Remind her that she’s worth it.
Her fingers thread into my hair, and the slight pull sends a current of need through me. Fuck. God, this girl makes me manic. One second I’m trying to pull away, let her cry on my shoulder again if she needs to. The next I’m a fuckin’ animal.
Slowly, because I don’t want to scare her, I unhook the front straps of her bikini and let them fall down her back, then pull down the front so her breasts bob free in the water, allowing me to suck one nipple, then the other into my mouth.
Part of me wants to rip the whole thing off her, but I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be too happy if she had to walk back in nothing but that scrap of fabric she calls a cover-up. Gentle, I keep telling myself, even though all I want to do is lift her up and take her against the rocks a few feet away. I want to spread her legs and drive into her, make sure she knows deep down within that she’s mine, leave my mark, my seed, my essence or whatever the fuck you want to call it. I understand now what makes men want to do things like hide their girls’ pills and creepy shit like that. It’s primal, the need to leave something of yourself inside your woman. Make the two of you truly one.
Layla moans as I drift back to her other breast, biting a little at the end before I release it from my mouth with a slight pop. But I keep my eyes shut, because I know if I actually look at her, I’ll lose the tiny bit of control I have left. Her legs are locked around my waist again. I’m hard and pressed against the core of her, and she’s already rubbing up and down the whole fuckin’ length of me. She wants this as bad as I do.
My fingers play over the slightly raised edges of the tattoo along her ribs, the one that matches mine. Saudade, they both say. A yearning for something you never knew. Something we both wanted before we ever even met.
I feel the curve of her waist. The swell of her hips. Her ass, oh God, that ass that I dreamed about for months when we were apart. That I’ll probably dream about for the rest of my life.
“Oh!” she cries, breathy and light as I grab just a little bit harder. Her hips roll into me, and I groan into her mouth.
“You like that?” I ask before I land a kiss on her neck, then draw my tongue to lick the tiny drops of salt water away.
She shivers again, so I do it again. And again. When I graze my teeth like this, she usually moans a little. She likes it when I bite too, when I pulled just enough on her nipples to make it hurt. A tug, a nip, the casual use of my teeth on her earlobe, and then with a well-placed growl, my girl starts panting for me to fuck her. And goddamn, do I ever.
But not right now. This is about love, not lust. I saw the look on her face after her dad caught us yesterday. She was scared. Terrified. Right now she needs it soft and slow, and that’s okay. I don’t care how I get to be with her as long as I just get to be with her.
“Nico.”
Layla’s voice, sharp and cutting, stills my mouth on her shoulder. I pull back. Shit. I was trying for gentle. Maybe I need to stop with the teeth completely. Like a feather, you asshole. You need to be like a fuckin’ feather.
“Nico,” Layla says again. She grabs my jaw and forces me to look straight at her.
I blink. “Fuck, I’m sorry. What is it, baby? I’m being too rough, aren’t I? Tell me what you need, okay? I’ll do whatever you want…”
Layla frowns. “Stop treating me like a china doll.”
“What?”
Quickly, while I stare in disbelief, she reaches down the front of my shorts and grabs hold of my cock. There’s no question in her firm grip, no nerves in the way her thumb circles lightly over the tip. A shudder, the best kind, ripples through every muscle I have.
“I think you know,” she says, and her eyes, a darker blue than I’ve ever seen them, dare me to look away. “Stop it.”
* * *
Layla
His cock twitches in my hand. I squeeze a little harder, and his whole body shakes. I’m not going to lie; the power is a little thrilling. He wants this just as badly as I do.
“Nico,” I say as evenly as I can. “Just fuck me already. Or did you forget how in the last two weeks?”
A change filters over his body. His muscles tighten. His shoulders straighten. His black brow rises slyly, and his half smile matches it while his hand slides around my waist, and I’m wrapped around him like a cobra while his cock stiffens even more in my hand.
“I would never forget how to do that, NYU,” he growls before he takes my mouth again.
