All the Things We Need Page 24

  I looked up at him for a second before settling back with my cheek on his belly. His swimmer’s body, nice and lean, wasn’t soft enough to make a good pillow, but I loved the soft tickle of his hair on my skin. I cupped his balls, weighing them and the soft length of his cock, and he jumped.

  “Sorry,” I murmured. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “It’s okay.” His hand stroked over my hair, tangling for a second before he worked his fingers free of the knot.

  “So pretty,” I said.

  He laughed awkwardly. “What. My dick?”

  “Yep.” I looked up at him again with a grin. “Blue ribbon winner, right here.”

  He didn’t laugh again, though I’d been trying to make him. “Thanks.”

  I pushed up on my elbow again. “I’m teasing you. I mean, it’s gorgeous, I’m not teasing about that…”

  He shook his head slightly, and I stopped. I settled for kissing his hip bone and moving up to snuggle back against him. I didn’t want there to be any kind of weirdness with him.

  “Do you want me to go?” he asked after another few minutes when my eyes had started drifting closed.

  That woke me up. “No. Do you want to go?”

  “No. I brought a bag. It’s out in the car.” He hesitated. “I don’t feel like getting up to get it right now.”

  “No, stay here with me in bed, just a little longer anyway. Then we can get up and shower, and you can get your bag if you want, but right now, I want to be naked and sticky with you.”

  “I can honestly say nobody has ever said that to me before.” He snorted softly.

  I burrowed my face again into the salty-sweet goodness of his skin. “I love the way you smell right now. All fucked out.”

  “That’s…damn,” he said. “I’m getting hard again.”

  I laughed and rolled onto my back, flopping on the pillows. “Good. I want you hard all the time.”

  Niall turned on his side to pull me closer, my hip nudging his groin. “That’s going to make it a little awkward at the grocery store and stuff.”

  “So I’ll keep you here in my bed all the time.” God, I was fuckdrunk. Giggling and slurring like I’d downed a couple shots of Fireball whiskey. I stretched, bones crackling down my spine. “Constantly hard so you can fuck me whenever I want.”

  He was quiet for a second. “That’s what you want, huh?”

  “Sure.” I turned my face to his. “Don’t worry, the gig comes with pizza and beer. Got to keep your strength up if you’re going to be my personal sex slave.”

  It was the second time Niall didn’t laugh. Instead, he reached to brush the hair from my face. Then he kissed my shoulder, hiding his face. I let my hand rest on his head, wondering where I’d gone wrong. Too far? Too much? Too soon?

  We were both quiet for a few minutes after that, and though I’d meant it when I said I liked being naked and sticky with him, it was getting to be time to clean up. I was just about to say so, when Niall pulled me closer to spoon against him. I hadn’t been expecting that, but I did it, nestling my ass against him. He pushed my hair to the side and kissed the back of my neck.

  “Are you feeling better?” he asked.

  I had, for a time, forgotten I’d been upset. I frowned for a second, but the discovery of my mother’s infidelity didn’t sting me at the moment. It wasn’t about me and never had been, really. It explained a lot, actually, though no matter what my mother’s betrayal had done to their marriage, or to my father, I still couldn’t find it in me to forgive him for fleeing to Florida and leaving us behind.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “Susan told me today that my mother cheated on my dad,” I blurted. “She said my dad had told her that. Another time she also told me a bunch of stuff about my sister that I never knew. It made me feel like I don’t know what’s going on anymore. Like I’m standing on shifting sands.”

  “Shit,” Niall said, but kept me spooned close. “Wow.”

  I tucked his hand beneath my chin. “Yeah. Total fuckery. I wish I didn’t know, I guess. It doesn’t change anything, really, and it’s just…gross.”

  “Did Susan say anything else?” Niall paused. “Shit, never mind, not my business.”

