12. Valeria #2
The club’s music, softer in this room, croons in a woman’s voice to love me in the dark.
His amber gaze sharpens. “What the fuck does that mean? You live with your parents. Why do you pay rent?”
“Because they charge rent.”
“And you pay for your groceries?”
“Not if I can’t earn the money.”
Pity softens his features, and I nearly shut my eyes against the sight.
More than anything, I can’t bear his understanding. I hate when he acts like a real person with me.
“You need money,” he murmurs, “you come to me.”
“I’m not coming to you for—”
He presses a kiss to my open mouth. I try to jerk back, but my head is caught against the wall. He’s trapping me with his hands as he kisses me again and again, driving his hips against mine until he draws an involuntary moan from my throat.
He drops his forehead to mine. “You don’t need to work. I’ll take care of you.”
He’s love-bombing me. Distantly, I’m aware of it, but the thought, the suggestion that someone else might take care of me?
“I want to work. For my money,” I whisper hoarsely. My thoughts are shreds of confetti. I don’t know what I’m saying. “I can’t rely on you.”
Nico exhales and releases me. He walks to the single couch in the room, sits, and plants his feet wide.
He looks like a fucking king.
“Then earn it,” he says. His gaze skates over my body, flashing heat through me.
I’m freezing and burning hot at the same time. “Nico.”
Without looking away from me, he reaches for his back pocket. “I know what you need.” He takes a hundred-dollar bill from his wallet and waves it at me. “This it?”
Heat throbs between my legs.
I thought this would be enough, to show him I wasn’t going to be the obedient wife he expected me to be.
And I was scared.
Scared to pack all my things and run away. I’d always dreamed of being strong enough to do it, but now that I’m on the precipice, I don’t know if I can jump.
My throat closes. I wonder if he’d take pity on me if I cried, or if he’d just laugh in my face.
I’m out of options.
There’s nothing else I can try that’s going to make him give me up.
He waves the bill at me. “I’m waiting.”
I clench my jaw. Fuck him.
He wants to pay for a dance, I’ll do more than empty his pockets. I’ll make sure he’s had the best night of his life. And then after he’s lazy and sleepy from his release, I’ll grab my things and go.
I take slow, measured steps to the beat of the music until I’m within touching distance.
He leans forward, extending the bill until his fingers skate along my hip bone, and tucks it into my miniskirt.
Then he leans back, a hard outline straining his jeans and bored expectation on his face.
With his eyes on me, I sway my hips to a slow rhythm.
“Were you planning on bringing other men in here?” he asks in a low voice.
I turn and bend down, offering a full view of my ass. “Yes,” I lie.
I’m jerked back as Nico grabs my hips and squeezes. His thumb skates over my wet underwear, and I startle at the sensation.
“I don’t believe you. You know what I would’ve done to any man you brought here. You’re not that cruel.”
He places a lingering kiss on my panties, licking against my pussy—toe-curlingly hot—and then just as quickly, his hands disappear from my body.
I almost tumble forward, barely managing not to crumble to my knees. He’s always keeping me off balance. Always trying to fuck with me for his own amusement.
Still facing the wall, I run my hands up and down my waist, my neck, twirling the ends of my hair. “You don’t know me.”
When I turn, he’s got a stack of cash in his hands.
“I know you’re not in this for the money,” he says. “You just wanted to piss me off.”
I squat, running my hands down my thighs, and look up at him. “Two things can be true at once.”
He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like to have money running through your fingers like grains of sand. There will never be enough to give me the security I want.
His expression grows hard, and when he reaches for me, I flinch. But he only tucks another hundred-dollar bill into my bra strap.
“How badly do you need this money?” He runs a finger along my bra strap.
“So bad,” I whisper.
“Are you a slut, Valeria?”
My mouth moves before my brain does. “Yes.”
Nico strikes out almost faster than I can track to catch my face in his palm. He traps my face against his inner thigh, and I rock from my heels to my knees.
“You’re my slut.”
