Page 101 of Not Part of the Plan
Emma smiled smugly. “Oh, good. Here comes our food.”
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Dinner was followed by drinks and music at a boutique club with chic white walls, purple neon, and thumping music. Niko, still ashen faced from dinner, ordered a bottle of wine before collapsing back against the plush cushion of the booth he’d scored for them.
It had taken them a while to get to the booth since they’d been stopped every few feet by people Niko knew. But he’d been distracted, cutting conversations and introductions short and dragging her toward their private oasis.
Finally alone, he leaned forward again, elbows on his knees. “Emma, I never thought how meeting women I’d…” he swallowed hard before continuing, “knownwould make you feel.”
“Yes, I can see that,” she said, offering a small, amused smile.
“No,” he shook his head. “No. I mean it really didn’t occur to me at all.”
The server returned with their bottle in a chiller and two glasses.
Niko drank deeply before continuing. “What I mean to say is that they don’t mean anything to me. Which now sounds incredibly callous, but there was never a woman who afterwards I wanted to…” He groaned and shoved his hands through his hair. “I don’t know how to be honest without sounding like an asshole.”
“Just spit it out,” Emma sighed. “Get it out, and we’ll work through it, or if it’s really that bad, I’ll dump this ice bucket on you and cause a huge scene.”
“None of them meant anything to me. Not compared to you. With them, each one was just a temporary distraction. You? You’re different.”
Emma ran her tongue over her teeth and waited.
“I meant what I said at dinner. You’re special to me. Very special to me, and I think you’re going to see that tomorrow night. But I never thought how difficult it might be for you to meet other women that I’ve—”
“Fucked,” Emma supplied.
Niko winced. “Shit. I’m fucking everything up, aren’t I?”
Emma took pity on him. “Niko, relax. Seeing you feel bad makes me feel better.”
He shot her a look, and she smiled brightly. “Gee, thanks,” he muttered.
“I just wanted you to understand how uncomfortable it might be for me tomorrow.”
“I feel like an asshole. I never even considered… no one has ever meant anything to me before you—and I get that that makes me a callous asshole—but you’re going to see that tomorrow night at the show. You’re going to really get it. And that’s all that I was thinking of. Not about anyone else. I think since they didn’t mean anything to me, it didn’t occur to me that they’d mean anything to you. But if you dragged me into an event with men you’d slept with?” His knuckles whitened as his fists balled. “It wouldn’t mean nothing to me.”
“As ungraceful as that was,” Emma said, sliding onto Niko’s lap and slipping her arms around his neck, “it does make me feel better.”
Niko held on tight and dropped his forehead to hers. “Emma, please know that you mean the world to me. Your friendship and stubbornness got me back to where I need to be professionally. And the way you look at me when you’re under me? The way you make me laugh when we’re having breakfast, the way you make me sweat at the gym when I’m trying to show off? I’ve never felt like this about anyone.”
Emma could hear her heartbeat pounding in her head. She knew,knewwhat he wanted to tell her. But she couldn’t hear it, couldn’t let him say the words. She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t sure it was right.
So she kissed him. She cupped his face in her hands and kissed him until she couldn’t breathe, kissed him until he was hard and throbbing beneath her. Here they were even. Here she could give as well as she got. Here they could forget everything else if even just for the moment.
He broke the kiss with a shaky breath. “Are you sure you’re okay?” The tenderness in his eyes slashed her across the heart.
“Take me home, Niko, and make me forget to breathe.”
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He called for their driver, and the second the door closed behind them, Niko’s hand trekked up her thigh as he kissed her, drawing the skirt of her dress indecently higher. The driver climbed behind the wheel and pulled into traffic. Emma clamped her hand on Niko’s. “Don’t you dare,” she whispered to him in the dark.
Of course he took it as a challenge. Her resolve weakened and then failed completely when he nibbled at the sensitive flesh of her neck. Dark deeds in the backseat of a Lexus. With the brush of his lips, Nikolai Vulkov managed to convince her to do things she’d never do if left to her own devices.
When his hand coasted higher again, making her throb with anticipation, she didn’t stop him. His fingers found the apex of her thighs and prodded gently, warm flesh over white silk.
“Open.” He whispered the command against her ear, and Emma shivered with need. She spread her knees an inch wider, teasing him as much as herself.
