but right here and now out of my mind.
"No talking," I remind him, slapping my palm across his mouth in a ridiculously childish gesture. I catch myself and shrug, sliding my hand behind his neck. He just stares at me as if I'm a complicated puzzle he's trying to figure out.
Then his eyes drop, trailing across my breasts in a slow indecent caress, and I'm torn between wanting to cover myself and leaning into it. I settle for examining him while he has his fill of looking at me. I run my fingers along his jaw, feeling the stubble against my fingertips. Dragging them up to his ear and running them through the close-cut hair at his nape. I'd always wondered if his hair would feel as good as it looked. It feels better. Thick and dark, chocolatey brown and delicious. He's delicious. I press my fingertips into the back of his neck, reveling in the strength and feel of him.
Nick groans and pulls me closer, kissing me before shifting me up on his lap to capture a nipple between his lips.
Now we're both groaning.
"Don't stop," he says. "Don't stop touching me." So I don't. My fingers are eager to trail along his shoulders and wind themselves in his hair, my tongue equally eager. Eager to lick and taste and suck every bit of Nick I can reach. Added to the list of things you shouldn't know about your boss? What he tastes like. Heaven help me.
When he flips me over and kisses his way down my stomach I'm sure I'll expire from pleasure and embarrassment. I try to stop him once his destination is clear. Not sure I'm ready for that burned into my memory. Surely I'll never be able to focus on anything again, distracted by the memories of Nick’s head between my thighs. But Nick shushes me with my own words. "No talking, right?" And then he spreads my thighs wide enough for his broad shoulders to settle between and I decide that none of this counts. I might as well enjoy the full Nick Saint-Croix experience before the clock strikes midnight and I turn back into myself and he turns back into a jerk.
That's what I tell myself anyway. For the ten or so seconds I still have rational thought.
Nick's second visit to the inn is even better than his first, which sounds like a ridiculous thing to say, but it's true. Sexually, he's ideal.
"Holly," he starts after it's over and I'm resting my head on his chest. I feel a conversation coming on so I place a finger over his mouth and shush him. Talking right now would be like starting a New Year’s diet the day after Christmas instead of waiting until January first. Premature. Unnecessary. A very bad idea.
"I'm sleeping," I tell him and keep my eyes pressed shut. I don't stop using him as a pillow, however.
He exhales underneath me, his breath tickling the top of my head, but he remains quiet, playing with the ends of my hair until I'm not lying about being asleep.
Chapter 11
The next day I'm weirder than usual. I know this to be true because Nick tells me so.
"Why are you suddenly being weirder than usual?"
This comes during the car ride on the way to a meeting he has with Friedrich Trains. The company is located about an hour outside of Nuremberg so Nick has rented a car to take us there, a fact I should be grateful for because it means we're having this conversation in private instead of in front of a cab driver.
It's the first chance we've really had to talk, as this morning he kissed me on the forehead as he slipped out of bed, telling me he'd meet me in the lobby in an hour. He turned on my shower on his way out, with a, "Fifty-five minutes, Miss Winter," on his way out the door.
The forehead kiss is the worst of all the kisses, don't you think? It's like a breakup kiss. Gah! Not that we were together. Of course not. See, this is why sleeping with your boss is always a bad idea. Sexual relationships are tricky enough all on their own without the added complications and confusion of adding a weird power dynamic into it.
"Because we had sex, Nick! And you're my boss," I add, in case he doesn't realize how weird that detail makes this for me. He blinks, the movement a flinch, as if I've just called