Sebring (Unfinished Heroes #5)(91)
“I know what you mean and that’s just not gonna happen.”
“And maybe my mom thought that before she had Georgia and me, gave up and took off,” she noted.
“And maybe your mom is a stupid, weak, useless bitch,” he returned. “What’s not a maybe is you’re not.”
“Nick.”
His name was all she said.
So he kept at her.
“We get there…and just so you know, baby, that’s where I’m heading us and I like where we’re going…I can’t say I’ll take you to the mountains so you can disappear. I got a business. I gotta see to that business. And that business is in the city. What I can say is, I’ll get you a place up there we can visit. And when we’re at home, wherever we’re makin’ that home, I’ll make you safe. And if we get to that place, we’re making a family. When we do that, I’ll make them safe. You’ll live free and easy. They’ll live free and easy. That’s what I can say. And we keep on, we get to where we’re headed, you gotta do what you promised along the way and believe.”
“Believe,” she said like she was rolling that word around her mouth, and even if he’d asked that of her before, and she’d promised she’d give it to him, she looked like she still wasn’t sure how it tasted.
Fuck, but that family of hers did a number on her.
“Believe,” he said firmly.
He watched her press the side of her head in the pillow and her tone was one of surprise like she’d just noticed something.
“You like where we’re going?”
He beat back a laugh and instead gave her a squeeze, sliding his leg deeper between her thighs.
“Uh, yeah,” he pointed out the obvious.
“Our duty to give the earth that beauty?”
That wasn’t said with surprise.
It was wonder.
“Yeah, baby,” he replied.
She shifted her hands flat across his skin from his back to his chest.
“I…well, I like you, Nick.”
Instantly, his body started shaking with humor he couldn’t control.
“Well, that’s good,” he replied.
She pressed hard into his chest and whispered, “Please don’t laugh.”
He stopped laughing.
“I like you, Nick,” she repeated.
Fuck.
She didn’t mean that.
She meant more.
“I like you too, Livvie,” he whispered back, rolling into her.
“And I like where we’re going,” she told him, almost shyly.
Fuck.
He settled on her. “I’m glad, honey.”
“I want three babies.”
Oh yeah.
His choice, he’d stop at two.
She wanted to give him three, he’d give her that.
He dropped his mouth to hers.
“You want three, we’ll have three,” he murmured against her lips.
“Think about the mountains, sweetheart,” she replied. “I think we both could use some peace.”
He was looking at mountain properties on Monday.
He ran his hands down her back, over the irregular skin at the small to her ass. She didn’t flinch, didn’t move away, didn’t have any reaction at all.
He was getting somewhere in a lot of ways.
“I’ll think about it,” he muttered.
“Good,” she whispered.
He let her say the word then he slid his tongue in her mouth.
She slid her fingers in his hair.
When he was done kissing her, he moved to work her throat as he trailed a hand around and up toward her breast.
“I love how easy it is for you to make me believe,” she said in his ear.
Shit.
He wanted to make love to her again, do it slow, make it last.
She got any sweeter, he was going to have to f*ck her.
“Baby?” he called.
“Yeah?”
He curled his hand around her breast.
“Shut up.”
“Okay,” she breathed.
He grinned against her skin and rubbed his thumb over her nipple.
One of her hands convulsed in his hair, tugging it. The other one started gliding down his spine.
Olivia shut up.
So Nick took his time and made love to her.
*
6:56 – Saturday Evening
Nick in a suit, no tie, and Olivia in heels and a little black dress that he liked a f*ckuva lot, walked out of the elevators at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Vegas.
They barely hit the public space when three guys walking by them slammed into each other as their eyes remained glued to Liv when she and Nick passed.
Nick looked from the men down to the woman he held close in his arm.
She was oblivious.
Nick was smiling.
They walked right out the front.
They got in a taxi.
And for the first time, Nick took his woman out to dinner.
*
11:58 – Saturday Night
Her ass on a velvet couch beside him, but most of her weight pressed up against him in a bar that felt suspended in a cocoon of crystals, her eyes carefree and happy, Olivia announced, “I need another cocktail.”