21. — her choice.
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Lower Manhattan, New York
Nico, Greenwich Village
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Almost four weeks later...
“I can’t believe,” Nico grunted out, fucking Frankie through every word, “that you seriously thought I would care.”
“Oh, my God, right here,” she mumbled against the lips he pressed to hers.
Her hips, tilting into him, and her legs, pulled high in the bends of his arms, sought the rhythm of his.
Until he held her down to the bed and started grinding every one of those thrusts hard against her pulsing pussy. “S-shit, okay, that.”
He kissed her again, knowing she found the taste of herself on the tongue that flicked out to find his before her breaths changed without warning. Her legs shuddered the tighter she tried to squeeze against his hold.
“I don’t give a fuck if your waxed or trimmed, or nothing, Frankie,” he told her, making sure she knew he hadn’t let go of what she said earlier when he woke her up between her thighs.
His flight came in red eye, but she awoke long enough to curl her entire body into his.
He fell asleep before he even took his jacket off.
Three days earlier than he planned. “I like pussy every fucking way I can get it.”
Her cute moment of embarrassment when he woke her up, already sucking on her clit, had better be the last thing on her mind at this point.
And by the looks of it, it was. Something hotter flashed in her eyes.
At the same time, she came. Her moans broke into a gasp from him leaving her body the second he felt her pussy contract hard around him; he saw the spark of jealousy as she realized what he said.
He’d take care of that in a minute. It made his dick harder.
Eating the orgasm out of her, drop by drop, was his personal apology for the way he’d posed his preference for the female anatomy. He could have specified hers, but...
He bet how she fucked him next would make up for that, and make sure he never made the mistake again.
Panting into the palms of her shaking hands, Nico kissed a wet path up Frankie’s quivering body. He waited for her to stop hiding under her hands and look at him the closer he came. At her chin, he kissed, sucking gently before she lifted her hands a little to peek at him.
“Do you know why you shouldn’t be jealous?”
She shook her head.
He grinned wickedly. “Even though it’s the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”
Especially when those hands of hers dropped between them. She found him with both, stroking just tight enough to make his next words ache a little on the way out.
“Because you think anybody compares to what it feels like when I fuck you,” he told her, dotting kisses across her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose as he spoke, “like you’re not the best lay I’ve ever had and the last woman I will ever fuck from now ‘til I’m dead.”
She stopped stroking him then, shoving at his chest to force him against the bed. She climbed on top, pulling her sheet around her body as she went before settling down on him all at once. Tight and wet, she consumed him.
It took his breath away. So did her nails digging into his chest.
He still managed to speak, because he wasn’t fucking done. Even if the way she rode him, a steady beat that made it hard to think while he grabbed her hips and watched the show, took his breath away.
“Only one of us seems to know these things,” he said, husky and between catching breaths. “Like the way you never wonder if how we’re fucking is bad, you just take it, fuck me back, and love it like I do; like you’re mine.”
Her breath hitched. “Aren’t I?”
“Like you’re made for me.”
He held her hips tight, letting his fingers bite into the curve of her flesh, and finally starting to fuck her back. It was a dangerous game for him to play, because he was sure to blow a lot faster if he helped, but he could see what edged her trembling lips and hooded eyes.
She’d come again. He wanted it.
“Then why do you like it so much?” she whispered up above.
“It’s hot.”
“Why?”
She punctured the question with a grinding roll of her hips against his body.
He couldn’t even be ashamed of the reason, the truth, that came out of his mouth as she inched him closer to losing his load.
Her being on top always did it for him. He liked how she looked doing it. How she used him to get off.
“Because it means there’s a part of you that somehow thinks you’re not worthy of me, like I’m too good for you. Like I don’t already know that you’re mine—that I’m yours.”
“Oh, my God, Nico,” she mumbled, head and hair tumbling back.
He fucked her through the orgasm, barely holding back his own.
He fully intended to get her on her back for that, so he could get every inch of his body that he could as close to hers.
Nothing felt better as he came and he could feel how she just folded into what he gave her, and he kissed her all the while.
And then a shriek cracked their bubble of bliss.
He yelled, too. Frankie squeaked atop him like a mouse.
“So, we’re way past the not having sex part of this whole thing, huh?” came a familiar voice.
Frankie’s eyes snapped to Nico while his heart thundered. Humiliation colored Frankie’s cheeks and he felt his own doing the same, but he did what he had to do in the next minutes. Even though he wanted to melt into a puddle and die.
