Page 36 of The Honest Affair

Chapter Eight

Nina

His lips were soft, and his hands were warm. With his jacket around my shoulders, I was enveloped at last in that familiar scent that comforted me in my dreams, though never so much as when I was curled on that rotting mattress at Rosie’s.

No, I didn’t want to go there. Not like I did most nights as I tried and failed to sleep in the plush comforts of Eric and Jane’s guest room. Just as I’d let myself go, allow my mind to drift toward sleep, suddenly I’d be back in that cell, swathed in the absurdly thin blankets, scratching at bites left by bedbugs, trying not to hear the sounds of wails and jeers from the dormitory down the hall. Praying those intrusive hands wouldn’t return that night or any other.

It hadn’t been long. Fifteen days was all. But it was long enough to stick with me. I was beginning to think it always would.

I inhaled deeply, allowing the sting of the cold air to penetrate those memories, keep them at bay. Matthew’s scent flooded me instead: the heady wool of his jacket, the light cologne he preferred, the overtones of soap, ink. Perhaps a tinge of cigarette smoke too? And now champagne.

It was all delicious. Intoxicating. I wanted to taste him forever.

My skin prickled with warning. I didn’t deserve this. And I was too angry for him to deserve it either. He had already proven that he was no refuge, no port in the storm when I needed him most.

But that didn’t mean I didn’t want him to be. Because he smelled good, and he felt good, and even more than everything else, he felt like home.

Below us, the city erupted with muted shouts of sirens and car horns. There were nights, even here in Eric’s stronghold townhouse, when I felt like the darkness that threaded through the city of my birth threatened to crash through my very windows and eat me alive. I was only just now beginning to realize how fear had eroded the core of me my entire life.

And now…with him…even though I shouldn’t, I felt so, so safe.

His tongue touched mine, begged to twist together, to dive into the taste of me. I groaned as my hands grabbed that silky soft hair and yanked. A pang of desire shot between my legs, where I was suddenly and disturbingly aware there was absolutely nothing guarding me from him.

Maybe not so safe after all.

Maybe a little bit dangerous. In the best possible way.

And maybe, I realized…right now…that was for the best.

For all his warmth, Matthew was really just a blazing fire. He had burned me once, and he would burn me again if I let him.

If I let him.

The choice, in the end, was mine.

Somehow, without even thinking about it, I managed to tear myself away. His heavy breathing sent feathery plumes of white into the night air while he gazed at me, taking in my dress, my legs, my heaving chest. He had spent long enough examining the lace of my dress that he was perfectly aware it wasn’t lined.

Had I chosen it precisely to see the expression on his face when he figured that out?

Perhaps.

But now, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to be viewed that way. I turned around, content to remain in his arms, but facing my back toward him so I could look out to the city and reassemble my good senses.

Just below, cars raced up and down Central Park West, one of the few thoroughfares in Manhattan with two-way traffic. It was a behemoth that stretched down to Lincoln Center, only fifteen or so blocks south, an explosion of light and color marking the beginning of Central Park’s chasm of darkness in the night.

As Matthew’s hands tightened at my waist and his lips feathered kisses up and down my neck, I gripped the railing and remembered those moments—twice—that I had run into that darkness with this man at my heels. Reckless, skittering into the park at night. But he had said he would chase me anywhere. Until, of course, he wouldn’t.

His teeth found my ear and sank down softly before the warm slip of his tongue curled around my lobe.

I shivered with desire as one of his hands cupped my breast. Brazen as always.

Though he had tried to respect my need for discretion, Matthew had never really cared where we were when it came to demonstrating his desire for me. The family’s seats at the opera, for crying out loud. He had taken some part of me wherever and whenever he wanted.

You’re no different, a small voice pointed out in the back of my mind as he found my other breast, pinching and toying with my nipples through the thin silk while he continued that delicious torture of my ear.

“Ah!” I gasped, as much at the sudden bite below my jaw as the memory of sinking to my knees for him in the middle of the park, pulling down the top of my dress, and forcing him to take his pleasure out all over my skin.

No, I had never really cared where we were either.

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