His brow furrows without waiting for my answer, and he closes his eyes as if in pain too. He rolls his lips together––his beautiful, soft lips––and exhales forcefully through his nostrils while he rubs his head. He’s processing something. I wanted to forget him, but Giancarlo is in this room right now. I hate him for it. I hate him for all of it.
Nico opens his eyes, suddenly full of direction.
“Tell me what he did,” he prompts.
I pause. “I––Nico, you don’t want to hear about that, do you?”
He puffs out his cheeks and blows out another breath slowly. “No, not really. But I think I should.”
I grimace. “Why?”
“Because,” he says softly. “Why do you think I flew across the country the second you called? Your pain is mine, baby. So let me bear it with you.”
I blink for a moment as his words seep in. The idea that I’m not alone in this. That maybe I really can talk about it with him.
“He––he liked it rough,” I whisper finally, terrified of the reaction I might get here. Nico hasn’t exactly hidden his disdain for me being with someone else, even before that someone turned out to be an abusive asshole. “Sometimes that was okay. I…I didn’t want things sweet with him. I never did. Being with him was always like a punishment, you know? Did you ever feel like you needed something to hurt for it to feel good?”
I close my eyes, working hard to keep my control. I’m terrified of what he might think of me for this. That he might say what a voice in my head also says sometimes. That whatever harshness Giancarlo dealt out, maybe there was a part of me that was asking for it. That felt like I deserved it.
Nico chews on his lips again, clearly processing my words with varying amounts of anger and sadness. But in the end, he retains that direct, open expression.
“Okay,” he says. “So tell me what he didn’t do, baby. Tell me that.”
“He didn’t…” I pause. Tears are threatening now. “He didn’t kiss me.”
Nico arches a black brow in surprise. “Seriously? He never kissed you at all?”
I blush. I doubt he can see it––not with my technicolor face and the dark lighting. But I can feel the heat rising up my neck. “No, he kissed me. I just meant…he never kissed me like you.”
Nico blinks. “Yeah?”
The blush deepens. It’s hard not to look away. “Yeah.”
Carefully, with movements scattered with micro pauses to check and check again that I’m actually all right, Nico shifts so that he’s lying between my legs. It’s not a lecherous move––just one that allows him to balance with his forearms on either side of my head so his hands can cup together at the crown of my head. We stare at each other. His black eyes glimmer with the glow of the city that sneaks into the room.
Slowly, slowly, he leans down. And finally presses his lips to mine.
“Like that?” he asks, his breath warm and heavy.
I nod. “Like that.”
So he does it again. And again. Slowly, slowly, my mouth opens to his. His tongue slips out to taste me again, to flicker with curiosity and want. I twist mine with it, finding again that delicate dance that always made me feel like I was floating two feet off the ground. Nico sucks lightly on my bottom lip, savors the top, licks and nibbles until a low moan emerges from my chest. My hands have somehow found their way into the hair at the back of his neck, and with a sudden yank, I pull him deeper, forcing his body to collapse over me. And this time, the hardness now pressing between my legs is unmistakable.
“Shit,” Nico breathes in between the deep, long kisses that I’m driving now as much as him. “Fuck, Layla.”
But when he thrusts his hips, something deep inside me stills again. My chest squeezes, and I freeze again. Nico pulls back, searching my face again, even though his lips are wet with our kisses.
I shut my eyes. Fuck. What am I doing? I want this, even though I shouldn’t. I need this, but I can’t do anything about it. I’m so fucked up. Quinn is right. Maybe the best thing for Nico is to just leave me alone. My needs shouldn’t matter when they just screw everything up.
“Look at me, baby.”
So I do. Because even in this tortured state, I also know the truth: that I’d do just about anything right now because he wanted me to.
“Did he make you come?” he asks.
At first I’m not sure he actually asks me that out loud. But then he draws a finger over my cheek, plays with my lower lip for a moment, and asks it again. His lips are soft as he drifts kisses down my body, over my t-shirt, between my breasts, down to where the hem rises just above my underwear.
