A French Whipping (13 page)

She came with a loud cry, her body clamping down on his fingers, squeezing him and making him wish that it were his cock inside her. He kept moving, riding out the crest of her shudders, until she went limp and trembling beneath him.

He removed his hand from between her legs and collapsed next to her, feeling like he’d just run a marathon at high altitude.

After a few minutes, she shifted so that she was turned toward him, her eyes soft and slumberous. She touched his cheek. “Is it always like this for you?”

He frowned, catching her hand and kissing her fingers. “Like what?”

She levered herself up onto one elbow. “Like you can’t get enough, like you want to try anything and everything and the possibilities are endless.”

Nick stared at her. He felt that way, but he thought it was because he knew he would only have her for a little while, and while he had her, he wanted to touch and taste every inch, commit to memory every line and curve and sound she made as he pleasured her.

“It’s never felt this way to me before,” he admitted and hoped she didn’t ask him for more of an answer. She’d touched on something he’d buried long ago, and having her here was slowly, inevitably, bringing it to the surface, like an anchor that had been sent deep and was slowly, inch by inch, becoming visible in the depths.

12

AFTER TAKING A
shower and painting her nails, Blake sat with Nick on his couch in her new Agent Provocateur silk pajamas and drank her wine. She’d turned the TV on, but was only half watching the news as Nick worked on his laptop. He was wearing reading glasses. God, he was gorgeous.

“Roland says that he spoke to your detective,” Nick said. He was reading an email.

“Yeah? Did she know anything else?”

His hair was still damp from the shower and he wore gray flannel pants and nothing else. He typed rapidly for a moment.

“Apparently Keenan is suspected in the murder of two men and a woman at a software company in Hong Kong almost two years ago, though he seems to be going by the name Curtis Venture. Interpol has a file on him as well, but she didn’t have access to it.”

Blake contemplated the bottom of her wineglass. “I wonder how she knew to connect this Curtis Venture to Keenan.”

“Roland wonders the same thing. He’s meeting her to go over the files.”

“Hmm. Did you tell him about what you heard today?”

“I don’t know what I heard today.”

Blake sighed. “You should at least mention it.”

“All right,” he replied grudgingly.

Shifting, Blake tapped her nails on her wineglass restlessly. Normally she’d be at work right now, moving quickly to keep up with the busy Friday night crowd at the Hairy Lemon. It didn’t feel right, to sit here and do nothing.

“I know you have another laptop around here somewhere. Even an old one.”

He looked at her. “What do you do at home when you need to use a computer?”

“I go to the library,” she shot back. Phillip had taken the computer they’d bought, along with most of the furniture and all of their savings account. He’d been a stock analyst at an online brokerage firm. She’d met him while working as an administrative assistant for a law office in the same building. She’d thought she’d been smart and picked someone stable, but he’d turned out to be the worst of all of them. She shuddered.

Nick scowled. “Hang on. I can set something up for you.”

He logged out and set his Mac on the couch between them. He walked back toward the door and went upstairs onto the second floor. Blake listened to his footsteps overhead. She knew his office and another large room were up there, but she hadn’t seen them since he’d had the building renovated.

He came back downstairs carrying a thick black laptop that looked several pounds heavier than the Mac he had placed between them.

“Okay, this is an older laptop, but I’ll set it up for you until tomorrow. We can go to the Apple store then.”

“You don’t need to buy me a Mac.” She shook her head. “I can use that . . . thing.”

He ignored her and opened the black behemoth, scowling when it took a couple minutes to log on. “I wouldn’t subject anyone to this for long.”

“You’re spoiled,” she pointed out.

He didn’t acknowledge that comment, logging onto the computer with sharp taps of his fingers on the keyboard. Blake sighed and picked up his Mac. She didn’t know his password. She might have tried to guess—she had a few ideas, but he seemed serious about not wanting her to be on his computer. She logged on as a guest instead and pulled up Safari.

She searched for the website of the community college where she’d been taking online courses in Excel and business administration. Most of the people who managed charitable organizations had business degrees or were from a related field, so she’d started with some of the general requirements.

Nick was looking at his computer in her lap and frowning.
Probably irritated that I’m touching his stuff.
She ignored him and logged in to the college’s site.

Her therapist had helped her realize that one of the reasons she became involved in so many damaging relationships was because of her father’s distance after her mother was gone. Though he’d physically still been present, he’d stopped really seeing or acknowledging her. She’d been a ghost.

So, when she’d ventured out on her own, she’d attached herself to the first man who said he needed her—Keenan. His attention had made her feel wanted and valuable and important.

Her therapist had suggested that, rather than suppress those needs, she find other, more positive ways to improve her feelings of self-worth. At first she hadn’t known how to go about it. Waitressing just didn’t give her the sense that she was really helping anyone or that she really even mattered, but then she’d helped put on the magic show for the kids. Seeing them struggle so hard and knowing that something she’d done had helped, if only in a small way, had changed her.

She pulled up the week’s assignments and saw that she’d missed a due date.

“Shit,” she muttered. “I forgot that was due yesterday.”

She glanced over at Nick and saw that he was still watching her, a frown between his eyes. “Why did you ask Roland to help you get a job waitressing? You were working as an administrative assistant before, weren’t you?”

“Yeah.” And before that she’d sold perfume at the Macy’s counter. That was where she’d met Carlos. Blake wondered why he hadn’t asked her that a year ago, when she’d started working at the Hairy Lemon. “I don’t know. At the time I wanted something different, away from everyone I used to know. I’ve waitressed before. I’m good at it.”

He nodded.

“And now it means that I have time to take classes during the day if I want, so I’ll be a waitress for a while longer.”

Still frowning, he went back to whatever he was doing on the laptop.