  I weighed the burden of telling him what I knew, silent at first. I kissed his knuckles. Finally, I said in a low voice, “Susan’s having an affair. I haven’t told my brother because I don’t want to be the one to blow up their family. I don’t want to do that to William…I can’t. And I don’t want to do it to Evan, either.”

  “Do you think by not telling him, it will go away?”

  I sat up, drawing my knees close to my chest. “No. She should be the one, that’s all. And shit, I don’t know, Niall, maybe I hoped she’ll get her act together? Something? And you know, what if I do tell him, and they reconcile, then I’m the asshole who messed with their marriage—”

  “She’s the one doing that, not you.”

  I looked at him. “You know what people do when they have to face something uncomfortable? They blame the thing that makes them feel bad, even if it’s not that thing’s fault. I’d be the thing that made them feel bad, Niall. Let’s say they figure out a way to work through it. They’d always know that I know, and it would be just one of those…things.”

  “Yeah. I guess you’re right. Except I think he knows. Or suspects anyway.” Niall frowned. “Sorry, it’s a tough situation, for everyone.”

  “The one I care most about is William,” I said flatly. “I love my brother, but I have to say, he’s brought some of this on himself. Not saying he deserves it,” I added quickly. “I love him pretty much unconditionally, but I don’t think I’d want to be married to him.”

  “Well, no,” Niall said, deadpan. “That’s a little too Flowers in the Attic, don’t you think?”

  “Ew, gross!” I cried and leaped to pummel him.

  He held me off easily enough, gripping my wrists with one hand while the other pulled me onto his lap. I wasn’t used to feeling so…well, small, I guess. Not delicate or weak. Cuddled and protected, though. Soft.

  It was what I’d told him I wanted, but faced with actually getting what I’d asked for, my insides froze. I untangled myself from him firmly but gently. “I’m going to take a shower.”

  “Not yet. One more minute?” Niall asked.

  I let him pull me close for a kiss. Then another. I laughed, pulling away when he went for a third. “Hey, now!”

  “You know what,” he said. “Let’s go away next weekend together. We’ll do it up right. Nice hotel, big bed. Clean sheets.”

  I nodded, solemn, and gave my own bed a raised eyebrow. “Oh, yes, definitely we need clean sheets. And what about a great view? Gotta have a great view.”

  “Oh, yeah, tell me about this view.”

  “Tell me about them rabbits, George.” It just came out, and as soon as it did, I bit my tongue.

  Niall frowned. “Huh?”

  “It’s from a book. Of Mice and Men. He always used to spin these stories for me, see, like about how we were going to do all these things and go to all these places. Usually when we were in bed. Once he told me…” I hesitated, not wanting to remember, not wanting to say it out loud, because at the time it had been wonderful, and now it only caused me pain. But Niall had said he wanted to know the things I didn’t like, so he didn’t do them.

  “Tell me.”

  I took a breath. “He told me that if he won the lottery, he was going to build me a castle.”

  “Huh.” Niall didn’t say anything after that.

  “Anyway, in Of Mice and Men, Lenny always asks George to tell him about—”

  “The rabbits,” Niall interrupted. “I get it. Like in the old Bugs Bunny cartoon. ‘I’ll love him and squeeze him and call him Geo
rge.’”

  “Yes.” I touched the rabbit on my wrist. “So I called him George. It was a thing my friend Alicia and I did. Give the boys we loved nicknames.”

  Niall made a soft noise. “Do I have one?”

  “No. You’re just you.”

  “Huh,” he said again.

  I kissed him, pushing away all thoughts of anyone else. “I think a trip sounds like an amazing idea. Where do you want to go?”

  He looked far away for a moment before he came back to me. “How about I surprise you?”

  I thought on that. I wasn’t a fan of surprises, in general. Not parties, not quizzes. Once in the eighth grade Evan had jumped out of the closet to “surprise” me, and he’d ended up with a broken nose. But I did like being known, and the best way to find out if someone really knew you was to see what they chose for you. So far, Niall had done an excellent job picking out things I’d like.

