17. Nick
NICK
Ivy moves through the new space systematically, silently. She catalogs everything in the penthouse with a few sharp glances through narrowed eyes. The exits first. The windows. Checking sight lines, gauging the distance to the nearest building.
And I stand back and let her work. It’s instinct. Fighting someone’s instincts is a waste of everyone’s time.
The penthouse is impressive, even to someone like me who’s been here more times than I can count. Compared to the hotel rooms we’ve bounced back and forth between over the past few days? It’s a palace.
She runs her fingers along the granite countertop as she passes through the kitchen, pausing at the hallway, looking toward the room where Liam and Aurora sleep and where they’re now holed up together. Her gaze moves over the security panel mounted on the wall and lingers as she studies it.
“The system was overhauled after an incident a while back,” I tell her.
“I oversaw the upgrades myself. Reinforced entry points, new cameras, biometric locks. The stairwell access requires a code that changes every twelve hours. The panic room behind the office—steel-reinforced, independent air supply, a hardline to Liam’s security team. ”
She listens, nodding, but her attention isn’t where I expected it to be. She stands in the middle of the living room, turning slowly, taking in the space. The view through the windows. The sheer scope of it.
“You’re safe here,” I add, because I assume that’s what she’s thinking about.
She looks at me, and the corner of her mouth lifts. It’s not really a smile. Something more thoughtful. “I wasn’t thinking about safety.”
“What, then?”
She glances toward the windows, where the city sprawls out in front of us.
It’s dark now, lights glittering after we spent the rest of the day going from store to store, picking up clothes and essentials we’ve been going without for a while.
“I was wondering what it took for the kid who grew up in that house with the blue door to build all of this.”
It hits me in a way I wouldn’t have expected.
Not because it’s sentimental, she doesn’t do sentimental, but because it means she’s thinking about Liam as a person.
Not as a stranger who claims to be her brother.
Not a name attached to a story she can’t verify.
He’s a person now, with a beginning she can picture, because she stood on the sidewalk today and saw where it all started.
“A lot,” I tell her quietly. “It took a lot. And you were part of it.”
“Me?”
“And your parents.” I didn’t mean for the conversation to move in this direction.
Not now, not so soon. But standing here, surrounded by the results of Liam’s obsession…
what better time is there? “You were the reason for all of this. He worked tirelessly; we both did. He built an empire brick by brick, and the goal was always to take down the man responsible for the explosion.”
I pause, glancing toward the room Liam and Aurora disappeared into when we first got here with a dozen shopping bags between us. “Aurora’s father.”
Her brows draw together. “Now I get it.” Her shoulders rise and fall in a sigh. “If this is all partly because of me, why did he practically run away as soon as we got here?”
“To give you space, probably. The only way he can do that is to keep himself away from you,” I add, when she gives me a curious look. “Nobody had to tell me. I know him. The way he thinks.”
She nods slowly, then moves down the hallway. I follow at a comfortable distance until she comes to a stop at an open doorway. She looks over one shoulder, and I nod. “Yes, we’ll stay in this room.”
It’s more like a suite, complete with an attached bathroom.
I could weep at the sight of what I know is going to be a comfortable bed with enough pillows to keep me from getting a crick in my neck overnight.
“I’ve missed comfort,” I admit, sitting on the corner of the bed and sighing at the firm mattress.
Ivy gives me an arched eyebrow over her shoulder before going back to gazing out the window. “You’ve gone soft. You realize that, right?”
“Did I go soft when I jabbed a hypodermic into your neck?” I counter. “Was that soft of me? Because from where I’m sitting, I outmaneuvered a trained assassin.”
She rolls her eyes, but I catch sight of the tiny grin she’s wearing when she turns back to the window. “This is very nice. And I won’t pretend I didn’t get used to a certain level of comfort over the years.”
“I guess your work paid well.”
The smallest shudder ripples through her, and she folds her arms, holding her elbows in her palms. “Yes, it paid well.”
She eyes the shopping bags lined up next to the bed. “I wouldn’t have blinked at spending this much money back in Europe. It was a drop in the bucket.”
I sense her pulling further away. Today is supposed to be about getting closer, but she’s slipping through my fingers.
