Chapter 25
Tat: Tit for tat; an equivalent.
A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
Francis Grose
Mariana froze.
I know.
With those two simple words, Nick shifted the power balance. And he knew it, she suspected. But she was too far gone to care. He knew that, too. Drat the man.
“I want you to need me,” he said.
Something about the way the word need scraped against his throat nearly undid her.
He slipped off the bed and stepped out of his unlaced trousers. Her unblinking gaze dropped to his hard shaft, and she felt the slide of her tongue against her lower lip.
“All of me,” he finished.
She observed him from across the length of the bed, and a dark hunger took shape within her. Too much distance separated them. She tipped forward and came to her hands and knees. With a sense of unhurried purpose, she began crawling across the silk expanse, her gaze holding fast onto his. Just at the edge, just shy of him, she stopped, her mouth a fingerbreadth from his ready member, her head and back deeply arched so she could hold his gaze.
“Is that”—They both knew what that was—“all you are?”
“At the moment.”
Anticipation skittered through her veins.
“And the moment is all we have.”
Her gaze still locked onto his, her tongue reached out to lick the tip of his manhood before circling it once . . . twice . . . thoroughly wetting the crown. Her eyes drifted shut as her body pressed forward, and he slid inside her open mouth one exquisite inch at a time.
Never in her life had she been so brazen, so wanton, so uninhibited. A deep moan of pleasure vibrated through her even as she squeezed her thighs together to relieve the ache between them.
He went utterly still. “Do that again.”
Again, she moaned, longer and louder this time, the vibrations of the moan pulsing through his hard, velvety column. His fingers threaded through her hair, and his hips rocked forward and back. She fell into a rhythm with him as his manhood slipped in and out of her mouth. Again, she moaned.
His fingers clutched tighter, his hips rocking, now thrusting, into her mouth. She sat slightly back as her fingers gripped the base of him, her mouth sucking his crown. She glanced up. He was completely gone, his body tensing, reaching . . . Her hands grabbed his hips and held, effectively bringing the momentum to a screeching halt, his breath coming fast and hard. His fingers released their grip on her hair and began caressing her scalp in tiny circular motions.
She almost felt undone by the unconscious measure of comfort. She’d denied him release, yet it was she who was being soothed.
But she wouldn’t be undone. She rocked her hips backward, allowing the length of his surely painfully erect phallus to slide from her mouth. She sat back on her heels and faced him.
They could stop here. They both knew it.
But she wanted more. She wanted everything.
She reached out and pressed her palm against the muscular flat of his chest as her legs swung around to the edge of the bed. Positioned in the corner behind him, she noticed a small chair. She hadn’t formulated a plan for what would come next, but one suddenly formed as she came to a stand.
Her arm stiffened, one foot moved forward, and she prodded him backward. She repeated the motion until the backs of his legs met the chair. With one final nudge, she pushed him down.
“Even when there’s a bed in the room,” he said, “we can’t manage to use it.”
Another time his words would have elicited a flirtatious response, but not now. Not when the moonlit length of his body offered such exquisite distraction. Defined muscles, at once sinewy and substantial, stretched down him, leading her eye across a man’s body hardened by time and energy. Speaking of hard . . .
Her gaze locked onto his thick manhood. “Hard and true and ever at the ready,” emerged from her mouth. Her eyes startled up to meet his. She hadn’t meant to speak the words aloud.
A knowing smile tipped up the right side of his mouth and sent a shot of lust straight through her. He’d been right: he knew exactly what she wanted and how. There was no use denying herself any longer.
In a pair of efficient motions, she straddled him and the chair. Poised inches above the glistening head of his manhood, her sex throbbed in anticipation of the press of him against her flesh. She leaned forward and braced one hand on the chair back, her loose hair falling around their faces and forming a silky curtain. Her other hand wrapped around the base of him. His pupils dilated, nearly extending to the outer edge of his irises.
