Fuck!
It felt so damn good.
“Hey,” he whispered in my ear, timing his words perfectly to accommodate every exquisite thrust, “I love you. I love you so damn much, Abby Wilder.”
“I love you, too.”
I came almost at once. Whether it was a result of his savage rhythm, his tender words, or his delightfully devilish tongue, I would never know. As my body tightened around him, he came as well, burying his face in the back of my hair with a quiet moan.
We stood there for a moment in absolute silence, both desperately trying to catch our breath, staring with various degrees of amusement at the handprints on the fogged-up glass.
Then, as if nothing remotely out of the ordinary had happened, Nick reached down and pulled up his pants. We both cleaned up and made ourselves presentable.
Nick offered me his arm and a casual smile. “Shall we?”
Yeah, that settles it. When it comes to games, he wins.
Chapter 12
The family dinner was not really that, but it came as no surprise, since we were not really family in the truest sense of the word. At that point, though, Mitchell didn’t even try.
The awkward lunch and introduction session had spooked him, and he was worried about Nick’s reaction. He didn’t know how much more emotional whiplash his son could possibly take, how many more underhanded slights he could possibly endure, and how much more liquor he could possibly consume before Harold had to fire up the helicopter and jet him off to the hospital to get his stomach pumped.
While most people would have handled the situation on a personal level by talking to the fiancée and the son, the Hunter family had always been a little more extravagant than that. Instead of basic problem-solving, Mitchell called up half the U.S. Senate.
When Nick and I were told that dinner was being moved from the smaller dining room to the banquet hall, we should have known something was up. When a butler stepped forward to announce our names, we should have run for cover. Unfortunately, when the door pushed open and we found ourselves face to face with the majority of the United States government, we could only freeze in the heat of their stares.
“Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Hunter!” the butler screamed it at the top of his lungs, then rang what looked like a miniature gong.
My teeth chattered with the vibrations, but before I could even process what was happening, Nick and I were swept away on a conversational tide, passed from person to person as everyone in the room clambered closer to get their fill.
People whose faces I had only seen on TV swept past me, smiling as widely as possible before we were grabbed by unknown forces and shoved toward the next. It was like standing on a spinning sidewalk as a parade of magazine covers danced around us, each more animated than the next.
It wasn’t until we got to a stern-looking man with darker hair that we were finally a
ble to stop long enough to catch our breath. He turned around just as I was unceremoniously shoved toward him, and while he had a hard time tearing his eyes off me, it was obvious that he couldn’t have been more delighted to see Nick. “Nick, my boy!” he boomed. “How the hell are you?” He didn’t wait for an answer and simply clapped Nick on the shoulder before lifting my hand for a leisurely kiss. “So it’s true? You got married then?”
It was fortunate that Nick needed only a moment to find his equilibrium; I, on the other hand, wasn’t used to any of the fanfare, so it took me much longer to adapt. The second the man roped us into his little corner, he was back on his game, flashing a tight smile and almost wary in its precision. “Senator Lennox.” He nodded his head politely before drawing back with an inquisitive gaze. “I’m surprised to see you here. I thought you were still in Stockholm, meeting with Prime Minister Löfven about those steel refineries.”
I followed his gaze with polite curiosity, only to find that Lennox was the one who looked surprised. His eyebrows shot into his hair while he discreetly scanned Nick up and down, as if he had brought a cheat sheet or scribbled talking points on his hands.
In the end, Lennox merely threw back his head and commenced with a loud, long laugh that caused several people around us to smile. When he finally stopped his obnoxious chuckling, he took Nick again by the arm. “Don’t you worry about that, young man,” he replied indulgently, as if billionaire playboys couldn’t possibly be expected to understand such things. “I’d much rather hear about your trip to St. Lucia. I saw the photographs in the paper.”
My face clouded with a small frown as Nick stiffened imperceptibly under his hand. In my two years of working with him, it wasn’t the first time I’d seen such a patronizing dismissal, and, truth be told, I doubted it would be the last.
There were stereotypes at play, cruel ones that Nick had to battle every day of his life, simply because of who his father was. I was sure it was quite frustrating for him most of the time. He walked into those fancy rooms knowing, without a shadow of a doubt, that he was brilliant, the smartest person there, only to be condescended and talked down to by everyone else, simply because they assumed he was what the tabloids made him out to be. Yes, he was beautiful, an attractive adventurer, but they also believed him to be mindless and careless, with a vocabulary just broad enough to lure silly women and gold-diggers into bed.
When I tuned back in, Nick was nodding silently as the senator gleefully expounded upon his latest expedition to British Columbia. My eyes glazed over instantly, and I wished I was allowed to drink.
Suddenly, I heard the quiet sound of someone’s throat clearing just over my shoulder.
I glanced around and found myself face to face with the one person I certainly did not want to see. Her eyes narrowed slightly as she looked me up and down before her face widened into a charming smile, one she flashed to both Nick and the senator before taking me by the arm.
“Nick, do you mind if I steal your beautiful wife for a moment?” Claudia asked, stretching her smile wider still, revealing every one of her perfect, porcelain smile that probably cost some unlucky idiot a fortune. “I promise to return her in one piece.”
No! Say no! Don’t leave me with this woman!
Nick, still held hostage by Lennox’s dull lecture, knew his hands were tied. All he could do was flash me a helpless smile and an unspoken apology before I was led away from the rest of the party, choking all the while on a suffocating cloud of perfume.