16. Nora #2
My chest tightens unexpectedly. The rain outside grows heavier again, drumming against the roof while we kneel on plastic tarp surrounded by paint cans and brushes and pieces of a room still half unfinished.
“You barely knew me,” I say.
“That’s the problem.”
I don’t answer.
He exhales softly through his nose before leaning back onto one hand. “You disappeared after that night. Completely. No trail. No explanation. Nothing. Then suddenly you walk back into town with a five-year-old kid and look at us like you aren’t sure whether we’re safe.”
“I still don’t know if you are,” I admit.
He nods once like he expected that answer. “Fair.”
“But Paxton likes you.”
That smile returns faintly. Smaller this time though. “Yeah, we all know that’s our saving grace here and we’re okay with that for now.”
“And I don’t understand why it feels so easy around you three.” The confession leaves before I can stop it. “That should probably concern me more than it does.”
Viper studies me quietly for a long second. “You wanna know something fucked up?”
“Probably not.”
“I think about that too.”
I blink and he keeps talking. His voice stays calm, almost conversational, but there’s something rougher underneath it now.
“Because you should hate this. Us. Everything connected to that night. Instead you let us build furniture in your house and buy your kid ice cream and repaint his bedroom.”
“I didn’t ask for most of that.”
“No.” His mouth curves slightly. “But you didn’t stop us either.”
The room suddenly feels warmer than it did ten minutes ago.
I stand too fast just to create space between us. “I need another brush.”
“You absolutely do not.”
“I do actually.”
“Nora.”
I move toward the supplies anyway. He catches my wrist before I get far. The contact burns immediately. I freeze and Viper looks down at his hand around my wrist like he feels it too. Slowly, carefully, his eyes lift back to mine.
“I’m trying really hard here,” he says quietly.
“To do what?”
“Pretend I don’t think about you constantly.”
My stomach twists hard enough to irritate me. I should pull away. Instead I stay there staring at him while rain pounds the roof overhead and paint dries on the walls around us.
“You barely know me,” I whisper.
“That’s part of the allure. How many times do I have to tell you I want to know everything about you?”
Something hot and reckless sparks low in my chest. Maybe it’s loneliness. Maybe it’s the fact that I haven’t been looked at like this in years, not since them. Viper’s thumb shifts once against the inside of my wrist. It’s a tiny movement, but it has a devastating effect.
“I’ve been trying not to push you,” he says. “We all have, but they’re better at this shit than me. Blade does patient better than me. Stryker does restraint better than me. But I’m telling you right now, sweetheart, I’m getting real fucking tired of pretending I don’t want you.”
The air leaves my lungs unevenly. His eyes flick briefly toward my mouth before returning to mine. Still giving me space to stop this. That somehow destroys my remaining self-control more than pressure would have. I grab the front of his shirt and kiss him first, but his reaction is immediate.
One second he’s still holding himself back and the next his free hand is at my waist pulling me flush against him. Hard enough that the paint tray rattles beside us. His mouth moves against mine rougher than Blade’s had been, less careful, less patient. It feels reckless immediately.
Like both of us already know this is a terrible idea and do not care.
“Nora,” he mutters against my mouth like he’s halfway between warning and disbelief.
I kiss him again before he can finish whatever he was going to say. That finally snaps the last thread holding him back.
His hand slides into my paint-streaked hair while mine fist harder in his shirt. Somewhere in the middle of us stumbling backward, I start laughing breathlessly because the plastic tarp under our feet keeps sliding across the floor.
“You’re laughing?” he asks against my mouth.
“The bed is literally covered in plastic.”
He glances once toward the mattress in the middle of the room wrapped in clear protective sheeting before looking back at me.
Then he laughs too.
“Jesus Christ,” he mutters. “This is probably the trashiest thing I’ve ever done.”
I cock my head before I grin and respond, “I’ve definitely done trashier things.”
He laughs disbelievingly before he’s lifting me onto the edge of the plastic-covered mattress and the tarp crackles loudly underneath us both.
Then neither of us cares anymore. My legs wrap around his waist naturally while he kisses me deeper.
