I manage a smirk. “Actually, I think it was your fault.”
He chuckles again. “Maybe so.”
I start to bring my legs together.
“Oh, no, Ms. Fairchild. That’s how you sit for the rest of the ride. It’s your punishment—and my reward,” he adds, tapping the rearview mirror.
“In that case,” I say, and strip off my sweater, shirt, and bra.
“Jesus, Nikki,” Damien says, as I sit naked on the backseat, feeling suddenly very smug.
“I thought you needed to be well rewarded. After all, you earned it. I mean, you’ve been sitting in an empty limo all afternoon while I was inside drinking and watching hot guys.”
“Best not to remind me of your infractions,” he warns. “And the truth is, I wasn’t just sitting in the limo.”
“Oh?” I lick the tip of my finger and slowly circle my nipple. I’m pretty sure I hear a low growl come from the driver’s seat. “What were you doing?”
“You were with the girls,” he says, his voice unnaturally tight. “I was with the guys.”
“Were you?” I let my finger trace down, down, down. Slowly, I stroke my sex, thrusting my finger deep inside, then withdrawing it to tease my clit.
I started this little show to torment Damien, but I’m also tormenting myself. “So, um, who were you with?” Honestly, it’s getting hard to think.
“Alaine, Charles, Preston. Jesus, Nikki, do you have any idea how hard I am?”
I allow myself the pleasure of a satisfied smile. “Anyone else?”
“Ryan, Evan, Blaine. A few others.”
“Mmm.” I force myself not to drift, not to let myself come. I want him hard and hot. I want to turn the punishment around on him.
I want to keep control.
“So, um, tell me about Evan. Jamie was certainly checking him out.”
“Tell her to stay away,” Damien says sharply, and my hand pauses.
“Why?”
“Actually, I take it back. Don’t tell her anything. Knowing Jamie, telling her to stay away would just make her more determined.”
“All right,” I agree. “But why? What’s wrong with him?”
“Not a damn thing. I like him, a lot. But he has an edge.”
“An edge? What kind of edge?”
“The dangerous kind.”
“Oh.” I want to ask more; however, I know better than to try to get information out of Damien that he doesn’t want to give. “To be honest, I think Jamie’s appreciation is more aesthetic than active. I’m pretty sure she’s got her eye on another guy.”
“Who?” Damien asks.
I shrug. I don’t answer, but I’m thinking of Ryan.
For a moment I think Damien will press the point, but all he says is, “We’re here.”
I glance out the window and see that we’ve entered a drive-in movie lot. I laugh out loud. “Where are we?” I ask, tugging my skirt and shirt back on. I don’t bother with the bra or underwear. At the moment, they seem superfluous.
“The Vineland Drive-In. City of Industry.”
“Don’t you have to pay?”
“I called ahead and made arrangements.”
“You planned this all along,” I say, which is pretty much stating the obvious. “Why?”
He opens his door, gets out, then joins me in the back.
“Why?” I repeat.
“So we could make out in a car at the drive-in,” he says simply.
I laugh, because as corny as it sounds, the idea is also exciting. “Interesting. I think I’d like that.”
“Would you?” He reaches over and begins to unbutton the shirt that I just put back on. I lean toward the console so that I can raise the privacy screen.
“No,” he says as he peels the shirt off.
“Damien!”
His fingers unbutton my skirt, then tug down the zipper. “Do you really think that someone is going to lean on the hood, press their face to the glass, and peer all the way back here?”
“They might,” I say, though I agree it’s doubtful.
“They won’t. But doesn’t the possibility make you wet?” He slides his hand up my skirt. “Yeah,” he says. “I think it does.”
I lick my lips, refusing to admit the excitement that’s building inside me. “I was already wet,” I say.
“Mmm-hmm.”
I feel my cheeks heat. “I thought you didn’t do public sex.”
“I don’t. And I’m not going to. We’re in a limo. No one’s looking in. But I like the fantasy,” he admits. He leans forward and kisses me, even as he slides two fingers deep inside me. “And so do you.”
“I do,” I admit, both because it’s true and because I don’t want to have secrets from Damien. “You are my fantasy, Damien. You know that, right?”
“And you are mine,” he says, after kissing me softly. “We’re lucky, you and I. There were so many places where our lives made wrong turns. And yet all those turns, all those horrors, all those days that we want to forget—they all add up to this moment. To you in my arms.” He strokes my hair, his expression tender. “I have no regrets for the past, Nikki. And when I’m with you, the only thing I can see is the future.”
“Damien,” I say, the word soft like a prayer.
“Yes?”
“Kiss me.”
“Whatever you want, sweetheart,” he says before his mouth closes over mine and I slide down into the bliss of his arms.
Chapter Seven
I sit in the silence of the Malibu house, sipping a sparkling water as I work at a small desk in the library. The library is my favorite room in this house, and it’s not really a room at all. Instead, it’s a level—a mezzanine—broken into a variety of sections. The comfy chairs and coffee tables are by the wall of windows overlooking the ocean. The bookshelves line the area that is visible from the massive staircase leading up from the entrance hall. The work areas are farther back, hidden from view, and it is in one of those quiet corners that I now sit.
It is late—barely three in the morning—and Damien is asleep in our bed.
I couldn’t sleep, and though I stayed in bed for hours, warm in Damien’s arms as I drifted in and out of a hazy dream state, I never managed to fall into slumber. I’m not sure if it was nerves or too much bourbon or the persistent thoughts of my mother, but in the end I gave up and came down here. Now I am sitting in the light of my laptop monitor putting the finishing touches on the gift I intend to give Damien on our wedding day—a scrapbook of our time together.