A Love Most Fatal (Morelli Family #1)

29. Vanessa

29

VANESSA

Nate is already downstairs when I finally make it out of the shower and pull myself together enough to call myself “ready for work.” Although “ready” is generous.

No amount of concealer can hide my under-eye bags, which isn’t to say I didn’t try. He looks tired too, but he also has the shadow of a smile across his face as he reads something on my iPad. I hate that he knows the passcode, but I have an absurd satisfaction that someone knows it and feels comfortable enough to use it. These pesky domestic butterflies in my gut have been bothering me for two weeks now.

Two weeks of waking up snuggled up to Nate in one of our beds, me vowing to myself that I will not sleep with him again only to do just that.

For once, I have no discipline. Unacceptable.

“Good morning,” I say, and he and Mom both look up in unison.

“Are you sick, baby?” Mom asks, already standing to come fuss over me.

“No.” I dodge her hands from feeling all over my face (they’d come back with a layer of makeup if she did). “I just didn’t sleep well, is all.”

“Stress?” Mom asks.

It’s been quiet since the gala, almost too quiet. Just because nobody has attacked in a few weeks, doesn’t mean that they won’t if we don’t keep our guards up.

“Nightmares, if I had to guess,” Mary says, brushing past us into the kitchen. “I heard. . . heavy breathing.”

I glare at her, but she stares fastidiously down at the chopped fruit she spoons into her oatmeal. Most nights, Mary is out prowling the town doing only God knows what, but last night she decided to stay home?

Rich, rich.

“Oh, sweetheart.” Mom pulls me in for a hug, which I return like a board. Mary waggles her eyebrows at me and I flip her off behind Mom’s head.

They’ve been dancing around this for weeks and I’ve been letting the silence drag on as long as possible.

“His face hides nothing,” Mom whispers in my ear, and I let out a sigh much too large for seven in the morning. “And really, you do need to sleep sometime.”

I do sleep. Some nights I get seven whole hours. Just not often these days.

“Nate, will you go check on the garden?” My mom asks.

He stops with his coffee cup at his mouth and I give him a look that I hope he reads as save yourself from the grueling conversation that is about to ensue .

“If we’re sending Nate on errands, go remind Leo that he owes me forty dollars,” Mary pats his shoulder. The two of them haven’t been chummy per se, but they exchange a dozen words sometimes now, which is big progress.

Nate flips the black iPad case back over the screen and offers a salute before slipping out of the back door, promptly putting his hands in his pockets as he strolls away from the house.

“Sweetie,” Mom starts.

“What?” I snap, a little too harsh. I slump my shoulders, immediately contrite.

“How long is this going to go on?” She’s so gentle with me, not judgmental, just worried.

“I don’t know, probably until he pulls a husband out of a hat?” I take a sip from my green mug on the counter only to wince at how absurdly sugary it is. Nate couldn’t drink black coffee to save his life. “It’s not safe for him to leave yet. Plus, there are still a few more men to interview.”

I don’t miss the looks Mary and Mom share across the island.

“What?”

Mom looks uncomfortable, like she’s trying to find a way to phrase this nicely. Mary has no such reservations.

“Why not Nate?” She asks, point blank.

“What?”

“Well, why not him? You’re fucking him?—”

“Mary,” Mom chides.

“I’m not fucking him,” I defend. “We’re just. . .”

Mary raises her eyebrows.

“Okay, yeah, I’ve been fucking him,” I say. Mom throws up her hands, any attempts to police our cursing futile. “But it’s not like that, we aren’t together.”

“And what’s so wrong with him?” Mary asks.

I never expected to greet a morning where Mary would be defending a guy, much less Nate, who she has on many occasions called a ‘weak, strange little man.’

“What happened to you hating him?” I ask the traitor.

“That was before,” Mary says. She puts a big bite of oatmeal in her mouth before speaking again. “He’s okay now.”

“Before what?”

“Before,” Mary shrugs. “Before he got good at shooting. Before he got a haircut.”

I thought sending her to teach him how to shoot was a bad idea for his safety. I could not have cooked up the possibility of them becoming friendly from this. What alternate world am I living in right now?

“There’s nothing wrong with him, he just. . . isn’t meant for this life. He’s said so himself plenty of times.”

“He could learn,” Mom says.

“He’s been learning,” Mary points out.

“I just worry that you aren’t being careful, baby,” Mom brushes a hand over my hair in soothing strokes.

“Of course we’re careful,” I say. Nate has faithfully worn condoms because while I do need an heir, a baby out of wedlock might be just the thing that makes the Mothers attack me themselves.

