It’s a stupid excuse. Layla is plenty healthy, and I’m being a chicken shit. I’m a scared little kid, scared to tell her how I really feel. About this city. About my life. About her.
She pushes herself up completely.
“Stop that,” she says.
I turn the bill of my hat around so she can see my face. “What? Stop what?”
“Talking.”
Before I can respond, she grabs a handful of my shirt and crushes her lips to mine. A groan escapes, buried deep in my throat. Every doubt I’ve had is suddenly gone, swallowed by the taste of her. Of Layla.
It takes me a second, but then I’m meeting her kiss for urgent kiss, snaking an arm around her waist and lifting her into my lap to bring our bodies closer, as close as we can. Somehow the hem of her dress pushes past her knees with the movement, and as she begs my lips to open with sweet, urgent flicks of her tongue, I palm her thigh, only inches from her ass, that part of her I can’t ever get enough of. She fits. We fit. Better than I ever thought possible.
She winds her arms around my neck, welcoming me closer, without a care in the world about the fact that we have an audience of literally hundreds surrounding our very public display of affection. But one of us has to be smart about this. I don’t give a fuck about what people think about me, but I’m pretty sure that neither Layla nor her uptight parents would appreciate videos of their daughter showing up on the internet.
I pull away and find another couple sitting a few feet from us watching over the tops of their sunglasses with disapproving looks. “Get a room,” one of them mutters before they both turn back to their newspapers. Layla buries her face into my neck in embarrassment, oblivious to the way the feel of her lips only make the, ah, problem in my pants get that much...harder.
“We should probably take their advice,” I mutter before gently biting her earlobe in that way that always makes her whimper. Fuck, I’d take her right here if it wouldn’t get us both arrested.
I’d take her for the rest of my life.
Fuck, Nico. What are you doing?
She shivers. “Let’s go,” she murmurs. “Now.”
We pack up the picnic in record time and practically sprint across the field onto one of the paths that lines the surrounding area. Both of us are laughing almost uncontrollably. I pull her onto one path, then another, until we’re running under green wood arches of the Central Park Dairy, which is by some miracle empty. We twist around, arms about each other’s waists, sneaking kisses until finally we slam against one of the doors, and I bury my face in the soft skin of Layla’s neck all over again.
The backpack hits the floor. Her mouth meets mine in a frenzy, nipping and sucking, twisting and diving with my tongue until we are both completely out of breath.
“How…ah…how well do you know…this park?” she gasps in between hurried kisses.
I chew on my lower lip before kissing her again. “Better than most. Why?”
You know why, you bastard. It’s all over her innocent face. Well, maybe not-so-innocent.
I press my forehead against the door over her shoulder, then glance from side to side, nervous of the onlookers I know will eventually come upon us here. It’s a visitor’s center, after all.
Then I look back at her, tensing when her hands reach around to my ass and grab, hard. Fuuuuuuck.
“I...I don’t think I can wait,” she whispers in a throaty voice. “To get to your apartment, I mean.”
She looks at me, and sex is painted so clearly across her sweet face as her lips fall open into a shape that would fit perfectly around my––
My hands tighten even more around her thighs. “Are you serious? Because I ain’t fuckin’ around, Layla. You have no idea what I’m feeling right now, baby.”
“Oh, I think I do.” Heavy-lidded, she rolls her hips against the fucking pipe I have in my jeans, which grows even harder when she moans a little.
Jesus Christ. This girl is seriously going to be the death of me.
Layla sucks on my lower lip like a lollipop, slips her tongue into my mouth, and welcomes me into hers. My arms hold her up, hold her close. I feel her light that I increasingly depend on to keep me steady in this dreary life. I’m a drowning man, and she’s my anchor.
I lift her off the ground and stumble us into a hidden alcove off the main arched corridor of the old wood building. I’m not sure how I even know it’s there––it’s like I have some weird sixth sense for where we need to go to be together. With the sky quickly covering with clouds and the new green of the trees offering a bit of cover from all the eyes around us, this is the best sanctuary we can get, the closest thing to a corner all our own. With Layla in my arms, open and eager, the rest of the city fades away.
