CHAPTER NINETEEN
He’d branded her soul, Emma thought as she fought her way through the bleary aftershocks of pleasure. Nikolai Vulkov had just destroyed her for any other man, past or future. She was ruined. And she couldn’t care less.
He’d collapsed on her, spent and satisfied, before rolling to the side and gathering her into him. And here she rested, lips smugly curved and the scent of their lovemaking hanging in the air.
She’d never be able to look at this bed without seeing him ranging over her, his dark eyes possessive and lustful.
God, she was going to have to get a new bed when Niko left Blue Moon. Hell, she was going to need a house that didn’t carry the ghosts of sexual perfection.
“You’re smiling.” Niko’s lips moved against her hair.
“I don’t think my face is capable of anything but this right now,” she sighed, refusing to open her eyes.
“Do me a favor and stay there,” he said, slipping out of bed.
Emma obliged, finding no desire to get back to life. She wanted to bask here, her body loose and wonderfully used, perfectly sated.
She snuggled into the pillow and thought of nothing but how good she felt.
The quiet click of a shutter had her lazily opening one eye.
Click.
Naked and unapologetic, Niko stood over her, camera held to his eye. “Just like that. Satisfied, smug, fucking beautiful.”
She arched an eyebrow at him, and he clicked away. “Is this a photographer’s version of a sex tape?” Emma asked, working her fingers through her tangle of curls.
“Very funny. This is a photographer’s version of perfection. So shut up and smile at me like you own me.”
She did just that and laughed as his shutter clicked in rapid succession.
“What are you doing?” she asked finally.
“Trust me, Emma. You’re going to love these,” he told her, putting the camera on the nightstand and sliding in next to her.
“Don’t even think about showing those to anyone ever,” she warned him.
“When you see these, you’ll want the world to see them.”
“I doubt that very much.”
He merely hummed an answer against her skin.
“Sounds like someone got over his slump,” Emma said, tracing her finger over his chest.
He was perfection beneath her hands, she thought. The muscled fullness of his chest and shoulders gave way to lean, shredded abs tapering to a still-hard cock of spectacular proportions. His thighs were strong and muscled. And that face, that fallen angel face with dark eyes and a cocky smile, looked at her with as much heat and need as when he’d knocked on her door.
“It’s hard not to with this inspiration,” he fired back.
Emma rose up on her elbow and teased her fingers down his chest, over every ripple of abs.
“Are we still friends?” she teased.
Niko grinned. “Baby, we’re best friends now.”
“Am I going to get to see those pictures you just took?”
“They’re as much yours as mine.”
“Good. How do you feel about cold stuffed mushrooms and a glass of cabernet?”
He nuzzled at her neck, teeth grazing her skin and nipping at her shoulder. “I’m feeling amenable to room temperature anything,” he teased.
“Thank God, I’m starving.” Emma hopped out of bed, feeling Niko’s eyes follow her. “Clothes or no clothes?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Definitely no clothes,” he decided.
“You have excellent taste, Mr. Vulkov.” Emma tossed him a saucy wink and yanked the bed sheet off of him, knotting it between her breasts.
“Baby, don’t I know it.”
Wrapped in bed sheets, they sat cross-legged on the couch drinking wine and picking at the mushrooms with their fingers. They laughed and flirted, teasing each other with soft kisses and long, silky touches, enjoying the peace and quiet of the long night before them.
They both jumped when Emma’s front door burst open.
“Aunt Emma! Do you wanna bake cookies with me?” Aurora skipped inside. Emma yanked the sheet up to her chin and shoved Niko down on the couch cushions.
Aurora stopped and frowned at them. “Are you making a couch tent? Where are your clothes?”
Beckett burst through the door at a run, shielding his eyes. Diesel the dog bounded in on his heels with a happy bark.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry. She got past me. Don’t tell Gia!” Beckett picked Aurora up, tossed her over his shoulder, and sprinted through the door with the little girl giggling. It slammed shut leaving them in stunned silence.
Diesel sauntered over and put his big, gray head on Emma’s lap looking mournfully at the mushrooms.
The door burst open again. “Shit. Sorry,” Beckett stumbled around the table into the living room and grabbed Diesel much the same way he’d carted Aurora out and hauled ass for the door.
Niko picked up his glass of wine. “Well, that’s never happened to me before.”
“Did that really just happen?” Emma covered her face and groaned. “My step-brother-in-law boss just witnessed our post-coital bliss.”
“That should make the next family get-together fun,” Niko quipped.
“I need to get my own place,” Emma decided. “I’ve been putting it off because I wanted to be sure I was staying, but I cannot live in my sister’s backyard forever.”
“We’ll go house shopping,” Niko said, leaning in to taste her neck. “After.”
