Chapter 31 #2
Instead, I slide one hand from his stomach to the center of his chest under the water and feel his heartbeat there. Steady now. Slower than when we first got in.
“You’re calming down,” I say.
“Because I’m drunk.”
“No.” I drag my thumb lightly once over his sternum. “Because I’m good at this.”
He breathes out a laugh, but it’s softer now, less guarded. “Are we back to you being comforting?”
“We never left.”
“Dangerously smug.”
“Correct.”
He turns more fully then, shifting in the water until he’s half sideways between my legs, one knee brushing mine beneath the surface, his expression opened up by steam and whisky and the intimacy of the room.
He studies my face for a long second, and for once, I let him, and I feel the full dark weight of his gaze on me.
“What are you thinking?” he asks.
I should lie.
I consider it for half a second, then decide I’m too tired and too far gone for the performance.
“That I don’t know how to be at ease either,” I say.
The confession sits between us, simple and bare.
His face changes instantly. Something in him gives, just a little. “Nikolaj…”
“No, listen.” I tighten my hold on him when he tries to turn more fully, not to stop him, just to keep him close while I say it.
“I don’t know how to sit here with you and not feel the countdown in the back of my head.
I don’t know how to be happy without waiting for a gunshot after.
I don’t know how to have something this fucking good and not look for where it’ll be taken. ”
The words come out rougher than I meant for them to. More honest too.
His fingers slide up and touch my face, just the backs of them at first, like he’s measuring the damage in me with the gentlest thing he’s got.
“You don’t have to be at ease tonight,” he says, shrugging one shoulder slightly in the water, elegant even here. Bastard. “Be restless. Be impossible. Be suspicious of every calm room on earth. Just stay in the bath with me while you do it.”
The answer is so painfully him that I laugh before I can stop myself.
“That’s not helpful.”
“It’s honest.”
“Same problem.”
“No,” he says, and his hand settles fully against my cheek now, warm and wet. “Not with us.”
I turn my head and kiss the heel of his hand. He exhales softly, and his eyes go darker. The bath shifts with him when he leans in, and the room narrows to the line of his mouth, the heat of his body, and the knowledge that we still have time, just not much.
I lower my glass to the ledge, then take his from him before he spills it trying to look at me like that.
I slide both hands to his waist beneath the water and pull him fully onto me, settling him there so he has no choice but to straddle my lap if he wants the argument to continue. He lets out a shaky breath that might’ve been a laugh if it weren’t already turning into something warmer.
“I was doing very well at being serious,” he says.
“You’re welcome.”
“That is not how welcome works.”
I kiss him before he can continue, gently, because I mean what I told myself when we got in here.
I’ll make sure he’s relaxed until he has to leave again.
I’ll do it with whisky and bad jokes, my hands and my mouth, and every bit of steadiness I can fake or feel.
Because he came to me carrying betrayal, self-doubt, and all the cracks in his structure, and I know too well what it costs him to show me those things.
The first slide of our mouths together is mostly steam and whiskey and a low hum of relief that I taste more than hear. Vincenzo’s lips are warm, his tongue slow at first as if he’s asking permission when he damn well knows he already owns me.
I palm the back of his neck, thumb brushing the short hairs at his nape, and deepen the kiss because gentleness is good, but I need him grounded, need him feeling the same weight in his bones that I do in mine.
Our teeth click; he huffs a laugh into my mouth, and the sound vibrates down my spine like a new pulse.
He shifts on my lap, knees scraping porcelain, thighs bracketing my hips under the foamy water. The move bumps our cocks together—half-hard and lazy from heat—but the jolt of contact makes him break the kiss with a sharp inhale.
The muscles across his stomach tense, slick and glistening, a bead of water trailing from his collarbone to the bruise I left under his throat earlier.
I follow it with my gaze, then with my mouth, licking the droplet before it can vanish.
He shivers for real this time, head tipping back against my knuckles.
“Relax,” I murmur against the bruise, letting my teeth graze the edge but not biting. “We’re not on a timer now.”
“That’s a filthy lie,” he says, but his voice is softer, less brittle. “There’s always a timer with us.”
