Painted Faces (47 page)

“
This feels right,” he tells me. “So perfectly right.”

“
It does, doesn't it,” I reply, with a weird nervous laugh that melds into his gorgeous one.

His hands drift down from my cheeks, his thumbs giving me just the right amount of pressure on the base of my neck so that I feel it all the way down my spine.

“
I belong to you. I've belonged to you since the beginning, since before I even knew that I did,” he rambles. “I'll never hurt you again. I'd rather die than to hurt you.”

I quiet him with another kiss. We fumble for each other in the dark, surrounded by drunken, happy revellers. My hand travels up his t-shirt and over his abs. His hands travel low to cup my bottom.

“
Let's go back to the tent,” I breathe past his kisses.

“
Good idea,” he says huskily and grips my hand.

We run through the crowds, Nicholas pulling me along with him faster. I have to stop to catch my breath, but also because I'm giddy with laughter. I hold onto my stomach, unable to stop giggling. He watches me with so much love in his eyes that it almost hurts. I recover and we continue back to the camp site at a more manageable pace this time.

When we get inside the tent Nicholas opens up his sleeping bag and spreads it out across the floor. He takes my hand and pulls me close to him, placing a soft kiss on my lips, the tip of my nose, my chin, my neck.

“
It's too dark in here,” he whispers and pulls out his phone. He switches on the torch and places it on the floor. “I have to be able to see you.”

His hands graze down my sides, resting on my hips and squeezing. I gasp into his mouth as he kisses me. He lifts up the skirt of my dress and trails his hand over my inner thigh, before rubbing between my legs.

“
More,” I whisper against his lips.

His mouth tilts up at one side in a grin. “More what, baby?”

I don't have to answer him because he's already slipping a finger inside my underwear and sliding it over my wetness.

“
Yes,” I pant. “Like that.”

He draws his hand away and I almost groan in frustration. He unzips the back of my dress and pulls it over my head, then buries his face in my breasts.

“
I missed these,” he mumbles into my skin, like he's worshipping at an altar.

He removes my boots, socks and bra, all the while I'm trying to unbuckle his belt and pull down his jeans. I need to feel his skin against mine, taste it. Once I'm wearing nothing but my knickers, he practically rips off his t-shirt and pulls his jeans down the rest of the way. He lowers me carefully onto the outspread sleeping bag and kisses all down my stomach, briefly dipping his tongue into my belly button and then continuing his descent.

He takes hold of the side of my knickers and pulls them over a little to expose me. He licks me once and yanks the fabric against me hard. I cry out. With deadly eyes he grins and drags them down my legs before pulling them off. He's kneeling between my legs now, his erection starkly obvious inside his boxer briefs.

I lean forward and kiss his collarbone; a gush of breath leaves him. I run my hand over his toned stomach and he groans. Then I take his cock into my hand and rub him gently. He watches my every movement with parted lips and heavy breathing. The next thing I know I've pulled him down and switched places so that I'm straddling him and he's lying flat on the sleeping bag.

“
Freda,” he says, some kind of warning in his tone.

I put a finger to his mouth. “Quiet, let me take the lead,” I whisper.

He visibly swallows and nods, closing his fluttering eyelids for a second. I pull him free of his boxers and raise myself up, before slowly lowering myself down onto his stiff cock.

“
Oh fuck,” he swears and grips me by the hips.

I start moving up and down slowly on him, then I quicken my pace, working him towards his release as I work my way towards my own. I kiss and lick at him everywhere. I feel powerful like this, like I'm marking him as mine. We've been dying to touch one another for days, the tension has built up to boiling point that it doesn't take long for both of us to come in unison.

Nicholas holds my wrists tight to his chest as he spurts into me and I shake against him. I collapse on top of him and he turns us so that he's cradling me in his arms. We stay like that for innumerable minutes and then he beings kissing my neck and fondling my breasts.

“
I need you again, honey,” he says softly into my ear.

I can feel his erection hard and pressing against my bottom. He manoeuvres me onto my hands and knees and positions himself behind me. He caresses my neck and then grabs a tight hold of my pony tail. He pulls on it gently, dragging my face around to look at him. He puts his other hand palm flat to the hollow of my throat and then sinks himself into me.

God, he feels good from this position, deep inside of me. His gentle tugging on my hair with each thrust of his hips is like pure, undiluted pleasure mixed with the sharp tang of pain. This seems to be his thing, hair and neck holding; almost like pulling, almost like choking, but not quite, always on the cusp. I can tell that he enjoys seeing me from this vulnerable sort of angle because his eyes are practically glowing.

I never would have thought to ask him to do this, but I know that I like it.