Her body is warm. Her hands are everywhere, finding their way under the hem of my shirt, yanking at the buttons of my jeans, even as I’m shoving her skirt up and pulling her underwear to the side. The humidity is rising—it’s like we want to melt into each other, and everything else is just in the way.
“Hold on,” I mutter as she tries to steer me inside her. It’s hard to find the condom in the back of my jeans with her lips fused to mine, but I manage to get it and put it on.
I can’t hear, see, sense anything but her. It doesn’t matter that we’re in the middle of the day. It doesn’t matter that we’re in the middle of this fuckin’ zoo we call a park. All I can think about is her, how badly I need to be inside her right fuckin’ now.
And then our bodies find each other, and I can’t think at all. I move automatically, and she arches violently as I spear her against the rough wall. She’s as desperate as I am, wriggling against me, eager to find that friction I know she needs to get off.
“Fuck!” My voice is hoarse; I’m struggling to be quiet. There are voices down the path, but for now we’re still hidden by the trees.
I bury my face in her neck as I pound away. Her nails bite into my shoulders as she whimpers in my ear. I’m so close, but I can feel by the way she’s tightening around me that she’s right there with me. Come on, Nico. You gotta last a little longer. Football. Dirty socks. Cockroaches.
“Please,” I whisper.
“Nico!” she cries, almost too loud.
But she’s coming––finally. I can feel it in the way her entire body tightens around me, the way her fingers tear at my skin, how her thighs turn to rocks around my waist. I cover her mouth with mine as I let go myself, shoving into her with one last painful, beautiful thrust. Our muscles throb. Our bones shake together, in waves that match the ebbs and flows of the wind blowing through the leaves above us.
Slowly, slowly, her feet fall to the ground. I feel the slick of her as I slide out and her skirt falls back into place. Layla takes in a deep breath. I try to remember how to breathe at all. But my hands don’t leave her waist. I’m stuck in place, my forehead pressed against hers for a few more blissful moments before I finally reach down to get rid of the condom.
“Fuck,” I whisper.
Our breaths mingle. I shudder.
“You said it,” Layla whispers back.
We both close our eyes and listen to each other’s breaths as we catch our breath and our hearts begin to slow.
“You.” My voice is haggard. I shake my head from side to side. “You wreck me, Layla. You really do.”
I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I decide not to think too much of it. Instead, I focus on the look on her face as she traces the line of my jaw, on her soothing touch instead of the terrifying sense of feeling completely undone. I don’t move or break eye contact until her finger touches my lips, swiping meditatively back and forth over the bottom one. She seems as entranced as I am. Small mercies.
I exhale through my nose, and then, because I can’t not do it, cup her face with one hand and kiss her again, savoring every dip and valley of her lips, tasting deeply, slowly, exquisitely. It’s not a kiss that says I need to fuck you. It’s a kiss that says I love you. Te amo. However you say it in Portugu
ese. It doesn’t matter; it’s all the same thing.
My eyes shut. It’s almost too much to bear.
I’m just about to tell her what I’m feeling when the sound of a few Japanese tourists crushing through the park ruins the moment. We break the kiss. Suddenly the air is heavy—sweat beads around my collarbone. I swipe off my hat and wipe the sweat before replacing it with the bill to the front. Layla stares at me hard, her chest rises and falls with each breath. The moment might be over, but the tension between us still crackles.
The chatter of the tourists dies away as they finish taking pictures of the quaint little building, unaware of where we stand in the shadows. Then a few of them scream when a loud clap of thunder sounds from the sky. A spring storm, right on time.
I glance through the trees, now bristling in a bit of heavy wind.
“It’s going to rain,” Layla says.
She’s right. The dark alcove of what used to be an old dairy might be enough to shelter us, but if the wind blows anything sideways, we’ll get soaked.
Another clap of thunder. I look up to the sky, and hold her tighter. “We need to find a cab.”