“Not tonight.” I press another kiss to the side of his neck, taste salt and faint smoke. “Tonight, nobody’s storming in, bleeding out in the hall, or knocking on the door with orders. Just me and the most expensive bathtub on the Adriatic.”
“And the ugliest chandelier above us,” he mutters, tilting his head just enough to glare at the fixture. “Who the fuck designed that?”
I snort, nipping the hinge of his jaw. “Some designer with more money than taste. Stop stalling.”
“Stalling?” He looks back down at me, eyebrows up. “I thought I was providing critical commentary on interior design.”
“Critical commentary can wait.” I skim both hands under the water, fingers spreading across his lower back, finding the long slope of scar tissue that runs diagonally from spine to hip.
I rub my thumbs along it with firm pressure, the way he likes when the tension gets locked there.
“Right now, your job is to breathe. My job is to make sure you remember how.”
His eyes flutter shut as I knead down the scar, loosening the knot that always forms where muscle meets history. A sigh slips out; the first honest sign of release I’ve heard from him all evening. “Fuck, Nikolaj… don’t stop.”
I don’t. I work my fingers lower, digging into tight bands of muscle, smoothing them out. The water sloshes, surface rippling around his chest. I watch his shoulders drop another notch, see the lines around his mouth ease.
I lift my head, catch his mouth again, a longer kiss this time, slow enough we can taste all the half-melted ice from the whiskey.
His fingers find my hair, tug just the way I like, and the kiss deepens until I feel him stir, cock nudging mine, heat swelling almost in spite of us.
I pull back a fraction. “We can fuck later. Right now, I want you loose.” I drag my hand down his side, stopping at his hip. “Turn around.”
His brows knit. “Why?”
“Because I’m going to rub your back until that knot is gone, and you’re going to let me. Then we’ll get out, dry off, maybe eat something that isn’t liquid, and if you still want my cock in you after that, I’ll give it to you all night.”
He opens his mouth—probably a smartass comment—then closes it. He swivels carefully, presenting his back to me, arms draping over the rim. I pull him flush, chest to spine, legs hooking outside his, my knees bracing his.
I reach for the bottle of that ridiculous sea-salt bath oil on the ledge, squeeze a slick line into my palm, warm it, then start massaging from the base of his neck downward. The oil mixes with water, slides easily under my hands, letting me trace every aching muscle.
He groans when my thumbs dig next to his spine. “If you did this more often,” he mutters, “I might actually trust the concept of vacations.”
“Note taken.” I knead around his scapula and feel the muscle shed its tension under my thumbs. “Vacations, baths, and ugly chandeliers.”
“And no fucking timers.”
“Exactly.” I work down to his lower back, circling the old scar. Beneath the oil, my thumbs catch small ridges of memory, each a place where a blade or bullet once tried to write its own story. I press a kiss to the back of his shoulder. He sighs, melting.
Ten minutes pass like that—water cooling around us, steam fading, his breathing turning heavy and even.
When I slide my arms around his waist and pull him back to rest against my chest, he doesn’t protest. He sags, head dropping to my shoulder, eyes half-closed.
I rest my chin on his damp hair, holding him.
“Better?” I ask.
He hums. “Might survive.”
“High praise from a Vieri.”
A soft laugh vibrates through him. He turns his head, nuzzles my jaw, kisses once beneath my ear. “Thank you,” he says, so quietly I almost miss it.
“For what?”
“For making quiet feel safe.” He pauses, breath ghosting. “For treating silence like something we can keep instead of something waiting to kill us.”
The words shred what’s left of my composure in the best fucking way. I kiss his temple and hold him tighter. “You’re welcome. Now finish relaxing before I reconsider that whole slow-down plan.”
He chuckles, settling deeper against me. We stay until the water is lukewarm and our fingers prune, and when we finally climb out, we towel each other dry like idiots.
The villa still holds that strange stillness, but it no longer feels like suspicion. It feels like space we might grow into if we’re stubborn enough.
I feel at peace that neither of us has to sneak out when morning comes.