Wrecking Ball, page 10
Nate taps in a code and the door unlocks––because of course keys would be too much hassle. He pulls the door open and leads me inside.
The room is dark because of no natural light being let in, and when Nate lets go of my wrist and closes the door, it is pitch fucking black. Good job I’m not afraid of the dark.
I feel Nate behind me, his body close, and I suck in a shaky breath.
I feel his fingers lightly touch my left shoulder before he slowly trails them down my arm, goosebumps left in their wake.
He does the same on the other side before he moves my hair away from my neck, pushing it to one side, and then his breath is feathering over my skin. I have to stop myself from leaning back into him and letting him take me to where my body wants to go.
“Do you feel that?” he whispers, and I close my eyes and grit my teeth together to not give in to all of the urges I have to kiss this man.
“What?” I manage to reply, my voice echoing a little around the room.
“That pull. That rush.”
Yes. Fuck yes, I feel it, and I don’t want to. But I don’t say that. I stay quiet, allowing myself a few moments to relish in having him close whilst we’re in the dark, unseen, a stolen moment.
His hands move to my hips and he pulls me back against him whilst holding me firm.
And not for the first time, I find myself wishing that we had met in a different way. That it had been my actual choice to be with him. That we had been able to experience that first meeting, the butterflies and the nerves.
He trails his lips up my ear and whispers, “Do you trust me, Kat?”
And isn’t that the most loaded question I have ever been asked.
Do I?
“Yes,” I reply without much hesitation. Because as much as what he did is wrong, I do find myself trusting him. I know that he will protect me. I know that he won’t hurt me. And I know that I have to fight daily to keep reminding myself of how he used me to settle a debt.
He could have married anyone, and he chose me, so whilst we’re all alone in the dark, I ask him the question that has been bugging me since he walked into my office––with his marry him or die ultimatum––nearly seven months ago.
“Why me?”
He stills behind me, and my heartbeat kicks up a notch. I don’t expect him to answer as the silence stretches on, and I find myself becoming disappointed, but then he startles me by speaking.
“From the moment that you first walked into my office; I knew. I knew that I wanted you, that I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about tasting you, worshipping you and ultimately, making you mine.
“And I knew you would challenge me, make me work and wouldn’t take any shit. So, I saw my opportunity and I took it. I made you my wife, and I will never apologise for that.”
His words have me breathing deep. I never expected such honesty, and I know that this is honesty. I’ve spent enough time with Nate to know when he’s bullshitting and when he’s being serious.
“How do you know that we wouldn’t have worked out if you had just asked me on a date?” I say, needing to keep a clear head even as his scent swirls around me, enticing me, his very presence making me want to crumble like some love-struck fool.
He chuckles quietly and the sound sends shivers running down my spine.
“I don’t do dates, Kat. And I never wait for what I want,” he says, no apologies in his words.
I get it, he’s a man that takes what he wants and doesn’t let anything stand in his way, but I’m not an object to be won.
“The thing is, Nate, you can’t buy me. I’m not some precious jewel that can be sold to the highest bidder.”
“But you are.”
“Excuse me?” I say, irritation lacing my tone.
“You are a jewel, Kat, you just don’t know it. You’re my jewel, and I’ll be damned if I am going to let anything change that,” he says, and I can’t help the sadness that laces my next words.
“But it could have been different. We could have been different.”
Silence ensues once again, and all of a sudden, he’s stepping away from me and bright lights are coming to life, blinding me, making me squint after being in the darkness.
I blink a few times to clear the blurriness, and when the room comes into focus, I see that this is another gym, except this one holds a boxing ring as well as all the boxing equipment you could want.
“You wanna unleash some anger, Kat? Have at it,” Nate says as he holds his hands out either side of him.
“And how is this meant to help exactly?” I enquire, because there is a boxing bag in the gym in the house, but it never helps to fully release my pent-up frustration.
Nate smirks and walks over to the ring and gets in. “You wanted to work some stuff out, so come on in here.”
“And do what exactly?” I say as I stroll over and climb up the side, joining Nate in the middle.
“There’s some gloves in the corner, put them on,” he instructs.
“Why?”
“Just do it, Kat.”
I roll my eyes and go over to the corner, picking up the pair of gloves that sit there and put them on.
“Okay, so now what?” I ask with a shrug of my shoulders.
“Now, use me.” His words steel my breath for a moment.
“Pardon?” Use him? As in… as a punching bag?
“The reason you have all of this aggression is because of me, so I’m giving you a free pass to take a few shots, work it out, and then hopefully we can move the fuck on with our lives without you hating me every goddamn second of every minute of every day.”
“This is nuts,” I say as I stare at him like he has gone insane.
“Not really. Come on, do your worst,” he says, holding his arms out wide, taunting me, egging me on.
“I’m not going to hit you, Nate,” I say adamantly as I start to undo one of the gloves with my teeth.
“Do it,” he goads.
“No.”
“Fucking do it, Kat,” he says, his voice louder, pushing me, making me want to scream in frustration.
