Page 32 of Fierce Love (Tucker Billionaires)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Nathaniel

I ’m staring at the ceiling, debating whether I should get up and take a sleeping pill.

After Hollyn came back to Bellerive, I went to the family doctor to get them.

One week of sleepless nights was enough to tell me the insomnia that plagued me when she first disappeared had returned.

For whatever reason, no one has ever impacted my heart and soul the way Hollyn Davis does.

Invades my dreams, seeps into every crack and crevice of my psyche.

There’s a sharp knock on my door, and I drag on the sweats beside my bed before jogging to the front entrance, my heart pounding that something is wrong. It’s three o’clock in the morning.

I throw open the door, and Hollyn is in the hallway, a short, silky pink wrap hugging her curvy frame. Long, full legs go on for days below the hem, and I’m equal parts turned on and worried.

“Is everything okay?” I ask, forcing my gaze back up to meet hers.

She searches my face, and the tension radiating off her feels familiar, as though we’re on the cusp of something I dare not name.

Then she reaches for me, hand around my neck, body arching into me, lips meeting mine.

For a stunned minute, my brain can’t register if this is a dream or reality, but when she tries to pull back and I hear the tiniest noise of embarrassment escape, I wrap my arms around her and slot her tight against me, deepening the kiss.

“Don’t go,” I murmur against her lips that taste like mint and sweet tea.

“Is this what you want?” she asks between kisses, and I can sense the anxiety in the question.

“I want it all,” I admit, “but I’ll take whatever you’ll give me.” Any determination to hold out for everything I want went out the door the minute she came to the threshold. I can meet her where she’s at. I’ll meet her anywhere.

“I don’t want to run from you. I’ve never wanted to run from you,” she says.

I kick the door shut, and I spin her against the wall, caging her in with my body. I’m not in the mood to question or second-guess her claim. Forward momentum is enough, and god, I’m fucking aching for her.

Lights from the street and other buildings filter through the open windows, curtains thrown wide in the living space as I undo her dressing gown and let it drop to the floor in a puddle. Her negligee is the same color as the robe. It barely covers her figure, and I love it.

“Every inch of you is mine tonight,” I say, trailing kisses along her neck, sliding my hand up her thick thighs to find she’s not wearing any panties. “You’re so wet. You’ve been thinking about this, have you? Fuck, that’s hot. I love the feel of you.”

Was she lying in bed, unable to sleep, knowing that I was just a knock away, that I could ease the restlessness inside her with my tongue or my fingers or both, over and over again? God knows I’ve been longing for her to ease mine.

With my free hand, I tease and taunt her breast, my thumb skimming her nipple before coming back to run the bud between my thumb and forefinger. Then I bend my head, kissing and licking her peaks through the silky material of her negligee.

Part of me wonders if I did take a sleeping pill—if this is just a dream, my subconscious on overdrive—and I’ll wake up to soaked sheets and deep disappointment.

I palm her flesh, sliding my hand along her warm skin. If this is a dream, it’s the most vivid one I’ve ever had. Her hands are in my hair, urging me closer, her body responding to each light or firm touch as though she’s desperate for what only I can give her.

And I want to lay claim to every inch of her again, mark her with my teeth and tongue, leave behind a residue of my presence so thick that she’ll never be able to scrub me out again.

On some level, I know that’s not the right way to feel, that I shouldn’t want her this violently, this completely and without compromise.

I urge her onto the heavy marble table near the entranceway, and once she’s perched on it, I drop to my knees, eager to taste her. But I need to slow down, or it’s going to be hot and fast and not at all how I want us to be. Or at least, not this time.

Hot and fast can come later.

So instead of burying my head where I want to, going where I know she wants me to be, I test my memory.

I circle my index finger around her anklebone, and then I kiss a line up her leg, getting to her inner thigh, where I nibble and tease.

She’s squirming and whimpering, and as soon as I’m close enough, her hands are in my hair.

I abandon her again to repeat my teasing line on her other leg, and then I rise to my feet, drawing her negligee over her head. She watches me, intent.

“I don’t look like I used to,” she whispers.

“I’ll never complain about having more of you,” I say, cupping her cheek and kissing her, long and deep. “Right now, I’m the luckiest man alive.” Then I kiss along her neck, in the spot behind her ear that used to make her moan, and she clutches at me, tries to wiggle closer.

“Please, Nate,” she gasps.

“Hearing you say my name like that—I fucking love it.” I drop to my knees again because I know what she wants, what she needs.

At the first taste of her on my tongue, I groan.

“Just like I remember. You taste so fucking good,” I mutter, and then I press the flat of my tongue against her most sensitive area.

I swirl and lick, the way she likes to be brought to the edge coming back to me in fractured memories.

“Oh, Nate,” she breathes out, rocking against me. “Oh god, yes.”