“Not looking!” Carina called, her voice farther away now. “Sissy’s right, we all need fucking reminders to close the door, apparently. I owe her an apology now.”
“Why are you in my penthouse?” Frankie shouted after Nico rolled them over in bed.
“Hush,” he warned her, dropping a kiss to her scowling lips. That attitude of hers had reason, but some shit couldn’t be helped.
Carina could have her reasons for being where she was. Now they had all learned a valuable fucking lesson. Call first or make noise.
“Oh, my God,” Frankie whined under Nico. “What is my fucking life?”
“It’s okay,” he murmured, kissing her forehead, and knowing damn well it wasn’t.
“Birth control is a thing we’re definitely bringing up,” Carina muttered loudly to herself somewhere in the penthouse.
As much as he hated to do it, because his balls ached so badly, Nico pulled away from Frankie. He’d deal with the raging hard-on and condom later.
She tried to grab onto him, but he needed to fix a few things first. Pulling the duvet over her and wrapping the sheet around himself, he climbed off the bed and padded for the door.
Slamming it shut with a glare at Carina who cringe-smiled from the open-concept kitchen, Nico turned around and let his head fall back to the door.
“What the fuck?” he asked the white ceiling.
Frankie covered her eyes with both hands. The bangle at her left wrist caught the filtered sunlight coming through the sheer curtains she’d picked for her bedroom.
“What’s that?” he asked, pushing away from the door to grab clothes.
He tossed a shirt of his to Frankie as she sat up in bed. She pulled it on immediately and then looked at the new jewelry on her wrist.
“It’s from our brother,” she told him, “although technically—”
“What did you just say?”
Frankie’s gaze darted to the side, like she had to say it to herself again. “But he is, isn’t he? I mean, she’s your—”
“No.”
Frankie glitched, her head moving back and forth fast like she hadn’t heard him. “He’s my dad, and she’s your mom, Nico. It’s your sibling, too.”
“It is,” came a muffled voice just outside the door.
“Go away,” Frankie snarled.
“Ah, no. Miss Ma’am, you missed the last two gyno appointments I made for you, and you will not miss this one today. I assure you. I even have bloodwork to do in the clinic downstairs, so it works out. Get up and wash up. You know why.”
Frankie glowered at the door, still red in the face.
Nico wet his lips. “That’s fucked up. I hadn’t even thought of it, really.”
“You’re still thinking about the brother thing?”
“Does that make us—”
“No,” Frankie rushed to say. “Stop being weird.”
Nico laughed, then. So did she.
He admired the bangle, and Frankie took it off for mere seconds so he could see the inscription inside after he’d pulled on boxer shorts and the black sweats he wore on the flight.
“It’s a cool idea,” he said of the bangle, dropping a kiss to her forehead.
“I’m glad you think so,” came a voice inside the room now. Carina spoke through a crack she opened up, adding, “Because Salvatore ordered a ring for you.”
“Please get out,” Frankie practically cried.
“Get up. You are going to the doctor today.”
“I support that, so,” Nico murmured, leaving Frankie to her fight.
“Nico!”
“Hey, I’m going nowhere today. I don’t gotta see the boss for a couple of days, and my father doesn’t even know I’m back in town yet. I’ll be here when you get back.”
The bedroom door clicked shut again.
“And then we’ll get back to that,” he said, nodding toward her and the bed.
She sighed. “We better.”
“And you know, you can wake me up like I did you anytime you want, baby.”
At the flippant comment he had only meant to be a tease, Frankie hesitated.
“Uh, I...don’t—”
He closed the space between them in a second, grabbing her by the face so he could make her look up at him. A twinkle of insecurity glinted in her eyes. But it dimmed when he dropped a fast kiss to her lips.
“First, that was a joke. A poor one, at that. My bad.”
Frankie scrunched up her nose. “It’s okay.”
“No, it isn’t. Just because we’re here doing all this together on the regular doesn’t mean shit, Frankie.
I don’t take what you don’t give. You don’t have to ever do anything you don’t want to do, including that or otherwise.
And, because this is what matters the most to me that you understand, if we are ever doing something that you just decide isn’t for you, that’s fine, tell me so.
It’s done. You might be mine, but you decide how I get it. Every time.”
Frankie’s teeth played with her lip as her gaze slid toward the door while she whispered, “I just haven’t done that before.”