~
Layla
Fat drops of warm rain splatter on my bare shoulder by the time we exit the park somewhere by Lincoln Center. The wind has picked up some more—now the sky is covered more with low-lying gray clouds that are nearly black. It’s a typical spring storm in New York—the kind that sweeps in on a warm day and leaves just as quickly. Another clap of thunder sounds, and as if some god turns a key, the clouds open and it starts to absolutely pour.
“Come on!” Nico yells.
The light turns on Amsterdam, and he tugs me across the street. Out of nowhere, a wave of sudden nausea hits me, and I stumble on a crack in the sidewalk.
“Whoa, you okay?” Nico calls through the roar of the weather.
I nod my head as we keep walking, even though I feel like crap. What the hell is happening to me?
Soon the combination of the jog and the withering humidity is too much, and it doesn’t take longer than a block before I have to stop again. I grab the railing of a set of brownstone stairs. Nico whips around as I collapse on the bottom stair, holding my stomach while the rain hammers down in fat sheets. I will not puke in the middle of the Upper West Side. I will not puke, I will not puke. Will. Not.
“Baby, what’s wrong?”
Nico’s at my side in a moment, sliding an arm around my rib cage while I bend over. I breathe deeply as the nausea subsides. Damn. Quinn isn’t going to let me hear the end of this. And neither will my father.
“I’m fine,” I say. “This weather is just kind of kicking my ass. Give me a second.”
Nico looks at me up and down, and before I can say anything more, he slips another arm under my legs and lifts me up like I weigh nothing. With a wicked grin and brief peck on the cheek, he carries me briskly down the block.
We stop in front of a boutique, one of those places that would have said no to Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. With me in his arms, Nico busts through the glass doors, startling the waifish salesgirls lounging behind a display of beige skirts.
“She’s not feeling too well,” he tells them with his trademark smile as he sets me neatly on the bench by the entrance. “Can she hang out here while I find a cab?”
With his rain-soaked shirt hugging his muscles transparently, he’s putting on the best wet t-shirt contest in the world. Even through the nausea, I can’t help but appreciate the view.
The salesgirls clearly like what they see too. One of them stumbles as she takes in the soaking wet god in front of her. She barely glances at me, despite the fact that I am dressed in red in a store devoid of color.
“S-sure,” she says. “Take as long as you need.”
Nico gives me a gentle kiss. “Stay here, baby. I’ll get us a cab.”
~
It takes close to thirty minutes for Nico to get a cab, leaving me thirty minutes to wilt on the bench, pressing my temple against the cold glass wall of the store and willing the waves of nausea that just won’t quite die to go away, away, away. I have had one offer of help from the salesgirls, the bitches, and it isn’t until Nico lifts me up again that I realize just how shitty I do feel. I want to lie down right here on the cold white marble and go to sleep. I want to be anywhere else than a New York City cab.
And I want to know what the hell is going on.
The cab is even worse than normal. The interior stinks of cheap air freshener and hot dogs, and the driver, a taciturn guy named Karim, is blasting some kind of South Asian music featuring an ear-piercing female singer. Karim drives even more erratically than most New York cabbies, whipping and winding around the corners, jerking at the stoplights hard enough to throw me against the thick plastic barrier between the front and back seats.
Ten blocks down Broadway, and it’s too much.
“Stop,” I say weakly. “Stop, I need to get out. I’m going to be sick.”
There’s nothing a New York cab driver fears more than people throwing up in his cab. I spoke softly, but almost immediately, the cab pulls over.
“Out,” Karim orders.
“Hold on, man, just give her a second,” Nico’s arguing. “She doesn’t feel good, but she’ll be all right.”
“I need out,” I manage to say. “Now.” That final lurch did it for me.
“Out!” yells Karim, and he slams his hand on his horn, prompting Nico to shuffle quickly out of the cab and come around to help me out. He stands me up on the curb and tosses a few bills at the cabbie, who zooms away.
The sky thunders. My stomach rolls. I sprint to a trashcan on the corner, where the stench of urine and rotten garbage lingers. Everything I’ve eaten today comes up.
