Deadly Fall (21 page)

A humorless, self-deprecating laugh sounded in his head. When she went down on him downstairs, that should’ve taken the edge off his need, but hell, no. This woman had changed the rules on him. Once just wasn’t enough. Anger darted through him at the realization that he had no defenses against her.

Breathing ragged and eyes locked on his, Augusta wriggled up the bed until her head touched the pillow. Nick followed her onto the bed, kneeling between her thighs, looming over her. With a harsh sound, he hooked him arms under her knees, spread her wide, covered her body with his and was deep inside her with a single thrust.

Augusta whimpered and clung to the gleaming shoulders above her. The rhythm he set was pounding, hard enough to satisfy her and yet leave her wanting more. She stretched her legs and crossed her ankles high up on his back, almost to his neck, opening herself even more. Eyes boring into hers, Nick planted his forearms on either side of her head, fingers tangled in her hair, and pounded her harder. He was pumping in and out of her with enough force that she knew she would be bruised in the morning, but she didn’t care. All her focus was on the rigid column of flesh that burned and created the most delicious friction inside of her. Her inner muscles clamped down and tried to hold him inside her with every fierce thrust, but he groaned and pulled out, only to come inside her and start it all over again.

After interminable minutes, as drops of his sweat landed on her face, neck and chest and seemed to sear her skin, Augusta was lost to everything except for the desperate spiral of sensation coiling tighter and tighter inside of her. She couldn’t think beyond where her own sweat and heat merged with his, where their bodies met and joined. She panted as she strained toward the peak that was the culmination of every luscious surge of Nick’s body into hers. She was close.

So close.

There.

There.

There.

Almost
…

There!

She screamed.

* * * * *

Nick knew she was awake. He felt the subtle change in her breathing, then began to stroke her hair, occasionally sifting through the individual strands. She made a soft, almost purring sound of contentment as she shifted her entire body an inch here and an inch there, rubbing against him like a cat.

Nick slowly, lingeringly stroked his hand down from her hair to her back to her lush bottom. He caressed it, squeezed it and made the return trek back to the silky mass of hair. He could’ve lain there forever, with her warm weight draped like a living blanket over one side of his body, her ear pressed just above his heart.

“Are you still with me?”

A sleepy “Hmm,” was his answer. Nick took that as an affirmative.

“I’ve never screamed before,” she confessed in a whisper, sounding embarrassed.

Nick couldn’t hold back the grin of pure masculine ego.

“What brought on this…display of affection?”

“Affection?” Her head rose to aim at frown at him. Then she pulled herself up on her elbows. “That’s a pretty tepid term for everything we did with each other,” she murmured, tilting her head to one side, spilling her mussed up hair over his chest, “to each other.”

His eyes burned, and he knew she could feel him hardening and growing against her leg.
Later
, he told himself.

“You never answered my question.”

“What question?”

“Augusta.” He very effectively infused the heat of warning into her name.

Seductive playfulness was forgotten as she searched his eyes for a long time.

“What do you want to hear?”

“The truth.” Even if it killed him.

Finally, she released a sigh laden with regret and settled back down.

“I never realized that he loved her.”

Nick reached down and tugged on the blanket, arranging it just in the middle of the back of the woman draped languidly over him once more. It gave him a moment to think, and to acknowledge to himself the reason for her urgency.

“He never said anything, and close, thoughtful friend that I was, I never even suspected.”

She swallowed hard. “This is like a Shakespearean tragedy. No, it’s a screwed up version of
Midsummer Night’s Dream
. Adam in love with Jana. And Jana still harboring feelings for Drew.”

He waited for her to finish, but she didn’t. Instead, she asked, “What did the doctor say about Jana?”

“Her face looks bad, but she won’t need reconstructive surgery.”

“I can’t believe they broke her arm and cracked her ribs.” Her voice lowered to a bare whisper. “And her knee.”

“She has some of the best doctors in New York working on her.”

“She’s a fighter. She’ll pull through.” Her fingers curled and dug into his chest. “I think it was more painful watching Adam. I’ve never seen him like that.”

His hand found the swell of her bottom and stayed there, warming her skin. “You had no idea of his feelings for her?”

She made a low sound in her throat. He took it to be a negative response.

“I thought the two of you were close.”

“We are, or at least I thought we were. Adam and I were very close in the beginning, then Drew came into the picture, and I suppose Adam and I…drifted a bit. Then Drew and I got married, and Adam and I spent even less time together.”

“It sounds like he kept everything pretty quiet.”

“Adam’s a private person. He and I are very much alike in that way. It’s what drew us together in the first place.”

“How did you two meet?”

The tension that stiffened her entire frame was instant. She braced one hand on his chest, as if ready to flee. Nick splayed one hand against the bare skin of the small of her back and rubbed the narrow area between her shoulder blades with the other, hoping to soothe her away from her flight response. After a while, her body relaxed once more.

“I met Adam when I was fifteen. That was about a year and a half after I moved to New York with my mother. I didn’t know anyone, so I used to do a lot of strolling through Central Park on the weekends. That was the extent of my social life back then.”

“You
strolled
through Central Park? Back then? Alone?”

“Not at night. I was a teenager, not a complete idiot.”

Nick bit back the retort that was on the tip of his tongue. He swallowed, hard. “Go on.”

