Tempting (17 page)

“Oh, honey. Why don’t you come home?”

Pinching the skin between my eyebrows, I sighed. “Mom, I can’t. I have school and my job. I can’t just quit.”

“Okay. But perhaps you can change?”

And there it was. My hand fell and I inhaled through my nose. “I don’t know—”

“You know I worry about you,” she interrupted. “All alone in that big city. Leo told me you didn’t even have internet hooked up.”

I narrowed my eyes, now convinced that Leo’s true first name was ‘Fucking’ with the amount of times I referred to him as ‘Fucking Leo.’ Just like in that moment. “I was bumming off the neighbors, but I have my own now.”

“Adele, there’s another way. You’re just like your father—stubborn.”

Shit. The gravity of her words shifted the ground beneath me. Was I just like him? Stubborn, unwilling to be deterred. Doing what I wanted, no matter what anyone else thought. That was my father defined. And, it was me.

“You can still write, Adele. But this way, you can study something more lucrative, more secure.”

She was knocking me down, nick by nick. Defeat was beckoning my name. Suddenly, I didn’t want to fight anymore.

When we ended the phone call, I stood by the stairs to the subway, fully intending to go to Nathan’s house as planned. But instead, I turned back toward campus and entered the registration office with my heart in my throat.

T
ruthfully
, I don’t know how the hell this happened. All I’d wanted from the very first night was just a release. I wanted to feel someone next to me, even for a short amount of time. And some way, somehow, I found myself staring into my refrigerator, wondering what I could make Adele for dinner, since I knew she had to work late. She hated mushrooms, so I stopped keeping them in my fridge. And she, against all my warnings, loved eating whipped cream straight from the bottle. So that too, had found its way onto my shelves.

Her smiles became my currency. Like the goodness or badness of my day was dependent on whether I saw her, saw that snarky narrowing of her eyes and heard that cutting tongue, read the words that she put in front of me, held me against her when I fell asleep, marveled at the mess she was able to make with such a small number of items, studied the different shades of gold in her hair when the sun hit it, hurt when I saw how moved she was by simple affection, the same way I used to be when I first started dating.

I’d fucked my way into a relationship.

Who the hell had I become?

At the age of thirty-four, I was someone’s boyfriend. I looked forward, down to the minute, to that moment where she’d walk through the door and give me that secret little smile. The one that said, “These people? They don’t know you. I know you. I understand you.”

I’d become addicted to her skin, to feeling every part of her that had been previously neglected. The freckle on the inside of her right arm and the light birthmark on the bottom of her left thigh had been discovered in the last week. I wanted to make her feel so good and so beautiful and so wanted that she couldn’t fathom having any man touch her but me.

And every single part of that scared the ever-loving shit out of me.

Because I hadn’t been looking for it. And I certainly didn’t think I deserved it. But nevertheless, she was there. I didn’t want that to change. We could just stay like this, keep our heads down while she was finishing her classes. I was thinking about the future again.

The realization that Adele had embedded herself so deeply underneath my skin is what drove me to sit on my couch, staring at the wedding picture of me and Diana.

Diana had fought her mother for that veil, the one with tiny pearls along the edge, that had sat anchored underneath all her dark hair. I remember sitting with her, railing and cursing at how her mother was a fascist tyrant who couldn’t fathom doing something new if it jammed her in the asshole. Our relationship had been so smooth and so real, we knew everything about the other person, knew when to soothe and when to push the buttons that would immediately turn a disagreement into a fight. Losing her had been like chopping off both of my arms in one fell swoop. And it had taken this long for them to grow back.

I sat there, staring at our young, smiling faces, not knowing what to feel. I wasn’t an idiot, I knew Diana wouldn’t expect me to stay single and celibate for the rest of my life. But she hadn’t had cancer, something where we’d had time to talk about what might happen in my future. One second she was there, the next, I’d blinked, and she was gone. We’d never had the opportunity to have those conversations. About kids and love and regrets.