His hands slide down my sides and over my hips with a kind of impatient certainty that makes my whole body feel hotter.
His thumb hooks under my shirt hem just below my navel and my body lifts automatically into the touch.
“You’re still thinking too much,” he says quietly while tugging my shirt over my head.
“I’m not.”
“Yeah, you are.”
I would argue, but I can’t, because he’s already shifting downward to kiss the skin just below my ear and my thought process dissolves into static. His mouth moves along my jaw, then down the line of my throat, pausing once against my pulse point, like he’s measuring how fast my heart is beating.
“You’re so loud sometimes when you’re quiet,” he murmurs against my skin.
My hands slide into his hair. “You talk too much.”
“Only until I find something better to do with my mouth.”
That should be corny. Coming from him, though, it sounds less like a line and more like a promise. He unbuttons my jeans efficiently while I watch him. His fingers brush against my stomach and my muscles tighten involuntarily.
“Relax,” he says.
“I am relaxed.”
He pulls my jeans down past my knees and the denim drags awkwardly over my boots before giving up. I kick them the rest of the way off while he watches me with an expression I’ve never seen on him before. Less teasing. More honest.
“Now you,” I demand before I can stop myself.
His smile returns faintly. “Bossy.”
“You started it.”
“I definitely did.”
He stands long enough to tug off his own shirt and the plastic on the mattress crinkles under me as I shift to get a better view. Not subtle at all. Viper notices immediately because of course he does.
“Eyes up here, sweetheart.”
“Shut up.”
He laughs again before leaning over me, bracing one hand beside my head while the other slides down my stomach and between my thighs. The first touch of his fingers against me is electric. I arch up into it and he kisses me again, deeper this time, more possessive.
“Still too much thinking,” he mutters against my mouth, one finger sliding inside me.
I gasp and dig my nails into his shoulder.
“Better,” he says.
He works me with an unhurried expertise that should probably annoy me, but instead just makes me more desperate. The room feels smaller suddenly. Hotter. The rain outside fades into the background while the only sounds are the crinkle of plastic and my own breathing growing ragged.
“Viper,” I breathe out when he adds another finger.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t stop.”
His thumb circles my clit while his fingers curl inside me just right and my whole body goes taut like a bowstring.
He watches me while I come apart under his hands, his expression focused and intense in a way that feels more intimate than the kiss that started this.
Everything bowls over inside of me and I come with a strangled cry.
“Good,” he says quietly when I finally sag back against the plastic-covered mattress.
My brain is still fuzzy when he moves between my legs, pushing my knees wider with his own.
He fumbles with a condom he pulls from his wallet and the absurdity of it almost makes me laugh again.
Six years. All this tension. And here we are in my childhood bedroom during a rainstorm with paint drying on the walls and a five-year-old asleep upstairs.
Then he pushes into me and every coherent thought I have evaporates.
He fills me completely, stretching me in a way that borders on too much but never quite crosses the line. His breath hitches against my neck and for a second I feel the same raw vulnerability in him that I’ve been trying to ignore in myself all evening.
“You okay?” he asks, his voice strained.
I nod and wrap my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper. “Move.”
He doesn’t need to be told twice.
The first thrust is hard enough to make the plastic under us slide violently across the mattress. We both laugh breathlessly before he finds a rhythm that’s less frantic but no less intense. His hands grip my hips hard enough to leave delicious bruises as he drives into me again and again.
I’ve always been a quiet person, but if I thought that six years of distance would change my body's reaction to any of these men, I was sorely mistaken. And right now, I find myself once again making sounds I didn’t know I could make.
Whimpers and gasps and breathy moans that match the pounding rhythm of the rain outside.
He seems to like it, his movements growing more forceful each time I make a noise.
“Let go, sweetheart,” he says, his voice rough with exertion. “Just this once.”
And I do.
I stop thinking about the consequences of this or the complicated web of history connecting us. I stop analyzing and planning and being careful. I just feel him inside me and the heat of his skin against mine and the overwhelming pleasure building between us again.
When I come this time, it’s with a force that scares me a little.
My whole body clenches around him and my back arches off the mattress as I cry out something that might be his name or might just be a sound.
