Wild at Heart (Walk on the Wild Side #1) (23 page)

He leaned his forehead against hers, and she didn’t pull away. For a few heartbeats, they stayed together that way, breathing in sync, and he felt a little of the emptiness inside his chest begin to fill with warmth. But then she straightened and drew back.

“I’d better go,” she said. And he felt the gray, dull void open again.

He didn’t know what to do about it, though. Better he should feel that void than Amber should, which she definitely
would
, if he let things go any farther between them. Because it was a sure bet that he’d end by breaking her heart.

So he carried the flash drive back inside, and it felt like a chip of ice in his hand. Or like he was carrying something cursed, something fetid and horrible.

He sat down at the little desk and fired up his laptop, his fingers shaking on the keys. He was sick to his stomach at the thought of actually watching the damn thing. Why had Amber insisted on filming the two of them together in the first place, and why did she want him to look at it now? Probably the only thing that could make him feel worse about their situation was having that last encounter turned into some sort of Kardashian sex tape.

He remembered how he’d felt at the time, with the cameras whirring away—he’d felt exposed, laid bare,
flayed
. Imagine how much worse it would be to watch the results from the outside.

God, he didn’t want to have to see his own animal side on display. The worst part of him, the part that didn’t respond to reason or discipline or decency—or friendship either, apparently.

A few years ago, he’d dated an actress who had mirrors all over her bedroom, including one over the bed. They’d had sex there twice, and he’d hated the mirrored glimpses of the two of them rutting and contorting. Despite her Egyptian cotton sheets and her antique Louis Quatorze bedstead and her carefully manicured body, the images he caught from the corners of his eye looked like cheap porn. All he could think was how absurd it was—this brief madness of the body, the push and pull of instinct. Why did it feel so overwhelmingly urgent to shove one swollen bit of flesh into another? Looking in those mirrors was a little too much like watching mating sea snails on the Nature Channel, and he’d left her house both mornings feeling drained and depressed. After that, he insisted they have sex only in her living room or her kitchen, but the relationship had been over within the week because she was convinced he must not like the look of her ass from behind. Which was ironic, because her ass was the best thing about her.

The idea of seeing himself with Amber in the same way made him want to retch.

A window popped up on his laptop screen, telling him the video file had uploaded. He pressed play, his heart pounding deafeningly, his breathing rough, as if the atmosphere had suddenly gone thin.

No bodies showed at first—just the bed, brightly lit, the sheets unrumpled. It felt strange and shameful to see even that much, and he felt a wash of gratitude again that there would be no sound.

And then there he was, moving into the frame, shirtless and carrying a topless Amber in his arms like she was something he was about to devour. He laid her on the bed, and then he was on top of her so quickly, so eager to have her—no pause for communication, no deliberation, no thought. He wanted to scream to himself,
why are you doing this? You know what a mistake it is? Why don’t you stop?

But of course his self on screen didn’t stop. And worse, as he watched, Nick understood exactly why he didn’t. In the split second before his screen self buried his fingers in Amber’s hair, he felt the desire himself to touch it. His fingers practically burned with the need to feel the silk of her curls sliding between them. As his screen self’s hand moved to her breast, his hands itched to do the same, right this instant.

Thankfully, Amber rolled him over quickly onto his back and straddled him. It made it easier now to keep his attention on her—her breasts and back bare, her golden hair loose over her shoulders. Lord, even now he wanted his hands on her, and his mouth.

She was as beautiful on screen as in real life. Her skin glowed like the amber she was named for, as if lit from within. She had such supple strength in her limbs and her back, such a long, elegant throat, such intelligent hands. All of that wonderfully softened by the exquisite curving of her breasts and hips and ass, and the wild spill of her hair. It was a pleasure to watch her bending and arching above him, graceful and passionate and sure of herself. He only wished the camera angle let him see more of her eyes.

If he just kept his focus on her, watching this couldn’t really be ugly.

He did his best as long as he could to mentally block out his own form. But Amber knew what she was doing when she set up the cameras—the way they were angled and the way she’d cut together the footage, he was the visual focus. His body and the look on his face were impossible to completely ignore.

And, no, he didn’t like what he saw.

It wasn’t as awful as seeing himself in that actress’s bedroom mirrors, but it was damning enough. He knew what Amber had told him—that he was to stay still, that he was to lay back and let her decide what happened. And he just hadn’t been able to do that. Not even when he didn’t want them to be in the bed at all.

He watched himself seize her hips, and her having to pull away. When she began to unbutton her jeans, he watched himself grab hold of her pants and yank them down impatiently—and, damn it, throw them across the room hard enough to all but topple one of the light stands. He could see the bobbling shadows across their bodies as the stand teetered, and only by a random stroke of luck stayed upright.

And there he was, touching her breasts when she’d told him just to watch, and grabbing her arms and dragging her down on top of him. She had to pull herself out of his grip again and again.

And the worst part of all of this was that, watching it unfold, he was growing hard as ever. The pounding of his pulse changed rhythm, from the cold of fear to the heat of lust, and it was all he could do not to undo his jeans now and take his cock in his hand and stroke it.

He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, feeling sick with himself. Why was she making him watch this? What did she want him to learn about himself that he didn’t know already?

When he’d first come into the cabin and discovered the lights and cameras around the bed, she’d talked about
seeing
. About how film was the way they communicated. About how it could reveal truth.