  “Okay,” I said. “Surprise me.”

  He slept with me that night, in my bed, spooned up behind me with his breath on the back of my neck. When I wriggled against him, he got hard, and we giggled about it, though the giggles turned to sighs when his hand went to my belly to press me back against him.

  I had no trouble falling asleep.

  His murmured voice woke me, I wasn’t sure at what time, only that I’d been dreaming. “What did he do to you that hurt you so bad? That other guy?”

  “I loved him too much,” I said, still half-asleep. “And he didn’t love me enough.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Niall asked me to meet him at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. I hadn’t been there since I was a kid. The aquarium was much the same as I remembered it, minus the sea lions that used to sun themselves on the rocks outside.

  “Too many people threw coins and stuff into the enclosure.” Niall leaned on the railing. “They’d eat stuff and get sick and die.”

  I frowned. “That’s terrible.”

  “Yeah, people suck.” He turned away from the empty concrete display and let the railing press against his back, his elbows propped on it. “I thought we’d go tour the submarine next. If you want.”

  “That sounds fun.” I kissed him. We did that for a while. “This is fun, too.”

  He brushed my hair, tossed by the breeze off the water, out of my eyes. It had become one of his favorite gestures, and surprisingly, it hadn’t started working on my nerves. “You make everything fun.”

  “I do?” I blushed a little, pleased.

  “Yeah. I mean, whatever I’m up for, you’re like, ‘yeah. Let’s do this.’” He paused. “I don’t know, I’m surprised.”

  “Why?” Walking, I took his hand and swung it gently between us. He glanced at me with a raised brow. “Oh. That.” With a sigh, I turned to face him and took both his hands in mine. “Niall. I don’t have to be in charge all the time. I like being taken care of, actually. If I didn’t want to do something you’d planned, I’d tell you. But so far, I like it all.”

  “Good.” He grinned. “Let’s do the Ripley’s Museum, too.”

  My answer had seemed to set him at ease, but the conversation stayed with me all day. It was true that everything he’d laid out for us was fun and all stuff I’d have wanted to do anyway, even if I hadn’t known about it before. And I did like that he’d taken care of all the details to make the whole day magic, so that I didn’t really have to think or do anything but enjoy it all.

  “It’s because you picked them all for me,” I said abruptly while we waited for our drinks to come at dinner. He’d picked the restaurant because it had vegetarian options in case I didn’t want to eat shellfish. Which I did not, but hadn’t told him. I’d said I didn’t eat pig, but had never mentioned crustaceans. He’d been doing a little homework, and it squeezed my heart until I thought it was going to pop.

  “Hmm?” He looked up from the basket of bread sticks in the center of the table.

  “The day. The sightseeing, the restaurant.” I drew in a light breath. “It’s not that I like you taking over and choosing for me. I mean, I would actually hate that.”

  Niall broke the bread stick in half and offered one side to me. “I don’t get it.”

  “I had a lover once—hear me out,” I said at the way his expression twisted. “I had a lover who really just liked to boss me around. He’d buy me clothes and tell me to wear them, and it was supposed to be sexy except he’d get the sizes wrong or choose a color I hated, and he’d get really pissed off if I didn’t want to do it. He always picked where we went out to eat.”

  “I picked out where we went to eat today.”

  “Yes, but…everything you planned for today, everything you ever plan for us, ever, you do because you think I’m going to really like it. Not because it’s only what you want or like. You try to pick things because you think I’m going to like them, and that makes me…” I shook my head and leaned forward a little. “It makes me insane, Niall. In a good way. A really good way.”

  He smiled then, slowly. His eyes blazed. His foot nudged mine.

  “Good,” he said, and then the drinks came.