“After what? Dinner?”
“I was thinking maybe we should skip straight to dessert and circle back around to dinner.”
--------
Hours later, wrung out and sated, Emma laid her head on Niko’s chest in the dark. She listened to the thud of his heart as it slowly returned to a measured pace. “Would it be wrong to say I’m so glad you had a life crisis? Because I’m feeling rather grateful at the moment.”
He laughed softly, lips moving against her hair. “I’m not feeling particularly regretful myself.”
She sighed and used the pads of her fingers to trace meaningless patterns on Niko’s chest. He let her play in silence for a few minutes before drawing her fingers to his mouth to kiss each tip. “How are you not taken, Emmaline Merill?”
“The pickings around Blue Moon can be… an acquired taste,” she said diplomatically.
“What about before? In L.A. There’s no way you were single out there.”
“I became very particular when I lived there,” she admitted. “It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got time unless Aurora is going to jump on the bed and ask to sleep over.”
Emma debated with herself. Opening up about past mistakes made her feel uncomfortably vulnerable. But Niko had been nothing but honest with her. She cleared her throat and took the plunge. “When I first moved to L.A., I was very young, very naïve,” Emma sighed, fighting the internal flinch at the memory of her own stupidity. “There was this guy who was several years older than me, more experienced, incredibly good looking.”
“He sounds like a dick,” Niko said, squeezing her hand.
She gave a wry smile and returned the squeeze of his hand. “He would surprise me with flowers, gifts. There were fancy dinners out, a weekend in Napa. It was enough to keep me from questioning why he never answered his phone when I called or why we never spent the night at his place.”
She could tell he knew where she was going with this story.
“I was just a shift manager at the time, so I’d work catering jobs on the side to make ends meet. I was mixing a Manhattan at a fundraiser when I saw him. He was supposed to be ‘out of town on business.’ But he was there with an aspiring model/actress. Beautiful, young, naïve.” She gave a sad laugh.
Niko threaded his fingers into her hair and stroked but said nothing.
“I controlled my considerable temper and bided my time. He wandered off to make a phone call—me on my cell, oddly enough—and I approached her with a tray of canapés and a line about how handsome her date was. They’d been ‘dating’ for two months. I was the other woman.”
“So what did you do?”
“Because you know I did something.” This time her smile was real. “I dragged Thandie—that’s her name—into the ladies’ room. I broke the news, maybe a bit harshly.” She regretted that, but it couldn’t be helped now. “When she recovered, we took a selfie together and texted it to him.”
“Cold. I like it,” Niko grinned.
“He called me first, which hurt Thandie even more and pissed me off even more. After I gave him a piece of my mind and hung up on him, he called her and gave her the same apologies, the same promises.”
“Did it work?”
“Not then but eventually. They got married a year later and divorced a year after that.”
“What about you?”
“I became much more selective about who I dated. I’d been seeing someone leaning toward serious when Jax showed up in L.A. with a job offer.”
“What happened to ‘leaning toward serious’? He didn’t want to switch coasts?”
Emma sighed. “He wouldn’t have wanted to. His life and job were there. It wouldn’t be fair to ask him to uproot everything for me.” She hadn’t actually asked Mason, hadn’t given him the chance to say no. But it was for the best. They’d both been disappointed that things hadn’t worked out, disappointed but not devastated. It was, Emma thought, how adults parted ways, civilly and without drama.
“What made you choose here over him?”
“Family,” Emma said without hesitating. “I missed my dad, and with Gia and the kids here, the decision was a no-brainer. I missed birthdays and Sunday lunches and pop-ins. I’m happy here. I feel like I belong and what I do matters to people here.”
“That’s a good feeling.”
“Nikolai?”
“Hmm?”
“When are you going to let me see the wedding pictures?” she whispered.
He pinched the flesh of her arm and made her squeal. “One-track mind.”
She trailed her fingers lower over his abs and then lower still to wrap around his shaft. “Maybe a two-track mind.”
--------
Blue Moon nights were quieter than the city, and Nikolai couldn’t remember ever enjoying a night more than this one. Emma slept soundly in his arms, her leg thrown over his, one hand resting over his heart.
In his considerable experience, there’d never been a woman who had captivated him, body and soul, like Emmaline. What happened here tonight had changed everything for him, and he needed time to process, adapt, refocus. He’d lost himself in her and in that loss had found something bigger and more essential than what he’d known before.
It was love between them, of that he was certain. He didn’t understand what it meant, yet. But he did know he wasn’t letting this woman out of his arms.
Emma cuddled closer to him in her sleep, and his lips curved. She wasn’t so concerned with vulnerability in her sleep. His serious, reserved girl needed him to tease out the adventuress in her. And he would show her what lay outside the lines, just beyond the rules.