Chapter 16 Nico
Nico
Five thirty in the morning.
Gray light filters through cheap blinds that don’t quite close all the way. The kind of blinds you get when you’re twenty-eight and have student loans and you take a job as someone’s secretary, even though you’re over qualified.
Yep. That’s right.
I’m lying in Bree’s bed.
Again.
She’s asleep beside me, her breathing soft and even, one hand tucked under her cheek like a child.
The sheets are tangled around her waist, leaving her back exposed.
Smooth brown skin interrupted only by the faint indentations of my teeth.
I marked her last night when I was inside her and couldn’t get close enough.
I trace the curve of her shoulder with my eyes. Follow the line of her spine down to where the sheet pools at her lower back. There’s a freckle just above her left hip that I discovered last night with my mouth.
This is insane.
I followed her across Manhattan. Sat in my car for ninety minutes watching her with another man. Nearly broke that same man’s jaw on her front stoop.
And then I fucked her like I had something to prove.
Which I suppose I did.
She stirs slightly, her nose scrunching in that way that looks so cute on her. I’ve been lying here long enough to memorize everything about her. Long enough for the gray light to shift toward something approaching dawn.
What the hell is wrong with me?
I run a biotech company. Develop facial prosthetics that help burn victims look at themselves in the mirror again. I negotiate multimillion-dollar licensing deals with hospitals that think they can lowball me because I’m younger than their golf buddies.
I don’t obsess over my secretary.
I don’t lose control.
Except, apparently, I do.
Fuck.
Bree’s eyes flutter open. For a moment she looks confused, that soft vulnerability of someone surfacing from deep sleep. Then she registers me watching her and the vulnerability hardens into something warier. “You’re staring at me.”
“I am.”
She pushes herself up on one elbow, the sheet slipping to reveal more of her. Additional marks I left on her neck, dark against her skin. Claiming marks.
Evidence of possession.
Mine.
“How long have you been awake?” she asks.
I shrug. “A while.”
“That’s creepy.”
I nod slowly. “I’m well aware.”
She sits up fully now, gathering the sheet around her chest in a gesture of modesty that seems almost absurd given what we did last night. Given how many times I made her cum. Given the way she screamed my name when I shattered her and shattered her and shattered her again.
“Are you going to apologize for following me and my date?” she asks.
I should give her that. I know I should. But the problem is that I’m not actually sorry. If I had to watch her kiss Aiden or whatever the fuck his name is, I would have done something far worse than grab his shoulder.
“You’re not going to apologize,” she states.
I don’t break her gaze. “Would you believe me if I did?”
She purses her lips. “No.”
I force a smile. “Then what’s the point?”
She shakes her head. “Jesus Christ, Nico.”
I sit up, the sheet pooling at my waist. Her eyes flick down my chest, cataloging me the same way I’ve been cataloging her.
“What do you want me to say, Bree? That I regret following you? I don’t. That I wouldn’t do it again? I would. In a heartbeat. That man had his fucking hands on you and I wanted to break every one of his fucking fingers.”
“He’s a nice guy,” she tells me.
“I don’t give a fuck how nice he is,” I growl.
She flinches slightly, and something twists in my chest. I don’t want to scare her. That’s the last thing I want. But I also can’t pretend to be someone I’m not.
“This can’t happen again,” she says quietly.
I open my mouth to contest her, but then bite back what I was going to say.
“I know,” I say instead.
“We have to be professional,” she replies. “For work.”
“For work,” I agree rotely, though inside a part of me is dying.
“You’re my boss. This is exactly the kind of situation I swore I’d never put myself in again.”
Again.
The word hooks into something inside of me that makes me want to ask questions she probably won’t answer.
“Understood,” I say instead.
She searches my face for something. Maybe evidence that I actually mean it.
Good luck with that.
Even I don’t know what I mean anymore.
“Okay,” she says finally. “Okay. We just. We pretend this didn’t happen. Both times. The gala and last night. We go back to being professional and we never speak of this again.”
I force a dead smile. “If that’s what you want.”
“It’s what has to happen,” she states.
She’s right.
I know she’s right.
The power dynamic alone makes this a lawsuit waiting to happen.
I control her paycheck, her career prospects, her ability to pay rent on this tiny studio apartment with its thrift-store furniture and its fire escape she uses as a balcony.
I should let her go.
Not just from my bed but from my company, too.
Give her a severance package and a glowing recommendation and never see her again.