“Why? What is the fucking point of this?” I say, raising my own voice to the same pitch that he did.
“Because maybe if you take a few swipes at me, just maybe you’ll start to fucking see that you don’t hate me,” he says, taking a step closer.
“That makes absolutely no sense,” I argue back, ripping the first glove from my hand and throwing it at his feet.
“It doesn’t have to make sense. I just need you to stop being so goddamn hostile.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have fucking kidnapped me,” I bite back.
“Kidnapped you? I fucking rescued you!” he shouts, getting in my face.
“And that’s your idea of rescuing someone? Marry me or die? And what the hell did I need rescuing from anyway? I had a good life, an honest life––”
“Yeah, so honest and good that you had a boyfriend who sent you to me, who made you come crawling for money before he gambled it all away on shitty poker games and cheap women––”
He doesn’t get to say anything else as the rage in me runs so fucking deep that I do what he asked, and I hit him. Right on the goddamn jaw. His head whips to the side before he turns back to me, his hand whipping out and grabbing me around the throat.
And I am anything but terrified as he throws me down and pins me beneath him, his legs straddling me, caging me, his free hand pinning both of mine above my head.
“You tell me that I don’t make you feel alive, Kat,” he says in my face. “Tell me that I don’t give you the best fucking high of your life.”
One… Two… Three… “Tell me,” he shouts, his eyes blazing, his grip a force to reckoned with, but I don’t struggle, and instead I shout back at him.
“YES! Yes you make me feel, Nate, but I also hate that you make me feel because I’m not meant to fucking like you…” My voice trails off as the heat of the moment becomes too much, and then his lips smash down onto mine.
I lose myself in his heat, his warmth, his tongue. It’s all so fucking good, and the emotions that he brings out of me are all-consuming.
I hate him.
I like him.
I want him.
I need him away from me.
I have to escape.
I have to stay.
Like a merry-fucking-go-round.
I am a mess, and I am losing myself more and more… or is he making me wake up?
I’m not sure, but as his tongue continues to merge with mine, I know I need to stop this. I need space. Distance. A moment to just fucking think.
“Stop,” I whisper against his lips, and he complies immediately, his forehead resting against mine.
“You’re not the only one struggling here, Kat,” he says, so quietly, so softly, so unlike Nate.
His words cause tears to sting the backs of my eyes, and I feel like I can’t breathe properly.
I’ve had him inside of me, kissing me, touching me, making me come in ways I never knew possible, but right now, I need him to get off of me and leave me be for a while.
“I need to go,” I tell him, still whispering, still struggling to breathe.
He moves his head back slightly and looks deep into my eyes, and damn if I don’t feel like I can see right inside his soul. A soul that I know is capable of loving me the way I want and how I should be loved.
But I’m scared. Terrified.
And I know I’m falling deeper under his spell despite how I came to be here.
I see his jaw tense before he moves off of me, rising to his full height and holding his hand out for me to take. I do, and I let him pull me up, and then I turn away from him and leave the boxing ring, jumping down and making my way across the floor.
I don’t turn around, I stay facing forward, my eyes fixed on the door––all the while feeling his gaze burning into my back.
And when I get outside, I take a deep breath of fresh air and make my way back to the house, where the thoughts keep swirling on a loop in my mind, driving me crazy.
Could I love Nate?
Could I be the wife that he wants me to be?
Could he be the husband that I always envisioned?
And those thoughts alone are the ones that continue to haunt me, because if I can love him despite him being a crime lord, if I can forgive him for making me part of his life in the way that he did, then I know that he will have the power to crush my heart to nothing but dust if this were ever to end.
And I don’t know if I would be strong enough to get back up again after.
Chapter Seventeen
Nate
“You ready to go?” I ask Kat as I peer around her bedroom door.
After she left me earlier, I stayed in the boxing ring and just sat, thinking, wondering what the hell is going on in her head.
I get it, the way we started out wasn’t ideal, but fuck, I’ve shown her softer sides of me that no one has ever seen before. I don’t know if I still want to break her apart completely, I don’t know if that is still a goal of mine because I am starting to realise that there might not be any point to it.
She has to love me for me.
She has to accept me for me, and at this point, I don’t know if she ever will.
The heat is there, that fire that burns between us is like a goddamn inferno that is at risk of spreading like wildfire, but is that enough?
“I’m ready,” she says as she comes into view and takes my fucking breath away. She’s dressed in a pair of black tailored shorts that come to mid-thigh, a skin-tight white vest top that seems to sparkle against the light when she moves, and a pair of black ankle boots that I would love her to keep on whilst I fucked her into oblivion.
Then there’s her hair, sleeked back into a high ponytail and poker straight. Her makeup is heavy, dramatic, and her lips coated in a deep red like they’re inviting me to stick my cock in her mouth and have her lipstick marks smeared all over my flesh.
Jesus fucking Christ.
I’m hard already.
I clear my throat, unable to rip my eyes away from my smoking hot wife, and I see her smirk. See? That fire, that playfulness, it’s there, so why is it so hard to navigate anything else between us?
