Chapter 23 Nico
Nico
Her mouth is soft against mine. Warm.
I pull her closer, one hand sliding into her hair, the other at her waist. She makes a small sound against my mouth.
When we finally break apart, we’re both breathing hard. She’s flushed, her lips swollen, and she’s looking at me like I’ve just said something profound instead of simply kissing her like a drowning man.
“You’re thinking loudly,” she announces.
I frown. “Am I?”
“Your jaw does this thing.” She reaches up, touches the scarred tissue along my cheekbone. “Right here. It tightens when you’re overthinking.”
She shifts again, and my t-shirt rides up her thighs.
Fuck.
She has no idea what she does to me. Or maybe she does. Maybe that’s the point.
“Can I ask you something?” she says.
“You’re going to anyway,” I tell her.
Her mouth quirks. “Does it still hurt? The scarring?”
I consider the question. Most people mean the physical when they ask that. The nerve damage, the skin grafts that didn’t take properly, the way cold weather makes the tissue ache.
“Not physically,” I say. “Not anymore.”
She waits. Like she knows there’s more coming and she’s willing to sit here all night until I give it to her.
“The emotional scarring is a different story,” I admit. “Takes longer to heal. Sometimes I think it never does. You just learn to build prosthetics for the parts of yourself that got broken. Functional replacements. They work well enough that most people can’t tell the difference.”
“I can tell the difference,” she states.
“I know.” That’s the terrifying part. She sees right through every protective barrier I’ve constructed. “You’ve always been able to tell.”
She rises up on her knees, facing me on the couch. My t-shirt is huge on her.
Mine.
The possessive satisfaction that curls through me is almost embarrassing.
I pull her into my lap in one smooth motion. She gasps, hands landing on my shoulders for balance. Her thighs bracket my hips. The t-shirt bunches between us. Through the thin cotton of my sweats, I can feel her heat against my arousal.
“I’ve been thinking,” I say against her throat.
“Dangerous,” she comments.
“Very.” I kiss the spot where her pulse flutters. “I’ve been thinking about how you taste. How you sound when you cum. How you look with your hair spread across the bed while I’m buried inside you.”
Her fingers tighten on my shoulders. “Those are very specific thoughts.”
“I’m a very specific person.” I pull back to look at her face. “But tonight I want to try something different.”
Confusion momentarily flashes across her features. “Different how?”
“Slower.” I brush hair back from her face. “Just you and me and all the time in the world.”
Her expression softens. The wariness that’s always there eases slightly.
“Okay,” she whispers.
I stand, lifting her with me. Her legs wrap around my waist like they usually do. The muscle memory of us together is already building. Synaptic pathways firing, connections strengthening each time we touch.
Soon it’ll be instinct.
Soon I won’t remember how to exist without her body.
I’m probably already well past that point.
My bedroom is through the library, up a short flight of stairs to the upper level. I carry her the whole way.
The king-sized bed dominates the space with those expensive sheets that Thessaly insisted on. I’ve never shared this bed with anyone. Never wanted to.
The idea of someone else in my most private space always felt like an intrusion.
But Bree isn’t.
She’s a renovation.
Tearing down walls I didn’t even know I had.
I set her on the edge of the bed and step back. She watches me with those amber eyes that see everything.
“Stay right there,” I tell her.
She stays.
I kneel in front of her. Look up at her face. From this angle, with the city lights filtering through the windows, she looks like something out of a dream.
The kind of dream I stopped letting myself have years ago.
“Good view?” she murmurs.
“Getting a good baseline.” I run my hands up her bare calves. “Before I take you apart.”
Her breath catches. “Nico.”
“Hands and mouth only.” I push the t-shirt up slightly, exposing more of her thighs. “For now. I want to explore every inch of you. Want to learn you like a technical manual. Every specification. Every optimal operating parameter.”
“You haven’t learned that yet?” she breathes. “Also, did you just compare me to a medical device?”
“I’m in bio-prosthetics. Everything’s a medical device to me.” I lean forward, press my lips to her inner thigh. “Especially the beautiful complicated ones.”
