15
SAY IT
You know why I don’t cry? Because it’s exhausting. It just sucks the energy right out of you, leaves you a snot-encrusted, puffy-eyed, blubbering, lip-quivering mess.
But no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t stop. It started with knowing I’d probably just messed up the one good thing that had ever happened to me, but then all the shit I’d just been through piled on. Getting kidnapped. Getting kidnapped in a thong and a T-shirt. Being locked in a tiny, cold, fish-stanky cell on a boat. Being forced to resort to hiding a Bic pen up my poon. Flaunting topless for Vitaly, never knowing when he’d decide to just rape me, or torture me, or kill me; not knowing was the worst part. Cut trying to rape me, and having to kill him. Jesus, that in particular sent me spiraling into a paroxysm of sobs, the awful visceral memory of the way it felt to smash that pen through his eyeball, the way it just…gave with a nasty squish. Having to slam it deeper so he’d just fucking die, and stop twitching and thrashing. Running. Being fucking hot, and hungry, and alone. The hike up that motherdick of a hill. The chase through São Paulo in the stolen car, culminating in Harris finding me, and then the ambush…killing another human being.
And then…Harris. Stealing my heart, blatant and brazen. Just snatching it out of my chest and claiming it like he had every right to it.
He made love to me.
The bastard.
These thoughts caused me to sob even harder. I just couldn’t seem to stop.
I had no clue what time it was. I had no idea how long I’d slept last night before waking up and sucking some epic cock. How long had that taken? I still tasted his come in my mouth. My pussy still ached. I could almost feel his finger in my ass. I felt him around me, behind me, above me, inside me.
I smelled him: sweat, sex, faint deodorant. Leather. Gunpowder, or whatever they used in bullets, now. Cordite? Who the hell cared? It was a sexy as hell smell.
With a start, I realized he was behind me, spooning me. I was still naked, and as previously stated, a snotty, lip-quivering, blubbering, rat’s-nest hair, sex- and sweat-stinky mess. He had a hand on my hip, nose in my hair, chest against my back.
“I’m no good with words.”
“No, Nick, I—”
“Shut up and listen a second, Layla,” he interrupted. “Just let me speak. I’m no good with words, with expressing myself. Hell, I’m no good with people. I’m good at one thing: assessing and eliminating threats. It’s all I know. I’ve never been in a relationship. Nothing has ever lasted longer than a weekend. I’m not the commitment type, you might say. I’m gone too much, and my job is too dangerous. And I just…no one has ever captured my interest, much less held it. I’ve never wanted to make anything last for more than a few days of feeling good. And now, I feel like I’m just too damn old to change my ways.”
“How old are you?” I asked.
“I’m forty-two.” He flattened his palm over my belly, low, fingers splayed, pressing me back against him. “I’m not done. Just listen. My point is, I fucked it up with you, a bit ago. I have no right to demand anything from you, to act like I did. And then I fucked up even more because I heard you crying and I stayed outside. I can face down men with guns and not flinch. I’ve been shot and I’ve been tortured and I’ve been stabbed and beaten and left for dead. I’ve had malaria, typhus, dysentery, and dengue fever and survived it all. But I didn’t know how to deal with a woman I’d made cry.”
“I’m glad, honestly. I wouldn’t have wanted you to see me like that. It was ugly.”
“No part of you is ugly, Layla. Not one thing. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, inside and out.” He spoke just above a whisper, his voice a heady, buzzing murmur in my ear. “You don’t owe me shit.”
“I do, though.”
“How do you figure?”
“You were right. I’m scared shitless of what I’m feeling for you. Like, where the fuck did it come from? Why is it so strong, so fast? What does it mean? I don’t know how to do it. How to be—that kind of girl. How to let you in. How to be…I don’t know. Like I said, that kind of girl. Because I’m not, Nick. I never have been. You said you’ve been with a lot of women, and I for real wasn’t judging you for that, because I’ve been with a lot of men.”
“Still don’t get why you think you owe me anything, though.”
I sighed. “Because…god, I don’t even know. Because you were right. Because you had the courage to own up to how you feel, and I didn’t.”
“That’s stupid. It makes no sense.”
“Well gee, Nick, don’t mince words or anything. Tell me how you really feel.”
He laughed. “I’ll never bullshit you. I can promise you that much.”
He was still fully clothed, the holster pressing against my back, the butt of the gun cold on my bare skin, his zipper scraping my butt. He rolled to his back and unhooked the holster, setting it on the floor beside the bed, and then turned back to resume spooning me, and this time his hand slid just beneath my boobs, just barely brushing the undersides.
“I can tell you one thing, though,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“It wasn’t quick, for me. My attraction to you, I mean. You forget, I followed Kyrie around for years. Just under seven years, to be exact. I was there when she met you, watching from a distance through a telephoto lens. I was there watching everything that happened between the two of you. I have a drawer full of memory cards with thousands of pictures of you, and her. You two together. At the bar, at school eating lunch together. Moving into your first apartment together. Every boyfriend you brought home to that apartment with Kyrie, I’ve got him in a picture, and I’ve got a file in a cloud account full of dossiers on all of them, criminal records and transcripts and medical records and financial information. Of your ex-boyfriends. If you hooked up with a guy more than once, I’ve got a file on that, too.”
“That’s a lot of files. I’m trying not to be creeped out, to be honest.” The idea made me a little sick, actually. “Why? