Everything for Us (The Bad Boys #3)(25)
Author: M. Leighton

Another shiver runs through my body like aftershocks of an earthquake. During the hours I was curled up on that floor, I imagined that the person lying near me was another woman, scared and alone. Unable to move or see or speak, like me. Only she was wounded. Badly wounded. Maybe beaten unconscious. She never made any sounds; her breathing never changed when I moaned and struggled to talk to her behind my gag. Until her breathing stopped, until it ceased to sweep through the quiet of the room. After that, the silence was deafening.

I lay on my side, my arm, shoulder, hip, and thigh having long since gone numb, and I cried. I cried for whoever had lain on the floor of the same room and passed away without a sound, without a loved one. Without a prayer of being discovered. Surely somewhere someone is mourning her loss, maybe even looking for her. Unless they know what she was mixed up in. And who she was mixed up with.

Then again, maybe it wasn’t even a woman. Maybe it’s best that I never know.

I’m not even aware of the tears coursing down my cheeks until the feel of Nash’s fingers brings me back to the present, back to the land of the living.

“I shouldn’t have asked.”

I smile a watery smile. “I guess we’re even, then.”

He gazes down into my eyes, neither of us saying a word, his fingers still pressed to my damp cheek. The sound of the piano fades into the background, as does the world and all the pain I’ve found in it so recently.

Instantly, I’m absorbed, consumed. Just like I want to be. For whatever reason, when I’m with Nash, I’m free of my life and the worry of it. I’m free of the past and the terror of it. I’m free of everything but him. He’s overwhelming and I need to be overwhelmed. He’s uncontrollable and I need to be out of control. He’s the promise of something . . . else and I need something else.

“I think there are times in life when you need something to lose yourself in, something to take away the pain, take away the feeling of everything else. Something to numb it. Just for a while.” As quietly as the beat of my heart, Nash articulates exactly what I’ve been thinking and feeling. And then he makes me an offer I can’t refuse, one that I don’t even want to refuse. He leans in closer, his lips brushing the shell of my ear as he speaks. “I can be that for you. We can be that for each other.” Chills race down my arm.

Nash’s hand moves into the hair at the nape of my neck. He cups the back of my head and angles his face until he can draw the lobe of my ear into his mouth. I feel the brush of his hot tongue and my eyes drift closed. “I could make you forget everything else. I can make sure that you feel nothing but pleasure, that you can’t think past what I’m doing to your body, what I’m making you feel. With my hands,” he says, pulling his fingers from my hair and trailing them down my arm to my hip. “With my lips,” he continues, moving his mouth across my cheek. “With my tongue,” he whispers as he spreads wet heat across my bottom lip with the tip of the very tongue of which he speaks. “And I promise, you’ll love every second of it.” As if to punctuate his statement, he bites down ever so lightly, sinking his teeth into my flesh.

My breath catches in my throat just as his mouth fully covers mine. I part my lips, eager to taste him, to feel a part of him inside me.

The lingering hint of mint is mixed with the vodka on his tongue. He tastes like a cocktail. And he’s every bit as intoxicating as the alcohol he’s drinking.

With a will of its own, my hand moves up to the back of Nash’s neck, my fingers threading into the silky strands of his loose hair. He tilts his head and deepens the kiss. He teases my tongue with his own, drawing it out until he can suck it into his mouth to tangle with his own.

Beneath the table, I feel his palm move from my hip to my thigh, then inward until skin meets skin. The dramatic slit of my dress allows him nearly full access to me. And I want him to take it. I part my legs the tiniest bit, an invitation. I don’t care that we’re in public. I don’t care that my father would disown me for the scandal. I don’t care about anything but this man and what he makes me feel. I only want him to touch me. I need him to touch me. And for this moment, the crowded piano bar is nothing more than a backdrop for the electricity that sings between us.

His hand moves to within inches of the apex of my thighs and stops. It’s perfectly still but for the movement of his thumb. It makes an arc over the sensitive skin of my inner thigh. Back and forth, so close to where I want most to feel it.

I’m panting into his mouth when Nash’s lips disappear. I open my eyes, confused. His face is a mere inch away, his eyes burning holes into mine. They’re on fire and I feel the heat all the way to my core. “I bet your panties are wet right now,” he murmurs, his hand inching up a fraction, then stopping again. My heart is racing and I wiggle a little in my seat. An impossible ache radiates from between my legs. “And I bet your ni**les are hard,” he says quietly, leaning forward to nuzzle my neck. “Hard and throbbing, Begging, like the rest of your body. To be licked. And sucked. And fuc—” he groans, catching himself.

And he’s right. It does. My whole being wants it. I feel like nothing will be right with the world until I’m filled with Nash, until my body is stretched tight around his, pinned beneath his weight.

With his scent all around me, his firm length pressed warmly to mine, his breath fanning my skin, his hands tormenting me, something begins to niggle at the back of my mind. Something seems so . . . familiar.

The house lights come on and applause breaks out all around us. With a frustrated sigh, Nash leans back, removing his hand from my leg, removing his heat from me. The performance was so amazing, the crowd is on their feet. A standing ovation. I think to myself that I had a private performance that was definitely worthy of such praise.

And I can only imagine how much better it gets.

The lowest part of my belly squeezes at the thought of what might be to come, what I feel is inevitable between us. What I want to be inevitable between us.

“Come on,” Nash says, sliding from the booth and offering me his hand. “I think that’s our cue to leave.” His smile is a wry twist of his lips that makes him even more handsome, even sexier than he usually is.

Personally, I didn’t think that was possible.

FIFTEEN

Nash

I don’t know what Marissa’s thinking and I’m not the kind of man who really cares or feels it’s overly important to find out. She’s quiet, but I figure if she’s uncomfortable or she’s got something to say, she’ll say it. She’s an adult. She doesn’t need me to pry it out of her. And if she does, tough shit.