The words were barely out of her mouth before he was behind her and pulling her hips toward him. And then he was sliding into her, filling her deeper and deeper. It hurt but it felt so good, the most exquisite kind of pain.
“Nicola. You are so fucking amazing.” Alex punctuated each word with a thrust of his cock, harder and harder, each stroke building the heat within her. Then he reached his hand beneath her and found her clit, massaging it relentlessly until—
Until she was there with him, both of them cresting and falling together, their moans of pleasure intermingled until finally he collapsed forward onto her back.
“Now, that’s what I call a deal sealer,” Alex said.
“Okay, spill,” Kiki said to Nicola the moment she walked in the front door. She closed it gratefully behind her—a brisk wind had picked up, an early sign of the promised storm—and smiled at her roommate. Kiki was sitting on the sofa with one leg bent up, polishing her toes in two contrasting shades of pink.
“What are you talking about?” Nicola said, trying to look innocent. But it was pointless—within two seconds she burst out laughing. “Fine,” she said, tossing her satchel onto the tiny entrance table. “I may or may not have been having the time of my life.”
“Assuming you were. Would it happen to be with a Z-list celebrity?”
Nicola could only laugh again. Only a day and a half had passed since she’d sat across from Kiki whining about her Hollywood-wannabe rescuee, but so much had changed since then that she’d nearly forgotten she’d once thought of Alex that way.
“Big misunderstanding on my part,” Nicola said, taking a seat next to Kiki on the sofa. “He’s Dev Stone’s little brother. He’s not trying to be famous at all. He’s just here for some business deal. We went for drinks, and then… Anyway, he explained to me that the reason he got so upset on the dive was because he almost drowned as a kid. Kind of dramatic, but there you go.”
Kiki’s jaw dropped. “Dev Stone’s brother?”
“Wait. Out of everything I just told you, that’s your takeaway?” Nicola stared at her friend as she flopped onto the sofa beside her. “You don’t have a thing for Dev Stone, do you?”
Kiki stretched her foot in front of her to admire her toenails, then she reached for the nail polish bottle on the coffee table. “Doesn’t every woman on earth? I mean, God, look at him! Those eyes…” She shook her head. “But we’re talking about you, not me. So tell me. Hot and heavy?”
Nicola felt her cheeks redden. “Wrong color. You’re about to put the brush in the wrong bottle.”
Kiki stared at the bottle and then corrected her mistake. “You’re avoiding the question.”
“We had a good time. He’s…well, amazing, if you want to know the truth. But he doesn’t live here. And he’s leaving in five days. And…” She looked away. “He doesn’t know the truth about me.”
Kiki placed her hand on her friend’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “The truth about you? What, that you’re smart and kind and brave and beautiful? That you’re a kick-ass scuba diver who wouldn’t hesitate to put her life at risk for someone else’s? That you’re an amazing schoolteacher whose kids made you pictures of themselves bawling their eyes out when you had to leave them? That you just happened to get caught up in a big, fat mess that wasn’t even close to being your fault?”
Nicola dropped her gaze again. “You know that’s not true. Not the whole truth, anyway.” Suddenly, her eyes were filling with tears. She shook her head as she tried to stem the flow with the edges of her fingers. As surreally wonderful as the events of the past twenty-four hours had been, they’d also put her on an emotional roller coaster that she hadn’t been prepared to ride.
Kiki moved closer to Nicola so she could put an arm around her shoulders. “It’s okay. You’ve been so strong about this for so long, I think it’s good for you to have a cry about it. What happened to you was fucking bullshit.”
“Sure, it might have been, but—” Nicola took a deep breath, trying to get her emotions under control. She wiped at her tears and looked at her friend squarely. “Even if Matthew and I never acted on our feelings, we still had them. I can’t deny that. Sure, the press blew it into so much more—all that stuff about secret meetings and family outings with his son was bullshit—but that day after our meeting about Oliver… Well, that photo didn’t lie. Matthew told me how he felt about me, and I didn’t brush him off or tell him to go away or remind him that he was a married father. I let him kiss me. I wanted him to! And after that, I started dreaming about him leaving his wife, about a future with him and Oliver. It was an affair of the heart if not the body—”
“But you did the right thing,” Kiki reminded her. “You never touched him again after that. And in the end you left your whole life behind to do the right thing! You need to give yourself a break, sweetie.”
“I’d like to, but the guilt is still there.” Nicola sniffed. “I can’t help it. When I think of Oliver now, wondering what happened to his family… I just can’t take it. I still feel like it’s all my fault.”
“But it’s not. If a marriage is strong, it’s like an airtight room—nothing can get in to destroy it. But when there are big problems, the walls start to wear away, leaving an opening for someone else to enter the relationship. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been another woman.”
Nicola stayed quiet, but her friend’s words made sense. Despite Kiki’s scatterbrained ways, Nicola had a lot of respect for her. With her light red hair, freckles and tiny-but-perfect figure, she had the look of an innocent china doll, but Nicola knew that her appearance belied a tough inner strength. She’d come from a childhood that had been traumatic in a completely different way from Nicola’s, but she’d prevailed and created the life she wanted on her own terms. And it wasn’t like Kiki didn’t know a thing or two about relationships—though only thirty, she already had a four-year marriage behind her.
“Okay,” Nicola said, taking a deep breath. “Okay, so maybe you’re right. But that still doesn’t solve my problem. What about Alex? How do I tell him my big claim to fame is being the 10 Things to Know About Matthew Beck’s Mistress girl—not to mention point number ten? Remember that one?”
Kiki shook her head. “Just tell him, sweetie. He’ll understand—everyone makes mistakes. I’m betting he’s got a few under his belt.”
Nicola nodded slowly. “You’re right. I know—I just have to look him in the eye and do it.” She took another deep breath, already feeling a little better. Screw it if he couldn’t accept who she was—her past wasn’t going away, and it was better to know now if this was a deal breaker for him or not. She glanced at her watch. “Speaking of which, I’m supposed to be meeting him in an hour. Hey!” she said, snapping her fingers. “Guess where I’m going tonight? To Dev Stone’s birthday party.”
Kiki’s eyes widened. “Are you freaking kidding me?”
“Seriously. Actually… Alex said the whole island would be there.” Said aloud, this statement suddenly gave her pause. The party was bound to have more than a few LA residents attending, and what if one of them recognized her?