She laughs, but it dissolves into a gasp when I bite down gently. The sound goes straight to my cock.
Her t-shirt comes off first. My t-shirt. I peel it over her head slowly, kissing each inch of skin as it’s revealed. Her collarbones. The hollow of her throat. The swell of her breasts. She’s not wearing a bra.
She’s perfect.
“Beautiful,” I murmur against her sternum. “So fucking beautiful.”
“Nico, please,” she gasps.
“Please what?” I mock.
“More.”
But I don’t give her more. Not yet. Instead I trace the faint silver lines on her stomach. Stretch marks, barely visible in the dim light. Evidence that her body has changed, grown, lived.
I kiss each one.
“These are mine, too,” I tell her. “Every mark. Every scar. Every so-called imperfection. Mine.”
She makes a sound that’s a half sob, half moan. Her fingers tangle in my hair.
I work my way down. Kiss her hip bones. Her inner thighs. Breathe against the heat of her, and she’s wet. So fucking wet already, and I’ve barely touched her where she wants me most.
“You’re cruel,” she gasps.
“I prefer thorough,” I counter.
The first swipe of my tongue makes her back arch off the bed. I hold her hips down and do it again. And again. Building pressure, reading her body’s responses, aiming for the exact rhythm that makes her muscles tense and her breathing stutter.
She’s close. I can feel it in the way her thighs shake. In the desperate sounds escaping her throat.
I stop.
“No.” The word is almost a wail. “Nico...” she whines.
“Not yet.” I press a gentle kiss to her inner thigh. “We have time.”
I do it again. And again. Three times I bring her to the edge and pull back. By the fourth time, she’s begging. Literally begging, the words tumbling out incoherent and needy.
“Please. Please, Nico. I can’t. I need. Please. Please please.”
“Please what?” I taunt darkly.
“Please let me cum,” she begs.
I look up at her face. Her eyes are glazed, her cheeks flushed, her lips swollen from biting them to keep from screaming.
She’s the most beautiful fucking thing I’ve ever seen.
“Good girl.” I lower my mouth to her pussy. “You may cum now.”
Her whole body convulses with the orgasm. I can feel her pussy clenching beneath my mouth.
But I don’t stop. Don’t let up. I work her through it with my tongue and my fingers, and before she’s finished cumming the first time, I’m already building her toward the second.
“I can’t,” she pants. “Too much.”
“You’ve done it before.” I add another finger, curling them just right.
She does.
The second orgasm crashes into the first, the layered sensations leaving her gasping and incoherent.
Her fingers are still twisted in my hair, pulling hard enough to sting, and I fucking love every second of it.
When she finally comes down, I kiss my way back up her body. She’s a quivering mess. Totally wrecked.
Exactly the way I want her.
“That was...” She can’t finish the sentence.
“Oh I’m not done with you yet,” I tease.
I stand and strip off my sweats. Her eyes track the movement, heavy-lidded but hungry.
My cock is painfully hard, has been for the last hour while I’ve been torturing both of us. Pre-cum glistens at the tip, pearling.
She reaches for me. I catch her wrist.
“Not yet.” I guide her hand to my chest instead, pressing her palm flat over my heart. The organ is pounding hard enough that I’m sure she can sense it. “You feel that?”
“Yes,” she replies.
“That’s what you do to me.” I slide her hand lower. Down my carved stomach. Past my navel. Wrap her fingers around my cock. “And this. All of it. Is yours.”
Her grip tightens. I groan.
“Yours,” I repeat. “Every fucked up, scarred, broken piece. Yours.”
Condom. I need a condom.
There’s a box in my nightstand that I’m pretty sure has expired from disuse, but I bought new ones last week. Just in case.
She releases me long enough for me to open my nightstand and fumble with the box. I grab a packet and tear it open with my teeth, then roll the condom on with hands that aren’t quite steady.
She watches me with that expression that still catches me off guard. Like I’m worth looking at. Like the scars make me more interesting instead of less. Like she wants to swallow every fucking part of me. Especially my cock.
When I finally sink into her, we both groan. I’ve already decided, I’m not fucking her this time. I’m making love to her.
