6. Nova #2
“Your heart is racing,” I murmur.
“I know.”
“Are you okay?”
A sound escapes him. Not quite a laugh, not quite a groan. Something in between.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine.”
“Nova.” His hand tightens on my waist. “I’m trying very hard to be a gentleman right now. Please don’t ask me questions.”
Oh.
Oh.
The realization hits me like a wave - he’s not tense because he doesn’t want this. He’s tense because he does. Because I’m pressed against him in my thin nightgown, my hand on his bare chest, and he’s lying there in the dark trying not to want things he’s decided he shouldn’t have.
“What if I don’t want you to be a gentleman?”
The words are out before I can call them back.
His breath catches. His whole body goes even more rigid, which I wouldn’t have thought possible.
“You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I know exactly what I’m saying.”
“You had a nightmare. You’re not thinking clearly.”
“I’ve been thinking clearly for three weeks.” My hand moves on his chest - just a small movement, my fingers spreading, feeling the contours of muscle beneath his skin. “I’ve been thinking about this every night. About you.”
“Nova-”
“When you tend my wrist, I think about your hands. When you roll up your sleeves at dinner, I lose track of the conversation. When I’m lying in my room at night, I think about-” I stop.
Swallow. Force myself to continue. “I think about what it would feel like. To be touched by someone who actually sees me.”
Silence.
His heart is hammering beneath my palm. His breath is coming fast and harsh. His hand on my waist is gripping hard enough to leave marks, and I don’t care - I want his marks, I realize. I want to wear evidence of him the way I wore evidence of her, but different. Chosen.
“You should sleep,” he says finally, and his voice is wrecked.
“I don’t want to sleep.”
“Nova-”
“Tell me you don’t want this.” I tilt my head up, trying to see his face in the moonlight. “Tell me you haven’t been thinking about it too. Tell me I’m imagining the way you look at me, and I’ll go back to my room right now and we’ll never speak of this again.”
He doesn’t say anything.
His hand slides up my back - slow, deliberate, like he’s mapping the terrain. His fingers find the nape of my neck, tangle in my hair, and I feel a shudder run through his entire body.
“I can’t tell you that.” His voice is barely audible. “I can’t, because it would be a lie, and I don’t want to lie to you. Not ever.”
“Then-”
“But I can tell you that this isn’t the right time.” His hand stills in my hair. “You’re healing. You’re vulnerable. You came to me because you were scared, and I won’t - I can’t take advantage of that.”
“It’s not taking advantage if I want it.”
“It is if you’re not ready.”
I want to argue. I want to tell him I’m ready, that I’ve been ready, that I’ve spent two years in a marriage so cold I forgot what it felt like to be wanted, and now I’m lying in his arms and wanting so badly it’s like a fever, like a sickness, like something that’s going to kill me if I don’t-
But he’s right.
God help me, he’s right.
I’m not ready. I’m still flinching at loud noises. Still waking up screaming. Still carrying the imprint of Vivienne’s hands on my skin, visible and invisible wounds that haven’t finished healing.
If I do this now, if we do this now, it won’t be about us. It’ll be about escaping. About replacing one kind of touch with another, using pleasure as a bandage over wounds that need air.
And I don’t want that.
I don’t want to be something he regrets. I don’t want to be a mistake he made in the dark with a damaged woman who didn’t know what she was asking for.
I want to be chosen.
“Okay,” I whisper.
His hand resumes its gentle motion in my hair. Stroking. Soothing. The touch of a man who has decided to wait, no matter what it costs him.
“Okay,” I say again, and I let my head fall back to his chest.
We lie there in silence. His heart gradually slows beneath my ear. His breath evens out. His hand keeps moving in my hair, steady as a metronome, and I feel the tension slowly drain out of both of us.
“I haven’t slept through the night in years,” he says quietly.
“What?”
“Insomnia. Since I was a teenager. Nothing helps - not pills, not therapy, not exhausting myself until I can barely stand.” A pause. “But the last few weeks, since you’ve been here… I’ve been sleeping. Not well, but better than before.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” His hand stills for a moment, then resumes its stroking. “Maybe because I know you’re in the house. Maybe because I keep listening for you - for your footsteps, your voice, proof that you’re real and you’re safe.”
“That’s-”
“Obsessive. I know.” He sounds almost amused. “I’ve been obsessive about you for a long time, Nova. Long before you showed up on that street corner.”
