Chapter Three #3
“You should’ve told me before you sat at my bar and looked at me like that.”
“Yes.”
“You should’ve told me before I found out by almost calling the Coast Guard on your fin.”
His jaw tightened. “Yes.”
“You’re very agreeable for a man I want to hit with a citrus crate.”
“I’ve learned not to argue with you when you’re right.”
I took another step. “That better not be charm.”
“It’s survival.”
“Good. Keep surviving.”
I grabbed the front of his shirt and kissed him.
Nico froze for half a second. Then his hands lifted, stopped short of my waist, and hovered there.
The restraint pulled at something under my breastbone.
I broke the kiss. “You can touch me.”
His voice dropped. “Tell me why, Nella.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Don’t turn this into paperwork.”
“I’m not. I’m making sure.”
“Because I want you to,” I said. “Not because I owe you. Not because of the debt. Not because you helped carry limes while looking like a wet vacation mistake.”
His hands settled at my waist.
Warm. Solid. Careful.
“This changes nothing about the money,” he said.
“No, it doesn’t.”
“It doesn’t make me safe.”
“No.”
“It doesn’t make you mine.”
My fingers tightened in his shirt. “Careful.”
His blue eyes held mine. “I know. I needed to hear you say I’m here because you want me here.”
My breath caught.
I let go of his shirt and flattened both palms against his chest. His skin was warm through the open linen now, the damp mostly gone, and his muscles were tight under my hands.
“Before this goes anywhere,” I said, “I’m clean. I have an IUD. I don’t have condoms up here, and I’m not pretending to be a prepared woman when my morning involved produce, sharks, and emotional terrorism.”
His fingers flexed once at my waist. “I’m clean too. I haven’t been with anyone since my last test.”
“Good.”
“If you want to stop, we stop.”
“If I want to stop, you’ll know.”
“I need you to say it anyway.”
My throat went tight, and not from fear.
“If I say stop, you stop,” I said.
“Always.”
I kissed him again.
This time Nico kissed me back like the answer had broken something open in him.
He walked me back toward the bed, slow enough that I could stop him, direct enough that I didn’t want to. My knees hit the mattress. I sat, grabbed his shirt, and pulled him down with me. He caught himself over me with one hand braced beside my shoulder, his chain swinging cold against my chest.
I hooked one finger under it and tugged. “This thing is ridiculous.”
“You keep touching it.”
“I touch plenty of ridiculous things.”
His lips brushed my jaw. “Is that your professional position?”
“That’s what the sign out front says.”
He laughed low against my skin, and heat opened under every place his breath touched.
Nico moved to my neck.
I went still.
He stopped immediately.
“Not yet,” he said.
“I didn’t say no.”
“I know. But I want that spot too much.”
The honesty slid through me, hot and sharp.
“You’re telling me your teeth require supervision?”
“With you? Yes.”
“Then supervise them.”
“I will.”
My fingers shook once when I pushed his shirt off his shoulders. “Then use your mouth somewhere less legally complicated.”
His eyes darkened.
“Bossy.”
“I own a bar called Bite Me. The branding has consequences.”
This time Nico smiled.
Then he lowered himself down my body.
He kissed the edge of my tank where it had ridden up, then the soft skin beside my navel, then the top of my cutoffs. His hands worked the button open slowly enough to make me want to yell at him and carefully enough to make me forget the words.
I lifted my hips. “If you rip those, you’re replacing them.”
“I can afford cutoffs.”
“That’s not the point.”
“What’s the point?”
“I like these.”
His smile brushed my stomach. “Then I’ll be careful.”
He pulled them down my legs and stopped when his thumb brushed my ankle.
The little tattoo there caught the light from the window: a colorful margarita glass tucked into a seashell and curling wave, with a tiny lime wedge bright against the rim.
Nico studied it for one long second. “That suits you.”
“It was my Miami breakdown tattoo.”
“Breakdown?”
“I signed the lease, drank two margaritas, and decided I needed proof on my body that I wasn’t going back to Jersey.”
His thumb moved once beside the ink, not over it. “Looks like proof.”
“That’s dangerously close to sweet.”
“I’ll recover.”
“You’d better.”
He kissed the inside of my ankle, and the little touch ran straight up my leg.
My fingers caught in the sheet.
Nico moved higher, kissing my calf, my knee, the inside of my thigh. I parted my legs before he asked because I was done pretending I had any appeal left against desire.
He lifted his head from between my thighs.
There should’ve been a law against that too.
“You still want this?” he asked.
I pushed onto one elbow. “Nico, if you stop now because you need me to fill out a form, I’m going to become difficult.”