“For a few weeks, I noticed this serious, skinny kid sitting on the same bench every Saturday with a sketch pad in his lap. He was very protective of it, as if afraid someone would sneak a peek at his drawings and critique them. Then one Saturday, I snuck up behind him to see what he was always so busy doodling in that pad of his. And it was me. He was really embarrassed at first. I’ve never seen anyone turn so red so fast.” She laughed softly. Then her voice gentled as she continued. “It was a very good sketch. And the ones he had done previously were close to brilliant. He captures you at your most candid. Adam has real talent. But I wasn’t mature enough to be flattered by it, so I told him he had no right to draw me and that he had to fork over the sketch.” She swallowed, and he heard the thickness of emotion in the sound. “He got so flustered that I took pity on him.”

“So you both have art in your backgrounds.”

Her tone was wry. “As well as family who strongly
encouraged
us to pursue different professions. That’s why I teach and Adam’s a lawyer. His family was disappointed he didn’t get an MBA from Wharton and join the family business, but they’re now holding out for a district judge and their Aunt Phyllis thinks ‘Senator Langan’ has a rather nice ring to it.”

“You’re not too fond of the extended Langan family.”

“Adam hates the law. The happiest I’ve ever seen him was when he had a sketch pad and a pencil in his hands. However, he had all those familial expectations to meet. It’s all nice and fine and expected for Langans to admire art and buy it, but to have someone in the family be an artist… That’s an entirely different story.”

“And, obviously, you had your family and their own expectations.”

“Her, singular. It was just my mother. She was obsessed with money and social standing, but she’d learned long ago I wouldn’t live my life to please her.” She paused. “Had she been alive, the day I married Drew would’ve been the happiest day of her life. A son-in-law with a last name dating back to the Civil War and a house in the Hamptons.” Suddenly, she pushed herself up a bit and rolled onto her back to lie on his right side. “I couldn’t breathe.”

“So you met Adam Langan in Central Park, discovered you were fellow artists, and the rest is history.”

“In a nutshell. Adam and I understand each other.”

“But not so much anymore.”

Augusta rolled onto her side, facing away from Nick.

“Augusta?”

He reached for her, fingers brushing her should, and she flinched. He drew back. “I’m okay.” She took one more shuddering breath.

“When will Drew’s body be released?” she asked. “I need to start making funeral arrangements.”

“I’ll contact the medical examiner and ask her tomorrow.” He paused and braced himself. “Tell me about Andrew Langan.”

August considered not answering him. But she could only take so much cowardice in herself.

“He was at Harvard when Adam and I first met. I didn’t meet Drew until two years later, when Adam talked me into attending his parents’ annual Christmas party in the Hamptons.” Her lips compressed into a bitter line as she recalled perfectly the poorly concealed relief on the elder Langans’ faces when Adam made the introductions, stressing the fact that they were only close friends.

“Drew was home for the holidays.” Augusta had taken one look at the twenty-one-year-old who was too good-looking for his own good, with his tall frame and dark auburn hair. She had pegged him as a shallow playboy in the making and dismissed him. Had it not been for her eminently realistic—if not pessimistic—nature, her seventeen-year-old heart would’ve tripped in her chest when he had directed that amused, dark green gaze in her direction. And when he flashed that grin…well, she had been young, but not that impressionable.

“Love at first sight?”

Nick’s question brought her back to the present, then she laughed. “Far from it. He and Jana were still dating off and on at that point. And I had him stereotyped as the typical rich kid with too much money and too much time on his hands. Jana had nothing but my pity.”

“What made you change your opinion of Langan?”

During her second year at NYU, she had discovered another escape from reality. That her mother had hated the parties and the late nights—if Augusta had bothered to come home at all—was a bonus in Augusta’s book. And if Francesca Sutherland Kincaid objected to the daughter she had sacrificed so much for, as she made sure to bring up on a regular basis, was on the birth control pill, Augusta was more than happy to point out she was not about to repeat her mother’s mistake.

“Adam and I were at some party on Long Island. We argued, and it was bad enough that he took off and left me stranded there.” He had disapproved of her allowing the latest star of the swim team to add her name to his list of conquests. Out on the terrace, no less. She, however, saw it as adding
his
name to
her
list of conquests. After that blithe comment came out of her mouth, Augusta had immediately wished she was one of those people who think before they speak. She had never seen Adam so angry before or ever since, until this night. But how could she have explained to Adam then that every time she let another guy use her body, it made the memory of her assault a little dimmer?

“Lucky for me, Adam was in the mood to vent when he got home and Drew was there to listen, so he took Adam’s head off before rushing to my rescue. Now you can say the rest is history.”

Of all the notches on her bedpost, Drew had been the first to counter her demand for darkness. He had been the first to demand that she keep her eyes open. He had been the first to demand that she say his name. Augusta fisted her hands in the sheets. She had loved him, but not enough and not the way he needed her to love him.

Then the man beside her turned onto his side, beckoning her back to the present. Nick propped himself on his elbow and slid a heavily muscled, hairy leg over both her thighs. Augusta shifted onto her back, looked up, met glittering blue eyes, and all thoughts of any other man but the one looming over her dissipated.

“Then he betrayed you.” The words were low and fierce, making some little devil in her heart thrill. “Remember that.” His leg shifted, his knee wedging between hers. “I’ll never do that to you.”

Nick moved on top of her until he was pressing her heavily into the mattress, nestled between her thighs. He nudged her sex with his erection and her breath escaped in a hiss. She pushed ineffectually at his shoulders with the heels of her hands.