Chapter 18 Johnny #2
“I still have to do what I have to do. I need to keep Anna safe. That part doesn’t change.” Her fingers tighten against my chest. “But maybe if this is the only place I get to have anything for myself, I stop telling myself I’m not allowed to want it.”
My thumb drags once over the damp skin at the back of her neck.
“Then say it, Nat.” I say it like a dare. “Tell me what you want.”
Her gaze drops to my mouth.
Then back to my eyes.
“You.” The word comes out shaky and quiet and aimed straight at my heart. “I want you, Johnny.”
Christ.
Those four words tear through me so hard I can’t breathe.
I should say something. Probably something important, maybe something smart. My brain offers nothing. It’s too busy short-circuiting while she stands there looking at me like I’m the only solid thing in her world.
I don’t move right away. I let the answer sit there between us, hot and breathing and real, because I need to know she hears it too. What she just said. What she just chose.
She does.
I can see it in the way she stays with me now instead of folding back into herself. In the way her hand stays pressed against my chest where my heart is doing its level best to crack through bone. In the way the fear is still there in her eyes, but it’s no longer the only thing.
I slide my hand from the back of her neck to her cheek, pushing damp hair away from her face.
“This?” I ask softly. “That’s what you want?”
She swallows.
“Yes.”
Every possessive, protective, hungry thing I’ve been holding on a leash since she said the word marriage strains forward at once.
And with it comes the shame.
Because she’s standing here stripped bare—not just the clothes, not just the water, but everything—giving me the truth without softening it, choosing me knowing exactly what it could cost her, and I’m still standing behind a borrowed name and half a life.
She just handed me every honest thing she has, and I haven’t earned a single piece of it.
I should tell her now.
I know I should.
The words are right there. I’m from Las Vegas, too. I know who your father is. I know what the Bratva is because I grew up on the other side of it. Three sentences. That’s all it would take to give her what she just gave me.
And I can already see what happens if I do. The step back. The shutter coming down. Her arms crossing again, tighter this time, because now the man she just trusted is one more person who lied to her.
I can’t watch that happen.
I hate what that says about me. I hate it with a clarity that changes absolutely nothing.
I want her anyway.
She’s still looking at me, still waiting, and the silence is one second away from turning into doubt.
I lean in just enough that my forehead brushes hers.
“Then come here,” I say.
I kiss her like I’m starving for it. I am starving for it.
She grabs my shoulders and pulls me closer and makes a sound against my tongue that goes straight to my cock.
I back her into the tile, and she gasps at the cold but doesn’t pull away.
Just arches into me, wet skin sliding against wet skin, her breasts pressed flat against my torso and her hips tilting forward until I can feel the heat of her against my thigh.
I could stay here. I could kiss her until the water runs cold and call it enough.
But enough is not what I’m after tonight.
I drag my mouth down her throat. Her collarbone.
The swell of her breast, where I catch her nipple between my lips and suck until her fingers twist in my hair and her back bows off the tile.
I give the other one the same treatment, slower, using my tongue until she’s squirming against me and her breathing has gone ragged and thin.
Then I drop.
One knee hits the tile. Then the other. Natalia’s looking down at me with her lips parted and her breasts heaving and an expression on her face that tells me she just figured out where this is going.
“Johnny.” Half whisper, half warning. “I’ve never...”
“I know.” I press my mouth to her hip. Drag it lower, across the crease of her thigh, and feel the muscle jump under my lips. “Just hold on to me.”
Her hand clamps down on my shoulder. Nails biting in hard enough to bruise, and I want every single one of those marks tomorrow.
I grip the backs of her thighs and part her legs wider. She lets me, but her whole body is trembling, a fine constant vibration that has nothing to do with the water temperature. I can feel her pulse hammering where my thumbs press against her inner thighs.
I look up at her one more time. Skin flushed a beautiful pink. Eyes so wide and dark I could fall into them.
“You tell me if you want me to stop.”
“I won’t.” Barely a breath. “I won’t want you to stop.”
I lean in and drag my tongue through her in one slow, flat stroke.
Her whole body jolts. The sound she makes ricochets off the wet tile, sharp and shocked, and her hand flies to the back of my head like she needs to hold on to something or her legs are going to give out.
She tastes like salt and heat and the filthy sweetness underneath, and my cock throbs so hard my vision blurs.
