3. Nico
NICO
I have two simple rules in my life:
Rule number one: never start a fight I can’t finish.
Rule number two: never leave loose ends.
Somehow in less than twenty-four hours, I’ve managed to break both, and they both have to do with the woman currently sitting in my passenger seat.
I had her fucking pinned beneath mine against her shower wall ninety-one days ago, and fucked her like my life depended on it.
And somehow, Lydia Palomino fully clothed is doing more to me than her naked, wet, and dripping self.
She’s long changed out of the green dress she wore at the wedding into something more comfortable. A light cream-colored blouse and a pair of long gray sweatpants. Her makeup has been scrubbed from her face, revealing dark circles under her eyes but making her look even hotter than I remember.
My grip around the steering wheel tightens, and I push the accelerator down harder than I should, and my car engine roars as it picks up speed.
Sure, why not. Let’s add speeding to the mix. Fuck it.
But doing that means I’m not sneaking glances towards her. Every time I do, my anger burns just a little hotter, and I can’t decide if I want to reach over and wipe her clean or put my fist through the dashboard.
I memorized every curve and detail of her body with my hands and mouth–her long dark hair that I wrapped around my fist like a leash, the small mole on the back of her neck, and her heart-shaped ass that jiggled and bounced from every rough thrust.
For ninety-one long tortuous nights, I find myself dreaming about her. I’d either wake up with my dick rock hard and leaking, or my hand already pumping myself past the point of no return.
I wasn’t fucking joking when I told her at the wedding that fucking her was a mistake that never should have happened.
Because for ninety-one fucking days, I just want it to happen again.
There’s one thing that my piece of shit father was right about me: I never learn from my mistakes and I’m always eager to repeat them.
Which is why, against my better judgment even though I’m pushing almost a hundred miles an hour, I steal a glance at her and at that smear of blood on her cheek.
As fucked-up of a thought it is, seeing her with another man’s blood on her face like a mark of ownership is kind of fucking hot.
My dick starts straining painfully against my pants.
I hadn’t counted on coming back to New York and killing so damn soon, least of all a cop. But the moment I saw his fucking hands on Lydia, I acted without thinking.
“Why did you leave?” I finally strain out.
Lydia turns from staring out and looks at me.
“I thought I made it clear that I didn’t want to talk about it.”
The balls on this woman!
I drag my hand down my face. “In case you haven’t noticed by now, piccola, you’re not exactly in a position to make demands.”
“I didn’t ask you to follow me.”
“You should be thanking your lucky stars that I did. Dead cops grow teeth. And I'll have to spend favors I'd rather hoard to bury it.”
“That sounds like a you problem.” She turns her face away to stare out the window again.
“No, piccola.” I reach out, grab her by her chin, and make her look at me. “You made it an our problem the moment that cop walked into that house.”
She glares back with those emerald green eyes that I haven’t been able to get out of my head.
The moment I look into them, my blood burns hotter, my dick gets harder, and I find myself wanting to lose control as my grip around her chin tightens.
“I don’t owe you a goddamn thing,” she whispers through clenched teeth.
I respond by pressing down harder on the accelerator. Gravity shifts and presses us into the leather seats. She tries to wrench away, but I don’t let her go, and I don’t look away.
“Eyes on me.” My voice goes deadly quiet.
“Nico…” Her eyes dart away from me for a moment to look out the windshield. “Nico, the road.”
“It’ll still be there.”
“Nico!” she shrieks.
I let her go and look just in time to see a curve coming up. With a single practiced motion, I ease off the accelerator, yank the steering wheel just enough to turn without risk of flipping, and continue driving.
All while my hand continues to hold her chin in place.
“Fuck!” she screams. “You fucking psychopath!”
“Just answer my question, Lydia.” I look at her again as I stroke her chin with my thumb. “Why did you leave?”
This time, she doesn’t hesitate. “Because I had to take care of things back here.”
“What things? About my father? About me?”
One word from Lydia about what I did to my father, and every brittle thread holding the families together right now comes apart in my hands.
I can’t risk that happening.
“Personal things,” she replies. “Got nothing to do with you.”
“So what was that cop about?”
“Wrong time, wrong place, I guess.”
“Hmm.” I give her chin one final brush and release her reluctantly. “That’ll do for now.”
