Chapter Thirty
Harriet
he drive home from the gala is quiet, both Nolan and I lost to ourT thoughts. He lays his hand on my knee as we pull out of the small church parking lot, but otherwise gives me space, staring out the window as we wind our way back to my house.
I thought I’d be immediately ravaged by guilt. Second-guessing myself.
But instead I just feel an odd sense of weightlessness. Like I could float right into the night sky if I wanted to.
Nolan clears his throat from the passenger seat.
“You’ve been sitting here with your chin on your steering wheel for seven minutes,” he says calmly.
“Oh.” I lean back and turn off the ignition, releasing my death grip on the wheel. I didn’t realize we were parked on the small parking pad behind my house. Muscle memory guided me home while my brain conducted an overthinking Olympics.
The low rumble of the engine cuts out. Silence descends. I pocket my keys in my jacket and collapse against the seat. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t apologize to me.” He frowns. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” I poke at the feeling, examining it for cracks, and realize it’s true. I do feel fine. I feel better than fine. I feel good. Euphoric, almost.
Drunk off the power of finally speaking my mind. “Actually, I think I’m good.”
I said what I wanted to say and the world didn’t end. I’m still here. I’ve opened a door, or … kicked a pebble down the side of a mountain. I chose myself, and I didn’t worry about how my relationships would suffer for it. I didn’t contort myself into some absurd shape for the comfort of someone else. I was strong, and brave, and a little bit of a badass.
It’s a relief, honestly.
“Good?” Nolan asks, sounding dubious. I nod. “Really good, yeah.”
I look over at him, cramped in the passenger side of my car, his knees almost to his chest, and my palms itch. I want to chase this feeling. I want to
hold on to it with both hands.
“Would you like to come inside?” I ask.
His eyebrows jump in surprise. “Do you want me to come inside?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“You haven’t said a word to me since you told me to fetch your coat.”
“Oh,” I say again. “I’m sor—”
Nolan’s long fingers squeeze my thigh. He hasn’t moved his hand since we got in the car. “If you say you’re sorry one more time,” he says slowly, “I might lose my mind.”
I button my lips shut. Sorry is right there on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow it. He lets out a breath through his nose, the smallest of smiles shadowing his cheeks. “Good,” he rumbles.
That word again. It glides over my shoulders and settles in the middle of
my belly, warm and liquid. I shiver.
Nolan watches me, solemn.
“I’m the one who should be apologizing to you,” he says, his voice a low scratch. “I overstepped tonight. I’m sorry for that.”
“How?”
“Your mother came over to me while I was waiting for you at the bar.” He squeezes and releases my leg like he’s trying to convince himself to let go, but can’t quite manage it. “She wanted to know the nature of our relationship.
She was—well. She’s a bit of a hag, really.”
I snort a laugh. “She really is, huh?”
My mother isn’t ever going to change. Oddly enough, it’s a relief to know it. I’ve tried to change so many things about myself to get her to like me, but it’s never been about me. I know that now. She’s holding on to old hurts, unwilling to forgive or forget.
Now that I’ve said my peace, I can let that wound start to heal. Nolan drops his head back against the headrest. “I lost my temper.
It wasn’t my place to correct her behavior.”
I give a noncommittal hum and inch closer. I don’t want to have this conversation in the car with a console between us. I want to be somewhere I can see his face. Where I can smooth my hands against his warm skin and raised scars and reassure myself that he’s still here, sitting in the space next to me.
I settle for tangling our fingers together on my thigh. “What else did you say to her?”
Nolan swallows hard, still nervous. “I might have told her that her head
resembled a potato.”
A laugh bursts out of me. “You what?”
“You have to admit she does vaguely resemble a root vegetable.” A flash of a dimple appears in his cheek. “I didn’t like the way she was talking about you,” he says softly. His touch brushes along the inside of my knee. “My frustration got the best of me.”
I snicker again, leaning forward to press my mouth to his. My bright, bubbly feeling expands. Nolan was there for me tonight. He showed up, he stayed, and he defended my honor. He made me feel good.
I catch his bottom lip between my teeth and suck at it, an indulgent kiss that makes him shift in his seat. He melts against me.
“You’re not mad,” he breathes when I let my mouth drift down the line of his neck.
“Of course I’m not mad.” I fumble with his bow tie, frustrated with how many buttons and clasps and closures are between me and his skin. He grunts when I tuck my finger in between his neck and the material, my nails scratching. “Why would I be mad?”
“Because I compared your mother to a yam.”
“I thought you said it was a potato.”
“There’s a saying about potatoes, but I don’t want to give in to Irish stereotypes.”