Then she’s arching into my tongue, crying out so loudly that I have a brief moment of worry that she’ll wake the girls in the next apartment.

I lap her up, loving the feel of her contracting in pleasure.

And then I kiss a line up her body, not sure if I’ll get another freak-out or she’ll be completely okay with her choice this time.

“I want to feel you,” she murmurs, drawing me into a kiss. “I want to feel all of you.”

“I have—” I start to say, keenly aware of what she used to need.

“I have an IUD. Please,” she says, her voice needy. “I just want to feel you.” She slips her hand down the waist of my sweats, and I let out a strangled noise at the contact.

“Are you sure?” I ask as she’s pushing my sweats down with one hand while her other hand has a firm and assured grip as she works the length of me.

“Yes,” she says, guiding me toward her entrance. “Are you?”

“Never been more sure of anything.”

And we both watch as I enter her, and when I glance at her, double-checking that this is actually okay, she puts both her hands on my ass, drawing me deeper.

I close my eyes against the sensation of her warm, wet heat.

Bare like this is a first for me, but I can’t say that, can’t make this more than she’s willing to let it be.

I open my eyes to watch my cock slide in and out, and then I wrap my arms around her, tilting her a little more off the table, so I can get deeper.

She gasps and then moans at the tight fit.

I sneak one hand between us, and I use my thumb to draw circles over her clit, seeing if I can drive her to a second orgasm.

She clutches on to me, and I kiss her, angling my head to keep us as connected as possible. Her breasts brush against my chest, and I press kisses along her neck.

“You feel so good,” I murmur into her ear, licking her earlobe. “I never want to be anywhere but here.”

“Nate,” she cries, need in her voice, “I think I’m going to come again.”

“Not yet,” I say, slowing the swirl of my thumb. “We’re coming together this time.”

Then I shift us so I can brush against her with each thrust, so that each time I get closer, so does she.

“I don’t know…” She shakes her head, clearly in the throws of passion. “I don’t know…”

“Hold on for me, Hols. Be a good girl and hold on for me.”

She whimpers into my ear, and I draw her so tight, we’re doing little more than rocking together, the table banging into the wall with each movement.

“Please,” she whispers. “Please.”

“Oh, fuck,” I mutter as everything inside me tightens. “Come for me, Hols.”

She cries out, and I push as deep as I can as my orgasm rushes out of me, the two of us coming hard together.

I get a warm cloth from the bathroom, and I press it between Hollyn’s legs, sweeping up the mess we caused. Even as I wash her, taking care to be as gentle as I can, I want more. Hollyn’s always been a drug, and being with her like this is a complete and total relapse.

When she slips her negligee over her head again, I try to draw her into the bedroom.

“I should go back,” she says. “I’m not just responsible for Kinsley on this trip.”

I scan her face, trying to figure out if this was anything other than her trying to scratch an itch. Accusing her of that won’t get me far, but I’m also not sure where else to step.

“I can’t just forget this happened,” I say, trying to tread lightly. “I don’t want to.”

She bites her lip and seems to think for a minute before responding. “When the TV show is over, I’m still going back to New York. No matter what.”

“You’ve said that.” I try to keep the irritation out of my voice.

Where she lives is so far from a deal-breaker for me that it’s comical.

She could live on Mars, and I’d build a rocket ship.

But for some reason, she doesn’t want to hear that.

“What do you want this to be, Hols? Because I can’t have it be nothing. ”

I don’t say the rest—that it would wreck me all over again, that I’ve made my intentions clear, and if she came for a one-night stand, I’m not the guy.

But I wouldn’t want anyone else to be the guy, which is the real mind-fuck.

Don’t treat me like shit, but if you’re going to treat anyone like shit in the way you just did, pick me. Pretty fucked up.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Nate.”

“Just tell me what you want, Hollyn. What you actually want. No filter.”

“I want you,” she says, but I can see the conflict in her eyes, the sense that she shouldn’t have said it with so much certainty. “For as long as I can have you. But I don’t want anyone to know. I just want whatever this is to be for us. No one else.”

“No one else?” I can keep work professional without any problem, but it seems impossible to keep whatever this might be from my family, from her sister.

“No one,” she says. “You have to promise me. Just us.”

I step toward her, and I cradle the back of her head with my palm before pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Just us,” I agree.

Whatever gets me her, whatever gives me a chance for more, I’ll seize it with both hands. She places a soft kiss on my lips, and then she slips out of my grasp, sweeping her robe off the floor before disappearing out the door.

She might see this as ending between us when she goes back to New York, but I don’t. That’s not how I see us at all. I’ll go where she goes—all she has to do is ask. Then there’ll be a ring on her finger. My child inside her—eventually.

And that’s just the beginning of what I see happening, what I know to be true. I just have to hope that these next few months give us enough time for her to see it too. I can’t chase her. I won’t. But I don’t know how I’ll ever let her go either.