Her hips lowered until the crown of his manhood touched the entrance of her sex. A heartbeat later, she began taking him inside her, his length a delicious, hard slide, until, at last, he filled her to completeness.
A breathy, “Oh,” fell from her lips.
Impossibly, he felt better now than he had last night or even this afternoon. He kept getting better and better. She needed him more and more. He was the opiate, and she the addict. She would never get enough.
Her fingertips brushed across the patch of hair at the base of his cock. Lightly, almost reverently, they trailed up the ridged muscles of his stomach and across the wide expanse of his chest. Finally reaching his broad shoulders, she dug in her nails, tilted her hips forward, and ground further down onto him.
Fluttery waves of pleasure and pain shot through her. Nothing beyond the points where their bodies met mattered. This must be how an addict felt the moment the drug filled the lungs.
She wanted to take him in slowly and deliberately, but each thrust of her hips stripped her resolve away until all that was left was an overwhelming urge to feed this desire that refused to be slaked. Still, she would try, her thighs tensing and releasing, sliding her up and down him. Her forehead met his, her hair encircling them, her sweat mingling with his as it dripped between their bodies.
“Fuck me, Mariana,” he whispered into her ear, impossibly notching up her lust for him.
His long, capable fingers reached out and gripped her hips, steadying her before he increased the rhythm of his thrusts. Mariana’s sense of control spiraled away as his body demanded more of her. She was reduced to a raw nerve capable of nothing other than giving and receiving pleasure.
And she cared not.
Not when the pleasure spiked ever higher and higher, winding her sex ever tighter and tighter until she reached the sweetest spot of anxiety.
“Nick,” she cried out, “please.”
His fingers found her face and pushed her hair back. “Look at me,” he demanded. Her eyes found his. “And do not look away.”
His gaze holding her in thrall to him, he returned his hands to her hips and began measuredly moving her atop him as if rationing out his strokes one . . . at . . . a . . . time.
Sudden and unexpected intimacy flared between them as their gazes held fast onto each other. Her sex began to curl inward and tighten. Storm cloud gray held and steadied her as a glorious and unstoppable momentum accumulated in her core and began to overtake her. She reached, she strived up toward a freedom that only he could provide. A few more strokes and her sex shattered in climax, tiny earthquakes of pleasure rippling through her as she shook off the bound world and tumbled into ecstasy.
“Mariana,” fell from his mouth as his hips continued their relentless thrust into her once . . . twice before he shouted out his own release.
All that remained of him and her was a confusion of breath. Lungs expanding, lungs contracting in arrhythmic pants. Her chin fit perfectly into the hollow of his collarbone. She’d known that once. Now she knew it again.
“Mariana,” she heard as if from a great distance. Her eyes squeezed shut in protest. Too soon.
His hands reached up to gently cup her face. She resisted the urge to nuzzle into their warmth and, instead, followed their direction. She shifted her weight back and faced him square.
He pressed forward and touched his lips to hers.
It was an almost chaste kiss—the sort of kiss that shouldn’t follow such an animalistic coupling.
It was a perfect kiss.
It was just the sort of kiss that could weaken a woman’s resolve.
Without deepening the kiss, he broke away, a shy smile on his lips. “It occurred to me that we hadn’t yet done that.”
Mariana felt exposed. How did a simple kiss have the power to shatter her after what they had just done?
Yet it wasn’t simply the kiss. It was the coo of his voice, too. Soft and sweet, she didn’t recognize that voice . . . because she’d never heard it. Nick had never spoken to her thus. Or looked at her thus.
Actually, that wasn’t true. He had the same look earlier tonight. It was a look that could give a woman hope . . . If she didn’t know better.
Her spine stiffened, and her feet hit the floor. When she pushed off him to a stand, her traitorous body experienced a momentary pang for the loss of him. At least, she hoped it was momentary.
Hope. How recently she’d experienced that emotion. How soon it had crushed her.
She moved to the foot of the bed and perched against its edge. Eyebrows drawn together, a bewildered Nick stared out at her.
