10. Ava
10
Ava
In the bathroom of the hotel room, I stare into a full-length mirror. My body is black and blue and pink, my hair wet with sweat, my thighs tinged with blood. I can barely move. Everything hurts, and the hurt feels good.
Behind me, Nico finishes drawing a bath.
He picks me up and lowers me into hot, bubbly water. The heat soaks into my bones, into parts of me I didn’t even know were aching. I hiss softly as I sink down and the water seeps into my wounds.
Nico sits naked on the edge of the tub. He lathers up a washcloth, and I tell him that I can do it.
“That’s not your call,” he says, reminding me that I am still on his time and under his power. He scrubs me down at the same time as he feels me up, taking fistfuls of my aching breasts and rubbing them slowly, sensually.
My head feels like static.
Even thoughts feel too heavy to hold for long. I sink into the water and try to pretend that I’m in the most intimate spa in the world. It doesn’t work. I can’t pretend that Nico and I are strangers. I’ve felt him in the deepest parts of me. My womb aches for him, my heart heavy and overfull. He cleans every inch of me meticulously, the hands of a murderer so gentle even when his fingers are smeared with my blood.
“Was it what you were expecting?” he asks.
“It was worse. And better,” I say, avoiding his gaze.
Surprisingly, Nico doesn’t take the opportunity to gloat.
I try to tell myself there’s nothing in there to want. He’s just another possessive man who wants the same thing as everyone else, trying to grab the controls and steer my descent before I spiral into wreckage. It doesn’t hold water when Nico presses kisses on my shoulder, telling me how well I did, how perfectly I handled him.
I have a hard time looking at him, my stomach fluttering under his attention as he praises me senselessly, making me feel weak and stupid for him.
I should have believed him when he said he was going to break me.
“Tell me how you’re feeling,” he prompts again, firmly. “The truth .”
I struggle to find words for it.
“I feel like I’m falling, and I don’t have anything to grab onto,” I finally admit.
He nods, as if he understands.
He runs water through my hair, washes away the heady scent of sex with lavender soap. Once I’m clean and dried off, Nico wraps me up in one of the white robes hanging on the bathroom wall. He takes me to bed and brings me a bottle of water from the minibar, ordering me to drink it.
“You don’t have to do all this,” I mutter.
“Yeah, I do,” he says, crawling into bed to kiss the top of my head. “Nobody lets themselves be broken unless, deep down, they really want to be put back together.”
My throat works and comes up empty of words.
“I meant what I said,” he whispers into my damp hair. “It’s not just pointless sex talk. You did so well.”
The gentle words and his soft touch make me recoil inwardly.
“Don’t,” I whisper.
“Ava,” he interrupts sternly, his hands just a little too rough on my arms, giving me an anchor point. “Let me catch you.”
Time stretches out on itself. Nico holds me in his arms and showers me in praises, filthy and loving. Gradually, I feel like I’ve come back to the surface, where everything is suddenly too sharp and too loud, and Nico holds me through it all, my only life raft. I give in and curl up with him, letting him hold me.
When I’m calm, and warm, and too tired, Nico leaves me to rest.
He goes to shower while I lie in bed, warm and clean and utterly spent. A tight knot of hunger has been living in my belly for all this time, unnoticed, until Nico came and pierced it, draining all that heavy tension out of me.
The past couple days catch up to me. After my late night, and now all this, exhaustion comes fast and sudden, and within minutes, I drift off into an empty, numb sleep.
Nico mercifully lets me sleep through his precious, limited time, but eventually he wakes me with his weight against me, his cock already teasing against my aching pussy. I’m still dazed and sleepy, and we make out and touch more than we fuck. I’m too tired to mind, and Nico feels good above me, pressing me back into the mattress.
Slowly, he wakes up the fire in my belly again.
Over the next hour, Nico takes me in the bed. Slow, still waking up. Neither of us finish. He moves us to the office, where he puts me over the desk. He fucks me from behind, his hand clenched in my hair and his cock hitting hard inside me. When we first start, I think I’m too sore to orgasm, that I’m just here for his pleasure. Instead, I come twice, shuddering and screaming over the desk as Nico fucks me like an animal—insatiable and raw and perfectly him.
I squirt for the first time, making a clear little puddle on the marble floor between my shaking feet. I’m left a sobbing, aching wreck.
I don’t have time to be embarrassed.
Nico groans when he realizes the mess I’ve made for him. He hammers his cock deep in my soaked pussy and finishes hard, his low growl becoming a snarl. I shake head to toe as he holds me primed in his savage grip. I’ve barely heard him make a sound—always so intense and focused—but now he can’t help himself. My slick, dripping pussy draws it out of him, and by the way he curses, I know he didn’t expect to finish again during this session. Like it hurts him to come so many times in a single night. It makes me blush hotter with flattery instead of embarrassment.
He puts his head on my shoulder and groans softly, his hand sneaking around to rub my belly.
We fall back into bed together again, and this time, Nico’s shoulder is my pillow, and I crave all those whispers of adoration he gives me. I take them from him like a feral cat sneaking hand-fed treats, wary but unable to resist.