His kiss consumes me, even more than it did moments before. But where that was a kiss of gratitude, of wonder, this is one of pent-up lust and frustration, the kind that both of us have been feeling for days. The last remnants of his self-control disintegrate, and suddenly Nico’s hands are everywhere: my arms, my waist, sliding down to take two solid handfuls of my ass again and squeeze. Hard.
“Fuck,” he groans as he kneads my skin. His cock, iron between us, bulges through his pants. “Are you—are you sure…”
“Sure about what?” I mutter as his teeth graze my neck. “That I want to fuck my future husband? Out here? Where anyone could see us?” I lean back to look him in the eye. “You bet I am, papi.”
With nothing more than a sly smile that lights up his face—whether because of my casual use of Spanish or because he can see just how badly I want him—Nico slams his mouth onto mine. His arms wrap around my waist and shoulders as his tongue and lips invade, while his cock, stiff and ready, teases between my legs.
“Say it again,” he murmurs as he takes one breathless kiss, then another, all the while reaching down, around my legs, to tug my bikini bottoms to the side.
As he suckles my lower lip, his hips rock forward, and the tip of his cock, eager to bury itself in my depths, makes us both shudder.
“I…need…you,” I whisper as he pushes forward, teasing me ever so slightly, even while his hands maintain their death grip around my thighs.
Nico closes his eyes, taking a deep breath before he latches his mouth to my neck, my ear, my jaw.
“Not,” he croaks, his voice a current. “Not like I need you.”
He consumes me like a starving man, his lips, his teeth, his hands, anywhere and everywhere, all over my body while my hips rock automatically, seeking the angle to take him deeply, that angle he never quite permits.
“Nico!” I cry as his teeth find my breast again and bite, harder than before. In that way that only he understands, Nico walks the line between pleasure and pain.
“Touch yourself,” Nico rumbles into my neck as his cock continues to tease. “I want to watch you come.”
“I…can’t,” I whimper into his neck. The tension ebbs and flows, a current that will take down a waterfall, just slightly out of reach. I want to fall, I do. But I need him to do it.
“Yes, you can, baby,” Nico says.
He shelters me with his body, dipping down to lick my collarbone or worry a nipple between his teeth while he urges my hand down between us. But his lips always find mine again, and his tongue twists and turns, driving the tension that my hand begins to match until that edge approaches far faster than I ever thought possible.
“I feel it,” he says as my fingers move a little faster, press a little harder. “You’re shaking, baby. You’re so fucking close. Can you feel it too?”
“Mmmmm,” I groan into his lips, sucking on the lower one like it’s a piece of candy. “I want to feel you.”
“Yeah?” he murmurs before taking another kiss, this one much, much deeper than before.
“Yeah.” And before he can respond, I take hold of his long length and guide him back to that slick, dark space where he fits best.
“Shhhhiiiittt.” Nico’s breath is hoarse, guttural as he slides inside, so deep, so…home. Then he starts to move.
“Tell me again,” he says, lifting one of my legs to wrap around his waist while his other hand slides between our grinding bodies, finding that spot I need for release.
I arch backward into the water, thrusting my bre
ast toward his waiting mouth. But his name is the only word I can say. “Nico.”
“Tell me,” he insists. His eyes squeeze shut as he moves; this is all instinct for him. For both of us.
But he needs to hear it. He needs to hear that thing I could never say to anyone else. Because it was only ever the truth with him.
“I need you,” I whisper, threading my hands into his hair and pulling him close. He fills me, body and soul, so deep, so strong. With him, I am stronger. He is the reason I can be what I never was before.
My body starts to shake. I’m close, so close. “I need you,” I whisper again. “Nico…I….oh, God…I do, I need you!”
“Fuck!” he shouts. His hips move a little faster, a little more erratically. He drives deeper, harder than he had intended. But I take it, every delicious, punishing blow. The hand at my hip slides up my body and behind my head. He thrusts even deeper, and as I lift my head to meet his hungry kisses, Nico winds my hair around his fist. And then he pulls.
