Nick nodded, touched my waist and moved to the stove.
We ate spaghetti with a spicy meat sauce, fantastic garlic bread and a delicious fresh salad.
In other words, Nick could cook.
He insisted we leave the dishes but we took the wine to his bedroom.
We fucked combative, fast and rough.
I won.
After, Nick did as promised and returned the favor of what I gave him that morning after room service.
But his ended with more fucking and me getting another orgasm.
Although I got another orgasm, that time, he won.
And after that, because to be smart I had to make my point, we got dressed and he walked me to my car.
We kissed hard and greedy at my driver’s side door.
And I nearly ran into a streetlight as I watched Nick in my rearview mirror as he jogged up his steps while I drove away.
Chapter Ten
A Goddamned Squeeze
Nick
10:38 – Wednesday Night
She was late.
Nick was not happy.
He looked at his phone to the text he got from her fifteen minutes ago that warned him she would be.
A dinner with her mother should not last this long. He knew. He’d sat through watching her do it more than once.
Shit.
Olivia Shade.
He was fucked and getting more fucked by the day, and not in ways he wanted.
This included the fact that the last two nights, later than their normal meets, at his invitation she came to his place. Once there, she immediately tried to climb on his dick (he allowed her to be successful before he stopped allowing this). He gave it to her and she gave it to him. After she was done, at her choice, they got dressed and he walked her to her Range Rover.
She had not retreated. She spoke. The sex was just as aggressive, but with their conversations, the outing of her scars, there was a trace more intimacy.
And she was learning to give him full access. She definitely came out of the moment if he touched her scars, but she fell back into it faster and faster and no longer tried to avoid it.
But other than that, she was giving him nothing. No in. She accepted his invitation to be friendly but only accepted it to the point she was comfortable with it, which was not much.
At this early point in his plan, Nick should be down with that. He assumed with her remark she’d “earned” her scar that her father had given it to her. He did not know this as fact, but with her shame around it, shame that felt deeper than her simply being a woman who had what she considered a flaw that marked her, it was a good assumption.
There was a story behind that scar and it had to do with Vincent Shade.
That mystery he would solve along the way.
Olivia sharing that she might be one of the few people in the world who’d understand the struggle he’d had coming to terms with his relationship with his brother and handing him the shock of her softheartedness when she thought his father died were unexpected things he knew he had to guard against.
So Nick had needed to step back.
When this was over, when he’d earned her trust and used it to gather enough information to bring down the House of Shade, the best case scenario for her was that he’d walk away and she’d remain standing. There was no doubt she’d hate him, but she’d remain standing.
Another scenario, when he had what he needed and made his move, she went down with her father, not literally, as in taking a bullet, but figuratively, as in enjoying a long stay in a prison cell.
The worst case scenario, she’d shield her father in a way where she did go down. Literally.
He already knew from what he got from her he’d work for the first.
But he had to be all in with his plan, so if she worked against him on that, he’d have to roll with it.
And take her down.
He’d given her two nights to back off and get her shit together, through doing that giving it to himself.
Now it was time to go back in.
He was impatient to do that.
In order to control the feeling, he also had to admit to himself that he was impatient to see her again.
This meant they needed to fuck, and a lot, so he could work that feeling out.
Eyes to the scene in front of him, a guy getting it from three girls, something that didn’t hold Nick’s attention (he’d prefer the guy being absent and just the three girls), knowing she was going to be late and that would last at least another quarter of an hour, when the call came in from his boy, he took it.
So he was surprised, in the middle of it, when he heard the door open behind him.
He had to roll with it.
Regardless, in order to gain her trust, he had to give her the impression she had his.