My heart stutters. “What do you mean?”
He doesn’t answer right away. I feel his chest rise and fall beneath my cheek, feel him weighing his words, deciding how much to tell me.
“Go to sleep,” he says finally. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
“Luca-”
“In the morning.” His voice is firm, but gentle. “I promise. But right now, you need rest. And I need-” He stops. Laughs softly, humorlessly. “I need to remember how to breathe without thinking about how you feel in my arms.”
I should push. Should demand answers. Should make him explain what he means by obsessive, by a long time, by all the weighted words he keeps dropping like stones into the silence between us.
But I’m tired. So tired. And he’s warm, and his hand is in my hair, and his heartbeat is steady beneath my ear.
“Okay,” I whisper for the third time.
And I close my eyes.
***
I wake in pieces.
First: warmth. A cocoon of it, surrounding me, seeping into my bones.
Second: weight. An arm across my waist, heavy and possessive. A leg tangled with mine. A body curved around me from behind, solid and real and there.
Third: him.
Luca.
We’ve moved in the night. I’m on my side now, and he’s behind me, his chest pressed to my back, his breath warm against my neck.
His arm is wrapped around my middle, his hand splayed flat against my stomach, and I can feel every point of contact through the thin fabric of my nightgown - the hard planes of his chest, the muscular thigh between my legs, the undeniable evidence of his arousal pressed against my lower back.
I should move. Should slip out of his arms, retreat to my own room, preserve whatever remains of the careful distance we’ve been maintaining.
I don’t move.
I lie there, feeling him breathe, feeling his heart beat against my spine. His hand is warm on my stomach, his fingers curled slightly, like even in sleep he’s holding onto me. He hasn’t let go, I realize. All night, even unconscious, he hasn’t let go.
When did someone last hold me like this?
When did someone last want to?
Dante touched me, in the early days. Perfunctory touches, marital-duty touches, the kind of touching that was more about checking a box than about desire. He never held me in his sleep. Never wrapped himself around me like he couldn’t bear to let go.
But Luca-
Luca, who I’ve known for three weeks. Luca, who pulled me off a street corner and tended my wounds and bought me paints and held me through my nightmares without asking for anything in return. Luca, who told me last night that he’d been watching over me from a distance for years.
What did he mean?
How long is a long time?
I feel him stir behind me. His breath catches. His arm tightens around my waist, pulling me closer, and I feel a soft sound escape him - a murmur, a word, something that might be my name.
“Nova…”
His hips shift, pressing him more firmly against me, and heat floods my body. I bite my lip to keep from making a sound. He’s not awake - I can tell by his breathing, the heaviness of his limbs - but his body knows what it wants. His body is making itself very clear.
I should move.
I should definitely move.
His hand slides higher on my stomach. Unconscious movement, probably, just his body seeking more contact, but his fingers brush the underside of my breast and I stop breathing entirely.
“Luca.” I whisper his name, trying to wake him gently.
His response is to nuzzle into my neck, his lips brushing my skin, and I have to clamp my hand over my mouth to keep from moaning.
“Luca.”
He stills.
I feel the moment consciousness returns - the subtle tension that enters his body, the way his breathing changes, the sudden awareness of exactly how we’re positioned and exactly what I can feel pressed against my back.
“Fuck.”
The word is low, rough, barely audible. His arm loosens - not letting go, but no longer holding so tight - and I feel him start to pull away.
“Don’t.”
I don’t know where the word comes from. It’s out of my mouth before I can think about it, before I can consider the wisdom of asking a man to keep holding me when I can feel exactly how much he wants to do more than hold.
He freezes.
“Nova…”
“Just-” I swallow. “Just stay. For a minute.”
Silence.
Then, slowly, his arm tightens again. His body relaxes against mine. His lips press against the back of my neck - not a kiss, exactly, just a touch, a point of contact, a benediction.
“You’re making this very difficult,” he murmurs against my skin.
“I know.”
“I’m trying to be good.”
“I know.”
“I’m not-” He exhales, shaky. “I’m not a good man, Nova. I’ve done things. I’m doing things, right now, that you don’t know about. If you knew-”
“Tell me.”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
His hand spreads on my stomach, possessive and warm. “Because if I tell you now, you might run. And I need you to stay.”
“Why?”
He’s quiet for a long moment. I feel his breath on my neck, feel his heart beating against my spine, feel the tension thrumming through his body as he fights some internal battle I can’t see.