I laugh against his neck, letting my forehead rest against his jaw. Tonight could have easily been another bad memory of Christmas Past to add to my already extensive collection, but it wasn’t. I danced, and I laughed, and I said the words that have been hammering holes in my heart for years. I was brave, and it was because of Nolan.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I murmur.
“What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t want to talk.”
“Noted,” he says.
His fingers inch up my thigh, disappearing beneath the high cut of my dress. When I don’t protest, the rest of his hand follows. I spread my knees wider in the limited space of the driver’s seat, encouraging him to explore.
He takes the direction beautifully, his rough palm scraping at my hip, gripping it as his mouth dips back to mine. I sink into him, mindless and warm.
“Let’s go inside,” I breathe, draping my arms over his shoulders.
“Aye,” he grunts. “Hold on to me.”
“I am holding on to—” I shriek with a laugh as his magic explodes out of him in a rush. It coils around my ankles before brushing up the backs of my legs, over the curve of my waist, up along my spine. It sends my pulse skyrocketing, that happy-spinny feeling twisting low in my belly. I close my eyes and hold on, laughing again when we land with a bounce in the middle of my bed.
I blink up at Nolan perched above me on his hands and knees. His bow tie is crooked and his hair is a mess, but he’s wearing a soft, somewhat bewildered smile. Like he can’t quite believe his luck.
I know the feeling.
“I love when you laugh like that,” he says.
I grin. “Like a hyena?”
“Like you’re happy.” He pushes some of my hair away from my face.
“Like you can’t contain it.”
That tender, soft place beneath my ribs glows. “You make me happy,” I confess quietly. A second ago we were wedged in the front seat of my car.
Now we’re splayed across my bed. Nolan’s holding himself above me on his elbows, my arms still wrapped around his shoulders. “That was very
efficient,” I tell him.
“Best use of my magic in decades.”
I drop one hand and trace a finger down the line of my dress strap. “I have some other ideas on how you can use it.”
His smile sharpens into something hungry. “Not quite yet.” He settles his hand at the base of my throat, urging my chin up with his thumb. He holds me steady, looking me over. “My control is tenuous at best, Harriet. I need to go slow.”
I don’t want him in control. If I get to keep him for only a little bit, I want proof that I had him while he was here. I want snowflakes from my ceiling. I want bite marks on my belly. I want magic pulsing from his palms and rattling my windows in their frames.
“You don’t have to be careful with me,” I say, voice hushed, my hands tugging at him. I finally get a good grip on his bow tie and untangle it from around his neck. I toss it blindly off the side of the bed. “I can take it.”
His breath stutters out of him in a rough laugh. “I know you can.” That laugh tumbles into a darker sound when I unbutton his top two buttons,
exposing the hollow of his throat. I scratch there lightly.
“And you will,” he rumbles. “I promise you that. You’ll take everything I
give you, won’t you?”
My skin flushes hot. I nod.
“But maybe I need you to be careful with me, hmm?” He props himself up on his palms, staring down at me. “There’s so much I want with you.”
“I’ll be gentle with you,” I whisper.
His eyes soften. “I know that, too.”
I’ve never cared very much about what’s fair and what’s not. It hasn’t mattered. I’ve taken what the universe has handed me and made the best of it.
But I’m not sure how I’m going to smile through the heartbreak that’s coming.
Nolan belongs to another time. Another place. He’s meant for a well- deserved afterlife, and I have no desire to keep him from the things he wants.
So I pack away the bruises I can already feel forming and do my best to exist in the moment.
“Your face got sad,” he whispers. “Where did you go?”
“Nowhere,” I answer. “I’m right here.”
I’m not going to spend tonight worrying about what’s next. I’m going to be here. With Nolan.
I tiptoe my fingers down his chest, undoing more of his buttons. I pat at his chest. “Up.”
He leverages himself to his knees without hesitation and I’d laugh if I wasn’t just as eager. Our easy affection melts into frantic desperation, his fingers working at his buttons from the bottom while mine work from the top.
He rolls his shoulders back and tears the material from his body, exposing smooth skin and a smattering of dark chest hair. Lean muscle and a heavy cut at his hips. A body honed by work, honored by time.
I press up on my elbows and brush my mouth against the middle of his chest, right where his heart is thundering out a furious rhythm. Both of his hands tangle in my hair, holding me against him.
Like this, he doesn’t feel like a spirit at all. He feels like a man. Warm skin and rough sounds. Scars littered across his chest and arms.
Like this, he feels like mine.
“Harriet,” he bites out from between clenched teeth when I sink my nails against his hips. He’s kneeling above me, straddling my left thigh, and I can’t get close enough.
“What?” I whisper, drifting my mouth lower, licking at a scar just above his hip. I undo the buckle of his belt and his whole body jolts. He sucks in a sharp breath when my knuckles drift over his cock.