“What?” she prompted.

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“Just say whatever it is.”

“I hate seeing you working as a waitress, waiting on all those men. They look at you and I know they’re thinking . . .” He stopped himself. “I hate it,” he finished.

Blake swallowed. She didn’t know what to say to that. He
hated
it. Carlos had hated it when other men looked at her and would rage at her for encouraging them, but this was Nick. He would never blame her for the way men reacted to her, would he? He’d always been protective of her, but this seemed like more than that. “Why do you hate it?”

He was silent for a long moment. “Partly because they don’t see you. They just see part of you.”

Her tits, her ass, occasionally her face. She knew it. She lived it. “It’s not so bad. The same thing happens no matter where I work.” She looked down at her chest. “Men see these and it’s like I’m this object.”

“I’m sorry.” Nick shook his head. “I have no right to say anything.”

Maybe not,
Blake thought, studying him,
but the fact that you feel that way is interesting.
It worried her a little. What else went on in that mysterious brain of his?

She leaned over to watch him work on the computer he’d brought from upstairs. “What are you doing to it?” she asked curiously, hoping that he would accept the change in subject. The screen was dark, with nothing but lines of what looked like code to her.

“Nothing fancy. I’m reformatting the drive and then I’m going to install updated software and Office and whatever else you need.”

Blake watched him for a moment. He was focused on the screen as if it held the secrets of the universe. “Have you always been this way?”

He looked up at her, lifting his glasses so he could see her clearly. “What way?”

“Intense. About everything.”

Nodding, he slid his glasses back down on his nose. “It runs in my family.”

Blake knew that his dad had been abusive, but she wasn’t sure about the details, nor did she feel comfortable asking, since she didn’t want to talk about her past, either.

With a sigh, she opened her assignment for her business class and began reading.

“Have you ever been sailing?” he asked a few minutes later, seemingly out of the blue.

“Sailing?” She chuckled. “No.”

“The weather’s supposed to be even warmer tomorrow. I’d like to take you sailing, if you’d be interested.”

He seemed hesitant somehow, like he was afraid she would turn him down or something. “Yeah. I mean, I’ll be next to useless, but I’ll go if you want.”

He nodded. “I have a boat docked in the harbor. We can walk over there in the morning.”

Blake felt her eyes narrow. “Just how early are we talkin’?”

He laughed. “Probably fairly early, but I’ll feed you first. Real food.”

“What kind of real food?”

“French toast?” he ventured.

“Deal,” she said. Sailing. She’d watched the boats when she was growing up. Quite a few people in her old neighborhood had worked with boats or on boats, but she hadn’t been one of them. Based on all the images of boats and ships in his apartment, she couldn’t say she was surprised that Nick liked to sail, but she hadn’t ever heard him talk about it. When they hung out, they mostly talked about her, she realized, or about Roland or Milton, or the kids at the hospital. Then there had been those long periods when she hadn’t spoken to him or the other men at all. She’d been too busy working and trying to appease Carlos or Phillip. Not even Keenan’s abuse had prepared her for what Carlos and Phillip had done.

Keenan had never indicated to her that he was jealous, not outright; it would have ruined his confident image, but she’d found out from Roland that he would quietly damage anyone who spoke to her in a way that he didn’t like by stealing from them, setting them up, or physically harming them. That had been bad enough, but it hadn’t been directed at her personally.

Carlos, on the other hand, would get suspicious if she changed the password on her phone or put on a different perfume, and would ask her endless questions about the reasons for the change. He’d also really hated her friendship with Nick and the others. He hadn’t outright forbidden her to see them. She liked to think that she would have resisted such a blatant control tactic, but if he thought she’d been around her friends, he’d ask her question after question, and make enough insinuating comments that eventually she’d lock herself in her room to get away from the relentless interrogation.

Phillip had been different, more insidious. When she’d first met him, he’d seemed so attentive and sweet, bringing her coffee, then flowers, telling her that she was the bright spot in his day, that no one else had ever made him feel like he was worth anything.

But then, once she’d started living with him, she would find him waiting for her with a brooding expression on his face. He’d suggest that she had flirted with someone, and she’d deny it, but he’d find a way to make sure there was evidence that she’d done something.

Once, when a colleague of his commented on her body, he’d invited the man to dinner. He’d put GHB in Blake’s wine and let the man touch her bare chest, had even taken pictures. Then he’d shown them to her and suggested that she stop flirting with other men. She knew, down to her bones, that Nick would never do anything like that.

She swallowed. “I’m sorry for all the times I didn’t answer your calls,” she said in a rush, feeling the ridiculous sting of tears. “When I was with Carlos. And Phillip. I just wanted to say that. I don’t know what I’d do if you and Roland and Milton hadn’t been there for me.”

He set the computer he was holding on the coffee table and then removed his Mac from her lap for good measure. With an effortless tug, he pulled her into his lap and wrapped his arms around her, holding her against his chest and putting his chin on the top of her head.

He held her like that and said nothing while voices from the local news droned on and the old computer beeped and whirred as it laid the foundations for a fresh, clean start, removing everything that had been there before. Blake closed her eyes and snuggled a little closer to his chest, enjoying the way his arms tightened around her so much that she didn’t let herself wonder what he was thinking, or what she would do when this all ended and she was alone again.

Nick held Blake until her breath grew deep and even and knew she’d fallen asleep. It was early, only nine-thirty, but he wasn’t surprised that she was tired. The pleasure of the moment unfolded within him, a quiet, normal night, with his beautiful friend asleep against his chest. He’d thought he would be more agitated to have her in his space, but so far she’d slid into his life neatly. Would it be like this all the time if she stayed with him permanently? Would it be this simple?