Forever Bonded (BWWM Pregnancy Romance) (7 page)

Zoë
nodded and rolled her eyes, failing to contain her irritation. “Something about
car trouble and Caleb not being home to drop her off.”

“Right,”
Nate replied, scratching his jaw as the reality of the situation settled over
him. “Well I guess it’s just you and me then,” he said after taking a moment to
adjust to the idea. “No big deal, right?”

Zoë
looked up from her phone, meeting his gaze for the first time since he’d
arrived. “Yeah,” she said with a hint of apprehension. “No big deal…”

The
next hour passed at a snail space.

“I
can’t stand slasher movies,” Zoë remarked, attempting to make small talk
despite how awkward she was feeling. “The women are always so damn stupid.
Bitch, you’ve got a killer on the phone. Why the hell would you go and answer
the front door? You never answer the front door!”

Nate
chuckled but otherwise remained quiet. They were only about 20 minutes into the
movie, but he was already bored out of his mind. While the cover had made it
seem gruesome enough to be promising, the actual movie was anything but.

“I told
you this was going to be trash,” Zoë said, continuing with her tirade. “There
isn’t one A-list actor to be found in this. Hell, I don’t even see any
B-listers. How did this make it into theaters?”

Nate
smirked and leaned forward to pick up a romantic comedy he was sure would be
more her speed.

Zoë
scoffed as she surveyed his selection. “Sleepless in Seattle? Seriously?”

“Hey,
you’re the one who owns it, not me,” Nate reasoned.

“Actually,
I don’t,” Zoë clarified. “I borrowed all of these from Erica. She’s the
cinephile in this family, not me. I'd much rather sit through this mess than
spend two hours watching white people make eyes at each other.”

Nate
couldn’t help but notice the way Zoë beamed every time she spoke about her
younger sister. The level of pride she had in her was akin to that of a mother
for her child. With almost 11 years between them, Zoë was about as close to a
mother figure as Erica was going to get. Their own mother had long since spread
her wings in search of greener pastures, fleeing north to live the high life in
Atlantic City with little regard to the daughters she’d left behind.

That
was 10 years ago. Neither Powell sister had heard from their mother since, and
their father, being the dirty dog that he was, had wasted no time in remarrying
a woman half his age. That left them with no one to depend on but each other.

Nate
placed the movie back on the coffee table and pulled out his phone when he felt
it vibrate in his pocket.

A text
from Audrey lit up the screen.

Show went great. Can't wait to tell
you about it. Call me when you’re free. X

Zoë
eyed Nate closely for a second before speaking. “Let me guess…Audrey needs you
to tell her a bedtime story?” she remarked in a juvenile manner, failing to
disguise the animosity in her tone.

Nate
rolled his eyes and focused on typing back his reply. Once he was done, he
looked up and tensed when he saw Zoë staring at the ring box. It must have
fallen out of his jacket pocket when he wasn’t paying attention. Hastily, he
went to grab it up, but she was that much quicker.

Zoë
flipped open the box and swallowed hard. Aniyah was wrong. Nate didn’t still
have feelings for her. If she hadn’t known that before, she certainly did now.
It was impossible for her not to when she was holding the proof in the palm of
her hand.

“I
guess congratulations are in order,” Zoë spoke up in a dry tone, keeping her
expression emotionless as she flipped the box shut and handed it back over to
Nate.

The
sudden discomfort between them was palpable.

“I
think I'm going to call it night,” Zoë spoke up after awhile, briefly looking
Nate in the eyes. “I’m catering a party pretty early tomorrow. You wouldn’t mind
showing yourself out, would you?”

Nate
hesitated. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t let them part ways on bad terms
again. “Wait,” he called out to her.

Zoë
turned to look at him as he approached where she was standing in the hall.

“I
can’t leave,” Nate said, holding her gaze in the darkness. “Not until I know
you’re okay.”

“Why
wouldn't I be?” Zoë challenged.

Her
nonchalance might have had Nate fooled if he didn’t know her as intimately as
he did. “Zoë,” he said, taking another step towards her. “I can tell when
something’s bothering you. Why don’t you just tell me what it is so that I
don’t have to guess?”

 
“It’s nothing,” Zoë insisted, attempting
to sidestep him. “Just drop it, would you?”

Nate
shook his head and pulled her back. “You know I can’t do that,” he said,
refusing to let the conversation die off that easily. “Just tell me what your
problem is and I’ll go.”

Zoë
narrowed her eyes at him. “My problem?” she challenged. “It’s you. You’re my
problem. I just…I really don’t understand what you were expecting. I really
don’t. Did you think I’d be happy for you? Happy that you’re about to make
things official with a woman so beneath you it’s not even funny?”

Zoë’s
voice trailed off into a whisper. She shook her head, falling silent as thick
tears blurred her vision. This wasn’t her. She didn’t do well with
vulnerability. Especially not when Nate was looking at her the way he was now.

Zoë
took a moment to regain her composure before speaking again. “Because I can’t
be,” she admitted. “And I know that isn’t fair, but I can’t help the way I feel
anymore than you can. I’m in love with you. But you know what’s even more
pitiful than that? The fact that I somehow managed to delude myself into
thinking you loved me back.”

Zoë’s
cheeks were streaked with mascara by the time she was finished speaking. She
felt like a damn fool for letting her guard down, but it was really only a
matter of time before the words she’d been keeping hostage came pouring out of
her.