I do it again. Slower. Base to clit, broad and deliberate, and this time I feel her thighs shake on either side of my face. Her hips buck forward and I grip them hard, pinning her to the tile so I can take my time.
“Oh god.” Her head falls back against the wall. “Oh my god.”
“That’s not my name.” I murmur it against her and feel the vibration pull another gasp out of her. “Try again.”
“Johnny.” It comes out wrecked. “Fuck. Johnny.”
“Better.”
I seal my mouth over her clit and suck, gentle at first, then harder when she yanks my hair hard enough to sting. I groan against her because I want her to feel that too.
Her hips roll into my face and I let them, matching her rhythm, learning what makes her gasp and what makes her grip tighten and what makes her thighs clamp against my ears like she’s trying to keep me there forever.
I ease one finger inside her while my mouth stays where it is. Slow. Letting her feel it. She tightens around me and makes a sound that’s half gasp, half moan, her hips pressing down like her body is asking for more before her brain catches up.
I give her a minute. Work her with just one, curling it gently, keeping my tongue steady on her clit. When I feel her start to relax around me, I add the second.
A sharp inhale. Her whole body goes taut and I go still, giving her time to adjust, pressing my lips softly against her inner thigh.
“Okay?” I ask against her skin.
“Don’t stop.” Her voice is breathless and shaking but not even a little uncertain.
A sound comes out of me that I couldn’t stop if I tried. Half-groan, half-growl, pulled from somewhere deep, because this woman just told me not to stop with her thighs trembling around my head and my fingers inside her.
“Wasn’t planning on it,” I manage.
I return my mouth to her clit and start moving my fingers in earnest, and whatever was left of her composure dissolves.
Her stomach muscles are trembling, and the sounds coming out of her mouth are these high, broken whimpers, the kind of sounds she’ll deny making later and I’ll never let her forget.
I don’t rush her. That’s the point. This isn’t me taking what she offered and turning greedy with it. This is me staying right here and giving until she can’t hold herself back anymore.
I curl my fingers against the front wall and wrap my lips around her clit at the same time, and her knees buckle hard enough that I have to brace her with my free hand.
She’s shaking hard now. Her grip in my hair has gone from pulling to just holding on, fisting it at the roots. Her breathing is nothing but sharp staccato gasps punctuated by my name, broken up and barely recognizable.
“Let go.” I press the words against her skin. “I’ve got you. Let go, Nat.”
That does it.
She comes apart with a long shuddering exhale. Her whole body locks up at once, thighs clamping, walls gripping my fingers so tight I can feel every pulse, her hand wrenching my hair hard enough to water my eyes.
She curls forward over me, trembling, and the sound she makes when it finally crests is my name. Just my name. Broken in half and barely audible over the water.
I keep my mouth on her, soft now, gentle, easing her through each aftershock while her body comes down in waves.
Her grip loosens. Her breathing turns from gasps to long, shaky pulls.
Her thighs stop clenching and start trembling instead, and I press a kiss to the inside of one, then the other, tasting her on my own lips.
I slide my fingers out of her slowly and she whimpers at the loss. Then I rise, trailing my mouth up her body as I go. Her stomach. The valley between her breasts. Her collarbone. Her throat, where I can see her heartbeat fluttering wild under the skin.
When I’m standing over her again, she looks up at me and I nearly lose it right there.
Her eyes are black. Blown wide. Her lips are swollen and parted, water clings to her lashes and a flush runs from her cheeks all the way down her chest. She looks ruined in the best possible way. She looks like mine.
She still thinks this ends with her getting on that plane.
Maybe that’s what she has to believe right now.
But I don’t.
For a second neither of us says anything. The shower drums against my back. Steam curls between us. She’s still coming down, and I’m hanging on by threads.
Then her hand slides down my pecs.
Over my stomach. Lower.
Her fingers close around my cock, and every thought I’ve ever had exits my skull.
“Natalia.” Her name comes out guttural. Barely human.
She tightens her grip and strokes once, base to tip, her thumb dragging over the head, and my forehead drops against hers because my neck has stopped working.
“I don’t want to stop,” she says.
Her free hand comes up to the side of my face. She holds me there, forehead to forehead, her breath warm against my lips.
Steady. Certain.
And that might be the hottest thing I’ve ever seen in my life, because this isn’t nerves anymore. It isn’t instinct. It’s choice.
“Show me,” she whispers. “Show me everything.”