Chapter Fifty-Six: Into the Dark
Author's note: This is excessively random and I super hope a bunch of you didn't get an alert on a story you favourited over a decade ago - BUT
I've always been embarrassed about how hard I phone in this wedding night scene. So here I am, fifteen years later, correcting a wrong. This is hilaryhilary in 2021 updating a terrible lackluster sex scene now that I've had some actual sex! I was prompted to do this by the random reviewer I got the other day. So to whomever the sole person reading this in 2021 is - hey! Sorry! It's better now!
"So." Haley looked up at Nathan. "We're married now?"
Nathan looked at the woman he loved, looking so small and terrified. He wanted desperately to take her into his arms and comfort her like a small child, but he needed to maintain his act. He needed to pretend, at least until he was certain he didn't have to.
"Yeah."
"This is crazy," she muttered under her breath, as the company car pulled up to the town house. Nathan got out of the car before her and offered his hand to help her out.
"Unconventional. Not crazy, Hales," he said reprovingly.
"When did Lucas and Brooke get married?" she asked, following him up the stone steps to the house.
"Six months before Devon was born. Now that's what I call unconventional," he said.
Haley paused in the doorway, looking out into the bleakly lit hall.
"Maybe. But they were in love." Slamming the door shut behind her, she entered what was to be her new home.
Letting her pulse drop as they walked, Haley walked up the wide, sweeping staircase to the upper floor. She sighed. As soon as she was settled in, she planned on giving the house a makeover.
His bedroom-their bedroom-was slightly better. The bed was a wide, normal bed, without curtains or lace or dust ruffles. The Egyptian cotton sheets had a high thread count. Covering most of one wall was a French door, leading out to a small balcony. Besides a large wardrobe and an armchair, it was fairly sparse. The walls were red. Haley thought, philosophically, that this was much preferable to pink. She looked out the window. Night was beginning to fall.
"We have to sleep here? Together?" asked Haley, eyeing his bed suspiciously.
"Is it really such a bad thing?" he asked.
"Nathan, we haven't been together in two years. And it's not like I'm so curious about all this anymore, anyway. It's kind of old news." Haley gasped in surprise when he moved swiftly toward her, backing her into the wall and trapping her wrists on it at shoulder height. She wiggled slightly to test his grip and found she was immobile.
"You're lying," he accused her. She shook her head.
"I'm not," she whispered. He pressed his body against hers, and she shuddered in response.
"You are."
"Let me go, Nathan," she demanded, her words more convincing than her tone.
"Tell me again," he ordered her.
"I had sex with Seamus," said Haley, her voice small and unconvincing.
He leaned forward and claimed her lips with his.
"You're lying." Nathan kissed her again and released her wrists while keeping her pressed against the wall. He reached down under her skirt and she shakily exhaled as he began to probe first on top of and then underneath her chaste white cotton panties.
"Yes. Oh, yes. Oh, Nathan."
Nathan hadn't been quite sure until that moment, but her moans of pleasure reassured him. Haley James was as untouched as he'd left her. Briefly, the knowledge that her beloved, perfect boyfriend of two years had gotten no farther than him reassured him. But as she pressed her lips to his and pressed up against him, their curves interlocking, all thoughts flew out of his head and suddenly it was all about her.
He was kissing her and she was melting and he was somewhere else and how were they here, finally? After all this time? When he remembered that due diligence had to be paid and this was his job, goddammit, and he brought himself reluctantly back to Earth. He shakily unbuttoned the top button of her blouse, feeling suddenly shy and virginal himself. She moved to stop him, as if out of some old habit, and stopped herself. He slid his hand onto the soft flesh of her breast, gently seeking what he had only once felt and never seen. He found her nipple almost without trying and she let out another moan and it was almost as good as he had imagined, and the noises she was making were better and he found himself physically tensing himself and holding off from lifting her up off the ground and thrusting in to her like he had been dreaming of since the moment he'd seen her.
He decided another approach was needed. He leaned down and surprised her by tucking an arm behind her knees and lifting her into his arms. He took two long decisive steps toward the no-nonsense King sized bed he'd picked out himself from a catalogue after Ryan had nagged him that a multi millionaire really couldn't have a mattress on the floor.
Nathan placed her carefully on the middle of the bed and stood for a moment, looming over her. She propped herself up on her elbows and stared back up at him almost unblinkingly.
After a moment she reached up and undid the rest of the buttons on her blouse and shed it off. As she moved to unclasp her bra he moved to lie down next to her.
"I'll do it," he said, finding his mouth dry. With a one handed, practiced, motion he reached around her and undid it.
Suddenly she was half naked before him, a sacrificial virgin in his big bed. He stared for as short a time he could possibly manage and tore his gaze back to her eyes. He cupped one breast, gently toying with the nipple, and pondered that they'd just rounded a base after four years that he had never spent more than two weeks on in his entire sexual history.