The
only thing that surprised her was that it hadn’t happened sooner.

Chapter fourteen

Nate
stared at Zoë at a loss for words before stepping forward to close the small
gap of space that still existed between them. As his warm lips enclosed on hers,
he felt an all too familiar yearning rush its way through him.

He
needed her.

Zoë
tensed up when Nate's tongue slipped past the boundaries of her lips into her
mouth. It took every ounce of strength for her to pull away from him, and the
desperate look he gave her when she finally did made her breath catch in her
throat. “What are you doing?” she gasped, steadying her body against the door
to her room as she attempted to slow her racing heart.

“I love
you,” Nate said instead of answering. His words were just as jagged as his
breath, but there was a certain degree of clarity behind them all the
same.
 
“I always have. I guess I
just...I thought proposing to Audrey would help me move on the way it seemed like
you had, but I realize how stupid that is now. It would never work. You’re not
the type of woman a man just gets over.”

Zoë
keep her gaze steadied on Nate’s face as she listened to him speak. When he
fell silent and leaned forward to kiss her again, she grabbed hold of his
t-shirt and kissed him back just as intensely before pulling him into her
bedroom.

As the
pair fumbled through the darkness and collapsed on Zoë's bed, their hesitation
dissipated with every piece of clothing shed. They could feel guilty later. In
this moment, they both felt as right as they had in quite some time. Their
kissing started out tentative and guarded, as if they were both holding back a
small part of themselves until they were sure the other was mutually invested,
but it didn’t take long for it to become much more aggressive in nature.

Nate
fought hard to control his urges, but his efforts proved futile when he felt
Zoë's hand graze his erection. All that small action did was push him even
closer to the edge.

“I’ll
be right back,” Zoë spoke up with bated breath, struggling to regain control of
her limbs long enough to pull away from him.

Nate
nodded, turning onto his side to watch her naked form dart in the bathroom
across the hall.

Zoë
exhaled a deep breath and studied her reflection in the mirror for a moment before
splashing a stream of cool water on her face to calm her nerves. When she was
finally composed enough to return to her bedroom, she entered to find Nate
studying the many photographs hanging above her desk.

It went
without saying that he was in almost every one of them.

“Everything
okay?” Nate questioned, pulling Zoë back down beside him on her bed.

Zoë
nodded, reading between the lines. What he was really asking was whether or not
she was on birth control. “I am,” she told him, biting down on her bottom lip.
There was no easy way to frame what she needed to ask next, but she definitely
wasn’t about to put herself at risk for the sake of avoiding a little
awkwardness. “But do you have a rubber?”

Nate
hesitated before reaching over her for his wallet, which was lying askew on the
floor beside his jeans. He shuffled through it for a few seconds before
sighing. “Damn,” he muttered, meeting eyes with her. “This would be the one
time I don’t.”

“Oh,”
Zoë said, rubbing her neck.

Great.

“But
I’m always safe,” Nate reassured her. It wasn’t even a lie. She was the only
woman he ever trusted enough not to use protection with. “And I get tested
every few weeks just in case.”

Zoë
gave him a relieved smile and wasted no time in resuming their kissing. The way
his strong body felt against her own brought her back to a humid summer day
shortly after her 16
^th
birthday, when he’d first introduced her to
what it felt like to engage in physical love. Now, as she became slowly
reacquainted with all his go-to techniques, she was reminded yet again of why
no other man ever seemed capable of measuring up.

Chapter fifteen

Nate's
teasing was driving Zoë insane with desire. He took his time exploring every detail
of her flesh, and when the warmth of his mouth became too much for her to bear,
she took action by straddling his lap.

Nate
groaned at the overwhelming gratification that came next. He cradled Zoë's hips
as she rode him, studying her face as it contorted in pleasure in time with
each stroke. Through trial and error, he’d learned how to tell when a woman was
faking it, but Zoë’s expressions made it clear to him that she wasn't. She
didn’t have to with him. Whenever they were together, the side effects of her
pleasure came naturally.

Nate
could feel Zoë’s inner walls clenching around his girth as her moans increased
in pitch. With a few well-angled strokes and a cry of pleasure, she collapsed
against his chest and shuddered into her release.

Nate spent
the next few minutes kissing his way down Zoë’s dark flesh, which was
glistening with tiny beads of sweat. When he was sure she could handle it, he
took hold of her slender legs and positioned himself between them to enter her
again.

Zoë
assisted him by lifting her hips up off of the bed so that he could penetrate
her more deeply. When his girth made contact with the soft pad of her g-spot,
she let out a strained gasp and gripped hold of his buttocks as she studied his
face.

Nate’s
sandy hair framed his jaw, accentuating chiseled features that twisted up in
pleasure as he came. After taking a moment to regain control of his body, he
laced his fingers through Zoë’s and proceeded to shower her with kisses until
they were both too exhausted to continue.

The
following morning, Zoë awoke in a haze and frowned when she looked over to find
Nate’s naked form sprawled out against her own. She’d fully expected him to
leave in the middle of the night. It was what he always did in the past, but
somehow, this felt different. There was something permanent about it.

Zoë
hesitated before reaching for her t-shirt, which was draped over a moving box
on the ground. As soon as she caught sight of it, she was reminded of Evan and the
very hasty agreement she’d made to move in with him. If she wasn’t sure about
it before, she definitely wasn’t now. All last night had done was complicate
things even further.