24. Lydia
LYDIA
Thunder wakes me first, then Nico's arm, tightening around my waist like even asleep some part of him is still standing guard over me.
We've been at this since the dining table.
The shower, where he had me against the tile with the water gone cold around us and neither of us noticed, his mouth on my breasts until my knees gave out and he had to hold me up by the hips.
The bed after that, slower, his mouth everywhere, my thighs, my nipples, my neck, and places I didn't know could feel so good, until I begged him to just get inside me already, both of us so sweat-damp by then the sheets stuck to our backs every time we moved.
The floor at some point, I don't even remember whose idea that was, only that his cock filled me from behind while his hand worked my clit until I couldn't tell which sensation was going to break me first, my palms sliding on the hardwood from how much we'd both sweated through.
The balcony, rain soaking us both, my hands white-knuckled on the railing while he fucked me slow and deep and told me filthy, tender things against my ear. Lightning lit the whole coast in flashes below us, the rain the only thing cool enough to cut through how hot we'd both gone.
I've lost count. I'm not looking for it. My skin feels permanently damp at this point, sticky in the creases, hair stuck to the back of my neck, and I've never wanted a shower less in my life.
Now the room is hot and close, the window thrown open, rain blowing in sheets across the sill, and Nico's already sliding out from under the sheet.
"Where are you going?"
"Lemonade." He says it like it's obvious. "You've earned it."
He comes back a few minutes later with a sweating glass jug and a bowl of ice, sets both on the nightstand, and climbs onto the bed like a man with a plan.
"Nico."
"Hold still."
He drags a piece of ice down my collarbone and I gasp, half laugh, half shock, my whole body jerking away from the cold. The meltwater cuts a clean line through the sweat already gathered there.
He follows the melting trail with his mouth, sucking one nipple and then the other until they're peaked and aching, and I fist both hands in the sheet, damp under my palms from everything we've already done to it tonight.
"You're going to ruin the sheets."
"Don't care about the sheets."
The ice traces a line down between my breasts, over my stomach, and his lips follow until I'm shivering and burning at the same time. Every nerve in my body argues with itself.
He watches my face the whole time. Not the rest of me. My face, like the only thing he actually wants is to see me come apart for him.
"I just want you to feel good," he says. "That's the whole plan tonight."
"Bold plan for two in the morning."
"I've got time."
He proves it. The ice melts against my skin and his mouth follows the water down, over my stomach, lower, both of us slick and sticky with sweat and ice and lemonade by now.
He settles between my thighs and pushes them wide open with both hands. He drags one last sliver of ice through my folds, and the shock of cold against how wet and hot I already am punches a cry straight out of me.
"Nico, fuck."
He answers by licking the cold away with the flat of his tongue, slow, unhurried strokes that turn to fast, hungry ones the second I start rocking against his mouth. He fucks me with two fingers while his tongue works my clit, curling them just right until my thighs are shaking around his head.
"You taste like fucking rain and sugar," he says against me, and the vibration of his voice against my clit nearly finishes me right there.
"Don't stop talking, oh my god, don't you dare stop."
He doesn't stop, doesn't speed up either, just keeps going with a patience that undoes me faster than urgency ever could, his fingers curling deep, his tongue circling, until the words coming out of me stop being words at all.
His hands slide under me, gripping my thighs, holding me open to him, and the sound that comes out of me is embarrassing.
I don't care. The rain is louder than I am anyway.
Lightning flickers white against my closed eyelids.
He hums against me, low, satisfied, like he could stay right there all night and never once get tired of it, and the vibration of it nearly finishes me on its own.
"Nico." Half a warning, half a plea.
He doesn't slow down for either one.
"Nico, I swear to God, I'm going to come so hard."
"Let go, piccola. Come on my fucking tongue."
I do. My hips come up off the bed and he holds me there with one arm banded over my stomach and finishes what he started, and I come so hard I don't hear myself over the thunder.
I just feel it, wave after wave, his name the only word I've got left, his fingers still moving inside me until the last of it wrings out of my body, my whole body damp and shaking against the wet sheets.