“Gross, Ness,” Mary says. “She’s talking about feelings.”

I blink at my sister then turn to look up at my mother, who has that sympathetic, all-knowing thing about her. What do they think? I’m going to find a husband and be brokenhearted when Nate inevitably leaves? All because of some sex?

“I’ll be fine,” I say. Why would I not be fine with this? Do they not know me at all? I’m always fine.

“Nate is a good person, Vanessa,” Mom says. “And he was already half in love with you when you brought him here.”

“No, he,” I break off and look away, searching my brain for any truth in what she says.

When he moved in, he made it very clear that he loathed me, my occupation, and his predicament. By my estimate, he barely started tolerating me a month ago. He’s just horny. We just have chemistry. It’s just convenient. He just?—

“He’ll leave as soon as all this husband business is wrapped up. When we know who’s been sabotaging us,” I say.

“Does he know that’s still the plan?” Mom asks.

“If he’s not an option, you need to tell him that before he starts getting ideas,” Mary says. Her spoon scrapes on the inside of her porcelain bowl.

I open the fridge and grab the first thing I can find, an apple and a container of baby carrots. This conversation is giving me hives on my neck. Nothing in my life has felt normal and Nate is the one thing that makes me feel like a normal, warm-blooded woman in a normal, uncomplicated situationship.

I can’t be thinking about this anymore today, not when I have an unbearably full agenda and projects with increasingly tenuous deadlines.

“Nate is an adult and he can make his own decisions,” I say. “He will be just fine.”

“Vanessa, don’t be a bitch about this,” Mary starts, but I am already on my bitch path and am too exhausted to stop it.

“I’m not!” I say, retreating from the kitchen without glancing back at them.

I avoid Nate, my mother, and my younger sister for the whole day, opting to eat out for dinner with Leo instead of going home to their judgmental stares and knowing glances. Nate finds me around midnight, when I’m so tired reviewing contracts that I can hardly read the words. He toes the office door shut and walks over to me with a glass of water in hand. When I take it, he drops a couple of ibuprofen in my palm.

“How’s it going in here?”

“Never better,” I muse, though the slump in my spine tells a different story.

He snakes his hands around my shoulders and digs his thumbs into the tight muscles in a way that is so soothing it should be illegal. This easy intimacy that has bloomed from the last two weeks brings to mind my mom’s concerns.

“You need to sleep,” he says.

“You’re not the boss of me,” I say, but I take the medicine and down the water before I lean back in my chair, my head falling back against his stomach as he stands behind me. My eyes are burning, so I rest them closed for a few moments. “Thank you.”

“What are we looking at?”

We .

I press my thumb and middle finger to either side of my temple.

“Willa sent me a contract with some sections flagged for final review but I’m so tired that I think it might be written in Latin. We’ve been in legal limbo for weeks and the buyer is a sexist shithead who’s impossible to work with. You met him once; old guy, last name McGowan.”

“The grumpy dude, right? From the gala?”

I nod at his spot-on assessment.

“It sounds like he doesn’t deserve your business,” Nate says.

Business is so simple to him. Right or wrong, black or white.

I crack a smile and flip a few pages before pointing at the bottom line. The whopping 437 million dollars being discussed.

Nate whistles and leans in to get a closer look. I smell on his neck a lingering hint of cologne that Willa bought for him before he started doing interviews. It’s expensive and heady and one I’ll never be able to smell again without thinking about smooth hot hands and a stubbly jaw scraping against my skin.

I clear my throat and shift in my seat. “I can’t blame McGowan for wanting to be careful, but he’s willfully difficult when I’m involved.”

“Well, then I hope you’re just as difficult for him,” Nate says.

“I’m not making it easy, at least.”

This deal could have been done a month ago if I had far undercut our worth and agreed to his outrageous demands. But I’m stubborn.

McGowan never would have tried this shit on my dad. I’m not sure if that’s because my dad was a man, or if it’s because he was better at business.

The niggling imposter syndrome worms around my gut again, too familiar these past weeks. Without Cillian this deal wouldn’t even exist. I have no problem getting other builds around town, and good ones, but not usually “$400 million” good.

“I just hate being taken advantage of. Makes me feel small.”

“You’re a giant,” Nate whispers, and kisses me on my head because, in private, I guess this is what we do now. When shrouded by the night and the promise that none of this is permanent, it’s easy to let him hold and touch and kiss me as if he’s my person. We can pretend whatever we like when no one is here to see it.

“You’ll do better work if you sleep past seven, eat some of the quiche Leo has prepped in the fridge, and look at the contract with fresh eyes in the morning.”

