47. Adam

47

ADAM

‘ P lease,’ Nat slurs from her position on my pillow. She’s drunk with either exhaustion or desire—I’m not sure which. I press my lips together to swallow a smile, because she’s something else when she’s like this—lying in my bed, dark hair fanned across my pillows and those eyes huge and beseeching. Even in her silk pyjamas, she’s impossible to resist.

‘No,’ I tell her far more decisively than I feel. ‘You’re shattered.’

‘I’m not, honestly.’

‘You were dead on your feet when I picked you up. You were actually swaying.’

I swear, something has to give here. I’ve picked Nat up from Alchemy three nights this week. On the evenings that she hasn’t been working, we’ve met up in town and travelled back to mine together. She’s burning the candle enough as it is without adding sex marathons into the mix, but I assuage my guilt over being one more demand on her time with the knowledge that the comfortable drive to my place is far shorter—and less exhausting—than her lengthy tube commute back and forth to Seven Sisters would be.

That’s a circuitous way of admitting that she’s spent every night this week here with me.

I’m worried about her. Even without the burden of a chronic illness to manage, she has too much on her plate. I get that she values being a part of Alchemy. That she adores Gen and the rest of the team. I get that it pays the bills. But if she’s really serious about building Gossamer, then we need to find a way for her to focus her time and energy there and not on what is merely a short-term financial crutch.

That she’s nightly fodder for whatever over-sexed, overly entitled dickheads frequent Alchemy is beside the point.

‘I hear orgasms are good for quality of sleep,’ she says now, her voice soft and seductive, and I roll my eyes, because if I think I stand a chance against this assault on my heart and my cock, then I’m sorely mistaken.

‘Is that so.’ I fondle the top button of her pyjamas and gaze down at her from my position perched on my elbow. ‘That rationale only applies when people actually get some sleep, Miss Bennett.’

She smiles, cat-like, and reaches up, sliding her hand around the back of my neck. ‘Okay, I admit, I’m tired. But I’ve been standing in that lobby all evening, fantasising about you. I told the girls about you tonight, and I just want you inside me. Is that so terrible?’

I bat away the glow of pleasure that she’s told her friends about us and make one last-ditch attempt to protect her from herself, because she needs to fucking sleep.

‘Maybe I should tuck you in in the spare room,’ I say sternly.

‘That’s never stopped you and your monster hard-on from seeking me out before. ’

I burst out laughing. ‘Touché, sweetheart. Touché.’

A moment later, I’m sucking in a sharp breath through my teeth as I get the final button undone and let her pyjama top drop open. She’s the most exquisite creature I’ve ever laid eyes on. Her skin is pale and creamy, her stomach flat above the elasticated waistband of her pyjama bottoms. Her little pink nipples are already hard and begging to be pinched. Rolled. Tormented. She has a small, perfect freckle on the underside of one breast, and I trace it with my fingertip. She shivers.

If things were different between us, I’d be flipping her over before she could react and letting her feel the force of my palm.

What am I saying?

If things were different between us, I’d be making plans for us to spend Christmas together. Possibly booking a trip to the Caribbean for New Year’s, if I could be sure she’d manage the jet lag. Jet lag is brutal if you have type 1.

I spend every day devising ways to coax her back here for the night, and she comes, willingly. I’m drawing her in—we’re drawing each other in, becoming hopelessly besotted and helplessly entangled. If I ever thought it was hot when Nat fought her attraction to me, her utter submission to whatever this is is something else entirely.

Forget the trappings of wealth and respectability I’ve accumulated. Forget the validation, the plaudits I’ve earned from the business world. The pure-hearted willingness Nat shows to be with me in every way she can is the most humbling gift I’ve ever, ever received.

Which makes my certain knowledge that we have an expiry date even more cruel. Because we’re still hiding in the shadows. I’m under no illusion that I doomed this perfect relationship to failure the day I took my fist to Stephen Bennett’s eye.

A stronger man would walk away, would never have started anything in the first place. He would have left Nat alone. He wouldn’t have sunk to seducing her, to gaining her trust.

But I did.

And I’m not strong enough to walk away.

Not yet, anyway.

I shake the cold, clawing sense of doom off. No point in fixating on that when I’m about to enjoy my new favourite activity. Making Natalie Bennett come undone.

‘So’—I push myself up so I can straddle her—‘you’ve been fantasising about me all evening at work, have you? What did I do to you in these torrid and most unprofessional fantasies?’

She hesitates, eyelashes fluttering as I let my palms slide over the silken skin of her stomach.

‘You spanked me.’

Jesus Christ. This woman. She seriously has no sense of self-preservation. Now it’s my turn to shiver, even as her words have me thrusting forwards so my flannel-clad cock nudges against her pelvic bone. As it does, I slide a couple of fingers under her waistband and stroke the skin there.

‘Jesus fuck,’ I mutter. I rear up onto my knees so I can slip these silky pyjama bottoms right off her. The sight of her neat little triangle of dark hair almost fells me. She’s letting me undress her. See her naked. Touch her. Do what I want with her. She’s fantasising about my spanking her, for God’s sake. There’s something so innately vulnerable about the sight of her naked body beneath me that has my heart twisting in my chest.

I tug down my own pyjamas while I’m at it and settle back top of her for story time. She widens her legs, raising her knees so I can lie flat against her. We’re both naked now, and the relief I feel is extraordinary. This is as it should be. Against my better judgement, I ask, ‘What did I do, exactly?’

She smiles up at me. There’s a hint of self-consciousness on her face, but it’s warring with desire. Trust. ‘You showed up at the club and dragged me off to one of the rooms.’ She takes a deep breath.