“Shit!”
Nico’s voice is frantic behind me while his hand is at my back, holding back my hair as I lose my cookies on a busy street corner in the middle of New York City.
“Nasty!” I hear someone sneer as they pass by.
My thoughts exactly. If I didn’t feel so awful, I’d be incredibly embarrassed.
When I stand up, all the blood rushes from my head. There’s another clap of thunder, and I barely register a flash of lightning against the dark gray of the sky and tall buildings.
“Nico,” I mutter, just before I fall forward into his arms.
~
CHAPTER THIRTY
Layla
There’s a ringing sound in my head. It comes and goes, like a timer going off, but just a bit slower. It’s steady, but annoying. And it’s making my head hurt more than it already did.
I groan. I just want it to stop. Ugh.
“Layla?”
The voice is warm, kind, and male, but not one I recognize. He repeats my name, and something rustles around my body. I’m in bed, but it’s not my bed. My hands grasp at the sheets, and my eyes open.
“There she is. I thought you were coming around.”
I stare through a foggy haze until my vision focuses on a round, tanned face framed by a mane of tawny blond hair. He looks like the human version of Simba from The Lion King.
Dressed in purple scrubs, Simba smiles sweetly. “Hey there. Welcome back.”
I frown. My vision is a little hazy, but it’s clearing up quickly. Looking around, I see that I’m in a small corner of a hospital, partitioned off from the rest of a busy ER by two hanging curtains that encircle my hospital bed. They are light blue, speckled with small pink teddy bears. My wrist aches a little. I look down to find an IV drip line inserted into my vein, just below the oversized sleeves of a hospital gown. It makes me feel faint again, so I lie back against my pillow and close my eyes again.
“You okay, there, honey?” Simba—the nurse, it appears—does a quick check of my vitals, taking my temperature and blood pressure in record time before making quick notes on my chart at the end of the bed. “I’m Tad, the nurse on call here tonight. You had quite a spell at the park.”
I clear my throat, coughing
a bit. I blink, trying to remember the name he just told me, but still, all I can come up with is Simba. “What…what happened?”
“You fainted, dear.” His expression is kind and honest. “Right in the middle of Lincoln Center, if you can believe that. You’re lucky your boyfriend was there to catch you, otherwise you’d probably have a nice little gash and a concussion too. It’s nothing major—just dehydration. Your doctor ordered an IV drip to help.”
He taps the bag hanging from the rod next to my left elbow. I just nod as he continues checking me out. Where is Nico? Where are my clothes, my things? A pounding headache rips through the side of my head, but disappears quickly. God, I feel like shit. This is worse than any hangover I have ever had.
“Baby?”
A familiar deep voice rumbles, and a brown hand gingerly pulls the curtain aside. Nico’s head pops in, his Yankees cap crooked and propped so far up that the bill points almost to the ceiling, the way it looks when he’s been taking it on and off in quick succession. His worry transforms into relief when he sees I’m awake, and he wastes no time moving to sit on the edge of my bed.
“Hey,” he murmurs sweetly as he grasps my hand and lightly brushes a thumb over my knuckles. I squeeze gently and he leans in to nuzzle my nose with his.
“You might want to give her some space,” says Simba.
Nico sits up, obviously annoyed. The thunder in his expression is enough to cause the nurse’s mouth to close mid-sentence.
“I’ll let the on-call doctor know you’re awake,” Simba says as he ducks away.
Nico turns back to me. “You need space, baby?” he asks with a sneaky grin. “Is Lion King right?”
I giggle. “You see it too?”
I get a sly grin in response. “How could I not? He looks like he just ran in from the Serengeti. Was off chasing wildebeests and shit.”
I giggle again. Nico lifts a hand up to cup my face, then runs it down my neck to rest on my shoulder. He exhales, long and slow between full, pursed lips.
“You scared me, sweetie,” he says in a low voice, almost too low to hear. He studies the edge of my hospital gown, fingering over the coarse fabric.
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