But there’s no way in hell I’m going to do that.
Call it selfish.
Call it fucked up.
Call it whatever you want.
But I’m not letting her fucking go.
“I should leave,” I say instead of any of the things I should say.
She nods, relief evident in the set of her shoulders. “Yeah. That’s probably best.”
I find my clothes scattered across her bedroom floor.
I dress in silence while Bree watches from the bed. Her expression is unreadable now. That poker face she wears so well at the office, settling into place even though she’s naked under those sheets.
“I’ll see you at the office,” I say.
She flashes a weak smile. “Nine o’clock. Like always.”
I force another lifeless grin in return. “Like always.”
I want to kiss her goodbye. The urge is almost overwhelming. But if I kiss her now I’ll end up back in that bed and we’ll be having this same conversation three hours from now when we’re both late for work.
So I leave.
Her apartment door closes behind me with a quiet click. The hallway smells like a mix of coffee from one neighbor’s unit and marijuana from another’s. I walk down four flights of stairs, my expensive shoes loud on the worn treads.
Outside, Callahan is waiting by the Mercedes.
Pulled an all-nighter because he didn’t know when his boss would be coming out. I could have texted him to go home. Should have, even. But he would’ve stayed regardless. His job is literally my security.
Indira stayed, too. Though I can tell from the way she’s rubbing her eyes in the driver’s seat that sleeping in an SUV doesn’t really suit her.
Callahan just opens the back door and waits. “Sir.”
I nod. “Callahan.”
I slide into the backseat. The leather is cold. “Take me home,” I tell Indira.
Callahan takes the front passenger seat, and Indira is already pulling away from the curb before I’ve buckled my seatbelt.
Neither of them says a word about the fact I’m doing the walk of shame from my secretary’s apartment building at six in the fucking morning.
This is why I pay them what I pay them.
The ride back to Tribeca takes twenty minutes in pre-rush traffic. I spend it staring out the window, replaying the last twelve hours in my head.
Following her. Watching her. The way I nearly lost control completely when that fucker leaned in to kiss her.
I’ve never been jealous like that before.
Not with anyone.
With past relationships, if you can even call them that, I maintained perfect control. Everything was calibrated. The distance was measured and maintained. Never let anyone close enough to matter.
But Bree got under my skin that first night at the gala. Burrowed in like a pathogen my immune system couldn’t identify.
And now she’s everywhere.
In my head.
In my blood.
In whatever part of me still knows how to want something.
We reach my building. I take the elevator to my loft suite, shower, change into a fresh suit. My house manager Quillan has coffee waiting even though I didn’t ask.
I’m at the office by seven.
The 28th floor is quiet this early. Just a few members of the R&D team and that’s it.
I enter my glass-walled kingdom and sit at my desk. Pull up my email.
But the subject lines blur.
All I can see is Bree’s face when she woke up and found me watching her. The soft vulnerability, then the wariness.
Wary.
She’s wary of me.
Doesn’t want to get hurt.
She’s the last fucking person I’d ever hurt.
Nine o’clock arrives with the usual morning sounds. Elevators dinging. Conversations in the hallway. The coffee machine in the break room grinding beans.
I’m in a teleconference with Elspeth when Bree walks past my glass walls.
She’s back to professional attire today. No dresses. Gray blazer, white blouse, black slacks. Hair pulled back in the usual sleek style she favors for work. Makeup carefully applied.
Extra concealer on her neck.
I notice because I’m looking for it. Because I know exactly what she’s hiding under that coverage.
My claiming marks.
She doesn’t look at me as she passes. Just goes to her desk and starts her morning routine like everything is normal.
Like I didn’t have her spread beneath me twelve hours ago.
Like she didn’t scream my name so loud her fucking neighbors heard.
The meeting ends. Elspeth hangs up.
Paloma arrives in person for a follow-up on the media strategy. Bree comes in to take notes, her laptop open, her fingers poised on the keyboard.
Our eyes meet for half a second.
The air crackles.
She looks away first. Types something on her laptop.
Like nothing happened between us at all.
But I can see the flush creeping up her neck. Can see the way her breathing changes when I speak. Can see every tiny tell that says she’s as affected by my presence as I am by hers.
Paloma is talking about stakeholders or something. I nod in the right places. Make appropriate sounds. But I’m not listening. Not at all.
I’m watching Bree’s hands on the keyboard. Remembering those same hands fisted in my shirt last night. Pulling me closer instead.
The meeting ends.