The phrase has always struck me as sentimental bullshit, but right now I understand it completely.
I set a rhythm that’s different from every other time we’ve been together. Slow rolls of my hips instead of brutal thrusts. Deep rather than hard. My forehead pressed to hers, our breath mingling, eyes locked.
“So perfect,” I murmur. “You feel so fucking good.”
“Nico.” My name on her lips, so full of desire, almost makes me cum right there, and it’s all I can do to hold back.
“I’ve got you.” I say after a moment, and I shift the angle slightly so that I’m hitting the spot inside her that always makes her cry out.
Her orgasm builds slowly this time. A rising tide instead of a crashing wave. I can feel her tightening around me, feel my own release gathering at the base of my spine. I keep up the slow, rhythmic movements.
Thrust.
Withdraw.
Thrust.
Withdraw.
And then I’m at the edge and can’t hold back anymore.
“Together,” I say. “Cum with me. Cum now.”
She does.
We shatter at the same moment, her walls clenching around my cock as I empty myself into the condom with a groan that feels torn from my chest.
The pleasure is intense enough to blur my vision, and I collapse on top of her, my hips stuttering.
Afterward, I swivel off her and deal with the condom, then return to the bed and collapse beside her. She immediately rolls into me, pressing her face against my shoulder.
The silence stretches, but it’s not uncomfortable. It’s the quiet of two people who don’t need words to fill space.
“Do you ever actually sleep here?” she asks eventually. “Or do you just work until you pass out?”
“Here specifically?” I glance around my bedroom. “Not well. Not often. I sleep better at your place.”
She tilts her head up to look at me. “Really?”
“Really.” I brush hair back from her face. “You’ve recalibrated something. I don’t know what. But my insomnia’s improved thirty percent since we started this.”
“You measured it?” she asks incredulously.
“I’m a data-driven person.”
She laughs. “You’re ridiculous.” She pauses. “Do you really sleep better at my place?”
“No,” I lie. “Your bed is too small. Your radiator clangs. Your upstairs neighbor has a very active nightlife.”
She giggles and cuddles closer, pressing her head against my chest. “Silly.”
We fall asleep tangled together in sheets that have never held two people before. My last thought before unconsciousness isn’t about work or threats or the next crisis to manage.
It’s about her.
I wake before dawn. Gray light filters through the windows. Bree is still asleep, curled on her side and facing me. Her hair is a mess. There’s a mark on her collarbone where my mouth got carried away. As usual.
I slip out of bed and pull on some sweats, then pad downstairs to the kitchen. Thessaly isn’t here yet. It’s too early. The espresso machine is simple enough to operate, so I set to work.
When Bree appears in the doorway twenty minutes later, wearing my shirt again with her legs bare, I have two cups of something vaguely resembling coffee waiting on the table.
“You made coffee?” She looks adorably skeptical.
“An attempt at coffee,” I reply. “Success is not guaranteed.”
She takes a sip and winces. “This is awful.”
“I know.”
But she drinks it anyway. We sit at the massive dining table, watching the sun rise over Manhattan.
At 8 AM, I hear the front door open. Quillan must have let Thessaly in through the main elevator vestibule. Not to be confused with the direct elevator to the penthouse, which no one uses but me.
She appears in the kitchen doorway and takes in the scene with a single raised eyebrow. Me in sweats. Bree in my shirt. Coffee cups on the table.
“Good morning, Mr. Rossi.” Her voice is utterly neutral. “Should I prepare breakfast, or will you be leaving soon?”
“Breakfast would be great, Thessaly.” I keep my voice equally neutral. “Thank you. Have you met Bree?”
“No, I haven’t,” she says. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Bree.”
She moves to the kitchen without comment. But I catch the small smile at the corner of her mouth.
Bree’s cheeks are pink. “She’s going to think...”
“She’s going to think correctly.” I take her hand. “I’m done hiding this. At least here.”
“And at the office?”
The question hangs between us. At the office, she’s still my secretary.
“Soon”, I say.
It’s not enough. I know it’s not enough.
But when she squeezes my hand and doesn’t let go, I think she might be giving me the time I actually need to make this right.