Sleep would keep me whole. Would allow me to see reason. Would provide me a simple anchor amidst these chaotic, confounding seas.
Unfortunately...sleep never exactly came.
“For fuck’s sake...”
I turned over again and again, creating an Armageddon-worthy crater in the middle of my mattress. A cocoon of sheets in which I was the unwilling center.
It should have been easy. I should have been able to see the situation for what it was, compartmentalize it into the ‘things done for the company’ folder of my life, then move on with some sort of sense of purpose.
But that didn’t happen either. If anything, the longer I lay there—chasing the ever-elusive respite of sleep—the more I was thoroughly undone by my present situation.
Nick KISSED me.
The man who had been my client for a little over two years. The man whose exploits I had endeavored to paint more favorably to the press. The same man who I had recently set up on a date with the worst of the worst just to appease his father’s board and company.
That was the man who had kissed me. That was the man who was keeping me from sleep that night. The man whose perfect, addictive face I couldn’t seem to get out of my head.
...with good fucking reason.
The kiss itself left me speechless. The kiss itself left me completely undone.
Nick kissed the same way he did everything.
With reckless abandon. With his whole heart. Without any kind of restraint.
It caught me off guard, I’m not going to lie. No matter how I’d been bracing for it. No matter how many times I’d seen him do it to someone else. On the cover of tabloids and more legitimate magazines. At awards shows and late-night dinner dates. From princesses to super models. The passion was the same.
There was simply no way not to be overwhelmed by it.
Possibly it was the combination.
It was strong, yet vulnerable. Laying himself bare, while sweeping me away with a feeling of utter helplessness at the same time. He took complete control, but also left room for active participation. The whole thing felt like an invitation. A precursor for even more delightful things yet to come. The whole time, I held my breath.
Hoping it would last another second, another minute.
Another lifetime.
But truth be told, that’s not what kept me awake that night. What kept me awake was a repeating question, as simple as it was utterly outrageous. Alone in my bedroom, without even a house plant to witness, it still somehow managed to make me blush.
If that was how Nick kissed...
I bit my lip.
...how did Nick fuck?
“Unbelievable. Fucking unbelievable.”
I actually leapt awake, landing somewhere in the center of the bed—pulling the lilac sheets up around me. I had no idea when, in the last hour and a half, I had actually managed to close my eyes. But at the moment, that was the very least of my problems.
Just a few feet away, Nick himself was perched on the edge of the mattress, holding out a steaming cup of coffee, identical to the one he was holding against his chest.
“What—what are you doing here?!”
I strung all the words together, unable to separate them. Unable to stop the guilty blush that had sprung up the second it seemed as though he was answering my embarrassing sexual question. Guessing at the guilty little speculation that had been running around my brain.
“This bed,” Nick replied, completely ignoring my exclamation in light of what he’d deemed a weightier issue, “this is the most uncomfortable bed I have ever come across. And for the record, I used to sleep with an understudy in Miss Saigon—their standards aren’t very high.”
I stared at him for an incredulous second, before trilling out in a high pitched voice: