whatever he’s about to do next will feel good too. And it looks like it feels super good.

  It looks really dirty.

  Imagine how dirty it would be if it were my hands tied up, if it were Nick brushing sensitive instruments down my body. Imagine what it would be like to stop giving a damn about what other people would think of me if I let him—how did he put it? See more of me.

  I shiver at the image that comes to mind: him, fully clothed in those ripped-up jeans and tight T-shirt, watching every move I make as I slowly remove the last of my clothes and stand naked before him. He’d crook one finger, and I’d be shaking as I’d—

  “You okay?” Hadley asks. Her face is concerned as she reaches over to lay a cool hand across my heated forehead.

  “It’s just so hot. I’ve never had sex like that.” I’m quiet for a moment as Hadley silently agrees and Rowan smirks. There’s a decent chance she is the Christian in most of her torrid liaisons.

  “You still have time,” Rowan says. “Everyone knows women hit their sexual peak in their thirties.”

  “I have to wait another year for mine? Damn. Wait, when do men peak?” Hadley asks.

  “I don’t know, just after college or something. They’re much younger.”

  I sigh heavily for what must
be the twelfth time this evening. Maybe all of this, the whole Nick thing, can just be chalked up to basic science. Maybe, since we both are in our sexual primes, the dance we shared just released some kind of pheromones or something.

  And maybe they just overwhelmed my common sense that night.

  Biological.

  Except that I haven’t stopped thinking about him since. Any proximity we have to each other definitely increases my lust, but it isn’t some fluke of his sweat. No, it’s more than that. It’s a kink, maybe, I think as the onscreen scene heats up, this longing to just let go, to explore my basest desires. Desires I didn’t know I had until I met him.

  “Do you think he’s hard right now?” Rowan asks.

  And before I can really think about what I’m saying, I ask,”Nick?”

  Both Hadley and Rowan turn to look at me—more like stare accusingly.

  Then I realize what I’ve said, and my face goes hot.

  “Wait, what?” I ask, trying to cover, doing a lousy job. No one is fooled. I’m a bad liar on my best days.

  Rowan’s delighted eyes never leave my face as she pauses the movie, freezing the image of Dakota on the screen and reminding me that I forgot to have my assistant send her a birthday card.

  Hadley jumps in immediately. “Did you say . . . Nick?” She scoots closer to me on the oversized sofa.

  “No. I think you misheard me. I said Christian. Of course.” Good actress, bad liar will go on my tombstone.

  “She said Nick. As in Nick Ryder?” Rowan is looking at Hadley now, and I’m pathetically grateful that this means Hadley didn’t tell her about the kissing at the club.