“If this is all too much for you, we can stay somewhere else. I know Liam wouldn’t…
” The rest of the statement dies in my throat, because of course, he would mind.
He would have to get over it, but I can’t pretend he’d be all right with it.
And she knows it. “No, this makes the most sense. We’re secure here.” Then she gets busy unpacking her new clothes, hanging them in the closet, and tucking things into drawers. She needs something to do. Something that will get her out of her own head for a little while.
When the time comes to settle in for the night, it’s obvious she has ideas about how to make that happen. “I’ve noticed something.”
I hear the difference in her voice. The playful note. Paired with the way she sits on the bed and leans back on her palms, she has something in mind that has nothing to do with the security system or anything else we’ve discussed since we got here.
“What’s that?” I ask, leaning against the doorframe after unpacking in the walk-in closet.
“There’s no way to tie me up in here.” She eyes the padded headboard. “What are we going to do?”
With a snicker, I ask, “Do I still need to do that?”
Something dark flashes in her eyes. The corners of her mouth quirk upward. “Who said anything about need?”
I look around the room, and my eyes land on the robes hanging in the closet. Perfect.
I cross the room and pull the two silk ties hanging from them, turning back to find her watching me with dark, hungry eyes. She knows what’s coming. And she wants it.
“Stand up,” I tell her.
She does, slow and deliberate, her gaze never leaving mine. I walk around her and take her wrists in my hands. I cross them behind her back, binding them together with the first tie, pulling it tight enough that she can’t get free but not so tight that it hurts. At least not yet.
Then I kneel, taking her ankle, lifting it. I bind her ankles together with the second tie—the silk smooth against her skin. When I stand, she’s completely at my mercy, arms trapped behind her, feet together, throwing her balance slightly off.
I push her gently, and she falls onto the bed, landing on her side.
Her hair spills across the pillow, her eyes wide.
I climb onto the bed behind her, positioning myself, lifting her legs and folding them toward her chest with her knees pressed against her tits, leaving her open and exposed, pussy already glistening with need.
Not holding back, I give one hard thrust.
“Fuck,” she gasps.
The angle is perfect: tight and intense. I grip her bound ankles, using them for leverage, pulling her onto my cock with every thrust.
Then I stop, still deep inside her, leaning down until my mouth is against her ear. “We’re going to play a game.”
She turns her head, trying to see me. “What kind of game?”
“You have two minutes to come.” I reach for my phone on the nightstand, setting the timer where she can see it. “If you don’t, you get punished.”
Her breath catches. Her pupils dilate. “And if I do?”
“Then you get to come. Simple.”
I start the timer and begin moving again. She tries to meet my thrusts, but she’s bound, completely under my control. All she can do is take what I give her.
Thirty seconds. She’s panting, her face flushed, she’s starting to get tight around me.
Forty-five seconds. I reach around with my free hand, finding her clit, rubbing it in tight circles as I fuck her.
One minute. She’s close, I can feel it, the sounds she’s making in the back of her throat. But the position, the restraint, the pressure of the game, it’s working against her.
Ninety seconds. She’s desperate, her hips trying to buck against the limitations of her restraints. “Please,” she gasps.
“Come,” I growl, pounding into her harder. “Let go.”
The timer beeps.
She didn’t make it.
I pull out slowly, seeing the frustration written all over her face. I position myself between her legs, still holding her knees to her chest.
“Five slaps,” I tell her. “Count them.”
The first one lands sharp against her sensitive folds, and she cries out, her whole body jerking. “One.”
The second is harder. “Two.”
By the third, her voice is ragged. “Three.”
The fourth makes her moan, a sound that’s closer to pleasure than pain. “Four.”
The fifth leaves her gasping, eyes glassy, her pussy even wetter than before. “Five.”
I reset the timer.
“Two more minutes.”
I push back inside her, and she’s so sensitive now that she screams out, her body clamping down on me like a vise. I fuck her hard, relentless, angling for that spot, rubbing her clit with my thumb, driving her toward the edge.
She’s closer this time. But the pressure, the fear of failure, it’s all working against her.
The timer beeps again.
She makes a sobbing sound, frustrated, desperate.
I pull out and roll her onto her back, her arms still trapped beneath her. I straddle her chest, my cock heavy against her sternum, and take her nipples between my fingers. They’re hard, sensitive, and I twist them.