In the dim lights over the highway, her green eyes are furious and beautiful. “Where are you taking me?"
"Home," I say.
"I didn't agree to that."
"You didn’t agree to a lot of things, piccola. But you don’t have a choice anymore."
There’s a certain truth to that statement. But I don’t tell her the full truth, and the only place in this world I trust her to keep my secret is the one place she can never leave.
The gates swing open when my car approaches.
The drive is a quarter mile through old oaks and cobblestone rumbling under the tires. Slowly, the house rises out of the dark, low and imposing. It’s built from gray stone and dark timber. The steep gabled rooflines are stacked one behind the other.
On the west end is a square tower that my father built tall enough to watch the water and the road both at once. Ivies have dug their hooks deep in the north wall. The heavy windows with their bullet-proof glass cast soft yellow diamonds in the dark.
Beyond the east wing, past the hedges clipped into walls, the lawn falls away toward the bluffs and the black sheet of Long Island Sound.
This place was never built to look like a home, but to intimidate everyone who came close.
I watch Lydia's face as we round the fountain at the front of the house. For a single second, the fury drops like a coat sliding from her shoulders.
My housekeeper Giorgia is already waiting at the door. Her robe is cinched tight, and her gray hair is tied in a braid over one shoulder.
She doesn’t react when she sees me opening the door to let Lydia out.
She’s helped run this house since I was a boy, and she has helped bury more of my family's secrets than the bluffs have.
"You're back early." Her eyes flick to Lydia and stop for a moment on the smear of blood on her cheeks. "I'll bring up towels and something hot to your room for your guest."
"No, not my room." I keep my hand at the small of Lydia's back. "She’ll be staying in the guest room across from mine."
Giorgia holds my gaze and slips me a quick questioning look before she nods.
I steer Lydia toward the staircase, and she takes several large steps to put as much distance between me as she can.
As she ascends, the gray sweatpants tighten around her ass and it’s impossible for me to tear my eyes away from the sway of her hips.
My mouth goes dry. Three months I've had nothing of her but memory and now she's six inches in front of me climbing my own staircase with a cop's blood still drying on her skin.
My dick has been rock hard since I dragged her into my car.
I swear she’s doing this just to get a rise out of me.
As I follow her up the stairs, I want to shove her against the closest wall, bend her over the nearest surface, and wrap her dark hair around my fist while I make her scream.
When she reaches the top of the landing, she turns around with fury in her eyes. “Which way?”
“Last door on your left.”
She turns and walks down without waiting for me to catch up. When she reaches the door, she tries to push it open only to find that it’s locked.
I walk up to the door, doing my best to ignore the warmth of her body and her scent wafting into my nose. As soon as I unlock the door, she steps past me, turns around, and holds her hand out.
"Key,” she says.
I cock an amused eyebrow at her. “Excuse me?”
“You think I’m just going to let you have the key to my room?” She doesn’t back down. “I’m not an idiot.”
I step past the door and she takes an instinctive step back. "You don’t get to hide from me, piccola. Not in my house. Not after what happened. Not until I get the answers I’m looking for."
Then, as if to make my point clear, I close the door behind me.
Her chest rises and falls quickly as she keeps backing up.
One step, two steps, until her back finally hits the wall.
The distance dissolves between us, and nothing can hide the flush of pink rising up on her face.
Her light scent tastes overwhelming in the proximity, and I can feel it burying deep inside of my lungs where I’ll never dig her out.
Not that I ever want to.
Her voice is feather soft. “I’ll scream.”
My dick hardens at the way she says it. Cazzo.
“This place has heard its fair share of screams.” I shrug as I invade her space. “Nobody will lift a finger when they hear yours.”
Her mouth falls open before closing, and her pupils widen so much that the emerald green of her eyes becomes a dark forest. I can practically hear her heart thudding against her chest, and she gasps when I reach up to stroke her face.
“Did you tell anyone about what happened that night?” Heat pulses in my throat. “I crossed an ocean's worth of trouble tonight and I still don't have an answer."
The disbelief on her face would be funny if I weren't so close to losing my patience. "You think now is the time? Did you really bring me here just so you can interrogate me?"
"I want to know if the answer is still no."
"And if it isn’t?" She lifts her chin, and the fire I've been missing sends my blood boiling. "Will you kill me too?”
I step even closer until I can feel her peaking nipples brushing against me through our clothes. “I could.”