He follows right after me, his own release shuddering through him as he buries his face against my neck.
We stay like that for a long time afterwards, tangled together on the plastic-wrapped mattress while our breathing slowly returns to normal.
And then he’s moving, wiping the hair from my face, and sitting up to grab the old comforter I dragged in from my room earlier for Paxton to sit and color on.
He wraps it around me and then settles next to me.
The room feels strangely quiet. The rain softened sometime during the last hour, leaving only occasional water tapping against the gutters outside.
I sit near the headboard my hair is surely a disaster. There’s teal paint smeared across my thigh. Viper settles to lay down staring up at the ceiling with one arm folded behind his head while the other rests over his stomach. The plastic under the blankets crackles every time either of us moves.
“I cannot believe we did that on what is going to be my child’s bed,” I mutter.
“To be fair, it was technically your childhood bed first.”
“That somehow does not help.”
“It helps me.”
I shake my head while trying not to smile again. The room smells like paint and sweat and rain. Half the walls still need another coat tomorrow. One roller sits abandoned upside down on the tarp near the closet.
Viper turns his head toward me after a while. “You regret it?”
The question stays casual, but I hear the carefulness under it. I think about lying for half a second.
Then I sigh quietly. “No.”
His shoulders loosen slightly against the mattress.
“I probably should,” I add.
“Probably.”
I look over at him. “You agreeing with me feels rude.”
“I’m trying honesty tonight. Thought I’d test it out.”
“That sounds temporary.”
“Very.”
Silence settles again after that. Then Viper speaks again without looking at me.
“Sometimes I think this might be it for me.”
I frown slightly. “What?”
He stares at the ceiling another second before answering. “Kids.”
My stomach tightens instantly.
“I spent a long time assuming it wasn’t happening,” he says quietly. “After I was injured a few years ago.”
I blink toward him. He still isn’t looking at me now.
“Doctors said maybe,” he continues. “Which usually means no. Eventually I just got used to the idea.” He huffs out a faint laugh without humor. “Then Paxton shows up.”
Something complicated shifts across his face finally when he glances toward me again.
“And now I keep thinking, maybe, he’s my only shot.”
The warmth drains out of me so fast it almost feels physical because of how vulnerable that sounded.
Because, suddenly, this stops feeling reckless and temporary and easy.
Now it feels important. Dangerously important.
I pull the blanket tighter around myself automatically while my brain starts scrambling for distance.
Viper notices immediately. Of course he does.
“Nora.”
“I should check on Paxton.”
His expression changes slightly, not to anger, but something far worse. Understanding. I climb off the bed too quickly and nearly trip over the tarp in the process. Heat floods my face as I grab my clothes from the floor.
“Nora,” he says again quieter this time.
“I just need to?—”
“You don’t gotta explain.”
That somehow makes it worse.
I pull my shirt back on with shaking fingers before avoiding his eyes entirely. “It’s late.”
“Yeah.”
“I should clean up.”
“Okay.”
The room suddenly feels way too small and intimate and I feel far too aware. Viper sits up slowly on the mattress, while I shove my hair into a loose knot with unsteady hands.
“I didn’t say it to pressure you,” he says finally.
“I know.”
“I just…” He exhales quietly. “Forget it.”
I nod too fast. Coward. And it’s true because he handed me something real and my first instinct was retreat. I hate that about myself sometimes.
“I’m gonna head out,” he says after a minute.
I nod again. Neither of us says much after that.
He dresses quietly, while I pretend to organize paint supplies that absolutely do not need organizing right now. The distance between us grows with every passing second, until it feels strange compared to an hour ago.
By the time he reaches the doorway, my chest hurts for reasons I do not fully want to unpack. Viper pauses there briefly before looking back at me.
“Night, Nora.”
“Goodnight, Viper.”
He hesitates, “My real name’s Ashton by the way.”
Then he leaves the room and a few moments later I hear the front door shut downstairs.
I stand alone in the half-painted bedroom, staring at the walls we finished together, while guilt curls slowly in my stomach. Because somewhere between the paint and the flirting and the way he looked at Paxton earlier tonight, something shifted.
And I think I just handled it really damn terribly.