Sleeping in sounds like a dream to me, a luxury, one I don’t think I can afford right now. Maybe not ever again.

He kisses me on my cheek, then my jaw, then my neck. His lips press against my skin for longer moments as he travels down my neck. I feel quite awake now that I have his mouth on me.

“I’ll help you get ready for bed.”

“Nate,” I start as if to stop him, but I’m already readjusting so he has easier access to my chest.

“Shh.” He starts unbuttoning the tiny buttons on the front of my dress. “Just tonight,” he mutters, and I can’t help the smile that takes over my face. “I love this dress.”

“This old thing?” I say, but I know he loves it. Last time I wore the flowy, floral dress, his eyes traced my body every time I entered a room with him the whole day.

He reaches in the dress and pulls down the cups of my bra until my nipples are on display for him and he immediately takes one in his mouth. He groans as he does, and my breathing is already labored. He’s so good at touching me, like he’s been learning my body for years instead of just weeks. Fourteen tonights.

I slip my fingers through his hair, which is so soft and slightly curling at the ends. He needs another haircut soon, but I love the length, love the noises he makes when I pull on it or tug his head closer to me.

One of his hands slides down my body and up the hem of my skirt until he’s at the peak of my thighs, teasing the silky fabric that covers me.

“You’re so good,” I breathe, surprising myself. It’s true, though, he is really very good.

“I have to be,” he says, moving to pay equal attention to my other breast. “I see the competition every day and they are very handsome.”

I giggle, then hiccup as he presses circles on my clit.

“You’re hotter than them,” I say. It’s not a lie; I can’t imagine a single person on that list I would want kneeling between my legs more than Nate. “And nicer.”

He gives me a wry glare, like he doesn’t believe me, but pulls my underwear aside and presses two fingers into me anyway. My back arches pressing my hips to the very edge of the chair.

“You just want me for my orgasms,” he says.

Panting, I grin. “I do like the orgasms.”

Perhaps sensing that we are toeing too close to something real—something like the feelings bubbling around in my stomach—Nate stands and pulls me up to sit on my desk in front of him. He kisses me deep, his tongue clashing with mine before pulling my lower lip between his teeth.

I work open his leather belt, then his slacks, pulling his already hard cock out between us. His body tenses every time my hand touches him, and I revel in the power. From his back pocket he pulls out a condom and makes quick work of sheathing himself with it.

“Ms. Morelli,” he murmurs, and kisses a line up the side of my neck.

“Yes, Mr. Gilbert?”

“I’m going to fuck you now,” he says. I grin, putting up no fight as he pushes my panties aside and slides into me. We both gasp. I think I’m growing too reliant on the feeling of him inside of me at the end of each day.

“How do you keep getting better?” Nate asks. His shallow breaths and moans are right at my ear, and they make me delirious.

It’s been two weeks of this—sneaking to each other’s rooms, his sweet words in my ears, the feeling of his skin against mine, waking with his arm around my stomach, holding me to him. If I let myself think critically, we are growing too close for comfort, but then I remind myself that his time here is limited. He’ll be gone before the fall, and I’ll be engaged to someone he finds for me.

I arch my back and let him take me deeper, faster, his words becoming gibberish in my ear while we both climb towards our peak. I reach mine first, and bite on my lower lip as to not cry out too loud as I pulse around him, my legs shaking around his hips.

“That’s right, you did so good,” he grunts. “You let me take care of you.”

I can only try to catch my breath and revel in the intense feel of him inside of me while his pace becomes erratic and comes with a long groan and a bite on my shoulder.

We both breathe for a moment, wrapped around each other.

“You’re wicked,” I whisper. “I thought you were helping me get ready for bed.”

He pulls his head away from the curve of my neck and I fail not to be charmed by that smirk of his. “You’re not relaxed?”

I shrug and slide my palms down his biceps. I am relaxed, way more than I was twenty minutes ago.

“My bad, then.” Nate pulls out of me and slides my panties back in place before tying off the condom and dropping it in the trash. “Come on.” Nate clicks off my desk lamp and holds out a hand for me to take. I could fight him, could scold him for waltzing in here and comforting me and fucking me and telling me what to do. I should, I think. But I’m too tired to pretend I don’t like having someone to fuss after me and take care of me while I give my best attempt to take care of everything else.

So I let him take me upstairs and draw me a bath and, when I’ve fallen asleep against his chest in the tub’s warm water, I let him carry me to bed, tuck me beneath the covers, and scratch my back as I fall asleep.