Chapter Seventeen
LUCY
In the elevator, there was no subtlety in Nicky’s lips as they crashed on Lucy’s. There was only determination and pure, overwhelming lust. It came over her like a fever, hot and immutable. She was powerless to it. To him.
Lucy grabbed at his T-shirt. At his tattooed arms. Her hand found its way to his scalp and he groaned.
The elevator doors opened to the penthouse floor and they tripped out into the hall, a tangle of limbs and lips.
‘Yours? Mine?’ Nicky mumbled into Lucy’s neck. Then pulled away, with a cringe. ‘Neither?’
‘Mine,’ she purred.
Nicky threaded his fingers through hers and guided her down the corridor with determined steps. When they reached Lucy’s door, Nicky reached into her back pocket. He only lingered for an extra second or two on the swell of her ass, before pulling her keycard out and slapping it to the lock.
Thank goodness Chloe was out with her friends. Lucy had answered ‘mine’ before giving the logistics of the thing a second thought. She’d been bamboozled by the sudden ache for Nicky.
Lucy guided Nicky past the kitchen and through the living room of the suite. To the left. To her bedroom. To the extra-large bed that looked in that moment like it could easily host the entire cast of Cirque du Soleil on its acres of fluffy white blankets.
Lucy stepped out of her Chucks as Nicky fell back on the bed, flicking his own sneakers off from the heels and sending them flying across the room.
She laughed at the sheer glee written all over his face and the way he called her over by waving his arms, like she wasn’t moving fast enough for his liking.
She plopped down next to him, and he immediately threaded his hand through her hair, gripping the back of her neck.
He sidled up closer. Kissed her slowly. As though he truly were taking his time.
And Lucy kissed him back with an equally languid ease, but only because his mouth was a thing of enthralling and consuming beauty and she could linger there indefinitely.
His hand slid under the hem of her T-shirt. Strong, callused fingers made a path across Lucy’s stomach, then gripped the curve at her waist before splaying across her back.
It felt like he was holding on, keeping her close.
Something about it made Lucy bristle, want to push away. It was irrational; she knew this. Still, she nudged him gently to his back and straddled him, saying a little prayer of thanks to a couple of years of yoga and Pilates.
She pushed his shirt up and helped him wrestle it over his head.
There, she found more ink. Everywhere. A riot of color and image that was too much to take in at once.
An amazingly detailed scene of evergreen trees with mountains in the background gave way to the bear from California’s state flag.
She spotted a fine line tribute to the angel on the cover of Nirvana’s In Utero , but the angel’s upturned hands weren’t empty.
One held a human heart, the other a flame.
She felt over his tattoos with her fingertips as though she might be able to divine their meaning by touch.
‘Jesus!’ she exclaimed suddenly.
‘What? The ink?’ he asked, frantically looking down at his own stomach.
‘No, the abs,’ Lucy huffed. ‘You have an actual six-pack.’
He smiled. ‘Nah, more like four. At best.’
‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I am a college professor. I can count to …’ She touched each ripple with her finger. ‘One, two, three, four, five , six .’
‘America’s youth is in good hands, professor,’ he teased. Then added, ‘I do crunches when I can’t sleep.’
‘Well, insomnia is really working for you.’
‘Thanks, I think.’
Nicky tugged at the hem of Lucy’s shirt. She stopped him with a hand on his.
‘Fair warning,’ she said. ‘I eat Cheetos when I can’t sleep, so there’s only one ab under here.’
Nicky chuckled. ‘I don’t care what you have under there. Whatever it is, I want it.’
She hoped that was true, because she wasn’t eighteen anymore and didn’t have the money required to try to be.
Lucy had never been particularly self-conscious about her body and she wasn’t exactly out of shape for a forty-something woman who spent all day in a desk chair. But also … time. And … gravity.
Lucy pulled her shirt over her head in one smooth movement, then unclipped her bra, tossing both over her head.
Nicky moaned low and soft, like Lucy did when there was pasta in the room. His hands went straight for her breasts, kneading them slightly and dragging his thumbs slowly over their stiff peaks. The sensation went straight to her core.
‘I like your ab,’ said Nicky in a faraway voice while pinching her nipple.
‘That’s not my ab,’ Lucy managed to croak as her hips pushed down on him of their own accord.
Nicky raised himself up using all those abs and sucked her nipple into his mouth. She grabbed hold of his shoulders to keep herself from collapsing.
‘Nicky?’ she asked.
His mouth slipped off her breast with a pop. ‘Yeah?’ he replied before kissing his way toward her other breast.
‘Can we go ahead and get naked now?’
His eyes tracked up to meet hers. She brushed a stray hair from his lust-drunk eyes.
‘Yes, please,’ he replied.
Lucy rolled off him and stripped herself of jeans and underwear with zero grace and ridiculous speed.
Nicky tried to do the same, but one of his socks was locked in a wrestling match with his jeans, trapping him.
Lucy laughed at Nicky’s frustrated groans as he lay on his back struggling with his foot in the air, jeans whipping around.
‘Here, let me,’ she said.
