CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

ALICIA

“Wow,” I breathed when Nick’s body finally stilled above mine.

He collapsed onto me, adjusting his weight to the side to avoid crushing me. I ran my fingers through his dark hair as our breathing slowed, and he pressed soft kisses onto my shoulder. Every touch of his lips against my sensitive skin sent small shudders through me, like echoes of the orgasm that had just rocked my world.

“Yeah,” he agreed, smiling against my skin. Nick looked sexy as all hell with his hair sticking up in every direction and his mouth slightly puffy and swollen from our passionate kisses. There was a look in his eyes that I couldn’t quite decipher, though.

The emerald depths, that should’ve held nothing but satisfaction if his orgasm had been as amazing as mine, shone with something that looked a lot like turmoil. I didn’t like it. Not one little bit.

“I’m going to get cleaned up, then we’re going to talk,” I told him, my legs shaky as I rose from the bed.

Nick didn’t say anything. He simply nodded and tucked a muscular arm behind his head as his eyes roved over every inch of my body. I could feel him staring at me all the way to the bathroom, then heard him sigh a little when the door clicked into place behind me.

I sat down on the edge of the tub that was so big, it was more like a tiny swimming pool, and I stared at my reflection in the mirror. “You finally did it. You got the truth and your man in one night.”

My voice sounded incredulous as it chimed softly in the bathroom. I could barely wrap my mind around everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours. I took the time cleaning myself up to compose my thoughts.

My father wasn’t the man I thought he was, but Nick… Nick was everything I thought he was and so much more. After I’d slapped him on the beach, I was sure that he was going to pull away from me again. I wanted him to, if I was being completely honest with myself. Because no matter how much I lusted after him, there was no getting away from the fact that he was protecting a criminal.

It didn’t matter that the criminal in question was my father, or that he’d eventually grown a conscience and turned himself and others in. All that mattered was the fact that he was a freaking criminal, and Nick had been protecting him.

Then he said all that stuff on the beach, and I finally realized that what he was saying was true. My father hired him, sure. But he was hired to protect me. The way he was staring at me in the moonlight, his eyes blazing with sincerity and his voice pleading with me like he couldn’t stand it if I didn’t believe him, like it would rip him apart irreparably if I didn’t, that’s what got through to me.

Nick was finally being honest and open with me, and he put everything on the table. It was right there in his eyes. He was playing every last card that he had, and he was doing it for me, so that I wouldn’t think that he was a bad guy. How I could deny him when he was letting go of his precious rules and baring his soul to me?

I couldn’t. Because I recognized that it was exactly what he’d been doing, letting me peek into his closely guarded heart and soul, past his bullshit rules and hardened exterior to the man he really was. It was huge for him. I knew that much. The fact that he was doing it for me, coupled with the fact that I’d been crazy about him since the first time I saw him, I didn’t stand a chance against all of that.

I didn’t want to stand a chance against that.

In the reflection of the large mirror in the spacious bathroom, I could see the enormous smile that spread on my lips as I came to the realization that Nick had finally let me in. After all these weeks of desire and verbal sparring, of him shutting me down at every turn, I’d finally gotten what I wanted from the very beginning.

Him.

No biggie. Only it was. The biggest. My heart pounding in my chest and the happy feeling in my heart that was sending bursts of joy through my entire body told me so.

I squared my shoulders, ran my fingers through my hair in attempt to tame it, and winked at myself in the mirror before I went back out into the bedroom. To him. To my man.

The man of my dreams who was finally mine. I had no intentions of ever letting him go.

Nick’s eyes found mine as soon as I stepped into the bedroom. He was sitting up against the white wooden headboard, his arms crossed and his legs spread wide under the sheets that clung to his hips. The sight of him like that, save for the crossed arms, had my knees feeling weak.

The turmoil in his eyes before I’d gone into the bathroom flashed in my mind. Combined with the crossed arms, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that he was doubting whether he’d made the right choices these last few hours.

I needed to lighten the mood if I was going to get him to relax and talk to me about it, so I smiled and stopped in the center of the room, cocking my hip and arching an eyebrow at him. “What are you staring at?”

His lips kicked up slightly in one corner, then the contemplative look was back on his handsome features. “I think that’s fairly obvious.”