He fucks me hard and fast, holding onto my hair and neck as I dig my fingernails into the fabric of the sleeping bag. He lets go of my neck to pinch one of my nipples and I moan.

“
That's it Freda, give me your noises. I want them all.” He encourages me.

I moan again and again until he's coming inside of me and my body feels like liquid. We sink to the floor, lost in one another.

Later on he uses some tissue paper to clean me, and even though it's a little embarrassing, I still let him. I need the intimacy it brings like I need air to breathe. He puts me in my night clothes and unzips my sleeping bag to throw over the both of us. I bury my face in his neck and fall asleep.

When I wake up I have three days worth of sweat and last night's sex all over my skin, but I've never felt better. I turn to my side to find that Nicholas had been watching me.

“
How long have you been up?” I ask, rubbing at my sleepy eyes.

“
Only a little while,” he says, leaning forward and giving me a kiss on the forehead. I can hear movement outside the tent just before Harry calls out, “Come on you two love birds, rise and shine, we've got to get packed up and out of here.”

I crawl forward and unzip the tent, before sticking my head out. I yelp when Nicholas pinches my bottom and then I turn around to give him a look of warning. He raises his hands in the air in surrender.

“
What time is it?” I ask, squinting up at Harry in the morning light. He's standing there fully dressed, as the others pack up their camping gear behind him.

“
Almost ten o'clock. Now come on you've already overslept. Tell lover boy to get his arse moving too.”

My eyes widen infinitesimally in surprise. “Yes, that's right.” He goes on, whispering now. “Sean and I came back early last night and heard everything. You put on quite a show. Well, an audio one at least.” He winks at me.

I go completely red in the face, tell Harry to shut up (to which he laughs) and then zip the tent closed again. Nicholas and I get dressed. It takes longer than usual because we keep getting caught up with kissing or teasing one another. After that Nicholas packs up the tent in record time and we follow the others back to where the van is parked.

He holds me all through the drive back to the city. I notice everyone looking at us questioningly out of the corners of their eyes, but they don't ask what's going on between us. I'm glad they don't, because it's none of their business anyway. What I have with Nicholas feels so precious and fragile right now; I don't want anybody else to even know it exists.

Back at the apartments Nora announces that she's going to her bedroom to catch some shut eye, complaining that she slept awfully in the tent the past few nights. I'm just about to follow her into our apartment when Nicholas pulls me back and practically shoves me in the door of his place. He pierces me with a sexy grin and turns over the lock. We spend the next hour having the most amazing shower sex ever. He presses me up against the wall and goes down on me. We kiss beneath the spray of water. He slides himself into me and I get lost in the sensation, in the feel of him.

When we get out I change into one of his clean t-shirts, before crawling into his bed.

He looks like he's just about to pounce on me when his phone starts ringing and he turns away to answer it. I text Aoife, who had been filling in for me again with the cupcakes this morning since I was still at the festival, to check if everything went okay.

She writes back saying it went fine, just as I hear Nicholas exclaim over the phone, “They said what?!” He paces back and forth at the foot of the bed.

“
All right, so some stranger paid them fifty Euro to throw a brick through the window of the club and rough us up a bit, what the fuck Phil?”

Oh my God, he must be talking about the attack at the club from before we left for Edinburgh. The police are only getting back with information now? Talk about slow. I'd completely forgotten about it since I've been so miserable over Nicholas the past few weeks.

“
Wait, wait, wait, describe him to me again?” he says, his voice calmer now as he rubs the back of his neck. I crawl forward and grab him by the hand while he listens to Phil on the other end of the line. I tug him down to the bed and plant little kisses all along his shoulder.

He winds his hand through my wet hair and nuzzles my neck with his nose, then pulls me onto his lap as he hangs up.

He leans in and presses his lips to my throat, just before he says, “I think we might have a bit of a problem on our hands.”

“
You do?” I question, furrowing my brow.

“
That was Phil, as you probably heard. The police came to the club yesterday to tell him that they caught one of the thugs who attacked us the other week. This guy is about twenty years old and known to the authorities; he hasn't been in jail before, but he's been arrested more times than they can count. When they brought him in for questioning about the attack he ended up telling them that some man paid him and his friends fifty Euros each to do it.”

I suck in a breath. “Are you serious?”

Nicholas nods. “And that's not all, the guy the thug described sounded an awful lot like Aaron. Medium height, blond hair, prim and proper dress sense.”

“
Oh shit! We need to tell the police it was him then,” I let my face fall into my hands. “Oh God, oh God, this is all my fault. The attack happened right after Aaron came to the club that time and stormed off. He must have done this as his twisted idea of revenge.”