He comes up my body after, grinning, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand like he just won something, sweat beaded along his hairline in the humid room.
"Smug bastard."
"Earned it."
I push him onto his back before he can get comfortable, and reach down to wrap my hand around his cock, thick and hard and leaking against my palm. I want to taste him before I do anything else tonight.
I kiss down his stomach, along the trail of dark hair leading lower, and take him in my mouth slow, watching his face the whole time. He watches me right back, just as intent, just as hungry for it. He curses under his breath and his hips jerk up before he catches himself.
"Fuck, Lydia."
I take him deeper, hollowing my cheeks, my tongue working the underside of him while my hand moves in time with my mouth.
He tastes like salt and sweat and like us, the whole taste of this endless, sticky night distilled into one place, and the sound he makes when I swallow him down further, until he brushes the back of my throat, is worth every second of my jaw already starting to ache.
His fingers slide into my hair, damp at the roots, not pulling, just resting there like he needs somewhere to put his hands.
"You're going to be the death of me," he says, voice wrecked. "Cazzo, just like that. Don't stop."
I don't stop. I work him with my mouth and my hand together until his thighs go tight under me and his breath turns ragged and short, right up to the edge. Only then do I pull off him, lips wet, and look up to watch his whole body strain toward a finish I'm not giving him yet.
"Not yet," I say. "I want you inside me when you come."
"Cazzo, Lydia." He drags me up his body by the hip, half laughing, half strained past the point of patience. "Get up here, then. Now."
I straddle him, my thighs already slick where they press against his hips, and sink down slow onto him with nothing between us still, both of us feeling exactly what that means and neither one of us saying it out loud.
He groans, hands gripping my hips hard enough to bruise, his palms sliding a little on my damp skin before he tightens his grip, and I ride him like I've got something to prove, slow at first, then faster, sweat sliding down between my breasts, his eyes locked on mine the whole time, steady and open, all of his attention right on my face.
"Look at you," he says, wrecked. "Taking my cock like you were made for it. Ride me harder, piccola. I want to feel you fall apart on top of me."
"Shut up and move with me."
He does, hips meeting mine, one hand sliding up my ribs, slick with sweat, like he's trying to hold every part of me at once, the other finding my clit and pressing hard, matching the rhythm I've set.
I brace my hands flat against his damp chest and take him deeper, faster, chasing something I already know is close, and his jaw goes tight beneath me.
"You feel that?" I say, barely words at all by now. "Nothing between us."
"I feel it." His voice comes out rough, wrecked all the way through. "Fuck, I feel every fucking inch of it. You're squeezing my cock so tight. You're going to make me come before you do."
"Don't you dare, not yet, not until I..."
The storm outside picks that exact second to crack the sky open, thunder rolling right over the top of us, and I come again with lightning white behind my eyes and his name breaking out of me into the rain-loud room, my whole body clenching around him hard enough that he curses under his breath.
He follows right after, both hands fisted against my hips, my name in his mouth like it's the only prayer he's got left, and I collapse against his chest, both of us drenched in sweat, skin sticking wherever it touches, neither of us in any hurry to peel apart.
After, I lie against his chest with the window still open, rain cooling the sweat on both of us, his fingers tracing slow circles on my back, and for the first time since I put on his ring, nothing in me is standing guard.
I just listen to him breathe under my ear, steady as anything, and let myself have this.
"Stay right there," he says, voice gone soft, softer than I've ever heard out of him. "Don't move."
"Wasn't planning on it."
His hand finds mine on his chest, and he laces our fingers together. Neither of us says anything about what that means. We don't have to. The rain says enough, easing now, the thunder rolling further out over the water, taking the worst of the storm with it.
We doze like that, tangled up together, until the storm finally breaks.
Grey light comes first, then gold, sunrise burning through the last of the clouds, the room gone soft and warm and quiet. I watch it happen against Nico's shoulder, half asleep, thinking I could stay in this exact hour forever and never once complain.
My phone rings on the nightstand.
I know that ringtone. I set it myself, months ago, for exactly one person.
Mom.