She shivers, but to her credit, she doesn’t look away.
“You know what?" her voice climbs recklessly. "Maybe I’ll scream after all. Let everyone in this house know about how you put a bullet in your own—"
My left hand–the same one that wiped away the blood from her face–grabs her by the back of her neck, and yanks her closer.
She yelps and her damning words die in her throat. The pulse in her neck goes wild under my fingers, and that flush spreading down her neck is unmistakable now.
“What’s wrong, piccola?” I breathe against her cheek. “I thought you were going to scream.”
The space disappears between our bodies–my chest to her shoulder and my thighs against her hip—and I smile when her hips rise up eagerly to meet mine. That single motion betrays her more than a thousand lying words ever can.
She can lie to me all night with her mouth, but never with her body.
“Maybe I should give you some encouragement.”
My right hand moves down past her hips, and the moment it makes contact against her thigh through her pants, she whimpers. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Then tell me to stop.”
She clenches her jaw shut. Her chest rises and falls, pushing her breasts into me with every breath.
“I thought so.”
I chuckle darkly as my hand moves up higher and higher until it settles between her legs. A wet and warm heat pulses against them. I yank her hair down to expose her throat and lave my tongue up the familiar taste of her neck.
My hand moves over the hem of her sweatpants, making contact with the soft skin of her belly, and I wait for a moment as I wait for her to say no.
But it never comes. I slide it underneath and find the thin material of her panties.
Fuck. She’s soaked.
“I haven’t even started yet.” I drag my finger over the slick thin material of her panties, and she makes a low moan of pleasure that goes straight to my cock. “And you’re already fucking soaked.”
She raises her fists to pound against my shoulders, but her hips are gyrating against my hand to seek more contact.
“You want to know what I think?”
I hook my finger under the fabric, trace her slick wetness one more time, and pause to feel her clit throb under the pad of my finger.
“I think you like it when you watch me kill.” I slip the first finger in.
Her eyes widen at the intrusion, and her pussy flutters as I push deeper inside. A soft whimper rises from her throat and I bite the shell of her ear as a second finger joins the first. “That’s why you fucked me that night when you should’ve run.”
I start to move. She shudders again, and this time, pleasure sends her body pressing into mine.
“That’s the real reason why you haven’t told a single fucking person.” I breathe against her temple, my fingers never slowing inside her. “And that’s why you aren’t telling me to stop.”
Her mouth falls open as if to dispute me, but the only sound that tumbles out is a quiet rasping gasp. Her brows furrow, but she doesn’t close her eyes as she glares at me while I finger-fuck her against the wall.
“That’s…” she chokes out.
“Don’t you even think about lying, piccola.” My fingers pump faster between her legs. “Not when you’re fucking soaking my hand right now.”
“I…” She rides my hand shamelessly, pussy fluttering around my fingers and her clit pressed against my palm. “You…”
"Go on, piccola,” I say. “Scream.”
I feel her orgasm build for a moment, and then it overwhelms her. She throws her head back, and her mouth opens for the beautiful ragged cry that I’ve been dying to hear again for ninety-one days.
But that’s when a sudden knock comes to the door.
I clamp my hand over her mouth to muffle the scream.
“Only me, piccola.” I curl my fingers and feel her clench desperately around them. Her moan breaks against my palm. "You scream for me and no one else."
Her body rocks and trembles against my hand. Her eyes roll into the back of her head. Her fists dissolve into desperate, clinging fingers against my chest, and her hips roll faster and faster as she rides out the last waves of pleasure.
When the aftershocks finally ease, I slide my hand off her mouth and ease my fingers out of her pussy. She sags against the wall, chest heaving, looking at me like she hates me and wants me to do it again in equal measure.
I bring my hand to my mouth and lick my fingers clean, savoring just how fucking sweet she tastes. She shoves me away and slides down the wall on watery knees. Her cheeks are flushed, and her chest shakes with each unsteady breath.
When she finds her voice, quivering and soft, she asks, “You got your answer, Don Nico. Now will you let me go?”
“Let you go?” I kneel down and tip her chin up at me. “When one word from you can destroy me? Never.”
She blinks as she processes what I just told her. "Then what exactly are you planning to do with me?"
“Simple, piccola.” A reckless idea takes shape in my head. "I’m going to marry you.”