I stare as his mouth hovers over the elastic band. “N-no?”
It’s a question more than a statement. But it’s also true. The few times I did orgasm with Giancarlo, I had to do it myself. And more often than not, he would get too impatient waiting for me to find the focus to do it. I’ve been faking it. For months and months, I’ve been faking it.
Nico props his chin on my stomach and gazes up at me with eyes full of love, free of judgment. “No?”
“N-no. I just…I just couldn’t. Not really. Not with him.”
Nico lays his cheek on my stomach, closes his eyes and smiles an impossibly sweet smile. Like my disclosure solves all of his concerns. Like he’s thinking of the countless times he’s brought me to the peak of pleasure, with just a few touches, a few choice phrases, a few breathless kisses.
Men.
Then he presses one kiss, then another over my stomach. “Is this okay?”
Quickly, all deprecating thoughts vanish as his mouth toys with the elastic band of my underwear. When they pull away, I look down to find Nico fingering the sides.
He looks at me, unsure. “Is this…is this okay? You can say no. I won’t be mad, baby, I swear.”
I believe him. I believe that in this moment, all he wants is to give me some pleasure. And even though I should say no, I can’t for the life of me think of a reason why.
In response, I lift my hips and watch as he removes my underwear. He kneels over me. With the moonlight shining in, bouncing blue gray off the windows of New York, he looks like an ancient warrior, standing over me. Protecting me.
He leans down and kisses me again, keeping it kind, but doesn’t bother to mask his hunger. My hands rub up his arms, over the dips and curves of his finely honed muscles, grazing the ridges of his abdomen. Christ, he really is beautiful.
“Can I make you come?” he asks before he steals another kiss or two.
“You used to all the time.”
There’s that smile––the impish, cocky smile I remember. The one he reserves just for me. I let him tug off my shirt, and he kisses down my neck, humming slightly into the soft skin between my breasts. My hands clasp his head, holding him there.
“Do it,” I whisper. “Please.”
With a rumbling groan, Nico kisses down my body all over again, worshipping my nipples, my stomach, my hips, all in ways I never felt with…him. A name that even this quickly, starts to grow distant. I look my worst, but Nico looks at me as if I’m at my best. As if he can’t see anything else but me.
He feathers his mouth over my inner thighs, and I shiver at the touch, moaning slightly as my legs spread. Spread for him.
“Please.” I’m so close to begging. I will if he wants. “Please. Kiss me there.”
But I don’t have to beg. Nico’s mouth finds my most intimate spots with the ardor of a starving man. Like he lives to do this, to feel me twitch and moan under his exquisite lips, feel my body shiver with each stroke of his tongue. As he sucks lightly on my clit, he hums again, creating a delicious vibration. My body, desperate for release, seizes almost immediately. My body isn’t frozen at all anymore. The heat of desire is almost too much to take, and yet, with him it feels like it could last forever.
“Oh, God!” I cry out, holding his head firmly in place. He doesn’t stop, even as the first orgasm fades. Instead, he chases it, urging another one ri
ght on its heels. “Nico!” I shout as the next one hits. “Oh my fucking God!”
He makes me come again and again, with his lips, then with his tongue, and finally with his hand, reached over my hip while he holds me securely against his body, absorbing the tension I didn’t know I had to release. It’s only after the fifth and final orgasm that he finally allows me to return to earth, still holding me close while his breath plays at my ear.
“I love you,” he murmurs, almost in a daze himself. His fingers strum across my stomach lazily. “I belong to you.”
The words catch in my throat, and unbidden, tears prick at my eyes. How often did I dream of him saying just that, of me being able to say it back to him as easily? I open my mouth to say it––I feel it, after all. I love this man more than anything. All I’ve wanted, since the day we met, was him.
But the words don’t come. And suddenly I am all too aware of his erection pressing at my back. Of that fact that I have taken and taken and taken from this man all day and given him nothing in return.
