Chapter 30 #3
“No, but I’ve always wanted them. I could never afford it. Or, well, I couldn’t afford for it to be done right, and I need it to be perfect. The first one I plan to get is my dad, mom, and sister’s names, in their own handwriting.”
He pauses, considering his words. “You still have samples of their writing?”
“My dad wrote me letters when he was deployed. I have some letters my mom and dad wrote to each other when they first started dating, a birthday card from my mom, and a drawing Rosie made me.”
“That would make a good tattoo,” he says. “A part of them to keep with you.”
The question forms in my head—could you do it?—but I catch it before accidentally saying it. I can’t ask him that. I don’t even know if we’re friends yet.
“Where would you put it?” His voice drops, and his voice rumbles down my neck, along my breasts, making them ache.
I struggle for words. “My inner arm, maybe?”
His hand trails up toward my elbow, fingers tracing a line through my hoodie to the tender skin on the inside of my arm. He lets his hand drop, completely oblivious to the fire his fingers have left in their wake.
“Here?” he asks.
A powerful tremor courses through me and I close my eyes. Okay, he can’t be that oblivious. “Yeah. There.”
Every sound around us fades. The hum of the refrigerator, the barely perceptible scratching noise, the ticking clock on the wall—it all goes away until it’s just Nico and me in this bubble of quiet that feels fragile enough to shatter if I say anything wrong.
I can’t take it anymore.
I open my eyes and push off the counter, toward him.
Nico rears back, taking hold of my arm to keep me at bay. “Eden, stop. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
In any other circumstance, this rejection would make me wish I were dead and I’d never talk to the man again out of pure shame, but I want this so badly that I keep pushing.
“Pretty sure I do,” I say.
“It’s the ectoplasm.” His grip on my arm tightens. “I know what you’re feeling, but you’re in no condition to consent to anything.”
“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t consent to,” I snap, craning my neck to stay looking up at him. “Are you telling me you don’t have control of yourself?”
“I… have control.” His voice comes out thick.
“I want you,” I say simply, my tongue feeling heavy. All of me feels heavy. Especially where his hand is on me. “So much I can’t think about anything else.”
The blush spreading across his face is such a stark contrast to his usual pale complexion that it’s impossible to miss. “If you knew me, you wouldn’t want me.”
“I would,” I say. “I want to know you. So badly, you have no idea.”
His throat works as he swallows, jaw clenching and unclenching like he’s fighting something inside himself. Oh God, what if I’m Griffin in this situation? What if Nico’s struggling with a general want, and I’m just the closest, willing person to him?
How can I be so aware of what I’m doing, but physically unable to stop?
“Do you want me?” I ask.
His eyes look pained. But then his gaze drops to my mouth, and it darkens. “Shit, Eden, you have no idea how much.”
His voice hooks under my ribcage and tugs me closer. It’s like there’s a weighted blanket draped over me, pushing me into the ground and making everything feel hard to move.
“I know I’m coming on strong,” I say quietly. “If I’m reading this wrong, just tell me, and I’ll—”
His hand comes up to hold my chin, his thumb pressing against my bottom lip with enough pressure to make my breath snag.
“Eden,” he says in a low voice. “For once in your life, close your fucking mouth.”
I close my mouth.
The pulses building between my legs are growing stronger, more forceful, until each one shoots straight through my core.
The ectoplasm may be amplifying things, but underneath that chemical amplification is something that’s purely mine.
This desperate, aching need for him that’s been building since the moment he crouched in front of me in that parking lot and told me I was okay.
I grip the front of his sweatshirt with both hands and pull him down toward me, crushing his mouth to mine.
He tenses, but he doesn’t pull away. His lips are pillowy and perfectly soft. Way softer than I was expecting. The rest of him is all hard edges—most of the time, he looks like he’s carved out of granite—but not his mouth.
For a second, he’s completely still. Then his other hand comes up to cup my face, and he kisses me.
Nico kisses me.
It feels like every cell in my body just let out a collective sigh. Yes.