“What changed between this afternoon and tonight?” he asked.
She should’ve been glad he’d spoken the words first. But she wasn’t. A naïve part of her thought she could seduce Villefranche and leave Paris without an accounting with Nick.
“We must talk about why you are here in Villefranche’s rooms.”
She forced out a dry laugh. “I prefer to be dressed for that particular conversation.”
Drained of the fiery energy that had propelled her through this day and night, she stood heavily and trod to the dressing table where her clothes lay.
He reached for his discarded trousers and proceeded to jerk them up his legs. “Mariana”—
Notes of frustration infused his voice. Good. That was a start.
—“we must discuss your intentions tonight if we are to salvage—”
“Salvage?” she shot out as she swung around to face him, reinvigorated by the coming confrontation. “There is nothing between us to salvage.” A confounded silence stretched between them. “How long have you known Percy is alive?”
The question seized control of the room, sinking in and settling between them where it would remain forever. The flummoxed expression clouding his features told her that he didn’t understand that yet.
“Ten years,” he stated flatly. He sounded . . . unapologetic.
Like that, Mariana’s anger returned like an Arctic fury. It was an anger that would sustain her through this conversation, through this night, and on through to London. “How could you keep it a secret?”
Nick grabbed his shirt and shrugged it onto his shoulders. A pang of loss for the sight of his gorgeous body shot through her. It sank in that this was really happening. Impossibly, a part of her had been hanging on to the hope that there were correct words to fix this situation—that he and she could be salvaged.
“It wasn’t my secret to tell,” he said, pitching his body into a deceptively lazy sprawl in the chair opposite hers.
“Olivia is my sister,” she began righteously, “and I am your—”
“Wife? Make up your mind.” His gaze held hers. “Percy was in too deep, and I couldn’t risk exposing him. Then time kept passing, and he kept staying buried. It was never my place to tell.”
“How could you be so ruthless?” she fired back. “Are you so without feeling? Are you so without humanity?”
He pushed to a stand, impatience evident.
“Do not come near me,” she stated, slowly enunciating each word.
He stopped cold. “Percy has naught to do with us.”
“How can you say that? After all the secrets and lies, I could never trust you.”
“Percy was part of a life that had naught to do with you.” He took a step forward. “A life I’m leaving behind.”
“Why bother? You will never change.”
“I’m not saying I shall.” He took another step forward. “You are in my blood, Mariana. That will never change. I’m done fighting it.”
“I’m in your blood? How dare you speak those words to me? That has never been our problem. The problem is that I’ve never been in your heart.”
Another step brought him within a few feet of her. She had only to reach out to bring her body into contact with his. But what would that accomplish?
“You want me, too.”
So bold were his words. She could ignore or deny them, but neither would do. Only the truth would serve this night. “I’ve wanted you too much,” she confessed.
His eyes searched hers. “Is it ever too much?”
“There is nothing substantial about you. Nothing I can hold onto. You always slip through my fingers.”
She stood and made to step past him. She must leave. There was nothing more to say.
Her flight, however, was arrested when he said, “I love you.”
Contained within his gaze was more emotion than she would have thought possible: anger, fear, and love. Yes, love. How had she never noticed before? And now that she had?
It was too late. Sometimes love wasn’t enough.
“I know,” she said. “But here’s what else I know about you: that other life, too, is in your blood, and I can’t compete with it. I leave Paris at dawn.”
“This isn’t what you want.”
“Perhaps not,” she returned, “but it is what I need.”
She turned and strode through the doorway without a single backward glance. She had some packing to complete and a restless night to suffer through. Then it was on to London . . . And on with her life. The same life she’d been leading these last ten years. And if a little voice protested that it wasn’t possible? That Paris had changed her? She would pack that away as well.
What couldn’t be isolated so easily was the wretched feeling that a bottomless void yawned at her feet and would consume her.
She’d survived it once.
Perhaps she would survive it again.