She unknotted the tangle at his ankles and slid his pants to the floor. His wallet and phone clunked noisily to the carpet.
Then she looked up and saw Nicky-fucking-Broome sprawled on the bed – naked, inked, amazing.
Everything about him was bigger than she remembered.
But then, her memories, cherished and well-loved as they were, featured a boy of eighteen.
There was nothing boyish about Nicky anymore, and she was grateful for it.
‘You’re a work of art,’ Lucy breathed. ‘Literally.’
‘I’ve been told I have a tattoo problem.’
‘I wouldn’t call it a problem ,’ she said, feeling the tingle between her legs intensify.
Lucy crawled her way over him again, seating herself on his legs and watched as his cock tapped impatiently against the skin below his navel.
She canted her hips, gliding her wet heat along the base of his shaft.
‘I have condoms,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Wallet.’
‘IUD,’ she said. She didn’t add that her (now former) gynecologist had referred to her internal lady bits as geriatric and the possibility of conception as statistically insignificant. ( Thanks for that, Dr. Jackass. ) Lucy added, ‘I was tested recently and I’m all good.’
‘Me too,’ he said. ‘Haven’t been with anyone since.’
‘I’m game if you are.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ he agreed with a fervent nod.
Lucy leaned over, and dragged her lips slowly over his. She nipped at his bottom lip, then made a slow trail over the slight stubble on his jaw, and around to the smooth stretch of skin behind his ear.
His hands worked at the soft flesh of her hips before sliding to her ass.
Lucy reached her hand between their bodies, wrapping her fingers around his shaft. She lifted her hips and guided him to her entrance.
In one swift jolt, she drove her hips down and took him deep.
Lucy’s forehead dropped to his as they both groaned at the pleasure of it.
She moved her hips up again, but was met by his hands on her ass, pressing her back down.
‘Lucy, baby. Hold up. I need a second. Pretty sure I’m having an out-of-body experience.’
‘You sure it’s not a stroke?’ she asked, maybe only half-teasing.
‘No,’ he replied with a smile.
They both laughed – deep, silly, champagne-fueled belly laughs.
Nicky’s wide pupils snapped to hers. ‘Oh my God. I can feel you laughing. From inside .’
That made her laugh more.
He grunted, ‘That is seriously the sexiest thing in the history of the universe.’
She smiled down at him, rocked her hips forward and back again, catching her clit as she did, and sending a wave of hot sparks down her spine.
‘You okay now?’ Lucy asked.
‘More than okay,’ he replied. The sincerity in his tone, and the unspoken words that seemed to linger in the silence that followed, was too much for Lucy. It was too difficult to reflect on, laced with too many emotions. She had to close her eyes against the force of it.
She pushed up onto her hands and put all her focus on her body.
‘Dreamed about this,’ he panted. ‘You over me. Dreamed about it.’
Lucy closed her eyes more tightly. Concentrated on her breathing, on the sounds their bodies made when she slapped her hips against his. Anything but what might lie behind his words.
She sunk into the pure bliss of Nicky’s body against hers. Of his big hands gripping her waist. The sensation of sweat trickling down her back.
Then came the sensation of her hamstring begging for relief because she was definitely not eighteen and was a CrossFit dropout.
Lucy pulled at Nicky’s body and he followed her with no resistance. Rolling, still connected, to their sides. Lucy wrapped her aching thigh over his hip as he thrust more forcefully inside her.
‘Lucy. Open your eyes, baby,’ he begged. His hand gripped her hip with purpose. ‘Look at me.’
To keep them closed would reveal more than simply complying. So, she did.
And it was devastating.
He wasn’t looking at her. Those loden eyes were peering inside her.
She felt like he could see the truth that she’d been trying to hide.
The hurt he’d caused. All the years that he’d been there, but not there.
She knew ‘The Breathing Room’ and its thorny legacy was written all over her stupid, uncooperative face.
She blinked hard.
‘Don’t go,’ he panted. ‘Stay with me.’
Lucy opened her eyes again, and he was right there. His eyes almost glowing in the neon streaming in from the window. His focus was so intense, so unguarded, that she felt it in her chest. A weight. A burden.
Then his hips shifted, and he hit a place inside her, deep and undiscovered. The pleasure there was so raw and vivid that it took her by surprise.
She gasped his name as her orgasm hit like an explosion, everywhere at once.
Lucy clawed at his back, trying to hold on. Trying to keep herself tethered to reality even as her thoughts scrambled and fractured into nothingness.
She felt his pace increase, but only tangentially – as something happening somewhere else. His eyes remained locked with hers, and Lucy couldn’t look away. In that moment, she truly felt that they were the only thing holding her together.
Nicky called her name like a chant, over and over, as she felt him pulse and release inside her.
He buried his head in the crook of her neck. ‘Oh my God,’ he said, struggling to catch his breath. ‘Oh my God.’
‘I know,’ Lucy whispered.
‘Lucy,’ he tried, with a kind of amazement that made her heart trip. He clung to her tightly.
‘I know,’ she replied. ‘I know.’
That was the last thing Lucy remembered before falling into a dreamless sleep, still clinging to Nicky Broome like a lifeline.