Three Wishes(78)
Author: Kristen Ashley

If he was worried she’d leave, she’d make him think that she would, she’d force him into the confrontation they should have had eight years ago.

Lily decided a grand gesture was the only thing that would get a reaction from Nate. And, for some reason, she needed a reaction from Nate. She needed it desperately.

She’d thought she could do this, live together and keep her heart apart. But, apparently, she couldn’t. It just wasn’t in her.

Because this was Nate. She’d known the instant she laid eyes on him that he was hers.

And he was hers. Except, he wasn’t.

On her second pass to the wardrobe, Nate’s hand seized her wrist and he swung her around, clothes flying everywhere.

“Talk to me, damn it,” he snarled, his dark eyes glittering with menace and something else she could not read.

“You’re a fine one to tell me to talk to you. If you were a superhero, they’d call you Silent Man,” Lily yelled.

He used her wrist to pull her closer and he leaned into her, his face barely an inch from hers. “You were talking to Laura, what did she say?” he bit out and Lily realised he was angry.

No, furious.

And it was barely contained and it scared the hell out of her.

He seemed no longer sophisticated and urbane. He was dangerous and predatory.

But still, Lily didn’t heed the warning look in his black eyes.

“Nothing!” she shouted into his face. “Not one damned thing. I asked her about you but she wouldn’t say a word!”

She saw a flash of relief cross his face before he hid it and she actually growled.

“What is it?” she cried, twisting her wrist free and grabbing fistfuls of his shirt at his chest. “What’s the damned secret about you that everyone is so intent on keeping?”

Nate’s hands hit her waist and he brought her closer but she resisted. He won, not surprisingly.

“It’s nothing,” he stated, his voice edging back to calm.

“It’s not nothing!” she exclaimed, yanking at his shirt.

“It’s nothing!” Nate barked, all calmness gone in a wink.

Lily jumped at the ferocity in his voice but she still didn’t stop and she pulled him even closer to her, her face a breath away from his.

“Well, Nate, it’s something to me. Whatever it is kept you from me for eight years. Whatever it is made you think I’d leave. Whatever it is made you let me go. Whatever it is, is holding you back from me now!”

When she finished her last dramatic statement, Nate jerked away from her and turned on his heel. Lily opened her mouth to call out to him that they weren’t nearly finished but he stopped at the door and threw it shut with such a vicious slam the pictures on the walls shuddered in their frames.

At this, she jumped again and could do nothing but stare at him, slack-jawed.

Definitely predatory. And definitely dangerous.

He strode directly to the bed, bent and with a swipe of his arm, sent her clothes flying.

At this, her eyes widened in alarm.

Then he strode, with determination, to Lily who stood rooted to the spot. He grasped her h*ps and lifted her upwards.

She cried out in surprise and threw her legs around his h*ps and grabbed his shoulders to steady herself as he turned her to the bed. Then she was falling, holding onto him as she went backwards, her back hitting the bed and Nate landed square on top of her.

“You think I’m holding back?” he growled, his eyes back to glittering dangerously, his face barely an inch away.

Regardless of all she had just witnessed, she threw caution to the wind. It was a grand gesture after all and she started it. She had to have the courage to follow it through and see where it ended or she might lose everything.

So she flung at him, “Yes!”

And then she felt his hand yank the skirt of her dress up around her waist.

“Nate!” she cried as she realised his intent and he buried his face in her neck, conveniently hiding his from view.

“You have more of me than I’ve given anyone,” he snarled against the sensitive skin at the base of her ear and then she felt his tongue there. She tried to push him away as the gymnasts, who didn’t seem to care about the dramatic events that had brought them to this pass, started to warm up with cartwheels.

At the gymnasts’ antics, Lily stopped pushing him away and slid one arm around him and the other hand into his hair, trying gently to move his head so she could see his face.

“I don’t mean this. I don’t mean here, in the bedroom,” she whispered.

It was as if she didn’t speak, one of his hands skimmed with delicious intent across her belly, up to her breast, his thumb expertly finding her nipple through the fabric and rubbed tantalisingly against it. Even though she tried to control it, Lily felt her insides melt.

“I’ve given you more than I gave my adoptive family,” he murmured, his voice turned silky and was still at her ear, the deep timbre shooting tremors through her.

“Nate, don’t do this. We’ve always been good at this. Talk to me,” Lily begged.

He ignored her and his lips edged along her jaw to her chin as his hand went between their bodies, teasing at the edge of her lacy panties.

With his lips against hers, he said, “More than I gave my mother.”

She gasped as she realised he didn’t mean Laura. It was the first time he’d spoken of his birth mother since, well, the only other time he’d ever spoken of her on their first date in the park.

Her gasp was cut off by his lips taking possession of hers in a brutal, demanding kiss, a kiss that was meant to tell her something, a kiss that coincided exactly with his fingers stopping their tantalising play. They shoved the delicate fabric of her underwear aside and two of them entered her in a beautiful invasion.

She immediately moaned against his mouth, instantly responding to his touch. Her arms went around him, her hands pulling his shirt out of his jeans so she could run her fingers along the hard muscles of his back, so she could feel the immense heat of his skin.

“So wet,” he muttered against her lips, “only for me.”

And touching her, he seemed somehow taken away from the current tense conversation, his voice almost reverent, disbelieving. The sound of it broke Lily’s heart.

His fingers started moving, she could think of nothing else, not their argument, not his secrets, just what his hand was doing to her.

“Only you, Nate,” she agreed softly.

At her words, he dropped his forehead to hers and closed his eyes that look coming over him that was so raw and intense, it shook Lily to her core.