“I can’t—” he says. “I won’t be able to—”
I stop and rest my chin against him, staring up along the length of his body.
My arms wrap around his torso, holding him close. “What is it?”
His eyes grow heavy and his hands sink into my hair. He looks decidedly
—deliciously—disheveled.
“I want to be inside you when I come.”
Everything beneath my belly button tightens.
I blink. “Oh.”
“And if you keep doing what you’re doing, it’s likely we won’t get that far.”
He lifts his hand and cups my face, his thumb tracing over my mouth.
“Oh,” I say again.
I part my lips and let his thumb slip inside. His face collapses into stern lines, attention focused entirely on my mouth. He dips his thumb farther inside and I curl my tongue around it. He grunts.
“Fuck,” he whispers. He pulls his hand away from my mouth, his eyes wild. “I need more.”
“I want more,” I say quickly. I want it so bad it feels like I’ll crawl out of my skin waiting for it. I lay back against the pillows. “Come here.”
Nolan lowers himself on top of me, his arms straining on either side of my head. He dips his mouth to mine, kissing me like I’m the one who is meant to disappear. Both of my hands anchor in his hair, our mouths working hot and wet and slow. I try to stretch out every moment until I’m warm and pliant beneath him. Aching, in all my hollow places.
My back arches. I fumble with the zipper at the base of my spine. “No.”
He roughly pins my hips back down. “Keep the dress on.”
“Why?” I whine.
He tugs at my skirt until it’s folded up over my hips in a puddle of silk. I’m wearing pale pink underwear, cut high around my hips, and he whispers another low fuck under his breath. His tongue drags along the inside of his cheek.
“Because,” he says, “I want to have you exactly like this.”
Then he pushes himself off my bed, drops to his knees, and drags me down the length of my bed by my thighs. I shriek at my ceiling as he settles my
hips at the very edge, my legs dangling uselessly over the side. He arranges me exactly the way he wants, roughly tipping my knees wide before slotting himself between them. I can only see the top of his messy hair, bowed over me.
“I need this,” he whispers, and any thoughts of self-conscious hesitation drift away with the raw desperation in his voice. He presses a soft kiss just below my belly button. “Can I have this, Harriet?”
I open my legs wider.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Please.”
He doesn’t hesitate. He hooks two fingers in the front of my pretty, lacy underwear and tugs the material to the side, pinning it against my thigh with his thumb. Then he drops his mouth against me and lightning rockets up my spine.
It’s messy and honest in the way Nolan always seems to be and I can’t breathe through the intensity of it. The way he opens his mouth wide against me, tongue licking, mouth sucking. It’s like he’s trying to taste as much of me as possible, as quickly as he can.
My hands hover over his head. I want to thread my fingers through his hair, but I don’t—I’ve never— He takes in my hovering hands from between the cradle of my thighs and my favorite crinkles appear. He grins and guides one of my hands to the back of his head.
“Go on,” he says. “Show me where you want me.”
I thread my fingers through his hair and his eyes slip shut. I pull and he moans, face crumpling in agonized pleasure. Overcome and out of control, I press my hips down against his mouth and rock. I expect him to hold me still, make me take what he gives me, but he surprises me again. He blinks open heavy eyes and stares at me lazily, letting me grind against his mouth. Letting me take what I need.
He’s always letting me take what I need.
I press myself up on one hand so I can see him, the angle better like this, the other still in his hair so I can hold his mouth tight between my legs. I roll my hips again. Again and again and again.
It’s the most selfish I’ve ever been.
It’s fantastic.
Heat pulls tighter in my belly and my head drops, the ends of my hair tickling the bare skin of my lower back as I work myself against him.
“Nolan,” I whine. “Yes.”
He pulls away with a gasping breath and his fingers take the place of his mouth, swirling wide, wet circles against my clit. He sucks a mark in the crease of my hip and I hear the clink of metal, his belt buckle dropping against hardwood.
“’S good,” I breathe, scratching my nails against his scalp, trying to guide his mouth back to where I want him. I’m so close I’m vibrating with it.
“Please. I need you.”
His face darkens and he drops another kiss, right above where his fingers work at me. “Pull your top down,” he grinds out.
I yank my arms free of the straps and the dress pools around my middle, a thick, tangled band of silk. Nolan grips it and he uses it to tug me flat to the mattress. He yanks again until I’m positioned exactly the way he wants me.
Which is hanging half off the bed, my thighs propped on his wide shoulders, hugging his ears. If he was using any restraint before, it’s gone now, his attention focused on sending me over the edge as fast as possible.
One of his biceps nudges against the inside of my thigh in a quick, tight rhythm and I roll my hips to match. It’s so good. So, so, so good.