We drift into silence for a few minutes, hazy and tired, but my thoughts still spin. I latch onto one, one last lifeline.
“Are you doing all this just so you can get back your role in the family?”
“You think I need an excuse to want you?” he asks, so simply that I barely know what to say. He traces the bumps of my spine with his fingers. “Are you thinking about our deal?”
“No,” I lie, unconvincingly. “I just don’t see why else you’d care so much.”
“You said it yourself. Even if the marriage falls through, Sal and Marcel will find some other trick up their sleeve to fuck me over. They might not be good at much, but they have that down to a science. This deal isn’t about me. It’s about you.”
“Why?”
He glances over at me, that possessive look stirring back to life. My pussy throbs with more pain than pleasure now, the mere thought of wanting to fuck him too exhausting to even consider for more than a few seconds.
“Because I don’t want anyone else to have you.”
“You don’t know me.”
Nico laughs lowly, his tongue swiping over his lower lip.
“ Bullshit . I’ve known every part of you now. I know you’re fucked up. I know you have jagged edges. Well, so do I, and they fit with yours like puzzle pieces. You can’t tell me you don’t feel that.”
I do feel it, and that’s the whole problem. I’m not supposed to feel anything.
“I had years of my life taken from me,” Nico continues, his voice low and poisonous. “I’ve had my role in my family stripped away. I’ll be damned if I take second best when it comes to the woman and I want, and like it or not, Ava, that’s you. I only want you. You want to know why you deserve that, you take it up with God. Not me.”
My belly ties itself into a knot, my heart pounding just a little too hard.
“Now get some sleep,” he says, breaking the seriousness of the moment by tossing a pillow into my face. “I’m gonna have you again before the sun comes up.”
I take the pillow and force it into submission under my head, facing away from him just so he can’t see my smile. Nico’s body heat lures me in when I am half-asleep, and soon I give in and curl up against him, into the crook of his arm. I drift off entirely, listening to his steady breathing.
Before sunrise, Nico makes good on his word again. The sky streaks with purple as Nico wakes me up with his head between my legs, kissing me awake by the cunt. This time, he presses me up against the full window. I overlook all of Manhattan, with my bare tits pressed against the cold glass. In the early morning hours, the city is still shaded in twilight, and an audience of a million windows looks back at me.
He has me stretched out completely naked where the whole waking world can see.
He fucks me slowly, gently, his mouth on my neck and his words on my ear. I can’t take much more than that. The pain has really set in now, and every little motion is like scraping against a raw nerve. I don’t fuss at him for thrusting slow and deep inside me or reaching around to stroke my clit to offset the pain.
I lean back into him, feeling the steady jolt of his hips, the way my ass shakes with every thrust. His free hand joins mine on the window as he breathes against my ear.
“You like it, don’t you?” he breathes. “Being fucked like a lover. Like a wife .”
My belly shudders at the words.
I whine, pitchy and breathless, as he ramps up the pace.
“No,” I whimper, in a tone that says yes .
My desperation grows wild as the sky begins to lighten, white light creeping up over the edge of the buildings. The sun is on its way as Nico’s hips drive into me, putting a delicious counter-pressure on my pelvis as I grind into his hand.
“Don’t lie to me,” he says, pumping harder between my legs until they shake.
“I’m sorry,” I whine.
Nico slows again, giving me the deep, sensual lovemaking.
“Try again,” he prompts.
“I like it,” I confess, with tears in my eyes that, for the first time since Nico took me under him, have nothing to do with physical pain. “I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t .”
“That’s it, gorgeous. Give me all that fucked-up guilt. You don’t have to feel guilty for the rest of your fucking life,” he whispers. “Just blame me. It’s my fault. I made you feel this. I made you come. I didn’t give you any other fucking choice. Blame me, baby girl. I’ll take the fall.”
I stare out of the window and dread the sun. The colors keep shifting, the sand in the hourglass running thin. My hands knot into fists, sobs of pleasure tearing from my lips as my body tries to give him another orgasm.
I feel like Persephone, soon to be whisked away from Hades, unsure if it’s a blessing or a curse to be rid of him.
He turns me around and picks me up off the ground to fuck me against the window properly, my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck. My jaw clenches, pleasure cutting deep through my already spent, exhausted core.
He hits a place deep inside me that makes me see stars, giving me more of his cock than he ever dared before. My legs clamp around his waist, back arching. He’s never done it like this—slow, methodical—and I feel the pleasure building and building, refusing to break until I scream with it.
And I do scream, just like he said.
When orange light finally breaks across the sky, Nico and I stand finished, gasping against each other’s bodies and holding each other up. My feet tingle, my knees wobbling. When it’s clear my legs aren’t going to hold me much longer, Nico gathers his strength first and puts me on the bed.
He doesn’t come to cuddle this time. He sits down on the end of the bed and gives me space. I feel his absence as sharply as I usually feel his presence.
“Don’t marry him,” Nico says in the sudden, cold silence between us. With sunlight creeping across the floor, the mood has shifted. He sits on the edge of the bed, staring out at the city. “I don’t care what the fuck they promised you. Don’t marry him. It’s not worth it. Tell me what you want. Whatever it is they said you’d get. I’ll make it happen.”
