17. — ODs and ironies. #3
“And see, this is what you want,” he returned, his hands circling her arms and squeezing tight, “right? You wanted this with me—you wanted me, right?”
“You better say it back, Nico.”
He sneered. “Oh, don’t worry. I love you enough to kill the both of us, babe. I literally almost did.”
She yanked from his hold and raised her hand to hit him, because he’d said that so flippantly it felt like a fucking stab to her heart. But he caught the hand in mid-air, under the water, inches from the side of his face.
“Don’t you ever, ever, ever fucking hit me,” he hissed.
A rage like she’d never seen shadowed his face, and twisting at his mouth as he spat his next words at her.
“I’ve been getting hit my whole fucking life, and you will not be another person I try to love that hits me and then demands I give a fuck afterward. Do you hear me?”
The intensity in his stare stilled her.
She could only nod.
Nico let her hand go.
“Don’t joke,” she hiccupped through tears. “Don’t joke about it. Don’t say what happened like it’s nothing.”
“It’s not a joke. It’s proof why you should get as far away from me as you can.
You think this was scary? Wait until the next time my brother tries to murder me—it’s been happening since before I can even remember.
Maybe next time he’ll get it right, and all this shit between him and me can finally be over. ”
He sounded like him again. Even if he was mean.
“Does Narcan linger for a while, or...?” she asked, shoulders jumping with her catching breaths. “Because it kinda feels like you just said all that to hurt me.”
He pushed the wet hair out of her face and swiped at the tears she couldn’t keep from falling. “Stop fucking crying. I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m trying to make you get it. This shit doesn’t ever end with me.”
“I want to. I don’t want to cry with you—about you.
I’m supposed to be in love with you! And what are you trying to make me get?
” she asked, throwing his words back in his face while he stared down at hers.
“That people you love, who should have loved you, have hurt you so much you find ways to hurt yourself just so you don’t have to think about it? Isn’t that why we’re here?”
Now he hurt. His face said so.
“I’m still here,” Frankie semi-taunted him then. “I still love you. So, what now? What’s next?”
“Frankie—”
She tossed the next thing at him that she needed to get out before it ate her alive.
“What are you more mad about, Nico?” she asked, pushing his hands away from her. “That you can’t remember what you did with me or that you know exactly what we did just by looking at my face? Personally, I can’t decide.”
That broke his facade. She watched it crumble.
This time, she allowed his hands to find her.
His fingers curled around her jaw while his palms cupped her throat.
His bruising kiss trapped her between the tiled wall and his naked body.
She didn’t hesitate to answer his kiss back with the same unbridled adoration and desperate need that he showered upon her.
Until her crying stopped and her lips tingled. Until her jaw ached.
He kissed her over and over, tongue trapping hers in a dance that she had come to learn so well.
Then, his mouth traveled across her cheek. She sighed, happy.
“Was it okay?” he asked, then. “Was I?”
Her heart broke. “You were sweet, and funny, and good. Oh, my God, so good. It barely hurt, and I remember every second of it.”
His face found her neck where he nodded.
“Okay,” he replied, but he still sounded so broken.
“I think the molly made it better.”
“Oh, definitely did,” Nico returned, laughing a sad sound.
“And you can’t remember at all?”
He shook his head.
She wanted him to know—to remember. He would never get that back, even if she always had it, and she bet he understood that reality, too.
She turned her head, making him move away so that she could see him again. Taking the chance, she kissed him that time, wanting him to know it was all okay. They were okay.
“Tell me,” she heard him say against a flick of her tongue. “Tell me what I did to you.”
So, she did.
While he kissed a path down her body to make that new tenderness between her thighs ease, she told him every detail. Beginning to end. He watched her from down below, and she shuddered against the exploration of his mouth.
How she convinced him, naked and whispering his name. How he’d filled her to the point of pain that he promised her she could take.
And as he fucked her again against the shower wall, her legs hiked around his pumping hips, she told him the rest, too. That it had been perfect. That he let her call every shot. That he was perfect.
Her head fell back to the wall, as she shook like a leaf after an orgasm that took her breath away. He followed soon after, spilling hot and deep inside her aching body. She repeated the same thing to him that he’d told her the first time.
He remembered then. Or so she thought...she thought she saw it in his eyes when he said the words, too.
“I’ll love you for the rest of my life.”
The irony? That hurt the worst for Frankie.