Comeback (17 page)

“I was. And I think you already knew that before I told you just now.”

He stretched one hand across the bar, settling it on top of mine. It was warm and strong. The contact sent tingles racing up my arm and down my spine. He teased the back of my wrist with his fingers, lifted my hand from the countertop to press his palm to mine. My focus was transfixed on all that he was doing; I couldn’t remove my gaze.

“I think you wanted me to kiss you,” he said. “I think you still do.”

“I do.” I couldn’t lie to him. He deserved better than that, and so did I. “I want to kiss you, and that scares me.”

“I scare you?”

I shook my head. “No, not you. I’m not scared of you.” I was scared of myself.

“Then what?”

“The thought that I’m getting too close. That I’m starting to care too much.”

Nicky stretched his other hand out and tipped my chin up with a finger until I looked at him. “Why are you scared of caring about me?”

“It’s not— I just—” I shook my head, debating how much to say. But if anyone deserved to know the whole truth, he did. Emma had withheld so much from him, and I’d watched the way it had destroyed him over the last couple of months. I squared my shoulders, determined not to run from his questions. Not on a night like tonight when his whole world had been dumped out and reshuffled. “I’ve loved addicts before. Still do, actually. And it’s hard. It hurts. It hurts so damn much, and I don’t know if I can go through that again, Nicky.”

“Oh. I get it. I’m sorry—” He started to pull his hand back, but I grabbed hold of it and threaded my fingers through his.

“I don’t know if I can handle it, but I also don’t know if I can stop it from happening. I think it’s too late.”

“You think?”

“I’ve been trying to keep some sort of distance between us. Emotional distance, more than anything. That’s why I discouraged you. But you keep worming your way in despite all of my efforts to keep you out.”

He smiled then, a real smile that crinkled his eyes. “I have a way of doing that.”

“You do.”

“Who?” he asked.

I didn’t need him to elaborate. “My father, first of all. Then my brother. Dad’s an alcoholic. He’s been in and out of AA and rehab and all that. I think he’s probably drinking again right now based on the fact that he doesn’t call me much. Mom is still with him, still putting up with it. Darren got into drugs when we were teenagers. He’s almost died I don’t know how many times. Nothing gets through to him. He can’t get clean. He doesn’t really talk to me much anymore, for years, because of it all. And Jennie Burton…she was my best friend for years. She’s dead now because of her addictions.”

Nicky looked like he was about to say something, to tell me he was sorry or promise me he wouldn’t be like them. I couldn’t let him. Not yet.

“And then there was Steve. My ex-husband.” A tear dropped down my cheek, and Nicky used the pad of his thumb to dry it. I brushed his hand away, then instantly wished I hadn’t. He was just being himself—kind and considerate and generous. Even though he’d been through the day from hell, he was trying to comfort me. How on earth could I
not
fall for him? “I’m sorry, Nicky.” I reached for the hand I’d just batted at and held it so our hands were joined. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“It’s all right.”

“It’s not all right. You didn’t deserve that. You haven’t done anything wrong, but I’m acting like a bitch.”

“You’re not acting like a bitch,” he insisted. He tugged on my hands, pulling me until I was leaning over the bar as he had been a little bit before. “You’ve just been hurt a lot. Like Elin and Hugo and Nils.”

“I have, but that’s no excuse. I’m an adult.”

“Adults still hurt.”

It was as though he was determined to not acknowledge my faults. I searched his eyes, but all I found in them was an emotion I couldn’t name and wasn’t sure I wanted to, even if I could have.

“You’re afraid you’ll end up hurt again if you care for me too much, is that it?” he asked after a minute.

“Something like that.”

“Because I’m an addict.”

I hated how that made me seem as though I was lumping him into a category, making anyone who fell under the heading “Addict” out to be the same. But it was the truth. That was how I got through life these days: keeping all the addicts in my life locked up in the same compartment in my mind, expecting them all to do the same things, to follow the same patterns. If I kept them there, they couldn’t hurt me. So maybe I was making myself feel as if I didn’t belong.

Nicky wouldn’t stay in that box, though, even from the start, no matter how hard I’d tried to keep him there. He kept slipping out of it and moving into the open spaces. The places where I was vulnerable.

“Like I said,” I murmured, opening myself up just a little bit more, letting him widen the cracks. “I think it may be too late. I think I already care too much.”

He turned my hands over, pressing the backs of them down against the countertop and fitting his palms over mine. The tips of his fingers tickled the sensitive flesh on the insides of my wrists, and I shivered. He was watching the path of his fingers, staring down while his mind worked. Neither of us spoke for a long time.

“I can’t promise you I won’t ever hurt you,” he said after a protracted silence. “I’ve been clean a long time, but you know what addiction is. It never ends. It’s a constant fight.”

“I know.” That was what scared me. It was a constant fight, and the addiction almost always came out on top.

“I can promise you that I will fight it with everything I have in me. And I have a lot of reasons to stay clean now, more than just my job and my reputation. I have three kids who don’t have anyone in this world but me. And I have you.” He looked up at me when he said that last bit, his eyes piercing me with their intensity.

The kids could be a powerful motivation for him, but I wasn’t so sure I would include me in that list. Look how many other addicts over the years had counted me among their reasons for getting or staying clean, and how many times had it been enough?

