One Dirty Night - Page 115

“Then take me home, Master.”

All the softness, all the wary tenderness in him snapped back into fierce authority. Fisting the leash around my throat, he glowered at those watching us, then bowed his head at Ella and Rhodes. “We’re leaving. Goodbye.”

Yanking me forward by the belt, he pulled me up the steps, out the door, and into the clean night air.

Voices trailed us.

Laughter and knowing whispers.

“Remember your safe word, Tia!” Ella shouted after me. “You’re gonna need it!”

I gasped.

Nick groaned.

He pushed me into his black Ford and drove us home.

Chapter Sixteen

THE DOOR CLOSED QUIETLY BEHIND US, TRAPPING us into our shared house, blocking out the world and keeping our sinful secrets.

Nick hadn’t spoken a word the entire drive home, but that hadn’t stopped our bodies from shouting. Tension built and built until I had a permanent case of goosebumps and ached exquisitely painfully between my legs.

He didn’t drive too fast or too slow.

His hands strangled the steering wheel; his eyes narrowed on the road.

His belt still fastened around my throat.

I’d done my best to come up with something to ease the stinging, sizzling awareness between us, but…each time I opened my mouth, only air came out.

Should I apologise for going to the club?

Should I thank him for coming after me?

What was going on inside that head of his?

I jumped as the front door clicked into place before the deadbolt slid home. Looking over my shoulder, I caught Nicholas’s stare.

Every question, every worry, every thought…all vanished in a puff of smoke.

No hazel now, just green. Blazing, smouldering green full of fury and desire. With bronze hair tumbling over his forehead and lips framed by a manicured short beard, I’d never seen a more handsome man or a more terrifying beast.

My heart rate soared as I spun around to face him, keeping my eyes on the dangerous predator I’d invited into my heart, all while tripping backward in my patent heels until my ass hit the back of the couch.

I froze. “Nick…I’m sorry.”

He bared his teeth as he stalked toward me. “Sorry? You’re sorry. What are you sorry for, Ella? Are you sorry you stripped for me this afternoon, then went to a club for another man to taste you? Sorry that you forced me to spend a day from hell wondering if I had the strength to come after you? Sorry that you forced me to watch another man proposition you…again? Sorry you forced me to accept pieces of myself that I’m still not ready to accept? Or…” Unthreading his belt and yanking it off my neck, he tossed it to the floor, then curled his hand tightly around my throat. “Are you sorry you forced me to fall in love with you?”

I gasped as he squeezed.

I longed to touch him back. To be soft in the face of his hardness. To melt his coldness with warmth he desperately needed.

But…just as I’d known when I’d offered him my mouth after Spectacle of Secrets—if I gave him soft now, I’d lose him.

He didn’t need apologies when my actions still bled him. He didn’t want my acknowledgement that I’d pushed him into emotions that were far, far too intense.

Right now…he needed a fight. A fight he could win. A fight that would appease him and give him back all the power I’d stolen by making him come after me.