I knew my regrets. That wasn’t the issue. They were never far from my thoughts, especially when I was sitting in this home by myself.

While I sat there, turning those things over in my head, there was a knock on the door. Like the universe, or God, or quite possibly Lucifer himself knew that it was the very last thing I needed. Adele was working, so I knew it wasn’t her. When I looked through the peephole, I almost lost my breath. The eyes that looked back at me were the exact same shade of deep brown, so dark that you couldn’t read much of anything, unless you really knew them.

“Open the fucking door, Nathan. I can see you looking at me.”

So I did. I opened the door and stared at my former brother in law for the first time in four years. Since the day we lowered my wife, his sister, into the ground.

He was bigger than he used to be, and a beard fell inches past his chin, the same dark brown that his whole family had.

“Elias,” I said in greeting, opening the door to let him in. He shouldered past me, pushing just hard enough that I had to step back, or get shoved. I set my jaw and faced him once the door was shut. “Where’s your car? Did you lose it again?”

He’d plopped onto my couch, stretching his long, tree trunk legs out onto the mahogany coffee table. “I haven’t had a car in years, dickface. Cabs and trains and buses and planes take me everywhere I need to go.”

“What are you doing here?”

He scratched his jaw, hidden somewhere under all that fucking hair, and peered up at me. “I missed you.”

I almost laughed. But the coldness in his eyes kept my mouth shut. I didn’t sit. I didn’t want to grant him the smallest comfort in my home.

“I bet. Seriously, what do you want, Elias? It’s been too long for a simple social call.”

He leaned forward, and the motion made his shoulders pop with muscles that gave me pause. There was a good chance that he’d take any opportunity to pound the hell out of me. And from the looks of it, he probably could.

“It’s been over four years.”

I sighed, rubbing the back of my neck. “I know. Do you honestly think I don’t remember?”

Elias shrugged, his coal colored eyes never leaving mine. “I’m sure you do, Nathaniel. And you should. It’s your fucking fault she’s dead.”

I sank into the chair behind me, dropping my head into my hands. “I know.”

“Good.”

When I finally looked up at him, the silence in the room too heavy for me to shoulder any longer, he looked less angry and more sad. “And you needed to remind me?”

“Yes. I’ll remind you for as long as it takes me not miss my sister so much that I feel like someone’s ripping my goddamned heart out of my chest.”

When I stood, he did too. “Why are you here?”

“I’m here because I’ve stayed away for too fucking long. She was my sister, Easton. I didn’t have a single memory that didn't include her, until you came along.”

“So why now?”

He shook his head, looking around the room, which was the exact same way as it had been the last time he’d been here, a month before Diana had died.

“Because I needed to know that you still suffered. Still surrounded yourself with everything that she’d put here.” He pointed a shaking finger at me, and I felt it like a knife in my chest. “You were the reason she was out on the road that night.
You
are the reason some drunk asshole wrapped her car around a tree, because you didn’t feel safe driving home after your three pussy-ass beers. Why she was stuck in that car until she bled out. So I
need
to know that you still feel like shit. The same way I do.”

Every word spat from his mouth felt like flames licking up my skin. I kept every thought of that night so far from my memory, that being thrust into it singed every part of me.

“And you really think I wouldn’t?” I whispered, voice cracking. “I loved her. You
know
I loved her. And she would have been home safe if it hadn’t been for me. I don’t need you coming here, after all these years to remind me of that.”

We stared at each other, the violence in his eyes just making me feel so incredibly tired. So bone-deep exhausted that I wanted to curl into myself and not come out for weeks.

“I know you don’t need it,” he finally said. Then he pointed at his own chest. “But maybe I do.”

“Then take your issues somewhere else. I’m not going to offer up a place for you to lay it down.”

There was second where he looked like he might relax. But then his eyes narrowed in on the driveway. I turned to look and cursed under my breath when I saw Adele walking up toward the house with a smile on her face.

“I need you to leave.”

He laughed. That fucker just laughed. “And why the hell should I?”