My lips move languidly, really taking my time so I can enjoy the feeling of his mouth against mine. His fingers slide into my hair, and I’m pretty sure my brain has melted and is dripping out of my ears because nothing exists anymore beyond my body and his.
I climb onto the counter behind me, holding his face with one hand to make sure he doesn’t think I’m trying to move away.
He steps closer. His strong hands wrap around my hips so tightly I can feel each individual fingertip, and the feeling of him holding me is so what I needed that I’ve never been so turned on in my entire life.
I tease his lips open with my tongue and arch into him, pressing my chest flush against his until there’s literally no space left between us.
More. I need more.
I wrap my legs around his waist, pulling him between my thighs. The friction makes us both gasp, and suddenly his mouth isn’t so gentle anymore.
He kisses me like he’s been starving for it, hard and urgent and completely undone, like he can’t get enough fast enough. I kiss him back just as hard. His teeth catch my bottom lip, and when his tongue sweeps into my mouth, I taste ice cream and salt and something else uniquely him.
His hand slips under the bottom of my sweatshirt, diving clean under the fabric and sliding up my back, his fingers splayed wide. There’s too much fabric between us.
I grip his hoodie, breaking the kiss just long enough to yank it over his head. Then we’re kissing again.
“Eden,” he groans. I’ve never loved the sound of my name more. “Eden, please, tell me to stop.” He mumbles the words against my lips without pulling away, like our mouths are magnets that can’t bear to be apart even for a second.
“Don’t you dare,” I say.
I lift my arms and he rips away my sweatshirt so fast that the fabric scratches my skin, quickly followed by my T-shirt.
I’m suddenly in just my bra and the air is cold, but I don’t care because Nico’s mouth is on mine again and his hands are on me, starting a fire every place they touch skin.
He fumbles to unclasp my bra. Then that falls away, too.
He doesn’t stop to look at me, doesn’t even open his eyes, only kisses me faster.
The calluses on his hands make me moan as they skim over my hard nipples and circle the tops of my breasts before clasping around them, hard.
The pressure makes stars burst behind my eyelids, and my toes curl in my socks.
I’m going to die. I’m actually going to die right here in this kitchen, and it’ll be a good way to go.
He tears his lips from my mouth to my neck, and my head falls back as his lips move down my jaw, down my throat, his teeth scraping against the sensitive skin there.
The pulsing between my legs has become unbearable, and when he grinds against me, I moan so loudly that I wish I could swallow the sound.
I reach to untie the drawstring of his sweatpants. I need him out of them. Need to know if he wants this as badly as I do. Based on what I can feel pressing against my thigh, the answer is yes.
I slip my hand inside his waistband, palming him through his boxers.
His hand catches my wrist. He pulls away enough to break the kiss, and the world around me comes to a crashing halt.
I actually whimper at the loss of contact. His forehead rests against mine, his fingers still twisted in my hair. I can feel him trembling. I am, too.
I open my eyes to find panic written all over his face.
I lean back enough to look up at him fully, confused. His pupils are blown so wide there’s barely any green left, and he’s breathing just as hard as I am.
“Nico?” I sound like I just got off the treadmill. “Are you okay?” I’m hit by the sudden realization that this is exactly what Griffin asked me in the gym after I pulled away, and I feel ill.
Nico says nothing. Just stares at me like he’s trying to solve a math problem.
I’m opening my mouth to ask again when his eyes lock onto something above my head. Any want that might remain drains out of his face, replaced by something cold and sharp and so angry it makes me flinch.
I glance over my shoulder at the kitchen cabinet mounted on the wall behind my head, expecting to see a ghost, or maybe Griffin with a baseball bat, because that’s the only thing I can think of that would cause that reaction, but there’s nothing.
“What—” I start, but Nico has already dropped his hands from me. He wrenches his shirt back on inside out and shoves the ice cream back in the freezer with the energy of someone who just remembered they left their kid at a gas station forty miles back. “Nico, what did you see?”
He storms out of the kitchen.