“I…” I trail off, feeling unsure. Awkward. “Hold on.”
I move clumsily, turning in his arms and reaching down to his underwear.
“Whoa!” he hollers as my hand takes hold of his solid length through the fabric. “Baby––shit––what-what are you doing?”
I keep him in my grip, holding tight. I don’t move, but that’s only because I’m shaking again. Once again…frozen.
“I just thought,” I whisper, even though I can’t look at him. “I just wanted to make you feel good. Like you did for me. Because I…I love you too.”
The words linger between us. Nico stares at me, holding my gaze to his. Then slowly, he reaches between us, and unwraps my fingers from his cock. My heart sinks.
“Not now,” he says softly, refusing to let me look away. “One day. But you’re not ready.”
Still he holds my gaze, like he’s demanding me to see the truth in his eyes. Maybe we moved too fast. Maybe he’s regretting his actions too. But the longer I look, the more I thaw. The more his warmth surrounds me, infiltrates me. Body. Soul. Mind. Everything.
Nico takes my hands and presses them to his mouth, kisses to my knuckles.
“One day,” he murmurs again. “I promise.”
“That’s patient of you,” I say, though relief floods through me at his words.
“No, baby,” he says as he gathers me into his chest. “That’s love.”
~
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Layla
My face hurts. My ankle hurts. Everything hurts. But even with that and the fact that I have an avalanche of stuff to deal with today, the world still feels a little lighter.
And a little colder too. It takes me a second to realize that the arms that were wrapped around me all night are gone, and that I’m alone in my bed, covers draped over my bare shoulder.
Quinn’s not in the room––in the wake of our fight, she really did take the couch. I feel bad. We may not be friends anymore, but that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t be able to sleep in her bed.
Nico walks in, fully dressed in his t-shirt and jeans, his hat on backwards, cell phone to his ear. My cell phone, I quickly realize.
“Sure,” he says. “Thanks, Cheryl. Yeah, I’ll make sure she prints out the ticket.” He catches me looking and winks. “Okay, you too. Take care.” He sets my phone on the desk before pulling up a chair in front of me so he can take my hand. “Morning, beautiful,” he says softly as his thumb plays over my knuckles. “You slept like the dead, you know that?”
I blanch. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
Nico shrugs and gives me a sly half-smile. “You snore too. It’s okay. I’ll make sure to bring earplugs next time I see you.”
“I do not snore!” I search for a pillow to whack him, but by the time I swing it around, he dodges it easily, chuckling.
“It’s okay,” he says. “It’s just a little snore. A baby snore, like a kitten.”
I tug my sheet over my head. “Kill me.”
Nico just chuckles and waits patiently until I pull the sheet back down. He lounges back in the chair, content, it seems, to just sit with me.
“Was that…was that my mom?” I ask a few moments later.
His gaze flickers around the room uneasily. “Um, yeah.”
Without explaining anything else, he stands up. I hold the sheet awkwardly to my chest and watch as he walks to the dresser by the closet. One of my suitcases is on the floor, open and half packed with clothes, I realize. Nico opens one of my drawers and starts transferring stuff into it.
“What-what are you doing?” I ask, completely confused.
“I talked to Shama,” he says as he folds a t-shirt. He’s clearly not used to folding small pieces of fabric. He has to try three times before he can get it into a square, which he puts on top of the others he’s already done.
“You talked to Shama…” I repeat.
Nico looks up from dubiously examining a tank top. “Yeah. She emailed your professors and got extensions on your final papers through the summer. You already finished your language finals, so the rest are just essays. You just have to email them to confirm.”
He folds the tank top in half, but it keeps falling apart every time he tries. Snorting with disgust, he balls it up and shoves it into the bag with a lot more force than a piece of cotton deserves.
I sit up and push my hair out of my face. “I don’t understand. Why are you packing my stuff up?”