“I’ll wait downstairs,” I tell her before I make myself move, and I swear I hear the faint sound of her chuckling as I do. I can’t help but frown as I make my way down the stairs.
Nate Knowles. Big bad wolf. Crime Lord. Shows mercy to no one… except one woman. One woman who he made sure was his. The only woman to have gotten this close to him. And he no longer has any idea how to play this. Fuck my life.
I had a clear-cut plan when I went after Kat. Make her mine, break her, have her need me. Simple. And even though I could see that she would challenge me, I never expected to start to fall for her so fast and so hard. Because that is what is happening here. Cold-hearted killer, falling for a woman who continues to hate him.
I run my hands through my hair, messing it up a little, but I give no fucks. I couldn’t care less what people think of me, and as long as they fear me and what I am, then all is golden, so my hairstyle is the least of my fucking worries.
There is only one person whose thoughts I care about, and she’s just walked in the room and is standing right in front of me, looking like a goddamn goddess. And then she smiles at me. A gorgeous, no holds barred smile. One I haven’t seen before, and fuck… something inside of me stirs… what is this feeling?
“We going?” she says, her eyes twinkling, and the fact that I haven’t seen her this––dare I say––happy before has me all kinds of fucked-up inside.
“Sure,” I manage to choke out as I mentally give myself a bloody pep talk to stop acting like a teenage boy with a hard-on. I move towards her, and the smile stays on her face, so I take my chances and hold my hand out to her.
She looks, she waits, and if I were a chick, my heart would be skipping a goddamn beat right about now. But then she puts her hand in mine, her fingers linking through mine, and then she looks up at me and there is an innocence about her in this moment. One where I know that I don’t want to break the woman before me until she needs me so desperately that she can’t be without me. I don’t want to break her to get to that point. I want her to want that for herself. I want her to let me in, give me everything, and in return, I will give her the same. Because she has me in her grip. I’m hers whether she realises it or not. And she is mine.
I close my hand around hers and quietly tell her, “You look amazing.” Amazing? Jesus Christ, Nate, could have gone with a better word than that, for fuck’s sake.
“Thank you,” she says as I see a blush cover her cheeks. A blush. A goddamn blush. “You don’t look too bad yourself.” And the compliment almost has my jaw opening in shock––almost. I have had years of schooling my reactions, so I contain the fact that I want to grab her and kiss her, claim her and fuck her into oblivion, as well as containing my shock at her words, obviously.
I lead her from the house and out to the car, opening the passenger door for her so she can get in. My men are already in position, watching, waiting, and they know exactly where we are going. I pay them to protect me and to use whatever means necessary to do that, so it enables me to worry a little less––most of the time. Right now though, I am on fucking pins. Someone we are yet to locate is tailing my wife, so I am on high alert. I didn’t want her to go to Zoey’s club tonight, but my sister doesn’t let things drop easily, so here we are, driving to the club, and damn if I don’t want to turn the car around and lock Kat inside the walls of my house––where I know she is safe at all times.
Why the hell did I agree to this?
When do I ever do shit that I don’t want to do?
I look to the woman sat beside me, and the answer is obvious.
Because of her.
I’m doing this for her.
We drive in silence, but I keep looking at Kat out of the corner of my eye, and there is a faint smile on her face which makes me feel… happy?
I can’t remember the last time a woman made me feel anything close to happiness, but Kat is it. I know she is, even when she pushes me away and tells me she hates me. It doesn’t matter because I’m never letting her go anyway.
I drive through the town and come to a stop outside Purity––Zoey’s nightclub. The name is so far from what we are that it’s laughable.
There is a line of people, waiting to gain entry, but of course, we won’t be queueing tonight. I turn the engine off and look to Kat. “You still want to go in?” I ask her, praying that she says no, but I already know that she won’t.
“Yeah,” she says, her eyes sparkling, a smile on her face and an energy coming from her that I’ve never felt before.
I blow out a breath and run my hand through my hair before I look at her one last time and then get out of the car, walking around to her side and opening her door and holding my hand out to her. She places her hand in mine and I help her out, stepping close to her when I shut the door. I lower my lips to her ear and breath in her scent as I say, “Don’t forget who you belong to tonight.” I lick my tongue along the shell of her ear, and I feel her shiver––hopefully with fucking delight.
I don’t let her say anything as I take her hand and move us around the car and to the steps that lead to the front doors of the club. I chuck my keys to one of my guys––because this whole place is roaming with men that work for me––so he can go and park it whilst we head inside.
When we do, I hear a few grumbles from the people in the line because Kat and I just walk right past them. But I pause and turn to look at them, a mean as fuck look on my face, and they quickly look like they just shit themselves. I smirk and carry on, walking through the entrance which is large with a seating area to the left and a booth to the right where you pay on entry. We skip that part and head on past the cloak room where people can drop their coats and whatever else they don’t want to carry around with them. The lighting in here is dim but bright enough to see what you’re doing, the music from the club pumping in the background, the bass vibrating through the floor.