  He took me dancing, too. The Power Plant Live had enough bars and clubs to keep anyone occupied for an evening. We hadn’t been dancing since the night in the bar after William’s Bar Mitzvah, the first time he’d ever pulled me close. He’d made me his that night, not that either one of us had known it at the time. I knew it now, though, and I wanted him to know it, too.

  I had never been the first to say it. Love. No matter how I’d ever felt about anyone, I’d never been the first to admit it, until tonight.

  “I love you,” I said into his ear as we danced. “And I want you. Now.”

  The music was so loud it was easy to pretend he hadn’t heard me, so I didn’t have to be embarrassed when he didn’t say it back. And he didn’t, not with words, and maybe I imagined the look in his eyes right before he kissed me so hard I couldn’t breathe. It didn’t matter. I felt it, and I said it, and I did not regret it.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Niall said.

  In the hotel elevator, we stood apart from one another, like that would keep anyone from knowing that the second our room door closed behind us, we were going to fall upon each other like wolves on a wounded deer. I could see him in the mirror, just as I could see myself, and there was no hiding the way we strained toward each other without moving an inch. Hell, I’m sure the other people with us could smell it on us. Desire. Yearning.

  He didn’t touch me even when the elevator opened and we walked down the long, long hall as leisurely as if we were strolling along the beach. Like we didn’t want to run. We chatted about dinner and the club, about stupid things I wouldn’t remember twenty minutes later. Our voices rose and fell, and the words came out, but the steady beat, beat, beat of “fuck me, fuck me, fuck me” was all I could really hear.

  He opened the door with his key and let me go through first. I was shaking by the time I got to the bed. My back still to him. At the click of the door, the slide of the lock, I had to close my eyes and concentrate on breathing so I wouldn’t feel faint. The wine from dinner, the cocktails after, I could blame those for the way the world tipped, but the truth was it had nothing to do with alcohol. I’d danced all that away.

  I was drunk on Niall and anticipation, and all I could do was shiver while I waited for him to touch me.

  Oh, finally, to touch me.

  Of course he’d been touching me all night. A hand on the small of my back as we crossed the street. Fingers linking across the table. His front against my back when we danced.

  With my eyes closed, every sound magnified. The slap of his key on the dresser. The shuffle of his shoes on the carpet.

  And then, at last, Niall put his hands on me. He moved up behind me, gripping my hips to pull my ass against his crotch. His m
outh found the back of my neck. His teeth, the slope of my shoulder. He bit as he pulled me back against him, and I arched and gasped. My nipples got immediately hard. One of his hands slid across my belly and between my legs, then down to curl his fingers in the hem of my dress.

  “Yes,” I said as he inched it upward.

  Niall’s breath heated my ear as he slipped his fingers inside my panties. He dipped low, sliding inside me for a second before moving up again to find my clit. He pinched it gently between his thumb and forefinger. My head fell back against his shoulder. My hand went to the back of his head.

  “I’m going to fuck you,” he said into my ear, “until you can’t stand.”

  I was already having trouble. Weak knees. His fingers jerked my clit in a steady, relentless pattern, and when he bit down on my bare shoulder again, I cried out.

  I turned. We found each other’s mouths. Kissing, hungry, demanding. Teeth clashing. His hand dug into my hair at the base of my skull, his fingers working deep into the updo. He pulled, hard enough to tip my head back so he could get to my throat with his lips and teeth.

  “I want you,” I told him. “I want you, I want you, I want you.”

  He paused then, for a second or so, looking into my eyes. Slowly, deliberately, he returned his hand between my legs. Slid his fingers inside me, then out, each stroke hitting me just right.

  My fingers dug hard into his shoulders. I widened my stance a little. Letting him in. I wasn’t going to come this way—the position slightly too awkward. But oh, it was going to be close.

  He kissed me again as he eased his hand out of my panties. Pushing me gently, Niall backed me toward the bed. With my fists curled in the front of his shirt, I turned us both as we got there. I meant to push him onto it, to climb on top of him and devour him with more hungry kisses, but he stopped me.