‘You can tell me,’ I urge her. ‘I mean, you’re making it very fucking hard for me to behave here, but if you’re shamelessly exploiting me in your fantasies, I deserve to know about it, right?’

She runs a hand up my bicep. ‘You definitely weren’t the one being shamelessly exploited. So you got me in this room, and you told me I’d been a bad, bad girl, and then you put me over your knee and pushed up my dress, and you spanked me over my panties.’

Fuuuuuuuuck. ‘Were they white?’ I breathe.

‘Absolutely. White cotton. And then you slid them down, very slowly, and you started fingering me as you kept on spanking me. I came so hard.’

I stare at her. As far as spanking fantasies go, it should be pretty basic stuff.

But it’s not.

Because it’s Nat’s little white panties and Nat’s pretty little bottom I’m spanking and Nat’s pussy coming all over my fingers, and she’s right, she’s so fucking right. We shouldn’t do anything else but that.

I move against her, my cock seeking her core, and she opens wider for me.

‘Sweetheart,’ I groan against her pink mouth, ‘we’ve talked about this.’

‘No we haven’t,’ she insists. ‘Not enough. You always tell me you don’t want to do it because you don’t trust yourself. Well, guess what? I trust you enough for both of us. I know you’re not a violent thug. Your secret’s out. You’re a really, really good guy. And if we both want this, then why the hell shouldn’t we try it?’

‘You don’t know if you’ll like it,’ I argue. Christ, I need to bury myself so deep inside her that she’ll never be the same again.

‘No, but I know that if I really hate it, then you’ll stop. Right?’

‘Of course.’ I stroke her hair.

‘So give me one little spank. Pretty please?’

I reach down and press my palm to her bottom so I can squeeze. ‘First you’re begging me for an orgasm, now you’re moving the goalposts. You’re not playing fair.’

‘Funny. I thought you’d love it when women beg.’

‘I love it when you beg,’ I say through gritted teeth. I release her arse and wrap my arm around her so I can flip us over. She lands on top of me, gazing down at me, her face already flushed, and God knows I will give this woman every last thing she desires, in bed and out of it.

‘Ride my cock,’ I tell her, and I draw my hand back so I can administer a stinging slap to her arse. Her look of shock and her surprised yelp are fucking wonderful. Her jaw drops.

‘Did you like that?’

‘It stung, but God, yeah.’ She pushes herself upright, planting her palms on my pecs.

‘Good. That’s all you’re getting for now. If you want me to spank you properly, then I will, but let’s do it at the club. I’d rather take it out of the bedroom in case you don’t enjoy it.’

Her brown eyes dance with delight. ‘Seriously? ’

I laugh at her reaction. ‘Yes, my beautiful, dirty little minx. Now open the drawer.’

She beams at me and reaches over to open the drawer of my bedside table, frowning when she finds that it’s empty of condoms. I removed them earlier when I replaced them with the printout from my latest sexual health checkup. They’re in the bottom drawer now.

‘Where are they?’ she asks. ‘We didn’t use them all up, did we?’

I laugh. ‘Not quite. But take a look at the paper. I’m clean. I’m not planning on going anywhere near another woman, sweetheart.’ I pause, stroking my hands up the slim thighs straddling me. ‘I don’t know if you’re on the pill or not. I’d never want to make any assumptions. But if you want to go bare, I’m game. If not, no worries. The condoms are in the bottom drawer.’

There’s a beautiful smile spreading over her face. ‘I have a coil in, and I hadn’t slept with anyone for over a year when I met you. I had a test when we broke up, so I should be good to go.’

Taking a woman’s word for it when she says she’s on contraception is the ultimate rookie error when you have my financial status. That’s the theory, anyway. But this is Nat, and in our dynamic, all the trust runs one way. She’s taken an enormous leap of faith to trust me after everything I’ve put her family through, and there isn’t an atom in my body that doesn’t have the utmost faith in her.

‘I haven’t been bare with a woman for years and years,’ I tell her now, my cock twitching at the way she licks her lips.

‘Good,’ she says as she rears up, wrapping her slim fingers around my erection, which is so desperate for release that I could erupt right this second .

The sensation of pushing into the tight channel of her body, into that slick heat, of having my flesh drag against hers with nothing between us, is so intensely pleasurable that I may black out. It’s not just the sensation, though. It’s the sight of her above me, her pale skin and taut pink nipples, the sight of my dick disappearing inside her beautiful body inch by inch. It has me feeling all kinds of emotions that lie heavily on my chest, pressing down just as much as she’s doing with her hand as she feeds me in.

There are so many things I could say. Things I won’t say, shouldn’t say, shouldn’t feel.

‘You are so beautiful,’ I say lamely instead, fingers flexing on her hips. ‘You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.’

Forget the sights I just described—the disbelieving, bashful smile that spreads over her face at my words is the best of them all. I rear up, propping myself on one hand so I can cup her face and kiss her.

‘Really?’ she murmurs against my lips.

‘Really,’ I tell her. In response, she sinks down, rolling her hips to accommodate me somewhere gloriously deep inside her body as I bottom out. I groan into her mouth, my tongue coaxing hers, because she was absolutely fucking right, as always.

This is far better than sleep.

‘Well, you’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen,’ she says a little shyly. ‘Every part of you is so perfect.’ She shifts, wrapping her arms tightly around me as she buries her face in my neck. ‘I—I don’t know how to handle it, really.’

In a minute, I’ll lie back down so I can thrust inside her properly as she rides me. I’ll give her that friction she craves so badly .

But for now, just for a moment, I band my arm around her, and I sit with this.

This sensation.

This emotion.

This staggering, terrifying, awe-inspiring intimacy we’re sharing.