“Nico!” I shout, as my legs squeeze his waist impossibly tight. My body seizes, up toward the sky, a world as limitless as us. With his kiss, this pull, the ultimate pleasure blended with just the tiniest prick of pain, Nico makes me fly right along with him.
“Layla!”
His groans echoes around the sandstone cliffs as he loses himself completely. The hand in my hair keeps the knot in its unrelenting grip as he buries his face into my neck and shouts out the rest of his release.
Slowly, surely, we come back to earth. Back to these waters that drift around us, as peaceful as before. Back to these palm trees, that whisper a little with the wind. Nico’s broad, strong body keeps me afloat, lifeless except for the slight twitches of his muscles as they slowly release their tension.
“Fuck,” he breathes. “God, I love you.”
The words sing through me, though I’m almost too dazed to hear them.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbles.
My eyes close. “Huh? Why?”
He leans back so he’s looking at me. “I…I kind of lost myself there.”
The concern on his face is so sweet. And it only strengthens my resolve that one day I’ll convince him I’m strong again. Enough for him. Enough for our baby.
“Yeah, but if we lose ourselves, at least we do it together,” I say.
My hand drifts up and down the length of his back. Nico sighs in contentment and pulls me back down to lie on his shoulder. Then he presses one last sweet, soft kiss to the top of my head. “Well, thank God for that.”
* * *
Nico
We swim for a bit longer, but as the sun starts to fall a little lower, Layla throws on her cover-up and suggests we walk through the town to get back to her aunt’s house, where everyone will be arriving for dinner.
I just want her. I’m thinking I’m going to have to figure out a way to sneak her to a hotel tonight, even if it’s just for a few hours. Fucking her—if that’s what you can even call it—in the lagoon didn’t do anything to quench the thirst I’ve been feeling for days. If anything, it just made it worse. We’re engaged. She’s going to be my wife. And fucking hell if I don’t want to celebrate that.
But instead, we walk back through the rural part of Guarapari, hand in hand or with our arms around each other’s waists as we wander in and out of shops. In one, Layla ducks into a dressing room with a handful of sundresses, leaving me to linger uncomfortably around the register, waiting for her.
“You are American?” the salesgirl asks me, taking in the tattoos on my arm and sticking out the top of my tank top. It’s something I’ve noticed here––there aren’t as many people with body art. It’s the first time I’ve been in a place where I look the same as so many other people, but even so, I stick out. No one else has an arm full of tattoos.
But that’s not what I’m thinking about when a glint of gold catches my eye.
“Yeah,” I answer her as I lean over the glass counter. “Yo, how much is that one? Combien?”
I point to a gold ring that’s wedged with a bunch of others in a velvet display. I glance over my shoulder, but Layla’s still busy behind the curtain. When I turn around, the salesgirl has already pulled it out and set it on a small plate.
The ring is small, but obviously nice. Its metal has been spun so finely that it almost looks like lace. There are no stones in it, no diamonds or rubies or anything like that. I couldn’t afford them anyway. I won’t be able to get Layla a real engagement ring for a long time, and even then it won’t be anything impressive. But maybe while she waits, she could wear something like this. Something beautiful and pure, just like her.
“Is it real?” I ask the girl. I look up sharply. “Like her finger’s not going to turn green or anything, will it?”
The salesgirl’s face screws up in confusion. “Ahhh…”
“Verde,” I repeat in Spanish. Shit, how do they say that in Portuguese? I have no fuckin’ clue. I try my luck again in Spanish, slowly. “Debido al metal, entiende?”
Luckily, it seems to be close enough to Portuguese that she understands—it dawns across her face, as she vigorously shakes her head. “Ah! No, no. No green, gold. We buy from Ouro Preto, you know?”
I shrug. I have no idea what she’s talking about. Instead, I examine the ring more, even scratching a little with my thumbnail to see if anything comes off. But she seems to be telling the truth.
“All gold,” the salesgirl repeats. “All gold.”
I look up. “How much?”