Smirking, I rounded the bed and raised a leg over his hips to straddle him. He let me. “True.”

He sighed, his hands raising to plant themselves on my hips. “It’s no fair, you looking all rumpled and sexy. I can’t think straight.”

I reached up to tap my index finger against his temple. “You think too much anyway. What is it that has you needing to straighten it out right now?”

Nick peered up at me contemplatively, tilting his head to the side. “I’ve never slept with a client before.”

“Are you seriously pouting about that?” I teased, letting my hands fall to his broad shoulders and tracing the strong muscles that bunched slightly under my touch. From there, I followed their corded ropes to his biceps and finally, to the dark veins in his hands. “Because from where I’m sitting, there’s nothing to pout about.”

His eyes darkened a bit as I continued exploring the hard planes of his body that I’d fantasized about touching so many times. “You don’t get it. There are rules to the bodyguard-client relationship. I’ve broken so many of them today that I’ve lost count.”

My eyes rolled to the ceiling, a deep sigh escaping before I locked my gaze on his. “The rules again? I thought we were done with that portion of the relationship.”

My fingers found his flat nipples, and I pinched down on them. Nick groaned in response. “I’m not talking about my rules, princess. I’m talking about the moral and ethical ones of my profession.”

I brought one hand up to cup his cheek, looking directly at him with all the confidence I could muster. “Does this feel wrong to you?”

To prove my point, I rolled my hips against him. The sheet was the only thing between our most private parts, and I knew that he could feel my wet heat against him. It was obvious because he was hardening beneath me again. Nick shook his head. “No, it doesn’t feel wrong. But that doesn’t change the fact that it is.”

I kept writhing above him, my hands roaming his ripped torso while we talked. “Does it feel immoral to have my hands on your body?”

My fingertips darted over the strong plane of his chest and along the hard ridges of the blocks on his abdomen. He groaned again as my hand dipped lower, to the smattering of hair below his belly button. “No,” he said.

“Then what’s the problem?” I tugged lightly at the hairs that formed his happy trail, raising my eyebrow at him in question. “We’re both consenting adults. I’ve wanted you from the first time I saw you, and I’m pretty sure it was the same for you. That you felt the same instant connection that I did, the same pull to each other that was as unavoidable as it is unexplainable.”

“I did,” he answered after only a moment of hesitation. Then his hands moved from my hips to my thighs, and he squeezed them tight, arching his hips into the circling motions I was making with mine.

“Then you also know that my being yours and you being mine was inevitable.” I sighed, my eyes falling shut from the pleasure that was starting to shoot from my core, simply from feeling him completely hard again and writhing beneath me.

It ignited a fire in my heart to know that no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t resist me. Nick’s grip on my thighs tightened, and then he rolled us over, flipping me onto my back and drawing one of my knees up so that it curled over his ass.

He kissed me deeply, murmuring his agreement against my lips. “Completely inevitable.”

When he kissed me again, it was with unbridled passion and with so much emotion that when we finally came up for air, we were both breathing hard and staring into each other’s eyes like there was nothing else that existed in the universe beyond the two of us.

Nick’s eyes were burning into mine as he pressed a soft kiss at the corner of my mouth. “I think I’m falling in love with you, Alicia.”

His voice was low and raspy, but his words rang clear as a bell in my head. My heart swelled to the bursting point, doing the happiest of dances in my chest. I cupped his face between both of my hands and kissed him hard.

“I don’t think,” I said. “I know.”

His lips curled into a sexy smile, and his eyes lit up with joy. “Is that your way of telling me that you love me, too?”

A soft giggle fell from my lips. “You had me at hello. So yes, Nick Harden, that is my way of telling you that I love you, too.”

A bright smile spread across his face before his lips came crashing back onto mine, kissing me breathless and letting me know exactly how much he loved me. Our bodies became one, limbs entwined as our loving kisses turned heated and wanting. It wasn’t long before we were both moaning, chasing those high peaks of climax and flying right over them. Together.

Afterward, he pulled me to his side and held me tight, his head resting in one of his hands as he peered down at me. “What we going to do about your father?”

That was the million-dollar question. Or several billion dollars, in my father’s case. “That’s between me and him. I’m not a little girl anymore.”