“Nicky,” I said slowly, but I didn’t know what I was trying to convey with that.

He just smiled. “So I can maybe pick on you some? Tease you? That’d be all right?”

“Maybe a little,” I hedged, unable to stop a small smile from creeping to my lips in return.

“And can I kiss you?” His fingers tightened over mine, drawing my hands closer to him.

“I…” My pulse was flying through my veins and my breathing was shallow—two things that no man had caused in me in far too long. It felt exciting and terrifying even as it felt comfortable and right. “Yes, you can kiss me.”

Releasing one hand but holding tight to the other, Nicky moved around the bar, turning me on the stool as he came toward me, until he was standing in front of me. He cupped the back of my head, the pad of his thumb sliding along my jaw. Then his lips touched mine, and I knew there was no going back. Whether I was prepared to love another addict or not, I was well on my way to falling in love with Nicky Ericsson.

I stretched my free hand up to his shoulder, tugged him closer, and gave up any false hope I might have once had of being able to protect my heart.

ALLOWING MYSELF TO
think hurt like
a son of a bitch right now, so I didn’t want to think, only to feel what was happening right here, right now. Nothing more and nothing less. There’d been too much that hurt lately, too much pain. Especially today. But what was happening right now didn’t hurt at all. Kissing Jessica felt so damn good. Everything about her was soft and warm—not to mention willing—and I wanted to lose myself in her and never find my way out.

She worked her hand free of mine, placing both arms around my neck and dragging her body closer to me until her ass was hanging just on the edge of the barstool. Her knees were apart, allowing me to slide between them and be wrapped up in her heat. Her legs went around my waist, drawing me right up against her body so all her curves were molded to me, fitting in against all my angles and hollows.

I’d only intended to kiss her, nothing more, but I hadn’t expected her to respond the way she was. She rained wet kisses over my jaw and neck, nibbling my ear while her hands pulled my shirt from my waistband. She moved her hands inside to rove over the skin of my abs and along my back and ribs, and my body responded in kind. I was out of breath, my heart tattooing the inner wall of my chest. And I was hard, so insanely hard that I’d be in a world of hurt—albeit a different kind of hurt—if I couldn’t find some relief soon.

There wasn’t a chance in hell that Jessica was unaware of my erection, but it didn’t make her think twice about what she was doing. She didn’t stop touching me. Her lips kept finding new places to kiss me, her tongue new patches of skin to swirl over. It was the needy little sounds—part whimper, part moan—coming from deep within her, though, that snapped my control.

With her legs still circling my waist, I picked her up and carried her down the hall to my bedroom, barely remembering to kick the door closed behind me—there were kids to think about now. I’d left one of the bedside lamps on earlier, the low light just enough to see my way to the bed without hurting either of us. I lay her down on the mattress and covered her with my body.

She arched up into me, slipping my shirt over my head. I flung it across the room in my haste to get my hands on her. Her sweater was soft—cashmere or angora, something luxurious and smooth—but the skin underneath was like silk. I moved my hands up her sides, pushing the sweater and her bra up and out of the way as I explored her body. Her breasts were perfection, rounded mounds with hardened dusk-rose nipples begging for attention I couldn’t wait to give them. Her bra and sweater got tangled when I moved them to her wrists. I didn’t have the patience to sort it out; I left it all knotted, trapping her wrists until she could free them as I undid her skinny jeans and peeled them from her legs. They got tied up with her boots, and she was still trying to free her arms, and it was all a huge mess.

“Fuck,” I muttered, and Jessica laughed so loud and long that I couldn’t help but lose some of my frustration and laugh right along with her. “I’m screwing this up.”

“Slow down,” she said, and her voice was as silky as her skin. “I’m not going anywhere. There’s no need to rush so much.”

But there was a need, one that I didn’t want to put a name to because it would require thinking about all the things in my mind that I was trying to escape, and I was still more than half-dressed. I pulled her jeans back up her legs far enough that I could get a grip on her boots and tug them off the way I should have done to begin with. I was apparently still in too much of a hurry, though. No matter how much I jerked and pulled, those fucking boots weren’t moving an inch.

“There’s a zipper,” she said, finally working her arms free and tossing the sweater to the other side of the bed.

I looked on the inside of the boot in my hand. So there was. Right there in front of my eyes. “Probably should have started there.”

She was still laughing. “It might have saved us a little frustration.”

Working together, we got her boots off, then her jeans. She hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her panties and slid them down her hips. My mouth watered at the first glimpse of her thatch of brown curls. Her skin was flushed and hot all over. I couldn’t wait any longer to get a taste of her. I dipped my head down and took one of her breasts in my mouth, easing my hands over her ribs, her thighs, the hollow in the small of her back. She pressed into me everywhere I touched and tasted, while soft, fevered sounds came from her lips.

With one hand guiding the back of my head, she nudged me over to her other breast. I lapped and suckled, giving it equal attention. She held me there even as her other hand slipped between our bodies to stroke me over my jeans.

She eased me off her and finished undressing me with far more skill than I’d used. I reached for the drawer of my nightstand and fumbled around for protection. She kissed my thighs the same way she’d been kissing my face and neck and chest. I’d barely opened that damned foil wrapper when she took my length in her hand and licked the underside with a pointed tongue.