Kristina Wright - Seduce Me Tonight

I slammed the poorly wrapped plate down on top of the stack and heard an audible crack. I gasped. The tears started coming even before I unwrapped the plate and saw it had been cleaved in two. I felt Nathan’s hand on my shoulder, that gentle, familiar squeeze to comfort me. But it didn’t comfort me. It made me angry. For the first time in at least six months he was touching me and it was because he felt sorry for me.

I shrugged him off. ‘Leave me alone!’

‘I was just trying to be kind, Rachel,’ he said. ‘It’s not as if you ever liked that old ugly china.’

I whirled on him then. ‘It was my mother’s !’

‘Well, it’s not as if you liked her much, either,’ he said, evenly. ‘And she was old and ugly, too.’

I knew he was joking. Sort of. Nathan was a lot of things, but he wasn’t cruel. He was trying to make me feel better. Trying to lighten the mood. He never could stand to see me cry. I knew all of that, but my first reaction wasn’t to laugh. Or even to stop crying. I sobbed – and slapped him hard. The diamond in my engagement ring glinted in the overhead light, as hard and cold as I felt.

‘Go to hell, Nathan Davis.’

He recoiled, as much from the shock of it as the pain, I think, and stared at me. The look of utter horror on his face was comical. I’d never so much as raised my voice or slammed a door, much less slapped him before. I was the quiet, angry type, more likely to hide in the bedroom nursing my wounds than to vent my emotions and risk hurting someone else’s feelings. It was, I thought, a good quality. But standing there with my hand stinging and my entire body practically vibrating with anger while the tears dried on my cheeks, I felt pretty good. Furious and violent, clearly, but good . Alive.

As quickly as the feeling came, it faded, shrivelling up inside me like it had been deprived of oxygen. I was ashamed of myself.

‘I’m sorry.’ I watched him rub the red mark on his cheek and felt small. And sad. ‘I don’t know where that came from.’

‘I do.’

He picked up the sugar bowl from the counter, the one that went with my mother’s china, examined it for a minute, then dropped it. I gasped in horror as it hit the tile and fractured into several smaller pieces, scattering shards across the kitchen floor.

I blinked at him, certain it had been an accident, but he proved me wrong by picking up a salad plate and doing the same thing. The sound of breaking porcelain seemed to echo even as he reached for a third piece. I was frozen in place, unable to move to stop him as another salad plate crashed to the floor.

I finally found my voice when he picked up the serving platter. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘Breaking your mother’s china,’ he answered, as if that made all the sense in the world.

I looked at the fragments of the seventy-five-year-old dishes littering our pristine kitchen floor – not even our kitchen floor any more, as the house was officially sold – and felt … nothing. I took a deep breath, waiting for the indignant anger to explode out of me again, and simply exhaled. There was no emotion there, no sense of loss. All I saw was a mess to clean up and a few less things to pack.

Nathan seemed almost as shocked when I started laughing as he had when I slapped him. It started small, just a twitch of my lips as I mentally replayed his comment about my mother and her china, and built from there. First a giggle and a shake of my head at my own audacity – laughing at something that wasn’t funny in the least – then an open-mouthed guffaw at the idea that I should feel bad for giggling. I looked at Nathan, at his gaping ‘have you lost your mind?’ expression, and completely lost it. I was doubled over with laughter, clutching at the kitchen counter to keep me upright.

‘You’re right,’ I managed to say between fits of giggles. ‘I hate this china. It’s ugly and tacky and has to be hand washed. Good god, hand washed! Who has time for ugly hand-washed china? I don’t!’

Nathan nodded sagely. ‘I know.’

‘Unbelievably fucking ugly.’ I was like a kid discovering the power of dirty words. ‘Right?’

‘Right.’

It was contagious, Nathan’s baritone chuckles joined my own girlish-sounding squeals and soon we were holding onto each other, laughing like fools. And maybe we were. Fools, that is. The two biggest fools in the world – and we had to hold onto each other because no one else would.

I kissed him then. It was an open-mouthed, awkward, laughing kiss, but it was the first kiss we’d shared in at least a year. His mouth felt both new and familiar. A couple of days’ growth of beard scraped against my cheek as I cupped the back of his head and held him to me, as if he might pull away otherwise. But he didn’t. He didn’t even hesitate before he was kissing me back. He fisted his hands in my hair, kept long even now because that’s the way he liked it and I had never thought to cut it, and held me as tightly as I held on to him.

All traces of laughter gone, I tentatively nipped his bottom lip. I heard – and felt – his moan. It had been so long since we’d even kissed, I didn’t know how to proceed. I couldn’t think straight, didn’t want to think at all. I wanted to feel. His act of destruction had released something inside me, something tight and coiled, and now I was reaching for more, hungry for something more than anger and hurt. His tongue swept along mine and I whimpered softly at his teasing. This was all familiar too, distantly so, as a recurring dream feels familiar in the light of day.

I don’t know how long we stood there, leaning against the counter, pressed together and making out like teenagers. The tick-tick of the kitchen clock counted out the seconds of our mad descent into wherever this was leading and the hardness of his erection pressed against my hip corresponded to the wetness between my thighs that he couldn’t feel. Yet.

That thought, as much a memory as anything else we’d shared, made me whimper again. I could feel my long dormant arousal awakening within me, blossoming like the heat had blossomed in his cheek where I had slapped him. I cupped his face in my hand, remorseful and anxious to set things right. I kissed the spot where I’d hit him, feeling his skin warm and rough beneath my lips. I trailed kisses down the line of his jaw, along his neck, to his collarbone. I breathed in his scent, clean and masculine and all Nathan. All mine.

Mine . Where had that come from?

I didn’t have time to consider it because he was pulling me up against him, one hand still tangled in my hair, the other wrapped firmly around my hip. He nestled the bulge of his erection against the soft swell of my belly and we both groaned. I ached for him to fill me. To fill the emptiness between my thighs, yes, but also to fill the hollowness behind my breastbone.

We stared into each other’s eyes, so close I could see his pupils dilate when I wiggled against him, pressing even closer. He pulled his hand from my hair, anchored it on my other hip and slowly scrunched my dress up in his hands. I shivered as he revealed me, so slowly I thought I would scream with the anticipation of it.

‘Are you wet?’ he asked when the hem of my dress was up to my hips.

My breath caught in my throat as I nodded.

‘Take your panties off for me.’

I did the best I could with him holding onto me. I hooked my thumbs in the sides of my panties and tugged them down over my hips. They slipped down my legs and I stepped out of them. Then I waited for what he would do next.

He didn’t make me wait long. In one smooth move, he picked me up and sat me on the edge of the counter. He pulled my thighs apart, baring me to his gaze. He stared between my legs without speaking. The kitchen counter was cool against my ass, but that wasn’t what made me shiver. He looked angry.