That one, she knows. After looking down a list of prices next to the register, she scratches out a number on a piece of paper and turns it around. I do the mental calculation in my head of converting reais to dollars. It’s not cheap, but it’s a song compared to what something like this would fetch in New York.
Without thinking about it too much, I pull out my wallet and thumb through the cash I have left. “Ummmm,” I say. I take out about half of it. We leave in a few more days. I’ll just have to be frugal. “Here. And you can put the rest on this?”
I hand her my credit card, the one with a tiny limit that I only have for emergencies. I glance over my shoulder, checking to see if Layla’s coming out yet. “Can you hurry, please? Por favor?”
The salesgirl nods with a wink and continues processing the payment. She puts the ring in a little cardboard box, and I shove it in my pocket and sign the receipt like a crazy man. And it’s just as well, since as soon as I’m done, Layla walks out with two dresses over her arm.
“You can’t look,” she says as she shields them from me. “They’re a surprise.”
Surprise? She has no idea.
I do my best to look casual and totally normal as she pays for the dresses. But all I’m thinking is that now that I finally have a ring to give her, how am I going to ask her to wear it?
Chapter Thirty
Layla
“O que você acha?”
The hairdresser spins me around so I can see myself fully in the mirror.
It’s a small salon, almost completely full of all of the women in my extended family—Bibi, Carolina, her sons and their significant others. Even my grandparents came from Colatina for the big party tonight. She’s having her ancient gray strands set into curls around her head. It’s more pomp and circumstance than I’ve seen for anything other than a wedding, but apparently this is totally normal in Brazil, at least in a certain set. The night before, when Carolina mentioned taking the day to get ready for the banquet, and I’d mentioned Nico’s and my plans to go to the beach again before the graduation Mass and ceremony the next day, my cousin had looked at me like I should be committed, and then promptly dragged me downstairs while shouting for her mother.
Which is how I found myself in the salon for almost the entire afternoon following Luciano’s graduation ceremony. After attending yet another Mass and then watching my cousin receive his degree along with the other twenty or so members of his class also graduating at the end of the summer term, I’d b
een swept into a car with Carolina and everyone else to be primped for the banquet tonight. Though I’d tried to be demure the day before, not wanting to be a burden or lose more precious time with Nico, Bibi took one look at me, windswept, sand-covered, with my hair a curly windblown mess from the salt water and hours spent at the beach, and informed me that she wasn’t taking no for an answer. And as much as I like Bibi, I don’t think she was doing it to be nice. This was one of those events, apparently, where her family would be seen.
But now I’m glad I went. It was only after watching all of the women in my extended family get waxed, buffed, and primped like it was no strange thing to have all of this done for a relatively small event, that I realized just how out of place I would be if I didn’t do it. Compared to them, I’d end up looking like a cavewoman. I don’t want to admit that a small part of me doesn’t want to disappoint my dad either. Or, at least, I don’t need another reason beyond the one growing in my belly.
His daughter. Pregnant. Out of wedlock. It sounds bad enough as it is, but when you add to the equation that my father is so Catholic he refuses to divorce his estranged wife who lives in a total other country…well, it’s basically going to be like splitting an atom inside my father’s head.
Of course, I need to tell Nico first. Sitting in the chair while a woman from Recife paints my toenails, I twitch my ring finger, imagining a ring, any ring, on it. Nico isn’t rich—neither of us are—and I hope he doesn’t think he has to get me anything expensive, or anything at all. All I want is him, as I’ve told him time and time again. He gives me so much more than any of this. Just like he’ll give our baby.
My hand drifts over my still-flat belly from time to time, and occasionally Carolina looks knowingly from the other side of the room, where she’s having her roots touched up. She’s wondering if I’ve told him, I’m sure. Wondering if I’ve told anyone. But for now, this secret is mine. Just me and whatever it is. A little bean, a little creature, a little something made of love and nothing else. Whatever happens in the next few days before we go back to New York, I’ll never forget that.
Bad Idea: The Complete Collection Page 98