“You’re already difficult.”
“And yet here you are.”
“Here I am.”
His fingers hooked in my panties.
I lifted my hips again.
He slid them down, and the air touched me first. Then his mouth did.
The first stroke of his tongue over my pussy took the sarcasm clean out of my throat.
I fell back against the bed with a sound I would deny under oath.
Nico’s hands closed around my thighs, not trapping me, holding me open. He started slow, learning every place that made my breath change. Then he found my clit, and slow stopped being a virtue.
I grabbed the sheet with one hand and his hair with the other.
He groaned against me.
The vibration punched straight through my hips.
“Do that again,” I said.
Nico did.
My thighs tightened around his shoulders. His stubble scraped the tender skin near my crease. His tongue slid lower, then back up, circling my clit while two fingers pressed inside me.
“Nico.”
He lifted his eyes without stopping.
Nobody should be able to look that smug while on his knees with his mouth on my pussy.
I tugged his hair. “Don’t get proud.”
He curled his fingers.
My warning fell apart.
Pleasure climbed hard and fast, burning through my thighs, my stomach, my chest. I tried to hold his stare because I hated losing, even in bed, especially to a man with fins. Nico watched every breath. His fingers worked me steadily, and his shoulders tensed when my hips lifted into his mouth.
He deserved to suffer a little.
I came with my hand in his hair and his name in my mouth, hips lifting into the heat of his tongue while the room flashed white around the edges.
Nico stayed with me through it, softer now, drawing out every last pulse until I pushed at his shoulder.
“Enough,” I said, breathless. “You’re going to make me useless.”
He lifted his mouth from me. “You’re never useless.”
I sat up before that landed too deep and grabbed his chain again. “Pants off.”
He stood.
I got to my knees on the mattress and hooked my fingers in his waistband.
His swim trunks were dry enough to fight me and wet enough to be obnoxious.
“These are stupid,” I said.
“They looked good yesterday.”
“I’m sure the mirror was very impressed.”
Nico’s hands curled at his sides while I dragged the waistband down.
That was when I saw the tattoo low on his hip.
Black ink. A shark-tooth compass tucked close to the hard line of his body, mostly hidden unless his clothes came off. It wasn’t flashy. It wasn’t a family crest. It looked like direction and danger in one small mark.
I touched the edge beside it. “This isn’t Torretti branding, is it?”
“No.”
“Good. I don’t want your uncle in this room in any form, including ink.”
His voice went flat. “Neither do I.”
“What does it mean?”
“That I know what I am, and I still get to choose where I go.”
“Oh, absolutely not,” I said.
His brow furrowed. “What?”
“That’s too much emotional information from a naked man.”
I wrapped my hand around his cock instead.
His breath broke.
Much better.
I looked up at him. “I have more questions.”
“I can tell.”
“I’m going to ask them later.”
“That seems wise.”
“It’s not wisdom. It’s triage.”
Then I took him into my mouth.
Nico’s hand hit the wall beside the bed.
The sound pleased me more than it should have.
He was big, hot, and hard on my tongue, and the controlled man from my bar went quiet in a completely different way when I sucked him deeper. His hips jerked once, then stopped.
I pulled back. “You can move.”
“If I move, this ends fast.”
“Then don’t embarrass yourself.”
His laugh came out rough. “You’re a menace.”
“I’m a small-business owner. We’re all like this.”
I took him again, slower this time, one hand at his base, the other braced against his thigh.
He tasted like salt and clean skin. His muscles locked under my palm.
When I glanced up, his head was tipped back, jaw tight, one hand fisted in the sheet beside me because he wouldn’t grab without permission.
I took his wrist and set his hand on my hair.
His eyes snapped down to mine.
“Yes,” I said around him, then pulled back enough to speak clearly. “You can touch me.”
His fingers slid into my hair, careful at first.
I tightened my mouth and took him deeper.
The care cracked.
“Nella,” Nico said, and my name sounded like a warning he had no intention of surviving.
Heat curled through me again. I wanted him like this. Not polished. Not leaning on a bar with a smile sharp enough to invoice. I wanted him breathing hard, watching me, and letting me see what I did to him.
His hips shifted, shallow and controlled. His thumb brushed my cheek. The tendons in his neck stood out, and his fingers tightened in my hair without pulling.
I pulled off him with a wet sound and stroked him in my hand.
His chest rose hard.
“If you say something noble right now,” I said, “I’m throwing you out.”
“I was going to say I need to be inside you.”
I smiled. “That’s not noble.”
“No.”
“That’s useful.”