He rolled on top of her and eased himself down onto his elbows until he was at level with her navel before placing a kiss below it and beginning to unbutton her skirt. She stopped him with her hands when his own met the waistband of her panties and he made to slide them off.
"You don't have to do that," she said, a flush on her cheeks. It was the first time she'd spoken since he'd first touched her.
"Why not?"
"Because, it's..." she trailed off.
"I don't want you to hate this, Hales." He rested his forehead against her belly so she couldn't see his eyes. "Hate me."
"Nathan..."
He looked back up at her and registered that her flush was not embarrassment. Her eyes were dilated and unfocussed and her hair was messed and it occurred to him that this vision was his. Exclusively, forever, finally.
"I couldn't. I won't. I... I want to."
He swung himself back up onto his hands and held himself above her.
"I've wanted you - this - as long as I've known you. I wanted you and then I knew what wanting was like. Jesus christ, I met you and I was lead around by my hormones like a thirteen year old boy."
He leaned back and kissed her and kissed her until she was incoherent and warm and flush and pliant and his finger found his way back into her underwear and he probed around until she arched against him and he thought, ah, there, and he circled around until she was moaning and pushing in to him and several rungs farther away from being in control of herself than he'd ever seen her. He pushed a hesitant finger in to her while keeping his thumb on her core and felt her tighten around him and shudder and release.
Nathan pressed his face into she space between her face and shoulder as she crested and came back to Earth.
"That wasn't a first, was it?" he asked, sparing her the embarrassment of looking right in her eyes.
He was kidding, but moved back up to look at her when she didn't respond.
"Before I met you, I didn't even really know I could want like that. And after..."
He leaned down to kiss and then gently scrape his teeth along the sensitive part of her neck.
"It felt like all or nothing. I honestly thought my drive had just vanished."
This was pain, the pain of knowing he'd left her and ruined her and ruined what they'd had but it was a familiar pain, a pain that followed him around every day.
He moved onto his knees and pulled off his shirt and awkwardly shuffled out of his pants, leaving his boxers on, enjoying how her eyes skated over his chest, enjoying the look of her splayed beneath him.
"Are you ready?" he asked.
"You're asking me that now?" she asked, making a halfhearted attempt at humour.
"Hales..."
"Will it hurt?" she asked. Her brown eyes were soft and liquid and trusting and he thought for the millionth time of how undeserving he was to have her beneath him.
"I think so?" he asked.
"What, you've never deflowered someone before?" she asked.
"I don't think," he said.
She nodded and seemed to hold herself back from commenting.
He carefully held himself suspended on top of her and reached down to where she was wet and eager for him and slowly pushed himself inside of her. She closed her eyes tightly and let out a sharp breath as he sheathed himself inside of her feeling her tightly all around her, feeling himself break through her barrier and telling his body to hurry, go, while also reveling in the feeling of being in her, with her, finally.
He slowly began to move inside her and he felt her relax again beneath him and felt her body move around his and hold him tightly and she was everything and he thought all he could think was Haley, Haley, Haley, and he entwined his hand in her hair and kissed her hard and deep and angled himself so that with every thrust she let out a gasp of pleasure and finally spent himself inside of her and was still.
After a moment he rolled off of her and onto the bed. He propped himself on one elbow and took in the sight of her naked body and ran a hand between her breasts and over her stomach and down to her centre and softly touched her there.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
She nodded slowly.
"I didn't hate it," she said after a moment. She turned her face to him. "I don't hate you."
He leaned over and kissed her and resisted the urge to plunder his fingers inside her again, knowing she would still be sore.
"It felt like a first for me, too," he added.
"Why? It's not like we're in love," she said, turning away from him and fixing her gaze on the ceiling.
"I mean I've never done it with… you're my wife. And never… bare."
She nodded and ran her own hands over her body, her still hard nipples and into her toussled hair. She moved to get out of the bed.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"What? My pajamas are in my overnight bag."
He snaked out a hand and pulled her back down onto the bed and rolled back on top of her.
"Sorry, Hales, no can do. You're lucky if I let you put on underwear or let you get out of this bed all week," he said, trapping her hands beside her head and leaning down to kiss her again. She wrapped her legs around him and eagerly returned the kiss.
"Some virgin you are," he teased.
"Sorry."
"It's okay. I probably deserved it," he admitted.
"You lost the nipple ring. And your sheets are all bloody," she said guiltily. He noticed this and shrugged.
"I can get new ones." Haley stared sideways at him for a second, watching the ripples of his stomach muscles, the rest of his body, completely revealed to her.
"Sheets, I mean. I'm done with the nipple ring," he confirmed. She laughed and he moved against her, fitting his body against hers and drawing the sheet up over both of them.
He dropped a final kiss onto her shoulder and tried to think of something fitting to say, but nothing would come to him, so he closed his eyes and wrapped his arm around her waist and waited for sleep.