Nico stops. He takes off his hat and passes it in between his hands a few times. The sounds of my roommates making breakfast filter under the door. He looks around the room guiltily, shifting on the balls of his feet like a caged animal.
“You, um, you wanna go for a walk or something?” he asks abruptly. “How’s your ankle?”
I swallow. This is out of nowhere, and I probably look even more like a punching bag than yesterday. If he wants me out of the apartment to talk, this can’t be good. But already the place feels suffocating. I need to get outside.
“Um, it’s all right,” I say. “I can probably just take some ibuprofen, I guess.”
I swing my legs out of the bed, and Nico’s eyes follow them down to the floor. His eyes dilate slightly before he blinks and looks away.
“I need to stop at Duane Reade for some of that makeup your sister showed me anyway,” I tell him.
And just like that, the look is gone. Nico blinks, and his gaze hardens as he looks back at my neck and face, takes in the real extent of my bruises. I hate that look. It makes me want to throw a paper bag over my head and be done with it.
“Just, um, give me a second to get dressed,” I say, looking pointedly at the door. “I need to take a shower, okay?”
He pauses, clearly unwilling to leave me alone, even for a second. But I sit there, waiting, until finally he nods.
“Okay,” he says as he moves toward the door. “Take your time.”
~
Nico
For the next thirty minutes, I wait on the couch, chatting with Shama and Jamie while they eat their breakfasts. I stare moodily out of the windows that look out toward Union Square. Quinn is nowhere to be seen, although according to Shama, she slept on the couch before leaving early to keep studying for her finals at the library for the rest of the day. Good. Layla doesn’t need any more stress today, especially since I’m pretty sure she’s not going to want to hear what I have to say.
But while she slept through most of the morning––seriously, if I hadn’t known before how hurt she really was, inside and out, the fourteen hours of sleep my girl just took would have told me––her friends and I were busy. Now that they’ve really clued in to just how messed up Layla really is right now, they jumped right in, helping me get things squared away.
Because there are only two things on my mind at the moment.
One: I love her. I love her more than anything. More than myself. More than my job. More than the need I have on a fuckin
’ cellular level to touch her, smell her, taste her. Those are things that suit me, but this love goes beyond that––it’s not about me, it’s about her.
And so the second realization beats loud and clearly, painfully through my skull: She needs to go home.
I barely slept last night, staring at the ceiling, looking around the posters on her walls while I recounted the past two days. The terrified phone call from the street. The plane ride where I thought I was going to chew my own arm off with anxiety. Arriving at her dorm to find her missing. Busting into that apartment to find her being attacked.
His blood. My fists. Her bruises.
But it would always come back to her, lying there in my arms, snoring peacefully. Occasionally she would cry out a little, or murmur something unintelligible under her breath. My baby is fuckin’ adorable when she sleeps. I never knew. I hate that I never knew. That I let a whole year pass between us without knowing all these small things about her. That I’ll have to put at least another three months more between us before I can start learning about them again.
Because my baby is broken. I was happy to give her a little pleasure last night––let her know that someone could touch her again without cruelty. I would worship her body all day every day if she’d let me, especially if it would convince her of that. But the look in her eyes that flashed every so often––pure, unadulterated fear––felt like a lightning bolt through my chest. It’s the last thing I ever want her to feel around me. Her wounds go so much deeper than a few bruises on her face. My baby needs time, real time to heal.
And she can’t do that here.
I went over it, over and over again in my mind, trying to figure out a way we could make it work. But I can’t for the life of me figure out how I’ll be able to pay for an apartment for the two of us and give her the attention she needs while I’m at the academy for the next four months. Me, I can deal with living in whatever shithole place I can afford on a cadet’s salary, but Layla deserves better than some basement room in Queens or my brother’s couch. She needs a place where she doesn’t have to worry about things like paying the electricity bills or dealing with seedy landlords, where she’s not going to be left for eighteen hours a day while I’m learning how to become one of New York’s Bravest. She needs a place where people can take care of that shit for her. Where she won’t be alone.
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