He stepped back, my fingers trailing away from his chest, and tugged off his shirt, dropping it to the floor, instantly forgotten. Isaac picked me up and carried me to the bed, divesting me of everything that kept me covered, and everything that kept him hidden from me.
I had never seen a naked man before. I’d never been naked with a man before. But there I lay on Isaac’s large bed covered by his long legs and muscular thighs, my small frame underneath him, open to him as he took control and showed me what it meant to be loved.
“You and me, Riley, there’s nothing but this. Nothing else but this, how we are right now.”
Isaac never spoke much of his feelings, the things that rocked his soul, the many worries that kept him up at night. Maybe he didn’t know how to say he loved me, but just then, with Isaac’s warm, solid body right against mine, skin to skin, touching me like no one ever had before, I decided words weren’t all that important.
“Nothing else, my love. Nothing else at all.”
And then he came to me, and took possession of me, and moved so deeply and so fully in me, that there was nothing else at all.
Later, when even the crickets had set their song to something low and tired, I lay next to Isaac feeling boneless and surreal. He felt like a mountain against me, the hard planes of muscle, the sharp twist of ligaments and bone that pressed into me, hard where I was soft, but tender and sweet. His breath had gone slow and even and I knew he slept, the quick movement of his eyelids fluttered as he dreamed. Yet even while he slept, he held me, set me to fit just under his chin with the slick feel of his sweat moving with mine. We’d moved together like a dance, bodies gliding to fit a perfect rhythm, a perfect life that once again made me feel a loss that was not mine. Next to this man, my man, there was only peace, only the sense that we were beginning… we had only started to know what that meant.
Sixteen
Nash
It was the dream. The waking dream again.
There was something tied up in that dream—a memory, the life I knew but had never lived. That was the only explanation.
The dream crawled inside my skull like a centipede. It stayed there, burrowed itself so deep inside my brain that imagination got squashed. Nothing was fantasy anymore. What had been figments of my imagination had grown to something real, something I couldn’t beat away. Something I couldn’t ignore.
It had me jerking awake. None of the others had done that. Not when Sookie ran from some asshole trying to hurt her. Not when I knew the danger she headed toward was starting to take shape.
This one was different. This one was more real than anything I’d ever felt.
The woman, somehow my woman? She’d been so real. So much. And I shuddered, I called out in the idle of that dream and woke with sweat dotting my forehead and slipping down my back, and ready, so damn ready to finish what was started in that dream. It made me want something that wasn’t mine.
The dream stayed with me during interviews with potential PR companies. Duncan wanted to hear pitches and made me listen in, still trying to impress me. I watched his face, focused like I understood the meaning behind the noise, the unrecognizable questions he asked the would-be marketing gurus promising to make Nations a household name. I knew Duncan expected me to weigh in with some technical expectations, ask how they’d spin my product to potential clients, but it was all I could do to keep from completely drifting away.
Lucky for me, he liked the sound of his own voice. Even Duncan and his slick CEO arrogance didn’t distract me from the dream. The sound of the pitch didn’t do a damn thing to erase what I’d felt. What I’d seen. What I remembered.
The dream stayed even as his nagging turned into a whining drone that made my teeth ache.
“What the fuck was that? You just tuned out. You weren’t engaged at all.”
No. I hadn’t been. Still wasn’t as I fed him some line about a migraine.
“I’ll catch you later, man. I gotta jet.”
He didn’t buy my excuse. Duncan’s eyes narrowed and I swear I felt his stare hot on my neck as I stood waiting at the elevator. I kept my head down, wondering for the umpteenth time how I’d gotten messed up with someone like Duncan in the first place.
Ah. Right. I had a program and no cash yet. Duncan had deep pockets and was looking for someone’s coattails to ride. One plus one is always two.
Didn’t much care if he bought the migraine excuse. I felt something right at the base of my skull. A pressure, a dull ache, but I wasn’t sick. I was high.
Frustrated.
Consumed.
Embarrassed that Willow had tried pulling her aura shit in front of my potential employees. God, how had she even ended up in this building?
Mainly, I felt shitty that I’d acted like an asshole to her.
Again.
I scrubbed my face, grunting against my hand. I needed a break from the company. From the dreams. From the unknowing glare of what refused to consume me.
The lobby was crowded and I weaved through it, tearing off my jacket, pulling at my tie like it might strangle me. It was too much, all of it and when I came to a bottleneck of the crowd blocking the entrance I didn’t bother to hold back the loud growl in my tone when I launched an angry, “Are you fucking kidding me? Move!”
Twenty jerking heads craned around at me; their eyes glaring, insulted. Their expressions, ranging from offense to anger. An apology started at the back of my throat, ready to shoot from my mouth but died the second I spotted two security guys heading my way. They didn’t know me. Why would they? I took up one suite on the third floor. A nobody whose company hadn’t even made a current, much less a wave. There was a threat in their eyes I’d seen from men like then a thousand times in my life. I’d been suspected, judged and convicted before a single question had been asked.
“Son of a bitch,” I mumbled, tired already, pissed at myself for the bullshit I was stirring. “Look—”
“Nash?” I heard, my attention jumping from the rent-a-cops darting toward me to the leggy redhead with the worried expression wrinkling her otherwise beautiful face. She took my bicep, wrapping her hand around it tight like she’d done that very thing a thousand times before staring at the security guards. “Andy? Mike? Is there a problem?”
Keep your mouth shut, I told myself, willing the smartass comments and arguments that I didn’t need anyone’s damn rescue back down my fucking throat. I didn’t need any of this shit today.
“You know this man, Miss Shannon?” one of the rent-a-cops asked Harmony, his face tight, expression skeptical.
“This man,” she said, hand on her hip now like she was some kind of baller with zero worries about shit starting, “is my boyfriend and from the looks of him he’s had a bad day.”
“He was being belligerent to the other occupants,” the other guard said, nodding toward the still-crowded entrance.
Harmony glanced behind her, mouth drawn in a tight frown when she glared back at the man. “Of course he was. If I’d had long damn meetings with unreasonable clients like Nash then had to hurry home to get to my sick mother, only to find the entire lobby at capacity and the exits blocked because the people who run and monitor this building are neglecting their duties, then I’d be belligerent too.” She stepped in front of them, pulling out her cell. “Maybe I should just call my uncle and ask that he find out who is responsible for making sure the lobby stays clear…”