Page 15 of I Dream of Danger
“N-Nick?”
Oh God. She’d done something wrong. Whatever she’d done it had been wrong. The wrong thing to do. She thought she’d been moving so naturally, but clearly she’d done something she shouldn’t. Or hadn’t done something she should.
And now he was angry. She chanced a peek at his face. Or…if not angry, then something. Whatever, he wasn’t happy. That was clear.
Nick swung his long legs over the side of the bed and sat, hands gripping the edge of the mattress, head slightly bowed.
This was frightening. What kind of mistake could she have made to have him so cold and remote, all of a sudden? “Nick?” she whispered.
He was turned away so all she saw was his broad back, the dips and hollows of the muscles, the strong neck. She had no idea what he was thinking, feeling, none at all.
What to say, what to do? She had no idea. She was suffering from whiplash, from extreme pleasure to extreme distress in a few seconds. It was hard to keep up, even to know what she was feeling.
Cold and alone, that was what she was feeling.
Nick turned to her and she couldn’t know what he was feeling either. The smile was gone and all that was left was an impersonal remoteness.
“You’re a virgin.” His voice was distant, flat. He gestured down at himself, at his erect penis that had some blood on it. Her blood. “Were a virgin.”
Well…yes. Of course. It had never even occurred to her that Nick might think otherwise. Of course, he couldn’t know that these past five years there’d been no question of dating anyone, she’d graduated from high school by a miracle, and frankly, by the indulgence of her teachers, who knew what was happening at home. A boyfriend had been out of the question.
But beyond that, well…no boy and no man had ever attracted her, in any way. She’d been waiting for him.
How pathetic was that? He wasn’t happy she’d waited for him. He was…what? Annoyed? Impatient? Exasperated?
She made a noise in her throat because she had no idea what to say. Words weren’t coming to her. Words had completely fled her mind.
His dark eyebrows came together. “Why the f—.” He stopped himself visibly, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed the word. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Why the fuck didn’t you tell me? What he really wanted to say hung there in the air.
Oh God. He was edging toward angry.
Elle sat up, clutching the sheets, bringing her knees up to her chest. Where before she delighted in feeling his bare skin against hers—such a mind-blowing pleasure—now she felt naked. Naked in every sense.
She opened her mouth but no words came out. Not even air. She coughed and tried again. “Sorry.”
She should say something else but nothing else would come out.
And then his face changed, almost melted. “Pixie,” he said. All of a sudden that deep voice was liquid with tenderness.
Pixie. His pet word for her. Usually accompanied by a tug of her hair. Elle’s muscles relaxed, she gasped in a big breath of air, let it out again on a sigh.
He was back. Nick was back.
The tip of his forefinger ran over her cheek. “You really should have told me…I’d have done it differently.”
Elle blinked. There was another way? She shook her head sharply, quite beyond words.
Nick sighed and lifted his head, as if he’d suddenly heard something. In a second, he was in her ensuite bathroom, the one he’d teasingly dubbed Fairyland when she was a kid. It was a little over the top. Her father had redecorated when her mother died. Her bedroom was an ode to frills and her bathroom—candy-cane pink and cream, with roses hand-painted in the washbasin—was embarrassing as an adult.
Her senses expanded back out as she watched Nick walk naked into her bathroom. For a few seconds she’d imploded on herself, a black hole of negative gravity threatening to suck her through it, totally incapable of thought and observation.
But she was a little more relaxed now, capable of feeling a little electric thrill of delight just watching him walk across a room. His buttocks were firm as apples, round and tight and absolutely delicious.
So utterly different from her father’s flaccid muscles as she tried to wash him in the last months of his life.
No. No thinking like that.