Well, what the hell truth was there here for him to
see
? He knew what he was already. He’d been telling her about that,
warning
her about that, since the first time they slept together. She wasn’t a vindictive person. She wasn’t a sadist. Why would she want to confirm the worst of him?

She’d watched all this, carefully—she’d had to, to edit it. If all she saw in it was what he was seeing now, would she even have shown it to him?

There must be something else. Something worthwhile to see.

What,
though? And
how
?

He opened his eyes, and tried to look again, differently. Tried to shift his frame of mind, to see as she would see. She was kinder than he was, more forgiving, less judgmental. She was always telling him not to be so hard on himself, not to beat himself up so much.

Okay, then. He’d try a kindness lens, a more forgiving lens. A lens that actually had some trust and confidence in the goodness of the world and human nature.

It didn’t come naturally to him, not at all, but he tried to squeeze his brain into doing it. What did he see then? Not Nick the greedy, impulsive, thoughtless hedonist, but Nick the—
what
?

He honestly didn’t know.

For pity’s sake—he made his living looking at things. Amber had reminded him of that just yesterday, hadn’t she? She told him he was good at paying attention to things, to small details, to people, that he had a gift for finding subtle nuances in the expressions of the actors he filmed.

All right, then, idiot, use the gift—go ahead and
look
.

On screen now, he had Amber’s hips in his hands, and he was pulling her against his mouth, gorging himself on her. He remembered how intoxicating that had been, the scent and the taste and the heat of her. How she swelled and throbbed against his tongue so he could almost feel the beating of her blood. And the sounds she made, the gasps and growls and sighs.

Of course, he couldn’t see her face at the time, but he looked at it now.

He could only see her in profile, but her lush mouth was open in pleasure, panting, and her eyes were pressed shut as she concentrated on what his tongue was doing to her. No one could say he was using her, could they, if she seemed to be enjoying it so much?

And then she leaned backwards, to rub her hand over his crotch. His hands were awfully quick to help her, he noticed, to loosen his buttons, to get his cock out where she could stroke him. That wasn’t exactly selfless of him.

Watching now, as she wrapped her palm around his shaft on screen, gripped it, began to slide up and down, it was like he felt it all over again on his flesh, and the pulse in his cock grew to a drumbeat.

He remembered what he felt when he knew she was coming, when she said she couldn’t stop. His fingers were inside her by then, and he felt her clench and clench around his knuckles, her sweet juices flowing fast and hot, and—well, he’d taken pleasure in that, tremendous pleasure. As much pleasure as he ever did in coming himself.

So it wasn’t just about what her hand was doing to his cock.

And her face, he could see something new in it, that he wouldn’t have imagined at the time. Not just sexual release, but something full of fierce joy. Something powerful and strong—Amber at her finest, so intensely alive and sure, confident and life-affirming, embracing the pleasure he gave her as something beautiful, something she deserved.

He wasn’t taking anything from her when they did what they did, or reducing what was best in her. It wasn’t just an
animal
thing, was it? It touched the spirit, it touched the
soul
.

The thought was—well, it was a revelation. Something in him started to shift, to melt, as if a wall of hard rock or a glacial shelf was starting to crumble, a little at a time, just fragments at first, but then a rush of falling, and then a roar.

And suddenly he could see so much more. The little synchronies between them, as her rocking hips and his shifting mouth moved in a rhythm, as her hands and his, though never touching, made small adjustments of position at the very same time, as though connected somehow.

The way he was caressing her, he realized, was the way he touched whatever was most precious to him. He’d always worked with his hands, with delicate equipment, sensitive equipment, he knew how he held things that were precious to him.

And he held her as something far more valuable, far more treasured. As he would hold her, and only her.

His breath caught in his throat.

And, God, he watched as she moved down along his body, kneeling between his thighs. It could have been pornographic—every guy’s fantasy, a gorgeous, naked blonde catering to his every need, with her hands and mouth on his cock. But he watched it now with different eyes: he remembered what he’d felt at the time, not just in his supercharged nerve endings, but
inside
.

He remembered how overwhelmed he’d been, how out of control—and how he’d thought of that as a bad thing, as dangerous, as proof that sex made him something untrustworthy and selfish and less than fully human.

But that wasn’t really fair, was it? Or even true. It had
mattered
to him, even at the most animal moment, that the woman with him was Amber. And it mattered that he trusted her so completely. That she was his safe place in the world.

It made a difference.

She was giving something of herself when she gave him pleasure, something meaningful, more than just a slick mouth and stroking hands. She was cherishing him, too.

The two concepts didn’t come together easily in his mind—the idea that sex and taking care of someone might actually, at least sometimes, be the same thing. He’d genuinely never considered the possibility before.

He could see himself on screen, his hips thrusting upwards, his face contorting as he approached his peak. And he didn’t just explode in her mouth, which he so easily could have, which maybe any other guy would have. He didn’t
want
that at the time, not even at the moment when he felt most on the brink, most overwhelmed, most desperate for release.

No, he took hold of her arm, pulled her up towards him, so they could be face to face, and so it could mean pleasure for both of them at once. He remembered what he’d said to her—that if this was the last time they’d let themselves do this, he wanted them to be together.

At the moment, he hadn’t even thought about why he wanted that. It had just been an impulse, unexamined. But now he saw it for what it was. He hadn’t just been
fucking
her that night, or any other time they’d been together. He’d been
making love
to her.