Chapter Six #4
I circled her clit while I fucked her, and the heat in my blood climbed.
Her body tightened around me. Her sounds got softer, then sharper, the way I’d learned meant she was close.
I watched her fight for eye contact through it because Nella DeLuca apparently treated orgasms like negotiations she planned to win.
Then her head tipped back.
Her neck bared.
The mark waited under the edge of her scarf and the loose fall of her hair.
I stopped my lips an inch from her skin.
Every instinct in me strained toward it.
I went still.
Her fingers tightened in my hair. “Ask me.”
My voice came out rough. “Can I bite you?”
Her hips lifted into mine. “Yes.”
“I want to mark you again.”
Her eyes opened. “Then do it because I want you to. Because this is mine too.”
My grip tightened at her waist.
I lowered my head and set my teeth to the side of her neck.
I bit carefully, making the claim chosen and hard enough to mark without breaking skin.
Nella came around me with a cry that filled the closed bar and went straight through my bones. Her pussy clamped down, her thighs locked around my hips, and her nails raked over my back while she rode the pulse of it against me.
I lasted three more thrusts.
Then I buried my face against her shoulder and came inside her, body shaking, hand braced on the counter beside her hip, Nella’s name torn out of me.
For a while, neither of us moved.
The neon hummed.
The ocean kept pushing sound through the night beyond the boardwalk.
Nella’s hand slid slowly up my back and into my hair.
I lifted my head. “You okay?”
She swallowed, then nodded. “I’m better than okay.”
I brushed my thumb along her jaw. “I didn’t break skin.”
“I know.”
“Was it too much?”
She smiled. “Nico, I own a bar called Bite Me, and I just had sex on the counter after winning a debt fight with a shark mafia uncle. If anything, my branding has never been clearer.”
I dropped my forehead to hers and laughed.
She laughed too, and for the first time since Sal’s door closed, my shoulders loosened.
I eased out of her carefully, then reached for the clean towel stack under the counter. Nella pointed at the lower shelf before I opened the wrong drawer.
“Blue towels are for spills,” she said. “White towels are for clean hands and post-crisis nudity.”
“I’m learning the system.”
“You’d better. I’m not printing a manual.”
I cleaned her gently. She watched me the whole time, cheeks flushed, eyes steady, and I didn’t say a word while I kept my hands careful. Then she took another clean towel and cleaned me with the same quiet certainty, like she’d added it to the closing list.
Afterward, I helped her down from the counter. Her knees wobbled once.
I caught her.
“Don’t say it,” she warned.
“I wasn’t.”
“You were thinking a protective thought.”
“I’m always thinking protective thoughts.”
“Think quieter.”
“I’ll try.”
She pulled on her panties and shorts, then looked down at the open wrap top hanging off her shoulders. “This top is going in the sink.”
“It died bravely.”
“It earned hazard pay.”
I buttoned my pants and shrugged back into my shirt without closing it. Nella’s gaze dropped to my open shirt and stayed there long enough to make my breath catch.
“What happens tomorrow?” she asked.
“The office takes the principal payment. Sal leaves you alone because there’s no clean default and no collector certification.”
“And you?”
“I figure out who I am when I’m not collecting for him.”
She picked up the two plastic cups from the counter and handed one to me. “You can start by washing the counter.”
I looked at her.
Nella lifted one brow. “What? You think commitment means ignoring sanitation?”
I took the cup from her. “I’ll wash the counter.”
“Good answer.”
“And after that?”
She looked around the closed bar. The string lights glowed over stacked stools. The chalkboard still carried the day’s special in her handwriting. The black-rim drink had left proof of itself on the service mat.
“After that,” Nella said, “you can stay for one drink.”
I looked down at the blue margarita.
“The Shifty Shark?” I asked.
She sighed like I had personally wounded her. “I hate you a little for being right about the name.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I could.”
“You won’t.”
She stepped into my side, bumped her hip against mine, and lifted her cup.
“To my bar,” she said.
I touched my cup to hers. “To your bar.”
“And to men who ask permission before using teeth.”
I smiled. “To terrifying women with receipt folders.”
She drank, then made a pleased little sound that tightened my grip on the cup.
Outside, the last of Sal’s engine noise was gone.
Nella leaned against me under the neon shark. The top-right drawer was locked. The counter still needed washing. Beyond the boardwalk, the ocean moved in the dark, close enough to hear and not close enough to call me back.
She tipped her face up to mine. “And to your terrible new life choices.”
I set my drink down, cupped her face, and kissed her until the smile softened against mine.
Fins, teeth, monsters—I knew those.
What came next with Nella was the mystery I wanted.