When it finally hits, it’s like lightning splitting me open. I cry out, head thrown back, legs trembling, hips jerking forward again and again as the orgasm tears through me, wave after wave, mind-shattering, endless. My fingers curl, my body shakes, consumed.
Breathless, spent, I finally twist the spray back to normal. I rinse, but the space between my legs is still raw, hypersensitive, every touch sending sparks through me.
I turn off the shower, reaching for a towel, and that’s when I notice.
Nik is gone.
Disappointment stabs through me, sharp and sudden.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the steamed-up mirror. My cheeks are flushed, my lips parted and trembling. My eyes blaze with heat, pupils dilated, almost glowing with the aftermath of the storm that just ripped through me.
My chest rises and falls in ragged gasps, my body still trembling and slick with the remnants of my climax.
As I get ready,my mind keeps drifting to him. Nik’s gone, but his bag’s still here, unzipped, half unpacked. Two pressed suits and two shirts hang in the closet. Some workout clothes sit along with a pair of running shoes in the open bag.
Drying my hair takes forever, but I force myself to be patient and coax it into loose, sexy waves. But the whole time, my thoughts circle back to him, and worry gnaws at me.
He must’ve come in on a red-eye from the West Coast. Did he get any sleep? Probably not. I’m sure he planned to crash once he got here, only to find me, sprawled out in his bed like some kind of cosmic joke.
Why does that matter to me?
It shouldn’t.
Nikolai Ivanov isn’t mine.
I’m not his.
Whatever this thing between us is, it doesn’t have a future.
And even if I let myself catch feelings, it doesn’t mean he did. He paid me for what we did. I was just the girl willing to accept money for services rendered.
It’s over now, surely, since he knows who I am.
The thought cuts deeper than it should. I always knew it couldn’t last. How could there be a real relationship with a man who never showed me his face, who never saw mine? It was doomed from the start.
And yet… the idea of not seeing him again, not touching him, not feeling him twists something in me I can’t shake.
I rub absently at the ache in my chest, brush sliding through the last bit of my hair, when my phone buzzes. Dad.
“Hey, Dad,” I say as I swipe to answer.
“Just making sure you’re up and moving,” he says, that familiar blend of authority and concern in his voice.
I laugh, rolling my eyes even though he can’t see it. “I’ve been getting myself to class for four years. Pretty sure I can handle a meeting.”
He grunts in response. “Well, your brothers, on the other hand, seem always to need a boost.”
“Dad, they are grown-ass men. Do not tell me you enable them by waking them up still.”
“I plead the fifth,” he says with a smirk I can hear in his tone.
“Lord, have mercy on my idiot brothers,” I mutter, more to myself than him.
“I’m grabbing a light breakfast in the hotel restaurant in ten minutes if you want to join me.”
“I might need more than ten, but I’ll come down. Don’t eat all the pastries before I get there,” I joke.
“Ha! Try me. I’ve got first dibs, pumpkin.”
