“Yes, sir.”
“Nicholas?” My grandfather’s frail voice hit me like a ton of bricks, knocking the wind from my sails. I remembered his booming voice when I was younger. His proud laugh. It killed me to hear him so confused and small now.
“Hey, Grandpa. It’s me.”
“I miss you so much, Nicholas. When will you visit again? I wanted to talk to a manager and figure out where you were. These men kept trying to make me sit down, and I didn’t want to. I just wanted to know where I was, dammit.”
I climbed into the back of the car, sure my molars would crack at any moment.
“They gave me a medicine, and I said I didn’t want it, but they gave it anyway. My memory, Nicholas, it’s not—” He cut off with a frustrated grunt. “I feel like I’ve lost days somewhere, and I just wish you were here. It’s been so long.”
It’d been a few days. Not long at all.
“I’ll be there. I’m on my way now. Get some sleep, and I’ll be waiting for you in the morning.”
“Okay. Okay. Does that throw off your plans?”
My mind flashed back to the woman in red.
“I don’t want to ruin any plans. Especially if it’s with a lady. You need to find a good woman, Nico. Give me some great-grandbabies.”
I smiled at the familiar words. He said I was nowhere near as great as I could be unless I found a good woman to stand beside me and raise me to my full potential. I just didn’t have time to look for one when I split my time between New York and Charleston.
“No plans, Grandpa. I’m already on my way to you.”
His heavy sigh reached through the phone. “All right. Maybe I’ll have to set you up. There are some pretty nurses here.”
I groaned playfully and relished in his almost familiar laugh.
“I’ll see you soon.”
“Okay. Love you.”
“I love you too,” I said.
Enough that I was willing to do whatever it took to build our family business back to its former glory before it was taken from him. Enough that I’d spend another night thinking of Verana—trying to figure out which side of my gut was right—instead of blotting her out with someone else.NineVeraI didn’t move beyond digging my fingers into the cement railing so hard the tips turned white. It took everything in me to not turn around, to not run after him and beg him to do it again. The clip of his shoes on the hardwood floor faded until the soft creak of the door, followed by the snick of it closing, announced I was alone.
My thighs clenched, and my core ached. I’d never ached after sex—never been so thoroughly used that I knew I’d feel him days later.
Who was I?
I’d always had nice sex—romantic sex in a bed with my boyfriend on top of me. We’d done different positions, but it had always been slow and tender. I’d come and enjoyed it, but the memory faded to nothing now that I’d experienced the rough fucking that had just happened.
I had no idea it could be filled with so much passion and desperation between two strangers. I had no idea I’d love it so much—that it would turn me into the vixen he kept calling me. I was careless and brash and bold, uncaring of who heard my pleasure. I wouldn’t have cared if everyone below watched and listened as long as he never stopped.
And though I may not have known who he was, my mind conjured an image. I knew his body type. Once I saw the flash of his silver mask out of the corner of my eye, I knew it was the sexy stranger I couldn’t stop looking for all night. But when I inhaled his familiar spicy, woodsy cologne, the stranger quickly shifted to Nicholas. My mind had stuttered over the thought, frantically piecing together the glimpses of him I saw, trying to decide if it was actually him. Then I remembered him talking about heading to Charleston this weekend, and I quickly shoved it off.
It didn’t stop my imagination from picturing him behind me. It may have been a complete stranger fucking me, but in my mind, it was Nicholas. I both hated and loved it. I didn’t want to imagine a man who constantly battled me, but there was no denying our attraction and how much I liked the idea of pleasing him so much. I remembered his moans and grunts of pleasure, the way he latched on to my neck to hide the sounds of his orgasm that he couldn’t hold back.
My fingers stroked the tender patch of skin, and I smiled.
Another surprise, I liked how rough he was. I looked forward to going home and finding each mark, reliving the moments he gave them to me.