16. Nikolaus #2
The moment feels infinite. But at some point, his hand finds my wrist, and he tugs me down until our faces are level. We both blink in the dim light, and for a second I see myself mirrored in the watery depths of his eyes—tired, hungry, desperate to be good at this.
I’m shocked as Charlie kisses me first—soft, slow, hardly even a kiss at first. Just a brush of mouths, a flutter.
Like he’s testing the boundary between wanting and being allowed.
It’s not the way I’m used to kissing—no hunger, no opening for teeth.
He’s trembling, so faintly it would be invisible if he weren’t pressed so close.
I hold his jaw in my hand and tilt his face up, and he lets me, always lets me, eyes closed, and lashes clumped together from some earlier wetness.
He tastes like salt. I taste the fear, and the hope that’s always been its shadow. I try to take both in, swallow them gently, and replace them with something better.
I kiss him, and then again, until the shaking in his limbs becomes a kind of vibration, a frequency that only I can hear. When he opens his mouth for me, I deepen the kiss, finally, and his fingers dig into my shirt, hard enough to hurt if I wasn’t so intent on the way he’s giving in.
Eventually, he pulls back, panting, and presses his forehead to mine. Our noses bump, awkward and so real it’s almost too much. He whispers, “Don’t go anywhere,” even though I haven’t moved.
I touch his cheek, trace the orbit of his eye with my thumb. “I’m not going anywhere.”
And then he’s kissing me again, frantic now, like something urgent has come loose inside him. His hand fumbles at the back of my neck, clutching at my collar.
His teeth scrape my jaw, then my neck, the soft edge of a bite that never quite lands, and I have to close my eyes because the need that seizes me is almost too much.
I have no idea what’s gotten into my baby, but hell if I let it go to waste.
I flip us and pin him to the couch. His hands fist in my hair. He arches up into me, and for a second I forget everything—the doctor, work, the world beyond this room. There is only the rain, the heat from the fire, and Charlie’s desperate, whispered “Please.”
He says it again, shuddering, and I groan.
I want to give him everything, all at once—my mouth, my hands, my certainty, the safety of being needed and known.
I bite his shoulder, gentle but possessive, and he gasps, fingers digging into my shirt. “Niko,” he says, a broken syllable, and then, softer, “Daddy.”
Time freezes.
My body reacts so violently it’s a goddamn miracle I don’t finish in my pants, right then and there.
I almost do. The word detonates inside my skull, echoing off the walls of old wounds and fantasies I’d never let out in daylight.
Maybe I make a sound—a grunt, a gasp, something animal—because Charlie’s eyes are suddenly wide and terrified, and he tries to scramble away.
I pin him, hard, chest to chest. “Say it again,” I growl.
He shakes his head, mortified. “I didn’t—I shouldn’t have—”
I kiss him, savage and deep, stifling whatever apology he’s about to spit out. I taste a sweetness in him that I know will kill me someday. And when it does, I will gladly accept my death. I bite his lower lip and pull back just enough to stare him down.
“Say it.”
He blinks, eyes shining, lips bruised and parted. “Daddy,” he says, barely a whisper.
I nearly lose control.
I grab the back of his neck and squeeze, not hard enough to hurt, but so he knows he’s not going anywhere. “Again.”
He stares at my mouth like he’s too scared to look in my eyes. “Daddy—” and this time he whimpers it, like begging for something he’s not allowed to want.
The sound is a razor blade dragged down my spine. I want him so bad I can’t see straight.
I get his shirt off in one move, not caring if I tear it; I’ll just buy him five more.
His chest heaves, and his arms go straight up, like a kid waiting to be scooped.
For a moment, he’s trembling, not with fear, but in that way bodies do right before they let something happen to them.
His skin is radiantly soft, and all I want to do is run my hands over every inch of him until he believes he’s something to be fucking worshiped.
I drag my palm down his chest, pinning him with the weight of my hips. He’s hard already—incredibly, wonderfully hard, straining against the fabric of his pants. I let my fingers drift over his stomach, watching it flinch beneath my touch.
“Good boy,” I tell him, and watch his pupils blow out. He tries to hide his face, but I’m not letting him get away with it.
He shakes his head, breath hitching, so I grab his chin and force him to look at me. “Say it again.”
He bites his lip. “Daddy—” It’s louder this time, but still the ghost of a sound. I want to rip it out of him, make him cry it, scream it, so the whole of Manhattan wonders what kind of unholy thing is happening in here.