Page 65 of Nash

I trace my fingertip over his thick brow and boldly ask, “What are the other tests?”

His face falls serious. He doesn’t pause. He gets it over with. “I fuck you in front of the other kings. I prove to them you’re my queen and that you want to be with me … with …us; that’s the first test.”

My breath deepens. My lust that ebbed after he came comes flooding right back. “Okay,” I sigh.

“Okay?” He raises a brow. “You’re okay with me fucking you in front of my brothers?”

“I’ve had sex in public before. I mean, at the club. Why would that be any different?”

“I know you’ve had sex at the club,” he says. “I’ve watched you.”

“What?” This is news. “I’ve never seen you there.”

“There’s a VIP room on the third level, the one above the main floor. It’s one-way glass, and I’ve stood there, watching you.”

Which question to ask next? My head’s unsure, but my heart needs to know, “How did it make you feel?”

Because if I had to watch Nash with another woman, I’d want to die. He’s not mine, but why does it feel like he is? Why does it feel like I can’t bear to share him, to lose him?

“To watch you with other women?” He admits, “I got jealous, but it turned me on. To watch you with other men?” He confesses, “I wanted to kill them, so I had to leave. It made me sick and furious for days. Weeks, honestly. Hell, I still am.”

“I never came,” I rush. “Not once, and I never kissed anyone. It wasn’t love or anything; I was just exploring, just desperate. I was trying to get out of this cage inside.” I trace over his lips. “The one only you can open.”

His eyes flutter like I’m touching his heart. Like I’ve found his soul. And I want to tell him everything. Why I flinch. Why I don’t kiss.

But I don’t want him to see me as a victim because I’m not. I’m a survivor. I’m strong, and no one has ever made me feel as safe and sexy as Nash. Only he makes me feel this free, too.

“Poison,” he sighs, “you say you want to pass our tests, and I believe you. It’s your body; you know what you want. But it’s my heart, too. I don’t know if I can take it.”

“Can take what?”

He’s propped up on his elbows, gazing down at me. He’s softening inside me, like my heart.

“This. Me and you,” he says. “It took me forty-four years to feel this way for a woman, and I swear to you, it’s not a feeling I’ll ever share with anyone else.”

Same.

I bite my lip, letting my sudden tear escape, sliding down and wetting my hair. “And it took me almost thirty years to feel this.” I smile. “To feel how it’s supposed to feel. It’s a feeling I’ll only share with you, Nash. I promise.”

He nuzzles his nose to mine before wrapping me in his arms and rolling us to lie side by side. Briefly, I sit up and take off what’s left of my clothes before I return to his waiting arms, lying on his chest.

He kisses my hair before he unbraids it. He’s done it several times like he’s obsessed with freeing my strands until they’re black waves tumbling down my back. Then, he presses my head to his chest and laces his fingers through, combing my hair as if it calms him. It must, because it soothes me, too.

For minutes, I swim in our silence, connected like this, and I have no doubt only with Nash will I ever feel this way. It makes me confident. It makes me brave.

“Can I confess something?”

He tickles my arm. “Yes.”

“Scratch that: Can I ask a question?”

His chest softly shakes with laughter. “That’s more like it.”

“You said last night that whatever you do in that room with yourBratvabrothers makes you hard. Then you said you’d never allow it to be done to me. And then that made us get so hot and horny that I sucked your cock and played with your ass and?—”

“Is there a question in there somewhere?”

“Yes.” I rise and confront his amused stare. “Is it your kink? Fucking in front of others?”

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