“Because I don’t need her involved in this. Nobody but you is hanging on to this anger over Diana. And it’s not her fault,” I said, pointing back at where Adele was nearing the door. The locked door, thank God. “If she walks in while you’re still here, then we’re going to have a problem.”

We stared at each other, neither of us moving while Adele tried the door. Then knocked.

“Nathan? Can you let me in?”

“Please, Elias,” I ground out. And the look at utter satisfaction that covered his face made me feel sick to my stomach.

“How long? Just answer me that. Just tell me how it took before you moved on.”

She knocked again, a little harder, a little more insistent. “Nathan?”

No part of me wanted to answer his question. Not a single one. He’d use it against me somehow, even if it wasn’t today. “Four years. I waited over four years before I touched another woman. And she’s the only one that I have.”

Elias nodded, and I couldn’t read the look in his eyes even if I wanted to. He could cloak every genuine feeling from his face, it was one of his best gifts. The only reason I knew he believed me is because no man would want to admit to being that pathetic. Being celibate for that long. “I’ll show myself out the back.”

“You remember how to get out?”

Then he smiled, without a trace of humor in it, showing all his stark white teeth against the dark hair of his beard. “I remember everything, Easton. Everything.”

I let out a slow breath when he turned and walked through the kitchen, finally pulling it back in when the back door slammed shut so hard that the windows rattled.

Dick.

I still felt shaken when I opened the door for Adele, but she was smiling so big that she didn’t even notice. She just threw herself into my arms as soon as the door closed behind her, hoisting her legs up and around my waist.

“Woah,” I said, feeling calmed by her tactile greeting and her wide smile. It was one I didn’t see on her often, such a broad, genuinely happy grin. “Someone’s having a good day.”

Adele nodded, leaning in to give me a sweet, close-mouthed kiss. “I am.”

I braced one arm under her ass, and smoothed the other hand up her back until it tangled in the edges of her hair. Her cold hands cupped my face and we stared at each other. After just looking at Elias, wondering how anyone could decipher his emotions, it was such a stark relief to see everything in Adele’s emerald eyes.

They glowed. She glowed.

“I’m very glad you’re here right now,” I said, though the words were such a simplistic statement of the overwhelming tidal wave of emotions raging through me. She smiled again, and peppered tiny kisses all over my face, lingering on my lips after she’d covered every other inch she could reach.

“I am too, Professor Easton. Now, take me to bed.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

H
ooking
a hand in the front of his jeans, I pulled him up the stairs, feeling high on my decision. Everything would be okay. How could it not be, when I had Nathan looking at me like I was something—someone—powerful? He made me feel invincible. His blue eyes were so warm, his smile cutting into his cheeks so deeply; it was a heady feeling, to know I’d made him happy merely with my presence.

Something clicked in my heart, a kind of unlocking, and I knew with complete certainty that I’d made the right decision, for me … for us.

“Mm,” he said, holding me closely at the threshold to his bedroom. “You smell fucking amazing. All the time.”

I leaned into him, relishing his warmth as the cold made my teeth chatter. “Even when I reek of coffee beans?”

“Especially when you reek of coffee beans.” He pulled back and placed a kiss to my lips. “You’re an aphrodisiac all by yourself.” He placed another kiss, softer this time. “I’m glad you’re here.”

My heart was putty in his hands. The way he said the simplest things shouldn’t have affected me so deeply, but they did.

I placed my hands on his neck and he let out a breath. “Your hands are freezing. Come, let’s shower.”

While he turned the water to warm, I stripped out of my coat and leggings, shivering a little when my bare feet touched the cold tile. When he turned back around, I grasped his shirt and pulled it from his waistband, unbuttoning all the way up. As more of his chest came into view, I placed soft kisses along his skin until the shirt was completely undone and he grabbed my face, pressing his lips fully on mine. He let out a sigh and unsnapped my bra before pulling me with him into the shower.

“Come here.” He grasped my hands in his and pulled me close, skin to skin, under the shower head. “Put your arms around me, warm up.” The water beat down on us and I let out a sigh at the welcome warmth of it. Wrapping my arms around him, he squeezed me tightly. I felt the warming down to my bones, wondered if I would turn to jelly just by him holding me so fiercely.