Then I slap them. Left, then right, sharp, stinging blows that make her cry out.
“Please,” she begs. “Please, I can’t…”
“You can,” I tell her, leaning down to bite her earlobe. “And you will. Because if you don’t come this time, I’m going to fuck your ass raw. No lube, no mercy. I’ll take you hard, and you won’t be able to do anything about it.”
I reset the timer one last time. “Two minutes.”
I push back inside her, and she’s so wet, so ready, that she moans like she’s dying. I don’t hold back. I fuck her with everything I have, hard and deep, and punishing, angling perfectly, rubbing her clit in tight, relentless circles.
Thirty seconds. She’s climbing, I can feel it.
Sixty seconds. She’s panting, her head thrown back, her body wound tight.
Ninety seconds. She’s teetering on the edge, and I can feel her fighting it, fighting herself, too scared to let go.
“Come,” I growl. “Come now, or your ass is mine.”
She shatters. Letting out a scream she tries to muffle against her own shoulder, her body convulsing around me, pussy milking my cock in rhythmic spasms that feel like they go on and on.
I keep fucking her through it, not letting her stop until the timer beeps again, marking two full minutes of her coming apart beneath me.
Only then do I let myself go, burying myself deep while coming inside her.
Afterward, I untie her slowly, checking her wrists and ankles for marks, massaging the circulation back into her limbs. She lies there, limp and dazed, her eyes half-closed, a satisfied smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
“I won,” she murmurs.
I laugh, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Yeah. You won.”
This is different. Not in a bad way. Sitting here in the bath with her back to my front, with her head fitting perfectly in the space between my shoulder and my jaw, her fingertips dancing up and down the length of my forearm once I’ve wrapped my arms around her.
Her breathing is slow and steady—soon mine slows to match it.
For a long time, there’s nothing but the sound of rain tapping the window and the gentle movement of the water whenever either of us shifts position.
“I could stay here for days,” she murmurs after a while. She sounds drowsy, content. I know the feeling. “One time, I was soaking in the tub and fell asleep, and the next thing I knew, I was choking and sputtering because my face had gone under the water.”
“Wouldn’t that be ironic?” I murmur, my lips close to the hair she piled up on top of her head. “The assassin, drowning in her own bathtub because she fell asleep.”
“I wasn’t quite the assassin yet, but I see your point.” She chuckles softly, nails gently grazing my skin. “Training would exhaust me. I would be covered in bruises, sore in places I didn’t know existed. That was half the reason I spent so long in the tub.”
The thought of her that way makes my jaw go tight and my teeth grind together. Not now. Not during this perfect moment. “What was the other half?”
“I wanted the peace and quiet. Nobody asking anything of me. Just myself, alone in my own head for a little while. Otherwise, everything was a test; even the cooking lessons with Elena ended when Vincenzo sent her away, and that was my only outlet. My only chance of having anything resembling what I imagined was normal.”
“What did she teach you to cook?” Because I’m craving the knowledge. Whatever scraps she feels like sharing, it might help me put together the full picture of who she was over all those years we thought she was gone.
“Would you believe one of the simplest recipes in the whole world took me an entire summer to master? Cacio e pepe,” she explains with a wry chuckle.
“It’s just fresh grated cheese, tons of fresh pepper, and the starchy water you cook the pasta in.
But I am telling you, it drove me insane.
For ages, I kept coming up with pasta held together by clumps of cheese, floating in cloudy water.
Elena always encouraged me to try again.
And when I finally got it?” She pauses. “I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything so delicious. ”
“I would love it if you’d make that for me sometime.”
“I would love to make it for you. And tiramisu. Have you ever had it?”
“I love tiramisu.”
“You only think you do. Wait until you’ve had mine. You’ll weep.”
“I look forward to it.” Truer words were never spoken.
I tighten my grip on her and close my eyes, very much aware of the hope that’s flickered to life in my chest, warming me in a way the water can’t.
She’s talking about the future. A future in which we’re together, where she’s doing something as simple as cooking for me, and I’m the lucky son of a bitch who gets to enjoy it.
Am I lucky enough for all of that to become reality?
I’d better be, because I’m not sure I could live with the alternative. Not now, after knowing a simple pleasure like this.