Page 36 of Savage Blooms (Unearthly Delights #1)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Nicola
The game dissolved quickly after that. Red-faced with pleasure and shame, everyone exchanged goodnights and disappeared to go shower off the evidence of their little victories.
Nicola had never been to Eileen’s bedroom, but she suspected Eileen lived on the very top floor, up the narrow set of servants’ stairs at the end of the main hallway where Nicola slept.
That suspicion was only strengthened when Nicola glimpsed Eileen pulling Finley with her up that little flight of stairs.
Adam walked Nicola to her room, just like all those times he had walked her to her car after a night of bar-hopping, only this time, he couldn’t meet her eyes.
Nicola’s thighs still ached from pinning Finley down beneath her, and her lips still tingled from where Adam had kissed her, pressing his confession into her skin.
She felt weighted down with wanting and light as air at the same time, perfectly in command of herself and yet totally out of control.
She didn’t know what she had been thinking in the parlor. She had wanted Adam, and she had wanted Finley, in a disparate yet complimentary way, and in the heady haze of the game, the answer had seemed so simple: have them both. But now, with a clearer postcoital head, complications swept in.
None of them had talked about any of this. Finley was Eileen’s, and Adam was certainly not Nicola’s, that much had always been painfully clear.
But Adam had kissed her like she was his, like she was the lady he wanted to honor with roses and courtly devotion by day, then despoil and devour by candlelight at night.
And Finley had looked up at her with something close to religious devotion, bucking against her and whimpering like she was the cruelest goddess he could ever want to be sworn to.
Nicola, who wasn’t used to being anything to anyone, was terrified and intoxicated by it all.
“Um, goodnight,” she said now, twisting her fingers as she stood at her bedroom door. Adam was with her in the hallway, only inches away.
She had spent so long resisting the impulse to kiss him that now, with that sacred veil torn right down the middle, she wanted to do nothing but kiss him, over and over again.
“Are you all right?” Adam asked, searching her face with his blue eyes. God, he was so tall.
“Why wouldn’t I be all right?” Nicola asked.
Adam could think whatever he liked about her, but she refused to let him think she was scared of a little light group sex.
She had enjoyed a threesome once in her lab partner’s dorm room, losing herself in two other girls for an hour before they ate cold Domino’s naked in bed and braided each other’s hair.
She might be sensitive, but she wasn’t delicate.
“That was a lot,” Adam said, like it was obvious.
“Maybe I like a lot,” Nicola said softly, exposing more of herself than she wanted to, right now, so late at night. “Would that be so bad?”
“No,” Adam said, breathy and low.
Nicola opened her mouth to ask him if he wanted to come inside, to practically beg him to, but then, to her surprise, he took the initiative. Closing the gap between them, Adam kissed her again, harder this time. Nicola’s head swam and her lips burned as Adam pulled away.
“I don’t know what’s happening to us out here,” he confessed. “And I need a little time to make sense of it. But I’m not mad about it.”
“Me either,” Nicola said.
“Goodnight, Nikki,” Adam said. And then, with a little bit of his old stalwart cheer, “Sleep tight, don’t die.”
“Sleep tight, don’t die,” Nicola responded. And then, she was alone in the hallway.
Thank God Adam turned the corner towards his room at the end of the hall instead of climbing the stairs towards Eileen’s room. Nicola didn’t think she could take that.
She slipped into her room and locked the door behind her, peeling off her clothes the moment the latch clicked tight.
She stripped off her dress, unlatching her bra and letting her heavy breasts free.
Then, wearing nothing but her black cotton panties, she snagged her vibrator from her travel bag and slipped into bed.
Her head swam with a hundred worries and desires and theories.
Her MacBook, left open to a half-read JSTOR article, glowed at her from the desk.
Nicola was irritated by the light and the reminder of her quest for the truth, and crawled across the bed to snap the laptop shut before nestling back down against the pillows.
She didn’t want to think about how anything could go wrong right now, or about what Eileen might have in store for any of them. She just wanted relief from the ache between her legs.
Nicola didn’t think she could fuck herself soundly enough to quiet all the longing inside her, but she could certainly try.
She kicked her vibrator onto the highest setting and teased herself for only a minute before thrusting the toy all the way inside herself.
