Chapter 21 Keeley
TWENTY-ONE
KEELEY
Oh. He hates it less when I—?
Fuck. That’s…big.
“What do I call you then?”
“Definitely not Nicodemus,” he mutters. I snort. Okay, that was funny. Nic opens his eyes and does that thing where I feel like he’s reading me like a book. “This really about my name?”
I keep threading my fingers through his hair, anything but let him see what I’m thinking.
I don’t want to make shit weird, not when he’s holding me like I matter.
“I just wondered, that’s all.” I sigh, and change the subject before he can dig into that too much. “We also need to talk about clothes.”
“What about them?”
I take a second, trying to say this without sounding ungrateful.
I’m also fishing. I want to know where his head is at.
“If I’m staying for a while,” I swallow the lump in my throat, please let me be staying, “I’m going to need some stuff of my own. I can’t just keep cycling through your wardrobe and whoever else has taken pity on me.”
I don’t even know whose leggings I’ve been wearing.
“Why not?” He says it like he doesn’t understand why it’s a problem and now I’m not sure why it is one, but I started this, so I forge ahead.
“Because… I look like I’m wearing a four-man tent.”
I don’t want the hoodies to disappear. They’re comfortable. Warm too. And even though they smell of laundry detergent, I swear I can smell Nic lingering on the fabric.
Him and his annoyingly masculine… aroma are actually making me unhinged.
But I want Nic to look at me and not see a shapeless lump drowning in his clothes. I want to be attractive to him. I want him to want me as much as I do him.
He pulls me into him, chest to chest, and nuzzles into my neck. I forget everything I was worried about because his hot breath caresses over my pulse.
I clamp my teeth into my bottom lip to stop from letting out a moan. I lose that fight almost immediately when his mouth finds that sensitive spot just under my jaw that makes every nerve ending in me light up.
Oh, sweet merciful Zeus.
I grip the headboard with one hand, the other wrapped around his shoulder. He kisses along the line of my neck until I’m panting. There’s heat pooling in my belly and my skin is on fire, but it’s the hot pulse between my legs that has me coming undone.
“I’ll get you an entire wardrobe of pretty dresses if you want them, Keeley.”
I swear I’m going to orgasm if he keeps this up.
“I’m not a dress kind of girl,” I breathe.
Or I think I do. I’m not sure if my lungs are even working anymore.
“You wouldn’t be in it long enough to care.”
Every thought in my brain scatters. I don’t have a reply. I just make this pathetic little sound that says far more than I want it to. I’ve officially lost the plot.
“Phoenix,” I say his name. Maybe. Probably.
My tongue feels twisted, tied in a knot.
“Fuck, sunshine. You’re gonna ruin me sayin’ it like that.”
“Maybe you’ll come to like your name then.”
He’s still nuzzling and kissing like he’s trying to mark every inch of my skin with him.
I want him to.
There’s a needy, empty feeling I want him to fill between my legs. A growing heated ache that is driving me insane. My fingers tangle in his shirt, and I let out a whimper when his mouth sucks against that frantic flutter in my neck.
Clothes… come back to the conversation.
Fuck the conversation.
This is the conversation.
No, I need control here.
I turn my head slightly, just enough that his mouth moves somewhere slightly safer. “I have clothes at my place.”
He grasps my chin and brings me back to where he wants me. One hand moves from my hip to my thigh, inching higher until his fingers brush over that sensitive spot I’m desperate for him to touch.
“You’re wet, sunshine,” he says it quietly, but fuck, it hits like a detonation.
He drags the fabric through my folds, soaking it in my arousal, and my legs open wider around him, giving him an invitation for more.
Nic takes it. He slips under the edge of my underwear and pulls the fabric aside. The first sweep of his fingers sends a full body convulsion through me. Fuck me. I’m so sensitive I almost come from that alone.
I curl tighter around his shoulder and the headboard, anchoring myself there as he teases slow circles around my clit.
“Nic.” I hum his name as I let my head fall back. “Oh, fuck.”
I clench so hard, the sharp pull of my stitches makes me see stars. The bite of pain tangles with the pleasure he’s building, twisting together while he keeps stroking me.
“You good, sunshine?” he asks, his fingers pausing.
Absolutely the fuck not.
“Don’t stop,” I hiss.
He chuckles and pinches my clit. I let out a sound that is part-human, part-animal. “Listen to how needy you are.” His mouth moves to my ear. “But you feel any pain and we stop, sunshine, yeah?”
No, we don’t. I could bleed out on this bed and I still wouldn’t stop this.
I silence any more concern by fusing my mouth to his. My arms wrap around his neck, closing the space between us until there’s none. There’s no room to think, no doubt or hesitancy, as he rolls his tongue over mine.
My breath quickens, my gasp swallowed by his mouth as my pleasure builds. Every touch between my legs is insistent, confident, and his kiss is claiming.
Nic’s mouth never leaves mine, not even when he slips two fingers inside me. I dig my nails into his shoulders at the delicious stretch, and my whole body tenses as my pussy clamps around him, trying to pull him deeper.
My breath hitches, stuck somewhere in my chest as he presses right where I need him and a low, broken moan slips out of me.
“More,” I whimper, grinding down on his fingers until my thighs shake.
I feel the burn as he adds a third finger, filling me like he’s mapped every inch of my body and knows how make this good for me.
He scissors slowly, stretching me, coating himself in my wetness even as he keeps that slow, deliberate rhythm, pressing deeper. The way he curls his fingers inside me hits that spot that makes me see stars. Then his thumb presses to my clit and I can’t pull air into my lungs through my gasps.
“Nic. Oh, fuck. Please.”
I don’t know what I’m begging for or if my words even make sense. His mouth swallows the rest of my words as he claims mine again.
Heat pools in my belly, and everything starts to tighten in that familiar, pleasurable way. I rock down onto his hand, greedily chasing more, even though I’m not sure I can take it. Then his knuckles brush that spot inside and my vision splinters while my hips jerk unevenly.
Cries spill out of me, half crazed sounds that might be sobs or pleas—I don’t know.
“Fuck.” His voice is scraped raw, but he doesn’t let up. He presses his thumb to my clit and plunges his fingers over and over into my pussy. “Come for me, sunshine.”
My fingers grip his shirt as the release breaks open like glass shattering. My back bows, my walls fluttering and clenching so hard around his fingers I’m worried I might break him.
“Nic!” His name tears out of me too loud—I can’t help it. I don’t try to. I just let the edge rush up so I can fall over it.
It rolls through me in unrelenting waves that almost hurt. My stitches pull, but I’m too focused on the intense heat burning through me.
I collapse into his shoulder, breaths ragged and uneven. If I wasn’t sitting, my knees would have given out. His hands move to my waist, so I guess I’m not as steady as I thought.
“You okay?” he asks as I tremble against him, wrecked, soaked and ruined.
“Ask me in a minute.”
“Fuck, sunshine. You’re perfect.”
I’m far from it, but I don’t have the strength to argue with him. I’m slumped, boneless, against him like my body has forgotten how to work.
His hand strays to my side, below my stitches. “You pull anythin’?”
“Mm.”
“Keeley? I need words, baby.”
“I’m fine,” I assure him.
He studies me for a second. “That rate higher than my last kiss?”
I snort. “You’re unbelievable, but yes—significantly.”
The look he gives me is heavy and unfocused, but soft around the edges as he takes me in. “I’m not lettin’ you go. Not now that I’ve seen you come so pretty.” My face heats, but he just kisses me, like I don’t need to feel embarrassed. “You’re mine, Keeley. Mine.”
And I’ve never wanted anything more.