The water poured from the showerhead over us and I became dimly aware of Nathan’s hand running down my hair soothingly. How had he known I’d needed this? After making such a big decision, I needed to be held like this, to feel myself just existing in the moment with Nathan. Despite our nakedness, there was nothing sexual about this moment. It was just us, holding one another, being what we both needed. The water slid in rivulets over my face, my closed eyes, falling into the little space that existed between our bodies. Neither of us moved, content to just be.

That’s how I knew what I felt for Nathan wasn’t merely lust. Lust was blind to what we desired most: an emotional connection. And any misgivings I had about changing my major were eliminated with each drop of water down the drain. Whatever this was, it was worth exploring. I didn’t want Nathan to be my secret anymore. I pressed my lips into his shoulder and felt his at my forehead. Nothing could have dragged me from his embrace in that moment.

I felt him murmur something in my hair, but the water was too loud that I couldn’t hear him. “Hm?” I asked, leaning my head to hum the word in his ear.

His hands gripped tighter into my back, as if he was afraid I’d move away. “I like this,” he said, as if admitting it was some big secret.

I laughed softly. “Judging by the bulge against my belly, I’d say you do.”

“Shh,” he admonished, still holding me tightly. “I’d have to be dead not to get a hard on for you, Adele. But this—just holding you.” He paused, running a finger over my spine. “We don’t do this enough.”

His words wound around my heart, squeezing. If I wasn’t careful, I knew he could bruise my heart very easily. I lazily kissed his neck and said, “I concur.” A contented sigh slipped past my lips and we continued to stay still under the water, just holding on to each other. The comforting rise and fall of his chest against me could have lulled me into a very peaceful sleep, but as soon as I yawned into his chest, he pulled back.

“Do you want me to wash your hair?”

Again, the noose around my heart squeezed. Unable to say anything, I just nodded. Our surroundings were fogged from the steam, so even if I wanted to look away from him, I wouldn’t be able to see anything but us.

I watched him pour a handful of shampoo into his palm before he rubbed it between his hands and began massaging my scalp. It was heavenly, having his fingers pressing into my skin. The tension I hadn’t known I carried released and I nearly groaned in the sheer ecstasy of it.

Pressing a finger beneath my chin, he tilted my head back under the spray, allowing the water to wash away the soap. His finger moved down the center of my neck and came to my shoulders. His other hand came up and both cradled the back of my head under the spray, massaging against the roots as he rinsed my hair. I felt exposed to him like this, with my eyes closed and my head back, my chest stretched in front of him.

Slowly, his fingers moved to my neck, rubbing circles into the skin. He continued over my shoulders, his fingers working magic into my muscles. His thumbs pressed into the spot where my neck met my shoulder and rubbed away every bit of tension I carried.

“Ahhh,” I sighed, spellbound. “You have miracles in your hands.”

He chuckled, cupping one hand at the base of my scalp and moving the other to my chest. I lifted my head, opening my eyes weakly. His eyes were the brightest specks of blue, even in the mist that surrounded us. And the way he looked at me, as if I’d just pleasured him instead of the other way around, was quietly, but somehow delightfully, unnerving.

“I definitely owe you for that,” I said, reaching my hands into his hair.

He placed his hands on my wrists and pulled my hands away. “No,” he said, pressing a kiss to my open palm. “I did that because I wanted to.”

This serious Nathan was different from the other serious Nathan I knew. Maybe it was because he seemed to be serious about us, about me. I wasn’t just a student or even a woman he was fucking; I was something more. And it relieved me. I wasn’t alone.

The profound impact of that realization nearly knocked me off my feet. I’d felt so alone most of my life between a mother who longed for her husband and a father who had treated me like an intrusion. Even with Leo, I’d felt a little out of place with my impulsivity. But, with Nathan I found a place I belonged.

