Page 47 of You Complicate Me

Con for letting Nick go now: No more long talks about nothing and everything. The kind of talks that made her laugh until she nearly cried. The kind of talks that made her feel more alive and connected to another human being than she’d ever felt with anyone else. Those talks were so…intimate, and going back to a life without that kind of intimacy—the kind she was pretty sure she’d never had with another anyone else—was truly terrifying.

Pro for letting Nick go now before they got too involved: The chances of her ending up an emotionally crippled shell of her former self, drowning in mint mocha chip ice cream and vodka to dull the pain of losing him at some point in her not-so-distant future were all but nil. Suffer a little bit now, save herself infinitely greater pain later. It seemed like a reasonable trade-off.

But then, of course, there was the other con for letting Nick go now: Not ever getting to have sex with him. Never getting to know what it felt like to be with him, skin-to-skin, surrounded by him, losing herself to him as he drove her to the edge of sanity and beyond…

I’m not looking for a relationship.

Yeah, but what would you do if you found one?

Images of the past few days with Nick raced through her mind like montage clips from a cheesy romantic comedy. Nick smirking at her across the table in that airport holding room, Nick paying for a stranger’s dinner and blushing when she saw evidence of what a nice guy he was, Nick protecting her from Cletus the creepy motel night manager, Nick holding her and taking care of her when she was too sick to move, Nick kissing the holy hell out of her in that elevator…

“Damn,” Grace muttered. “I’ve found a relationship.”

And that was pretty much when her heart told her brain, with all its logic and pro/con lists, to go screw itself. How could she possibly let him go now? She’d been a fool to even consider it.

A cocktail of dread and panic coursed through her veins as she considered the possibility that he might not want her anymore. She had stiff-armed him away from her pretty hard. What if he was in the hotel bar right now, picking up some hot, willing woman who wasn’t all fifty shades of fucked-up like Grace was?

Driven by panic, Grace shot up off the bed and raced to the door separating their rooms. Without giving any thought to what she might see if he wasn’t alone in that room, Grace yanked the door open and…

Let out a shocked gasp when she found Nick standing right there, head down, arms braced on the doorframe above his head.

He hadn’t moved when she told him to go away.

Nick lifted his head slowly, and when his eyes met hers, Grace knew there was no turning back. The hurt, the longing, the confusion, the need…everything she was feeling was looking right back at her from the depths of his fathomless blue eyes.

She opened her mouth, but whatever she was going to say was lost forever when he grabbed her, yanked her into his arms and kissed the ever-lovin’ hell out of her.

Chapter Twenty-four

Grace didn’t even hesitate. She threw herself into the kiss as wholeheartedly as he did. Maybe a little too wholeheartedly, she admitted to herself as he staggered back a step under the onslaught of her full body weight against him. But true to form, he righted himself quickly, his hands slipping down to her ass, pulling her tightly against him.

Nick flipped her around, pressing her back against the wall in his room. He kissed her hard and with a desperation she could only attribute to fear of being pushed away again.

Not that there was any chance of that happening at the moment.

He pulled back just far enough to rest his forehead against hers, his breathing ragged. “I’m so sorry, Grace. I didn’t mean what I said.”

Less talking, more kissing, she wanted to say, but his mouth seemed to have some kind of gravitational pull, because she couldn’t help but go after his lips again. He held her back, though. “I mean it,” he said in a voice so rough it sounded like it’d been beaten against rocks since they last spoke. “Do you forgive me?”

“Only if you don’t stop kissing me.”

He raised his head and looked down into her eyes, and Grace knew she was this close to convincing him to surrender. And damned if seeing that near-surrender in this man’s eyes didn’t make her feel like the sexiest siren ever to have lived. It was a heady, dangerous feeling. She could get used to it, grow dependent on it, so, so fast.

But that was a worry for another day. There just wasn’t room for worry between them at the moment. Only heat, forgiveness, passion, and need.

He closed his eyes and let out a hoarse groan. “You’re killing me. Don’t we need to talk about this?”

She was pretty sure she was going to die if she didn’t get him inside her soon, so she just shook her head. “Not now.”

He slid his hand under her hair to firmly but gently grip her nape. “We will talk about this later,” he said, his tone brooking no argument.

Yes! Grace did a mental fist pump. She had him!

“Later,” she agreed. “Much later.”

Her entire body hummed with electricity as he moaned into her mouth and kissed her again. It wasn’t long before their kisses grew feverish and frantic, their breathing labored.

Grace had never been the type to lose control, but with Nick, control was nothing more than a distant memory—and not an entirely pleasant distant memory. If this was what it felt like to let go with Nick, Grace realized there was no going back. She might just be officially ruined for all other men, and she hadn’t even gotten him inside her yet.

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