I can’t say it. It feels silly now, like I’m a kid asking to sit with the adults at the dinner table.
“My time’s up,” I say softly. “I don’t have to answer you.”
He glances over at me. If I squint, I can almost see a shadow of disappointment on his face. It makes me feel guilty enough to confess.
“I wanted a job,” I finally say. “Something within the family. Something real.”
“Like what?”
I shrug pathetically.
“ That’s why you’re getting married?” he asks. “So that Sal and Marcel can boss you around worse than they already do now? So they can make up some fake little role to fill your time and keep you complacent, just like they’re trying to do with me?”
“I’m getting married because you decided to threaten my brother, thank you very much. Now I just happen to benefit from it. At least I’d have a purpose,” I shoot back, temper spiking, as he pretends to understand anything about my choices.
“Your purpose is going to be pushing out that bastard’s babies,” Nico says lowly.
“And what should I do with my life instead, Nico? Push out yours?” I ask, finding just enough strength to get in his face.
“Back up,” he warns me darkly, “before I violate my own fucking agreement.”
I didn’t expect that to set him off so much.
I didn’t expect it to set me off that much, either, as my body revolts when he stands suddenly and disappears into the bathroom instead of taking me by the hair and making me apologize with his cock. I hear the shower start.
It finally sinks in that I’m free to go. My time is up. I have every right to walk out of here now and go home. I don’t. I glare at the bathroom door, my head spinning.
Is that what he really wants? Did I accidentally speak the truth?
Even exhausted and raw, my belly tries to feel something over that, clenching hard with the insistence I could go just one more time . Just for him. I glare at the closed shower door, ignoring the second wave of heat burning through my belly for him.
All at once, I realize Nico did everything he promised he was going to do to me.
Every last thing, until I am so twisted up inside, it hurts to feel.
I don’t remember falling asleep, or Nico joining me, but I wake up just long enough to hear him on the phone with the front desk, telling them to fuck off and charge him for a second day. If anyone had any objections about that, it’s cut off by Nico slamming the phone down.
I sleep like the dead.
It’s well into the day when I finally wake up and take in the disaster, like the sun rising over a storm-ravaged town. My body is stiff, my dress in tatters on the hotel floor. I limp through the hotel room in a haze. I wander through every room, dazed and looking for Nico. He’s gone.
I get my phone, where I have a single text waiting from him:
Stay.
Being commanded like a dog really shouldn’t make me smile.
I wonder at the odds of Nico just leaving me here to find my own way home with nothing but a hotel bathrobe.
Feeling bold, I flip to the camera on my phone. The marks Nico left on me have darkened overnight, turned an array of dark, shimmering colors, like oil in the sunlight. I open up the front of the robe, angling the camera as I snap a picture of my naked body. My thumb hovers, but finally, I send it to him and immediately toss the phone away from me.
He’s back in fifteen minutes, a little out of breath. He’s seemingly recovered, all that strong physique not just for show, while I’m still working on not whimpering when I walk. Annoying.
He has something in his arms, some kind of clothes hidden in a designer bag, but before I can even ask him what it is, he throws it aside and marches right toward me.
I hold my ground.
He stops an inch away from me, the invisible barrier of our agreement still between us.
“Don’t play games with me, girl,” he warns me lowly.
“You started them. Don’t play games you can’t win,” I challenge him right back.
I see him wrestling with his urge to put his hands on me. I revel in his uncertainty for a few moments, milking it for everything I can—and then have mercy on him, bringing his hands to my waist as he pulls us body to body.
“Tell me I was right,” he says lowly. “Tell me you don’t want to marry him. I want to hear you say it.”
“You were right,” I whisper back, “I don’t want to marry him.”
Before Nico can catch me in another kiss, I hold him back and look him in the eyes.
“But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to.”
He stares at me, bewildered. His hands start to fall away, but I grab them again, desperate for him to hear me.
“You act like this is all my choice, but it’s not. It’s your choice, too. You could back off. You could leave Marcel alone, take whatever offer Sal makes you. If you want me so goddamn bad, all you have to do is pick me over this ridiculous vendetta.”
I feel Nico’s answer in the cold air that creeps between us before he even speaks.
“I can’t do that,” he finally says.
“You can’t even say that and look me in the eye,” I scoff. Disappointment lands like an arrow in my chest. I step back away from him. “Well, I can’t do this. I made a deal, Nico. With Salvatore. And I’m not letting you use me against Marcel. You proved your point last night. Congratulations. You were right, if that matters so much to you. But all you’ve done is manage to make this all just a little bit worse for me.”
He doesn’t answer me.
He drops the bag of clothes at my feet—it’s just enough to get me home, a simple tank top and pants, with a leather jacket with a collar that zips high on the throat to hide the love bites all over me.
I dress, trying not to feel guilty. It’s always the smarter choice to resist the devil on your shoulder—but that doesn’t mean it’s the easier one.
On the way home, Nico says only one thing to me the entire time:
“You’re not the one who died, you know.”