Nathan pulled me out of the shower and wrapped a towel around me before wrapping one around himself. As he towel dried my hair, I was overcome with gratefulness and leaned forward, kissing him deeply.

Somehow we made it into the bedroom. Nathan threw back the sheets before hooking a finger in the knot at the center of my towel, opening it and letting it fall to the floor. He lifted me onto the bed gently, as if I was made of porcelain. With his palms, he spread my knees to allow him room to step between them and then he framed my face in his hands.

The kiss was gentle at first, his lips just teasing mine, back and forth. But my lips were hungry, and I bit down before soothing it with a lick. Over and over I bit and licked until Nathan climbed over me on the bed.

His lips paused above mine when I took control and wrapped my legs around his waist, placing my pussy right against his cock. A breath passed between us, from his lips into mine, before he rocked forward, sliding into me.

When my orgasm built and crested, Nathan gripped a fistful of my hair in his hands, giving me the bite of pain I needed to fall over the edge with him.

“
A
dele
?” his words were soft, whispered in the dark.

“Hm?” I mumbled, rolling over. My hands met his chest and I sighed. My muscles felt deliciously relaxed from the shower massage and the sex.

“We fell asleep. We should eat something.”

“Let’s go out,” I said, remembering that we could now.

I felt the shake his head. “No. I’ll order pizza.”

“No,” I moaned, rubbing a hand over his chest. “Let’s go out to dinner. Out of town. Just you and me and two giant plates of spaghetti.” I pressed a kiss to his perfectly sculpted pectoral. “Say, ‘Yes, Adele. Not only are you pretty and charming, but you’re full of great ideas, Adele.’”

His laugh bounced my head off his chest and he flipped me over, pinning me underneath him. “You are very pretty,” he murmured, kissing the corner of my lips. “And charming.” He kissed the other side of my lips. “And while I like most of your ideas, there’s that pesky little thing like me possibly losing my job and you losing your scholarship if people find out. But let me show you where you can get the greatest pizza in Boston and we’ll eat it naked,” he rubbed a hand down my chest, pulling the sheet down, “in bed.” He kissed me fully and then rolled over to his side.

I needed to tell him about changing my major. “Do you have to pick it up?” After rolling over, I nuzzled into the pillow.

He kissed the top of my head and ran a hand over my hair. “I’ll order delivery, but I left the menu downstairs. What do you like on your pizza?”

“Anything is fine. Do you have wine?”

“Wine and pizza?”

I felt him leave the bed and heard the sounds of him grabbing our clothes from the bathroom and bringing them back to the bedroom.

“Sure. I feel like celebrating.” A smile spread my lips, but he couldn’t see me in the darkness. I held a hand to my chest, hoping to hold on to the happy for a while.

“Celebrating what?”

As I was about to answer, I heard the sound of glass falling and Nathan muttering a curse. The lamp on his nightstand switched on, and I blinked as I adjusted.

“What happened?”

Nathan, towel wrapped around his waist, gestured to the puddle of water on the nightstand and the floor. “I was trying to turn on the light, but I knocked over the water.”

“Just go,” I said, climbing out of bed and picking up my discarded towel. “Order pizza and I’ll wipe this up.”

“Okay. I’ll be right back.” I heard his footsteps leave the room.

I wrapped the sheet around me and grabbed the towel. I sopped up the mess on the floor and moved up the wood, sliding the towel under the handles of the drawers. As I wiped the water from the table top, I realized the top drawer was slightly ajar and I opened it to wipe out the water that had surely dripped inside.

The papers on top were wet with angry, large splotches blurring the words in their center. Pulling them out, I saw a small, redwood box.

Even as my hand reached in to pick up the box, a small voice in my head registered that I shouldn’t pick it up. But I was deaf to anything but the rush of blood in my ears as I snapped the lid open.

Cushioned inside the box was a simple gold band, topped with a single small, but quality, diamond. Holding it to the light of the lamp, I was mesmerized by its sparkle and pulled it from its cushion, sliding it over my ring finger before I even knew what I was doing.