“I am,” I whisper, and it’s true. He teases out a side of me that I’ve never shown another man before, a side I never knew existed. A part of me I can’t control when I’m around him.
He reaches for his belt buckle. “Is that what will make you stop fighting this? An allowance?”
My heart hammers as he draws out his gun, heavy and dark.
What is he going to do with that?
I realize how vulnerable I’ve made myself, kneeling between his thighs. He could do whatever he wanted to me, and I’d be powerless to stop him.
“We’re not playing with a live gun,” he says, frowning like I’ve made the suggestion out loud, and slides it to the far end of the couch. His thumb rubs my lower lip. “You think I’d put you at risk like that?”
My lip trembles.
I don’t know what I think anymore. He’s too many contradictions at once, and I don’t know which to trust.
Confusion, shame, anxiety, and raging desire swirl through me, battling to make themselves known.
I’m so tired of making decisions. I want a break. I want Nico.
When he finally pulls out his cock and frames it in his tattooed fist, I’m panting with lust.
I’ve never seen it up close in the light like this. His piercing gleams, and at the tip of his perfectly shaped head wells a clear drop of liquid. My mouth waters.
I wait for him to push me forward, to take his frustrations out on my mouth, but he only strokes through my hair.
“What do I do with you?” he murmurs.
Let me go, I think.
“Fuck me,” I whisper.
My swirling thoughts slow to a stop as he feeds the head of his cock into my mouth.
I taste salt. My tongue slides over the hard metal bead of his piercing, and like I’m tonguing myself, my clit throbs in response.
His hand fists in my hair. I suck his cock into my mouth, stuffing myself with as much of his girth as I can.
“Is this what you need?” he asks.
I answer by sucking hard, hallowing my cheeks as I bob up and down on his shaft.
Above me, Nico swears.
He thrusts into my mouth, his thighs straining like he’s holding himself back from doing more. Heat and pressure build between my legs, demanding release. I reach down, but Nico snatches my hands and holds them over my head.
“No.”
A fluttering like butterfly wings as a handful of cash cascades around my face and back.
“I’m not paying you to touch yourself.”
I glare up at him.
He laughs cruelly. “Go ahead, hate me while you suck my cock.” He shoves his foot between my legs. “You want to come, ride my boot.”
I refuse.
I bury him in my mouth, straining to swallow all of him into me, determined to make him come without giving him the satisfaction of mutual pleasure.
That’s his fucking problem, isn’t it? He thinks if he makes me come too, he owns me.
“Fuck,” he groans the word out long and ragged. “You’re too fucking good at that.”
My jaw aches, but I don’t stop. He’s close.
He shoves his leg against my clit, grinding pleasure out of me.
“Ride me, pretty girl.” His amber eyes are hazy with lust.
I want to. I want to give in so badly.
Maybe my hips rock against his boot. Maybe it hits just the right spot.
But I fight off the rising pressure.
I won’t give him the satisfaction.
“Fuck, Val.”
He stiffens in my mouth, swelling long and hard, and then he’s coming, coating my tongue in pulse after pulse of hot seed that I swallow down, too aroused to deny myself the pleasure.
Nico shudders underneath me.
I flick my gaze up at him.
Bliss on his features, he shoves his leg further underneath me.
I jerk my hips back.
Realization crosses his face. His amber eyes focus on me with growing clarity, and I can nearly see the thoughts sliding into place.
“You didn’t come.” It’s not a question.
He flings away my hands and shoves his half-hard cock into his jeans. “Get up.”
As I push myself to standing, he scoops up most of the cash from the ground.
He rises and shoves the money into my panties, his knuckles grazing my swollen pussy. I bite back a moan.
“I’m not playing games with you anymore.” His jaw clenches in a sharp line. He jerks off his coat, throws it around my shoulders, and grabs my wrist.
He completely ignores my attempts to pull free as he drags me to the door.
“Where are we going?”
“Home.” He looks back at me, his eyes dark and full of intention. “And this time, you’re not leaving until I’ve put a baby in you.”