I close my eyes and give in to it, whimpering and moaning and whispering his name, tracing my fingers through his hair, over the tops of his ears, across the back of his neck, and down his jaw to where his mouth is warm and wet against me. I choke on nothing when I feel the wet slide of his tongue across my fingers, my orgasm tightening in my belly.
“Nolan,” I breathe. “Nolan.”
“Don’t be polite, Harriet.” Dark blue eyes meet mine. “Take it.”
Then he ducks his head down and makes me.
It’s slow and thick. Indulgent. It dances up my spine before easing low in my belly, snaking down my legs, and making my thighs tremble. I break apart while Nolan watches, leaning back to rock the palm of his hand firmly where his mouth just was, letting me grind my way through the rest of it. He knows exactly what I need without my even having to ask, amplifying the pleasure until it feels like my orgasm has been going on for hours. I’m sweating, incoherent. I whimper nonsense as my hips work, my body unspooling like thread beneath him.
Nolan arches over me when I finally quiet, one hand pressed next to my hip, the other with a firm grip around his cock. His teeth clamp down on his bottom lip as he strokes up and then down, the tendons in his neck standing
out in sharp relief.
“This is enough,” he pants. He edges forward and his knuckles bump where I’m wet and sensitive, the blunt tip of his cock pressing down against me. He grinds there, his hand still working. “This is more than enough.”
I urge my knees wider and shake my head. “Not for me,” I say. “Want you inside.”
He makes a wounded sound and falls on top of me, catching my mouth with his in a messy, furious kiss. I can taste myself on his tongue and it makes me burn hotter, my desire reigniting, my body demanding more.
“Harriet.” He moans. “I don’t think I can—I won’t last.”
“That’s okay.” I push my hands into his hair, trying to soothe him. “It’s good. It’s so good.”
He nudges against me again, mumbling under his breath. I catch words like beautiful and incredible, his accent a rough scratch somewhere under my ear.
Then he tilts my hips up and presses his way inside, a thick slide of heavy heat.
He goes slow. So slow I’m wiggling and pushing for more by the time his hips are flush with mine. Both of our bodies are sticky with sweat, my dress still caught between us. Nolan props himself above me and hooks one finger beneath the tangled, ruined material, a sly smile curving at the edge of his mouth. With a flash of heat, the dress is ribbons against my skin, his magic a tingling aftershock. A single strand loops around my torso, a pretty bow
knotted between my bare breasts.
“A gift,” Nolan pants. “Just for me.”
I laugh and Nolan brushes my hair away from my face with trembling hands, smiling with a barely there quirk of his lips. He keeps watching me as he moves his hips, his jaw going slack. His rhythm is slightly sloppy, unpracticed, but everything feels better because of it. The friction. The press of my thighs at his hips. The way his fingers catch and tug at my hair. I’m reduced to feeling everything in pieces because I’m not sure I can handle the whole of it. How thick and hot and syrupy sweet it is to be pinned beneath him like this. To lie here and take it. To give him what he needs.
Nolan’s forehead creases, his hips moving faster, and I know he’s close.
“Show me,” I whisper, and he shakes his head, clenching his teeth. “Let me see,” I beg.
He wedges his hand between us, fingers searching.
“Not yet,” he orders. “Need to feel you again. Need to feel you on my
cock.”
He already knows how to touch me, I think somewhat deliriously as his thumb rubs. He knows exactly what to do. “You don’t have to—”
“It’s not for you,” he bites out. “I need it.”
He flips his hand and drags two knuckles on either side of where he’s still moving inside me, trapping my clit and forcing friction, and that’s—that’s it.
The pleasure chokes me, sweeping me under. A sharp, furious orgasm burns through me like a storm, stealing my breath.
Somewhere through the haze, I hear him groan, his hips punching against mine as he chases his own release. I drag my nails lazily up and down his bare back as he tenses, his muscles rigid as he works his way through his pleasure.
He looks beautiful. Furrowed brow. Open mouth. Hair damp at his temples and his bottom lip swollen from my kisses. I cup his face in my hands, watching the way his face collapses in relief.
When his eyes blink open again, they’re a startling shade of blue. One I haven’t seen before. His magic lurks at the corners with flecks of gold and I beam at him. He grins back, chest still heaving, and then the both of us are laughing like love-drunk idiots, our mouths bumping together as we try to kiss our way through it.
When he finally collapses at my side, I’m kiss-bitten and beaming. Nolan looks equally stupefied, his hair practically standing on end.
Remember this, I tell myself as he laces our fingers together, his eyes closed as he tucks my hand against his mouth. He drags a kiss across my knuckles and I slot it in the secret place right next to my heart.
Please, please, please.
Remember him.
