11. Nick #2
She’s been retreating deeper into herself for hours, all through the ride.
If I let her go to sleep like this, she’ll be further away from me than ever when she wakes up.
The distance between us will only get worse.
Whatever delicate thing started to grow between us back at the cabin will evaporate.
I can’t let that happen. I won’t.
“Come with me.”
She looks up for the first time since sitting down, brows drawn together over her nose. “Where?”
“To the pool downstairs. I noticed the signs pointing to it while we were in the lobby.”
“So did I, and I noticed the sign saying it closed at ten p.m.”
Now she cares about the rules? I arch an eyebrow, folding my arms. “So? What, you think I can’t pick a lock on a pool door?” When her expression doesn’t change, mine does, and I heave a sigh while giving her a helpless shrug. “You need to get out of your head for a little while. We both do.”
That gets through to her. Appealing to her sense of logic is what brings her to her feet so she can follow me out to the hallway, then down the stairs to avoid being seen in the lobby.
Granted, I doubt the woman would give two shits either way if she saw us wandering.
She might not even be awake by now, for all I know.
Still, I don’t feel like taking a chance. We’re not here to be remembered later on.
The pool is on the lowest level at the far end of the long building.
It sits behind a glass door with a sign listing the hours, printed in large block letters.
It doesn’t officially open for another three hours or so, meaning we’ll have privacy.
The lock is your usual commercial deadbolt, which takes me roughly fifteen seconds to pick.
When the door swings open, the chlorine hits us immediately.
Sharp, familiar. It reminds me of countless summers swimming at the public pool when I was a kid.
I won’t bother asking her if she remembers anything.
The only light in the room comes from the ones underwater, which turn the surface blue-green.
The only sound other than our footsteps comes from the filtration system.
Against the far wall sits a line of lounge chairs.
As I close the door behind us and lock it, I can’t shake the feeling of being in a space separate from the rest of the world.
She stands at the edge of the water, staring into it. “One problem.”
“Which is?”
“We don’t have bathing suits.”
For someone in her line of work, she is almost shockingly pedestrian when she feels like it. “No, we don’t.”
She looks up from the water, hitting me with a stare that feels somehow heavier when the blue-green light from the gently moving water reflects off her face. “You’re suggesting we swim naked?”
“The only thing stopping us is fabric we don’t have.” I pull my shirt over my head and toss it on one of the chairs. “We’ve already seen each other without a stitch on. At this point, I don’t think modesty is our biggest problem.”
I can’t read her expression as I untie and take off my boots.
She’s not assessing me with that cold, clinical stare she gave me back in Prague.
It’s not the fake warmth she tried to give me in the shower, either.
It’s something in between the two. Cautious, suspicious, maybe. But not closed off. She’s intrigued.
“You’re trying to distract me,” she decides.
“Is it working?”
After waiting a beat, she reaches for the hem of her shirt. The one I bought her. It’s wrinkled now, and it carries the faint odor of gunpowder after what went down earlier. She pulls it off and tosses it aside the way I did with mine.
She doesn’t look away from me. She’s telling me this is her choice. There’s a fire in her eyes as she steps out of her jeans. The underwater light catches the scars on her arm and her leg, painting them in blue. This time, she doesn’t turn her body away to hide them.
Once she’s bare, so am I. I’m damn glad as I lower myself into the water that I thought to use the superglue on my wound, because the sensation of warm water closing over my sore muscles is something I didn’t know I needed.
I sink up to my shoulders and lean against the edge, allowing myself to relax.
She looks like something out of a dream, still standing with her bare feet at the edge of the pool. The glow from the water casts shifting patterns across her body before she drops into the water without a word and goes under completely.
When she surfaces, her hair is slicked back and water streams down her face. Her long, slow exhale seems to carry something out of her. Whatever she’s been wrestling with for hours, it starts to slip away. At least, some of it.
For a while, it’s enough to float silently with the water lapping between us. Even though she’s only an arm’s length away, I don’t reach out. Not yet.
When she does break the silence, it’s to say, “He would’ve called it sentiment. Wanting to keep me alive instead of cutting his losses. Vincenzo.” His name echoes off the tiled walls and sets my teeth on edge. “He used to say sentiment is the first thing that gets someone killed.”
She’s still trying to make sense of things. Creating excuses, or at least rationalizing his decision. I can’t blame her for it. “He was wrong.”
“He was right about some things.” She looks at me, and the way her eyes gleam in the blue light is something that will live in my heart for the rest of my life. “But he was wrong about me. He thought I would die easy.”
“He should know better. You don’t do anything easy.”
She offers the ghost of a smile; there and gone almost in the same heartbeat. But I saw it. Nothing can take that away.
She drifts closer. The distance between us shrinks from an arm’s length to a hand’s width, and then even less. Now I feel the warmth of her body through the water.
“Thank you,” she murmurs. “For tonight.”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“I know. That’s why I’m doing it.”
She’s close enough that I can feel her breath. Close enough that I could almost count the beads of water on her eyelashes, rolling from her temples down to her jaw. The silence is charged now, the energy swelling between us. It’s full of everything we’ve survived, everything we still haven’t said.
She doesn’t wait for me to make the first move. She pushes me against the tiles; the smooth surface feels cold pressed to my skin, but that’s not what shocks me slightly. It’s her aggression that takes me by surprise. She’s taking what she wants. And I like it.
“This is different,” I say, my mouth inches from hers.
Her eyebrow raises. “Different how?”
“More aggressive,” I reveal.
“Is that a problem?” Her palms land flat against my chest with another playful shove.
Water sloshes around us as she straddles me underwater, her bare pussy grinding against my growing cock.
“No.”
“Good.” Her lips slam against me suddenly. She kisses me like she wants to consume me, tasting like sin and danger. Her nails drag down my chest and abdomen until one of her hands is fully wrapped around my cock.
“Fuck,” I groan between kisses. She strokes me, her fingers tightening around my shaft.
“I need you inside me.” She’s not asking, but telling. “Now, Nick. I want to feel you split me open.”
Without any direction, she positions herself, the head of my cock at her entrance. I grip her hips to guide her, but she doesn’t take it slow. Pulling herself closer, she takes every inch of me at once.
We both cry out, our voices echoing through the space. She’s so fucking tight, and doesn’t even give herself time to adjust before she’s moving, riding me rough, water splashing over the edge with each thrust.
“I love the way you’re taking me.” My words make her grind harder, causing me to hit deeper.
“Yes. Don’t stop,” she urges me to keep doing what I’m doing. Her hand finds mine and pulls it between her legs. “Touch me, Nick. Make me come while your cock is inside me.”
I draw tight circles, feeling her walls clench in response. She’s wild, unrecognizable. This Ivy fucks with no mercy, all instinct and aggression.
“Harder,” she demands, nails digging into my shoulders, drawing blood. “Fuck me harder. I want to feel you for days.”
I grip her hips tighter, meeting her thrust for thrust, our movements erratic. I feel her getting close. “Come for me,” I growl. “Let me feel you come.” I thrust up one last time, and her orgasm takes her over the edge, bringing me along for the ride.
I let go of a loud growl as I come… hard. Maybe harder than I have ever come. Pure bliss ripples through my body, the aftershock of my release slowly fading as I still feel her pussy pulsing around me.
We stay tangled, breathing hard. She lifts her head, looking back at me with hooded eyes and a ghost of a smile that’s edged with danger.
“Still think I’m fragile?” she asks.
I tighten my arms around her. “I think whatever you are… you’re mine,” I say, meaning every damn word.