NICHOLAI
Watching my father walk out the door, although he was shaking his head, I felt a shift in the universe. I had a woman at my side who’d defend me against him. To the Nicholas Grimm!
She was unafraid. Completely!
I was shaking with emotions I had never felt before. “You are one amazing woman, Natasha Greenwell. Even my own mother never stood up for me against him.”
She looked at me with sadness in her blue eyes. Her hand moved over my cheek as she looked at me. “We have so much to figure out, Nic.”
“We do. The main word there, being, we.” I pulled her around in front of me and kissed her with a passion I’d never felt before.
I had a partner. I’d never had one before. I had a woman who’d stay by my side and face the demons with me. She had to see, she and I were something neither of us saw coming.
I picked her up and carried her to my bedroom. She had her arms around my neck, gazing at me. “What are you doing?”
“I am taking you to my bed. A bed no woman has ever been in.” I kissed her as I took her into the hallway.
When our mouths parted she was looking into my eyes. “And what do you plan on doing to me when you get me in there?”
“Kissing you all over and making love to you, Natasha. I want to make love to you. I want nothing between us. I want your skin on mine and I want to feel you. All of you.” I kissed her again as I pushed the door to my bedroom open with my foot.
Her mouth was working with mine to deepen the kiss we shared. It was the first real kiss I’d ever had. A shared kiss. No domination on either side. Just a coalition bent on the same purpose. To express our care for one another.
As I laid her down on my bed, I gazed in awe at how beautiful she looked in my bed. I’d never allowed any woman in my bedroom at all. She was the first and from what I thought at that time, the only woman who would ever grace my sanctuary.
She swallowed then said, “This was in my new set of rules. Once a week, at the very least, I wanted to make love with you.” Her eyes glistened and I kissed a tear that had managed to escape, away from her rose-petal-soft cheek.
I pulled her clothes off her in a slow fashion, touching her exposed body with a reverence I hadn’t before. The truth was I’d never made love before. I’d laid out specific plans for how I was going to take a woman but I’d never relied on going on instinct alone.
After undressing her, I stood back and took my clothes off as she watched me. Her gaze told me she admired my physique. But there was more there than mere lust in those blue eyes. I saw it. She cared for me.
Before I touched her, I told her words I’d never uttered before. “I think I love you, Natasha.”
Her lips went up in a half smile. “That’s funny. I think I love you too, Nic.”
My heart fluttered in my chest as I laid my body down next to hers and stroked her bare stomach as I looked into her eyes. It was as if I was in a dream. That could never be my real life. No woman could ever tame me, break me, call me hers.
Natasha was not a normal woman, in my opinion. She was more than any woman I’d ever known. My money did not make her cave to me so she could have as much of it as I’d bestow upon her. My looks didn’t bring her to her knees in hopes of getting to lay her hands on me.
She was something else. She was the one for me and I was beginning to get that cemented into my stubborn head. Her body trembled as I moved my hands over it.
It was not from fear this time it was from pure unadulterated emotion. She was falling for me. I knew she was from the very start. I could see it in her eyes.
The bond agreement would never work with a woman like her. She was not made to be broken. My plans for her had changed when she showed me that side of her. The protectiveness she had for me was a thing I never even knew I’d like.
But then again, no one had ever been protective over me. Not even my parents. I recalled being bullied in the schoolyard by a boy three years older than the 11-year-old I was then. When I came home with a black eye and busted lip, my father spanked me.
My mother turned away from the scene, leaving me to him. After he spanked me many times, he told me I was to stand up to that boy and if I came home hurt by him again, he’d add to the punishment.
I had no choices then. I had to become brutal if I was to come home unscathed by the older and bigger boy. My father had not taught me how to defend myself in the least. He acted as if I should’ve instinctively known.
That instinct had not kicked in. If there was one at all. I went to school with a rock in my backpack. I put it in a side pocket so I could easily get to it. I knew if I held that rock in my hand my punch would carry more weight and when that boy called to me to face him, yet again. I did so with the rock in my hand.
His face was a bloody mess by the time I stopped and I was unharmed. As I left that schoolyard with kids cheering for me, it was not victory I felt. It was defeat. I had become something my father would be proud of and that made me sick inside.
That feeling just grew as I grew older and found the ways he demanded I be, always brought more sickness to my soul. When I was only 15-years-old, he brought a woman to my bedroom and simply pushed her inside, then closed the door.
I had no idea why he’d done such a thing until the woman came to me and showed me exactly why she was there. My first tutor in the sexual subject. And she was to teach me to lord over her. Not make love to her or her to me. She taught me the ways of my father’s world and I grew sicker inside.
She made me spank her when I did not want to. She made me act like an animal as I plunged my cock into her stinking depths of wet heat. I hated her but more so, I hated my father.
My older brothers clamored for my father’s attention. They have always had hard feelings for me because my father married my mother and he never married theirs. My brothers have two different mothers. It seemed my father never wanted to have more than one child with any woman.
Their mothers came before his tryst in the BBC with my mother which carried rules for such things as pregnancies, else he’d have never made an honest woman of her either.
My mother was a nice woman when my father was not around. She’d do nice things for me and she’d even slip in the word, love, sometimes. A thing my father never allowed, as in his opinion, it would make me soft and he’d never have a soft son. Not Nicholas Grimm!
The touch of her hand moving over my cheek brought me out of my inner thoughts. “You look like you’re a million miles away, Nic. You can talk to me you know. You can tell me anything you want or need to. I’m here for you. Use my ear to your advantage, my prince.”
As I gazed down at her from my raised position, I could feel it enveloping me. The feeling that would be my demise. Complete love for another human being. The straw that would break my father’s back.