Usually she needed more warm-up, but she was so embarrassingly wet that her body took the vibrator with absolutely no resistance.
Her fingers grew slick as she moved the toy in and out of her body, faster and harder with every thrust.
Her mind was a swirl of indistinct lust, alighting for one second on Finley’s full mouth, then on Eileen’s burning eyes, then on the scent of Adam, all mint toothpaste and amber deodorant.
She tried to force herself to conjure any garden-variety fantasy: something tame, something that wouldn’t muddy the boundaries between her and her friends any more.
But when she came, hard and sudden and with a cry that could no doubt be heard all through the house, she was imagining all three of them, covering her with hands and mouths in a vicious game of conquest, ruining her for their pleasure like she was the mouthwatering centerpiece of their feast of desire.
Nicola caught her breath in the dark for a good ten minutes afterwards, riding out the aftershocks.
She had hoped to work all that longing out of her system, but she had barely recovered before she plunged back into wanting again.
Her stomach tightened with need the moment she turned her thoughts back to Adam or Eileen or Finley.
She let out a sound close to a sob as she slipped her fingers back down between her legs, circling her clit in search of a second orgasm.
Craigmar, it appeared, had made her insatiable.
Nicola couldn’t say how long she slept in the next day.
She had dropped into unconsciousness the night before, utterly wrung out, and hadn’t even thought to set an alarm on her phone.
By the time she opened her eyes, on her eighth day at Craigmar, the sun was bright through her gossamer curtains and the birds were singing a full-throated chorus.
The date of her flight home had come and gone, and she had barely noticed. Realizing that the plane had taken off without her felt like crossing a threshold, like throwing her lot in with her new friends in a very real and immediate way.
She hauled herself into consciousness, groggy and irritable.
Despite all the orgasms, she hadn’t slept well, and had been tormented by nightmares.
Visions of humiliation floated through her mind as she dressed: Adam shouting at her for committing some sort of infidelity, Finley running into her at a party and pretending like he didn’t know her, Eileen lending Nicola a dress only for Nicola to rip it down the seam and sob while trying to mend it.
And there had been another dream as well, something darker and more strange.
A cold, long-fingered hand encircling her throat, holding her as gently as a farmer might hold a chicken he didn’t want to startle before wringing its neck, and an unfamiliar voice whispering her own name in her ear.
Nicola scrubbed her face clean in the bathroom, patted off the excess water, then fastidiously applied mascara, concealer and shimmery lip balm like a soldier preparing for war.
No matter how any of the others felt about what had happened last night, she would not be made to feel ashamed.
Nicola found her way down the stairs to the kitchen without Adam – Craigmar was becoming more familiar with each passing day – and she was greeted by the sound of men’s voices as she approached.
Nicola paused a few feet from the doorway, listening intently.
Eavesdropping had always been one of her favorite vices.
“Did you sleep well?” Adam was asking.
“Like the dead,” Finley said. “Eileen’s games always tire me out.”
“Is Eileen still out cold?”
“She lies in later than most. But I’m sure she’ll be pleased to see you when she wakes up.”
“Oh yeah?” Adam replied, a teasing challenge in his voice. “I’m sure Nicola will be happy to see you too.”
Nicola’s heart skipped a beat at the sound of her name, betraying her with girlish hope, and heat pooled in her stomach at the idea of these two men discussing her when she wasn’t around, with an altogether more adult sort of longing.
Why did that faint whisper of objectification turn her on so much? She was losing her mind. She had to be.
“Did you and Eileen kiss and make up?” Adam went on. “You two seemed like you were on the rocks last night.”
“We’re always on the rocks,” Finley scoffed. “But yes, we made up. Multiple times.”
“I hope you aren’t upset with me for what happened.”
“You mean you fingering my girlfriend, who happens to be my employer, three feet away from me? I’m not, actually. So long as you aren’t upset with me for taking liberties with Nicola.”
“Nicola can do what she likes, and we’re all grown,” Adam replied, in the voice he used to try to make himself sound worldly and experienced. “I think we know how to share.”
“And have you talked to Nicola about that?”
Deciding that was as good as any cue she was going to get, Nicola walked through the kitchen door as though she had just arrived.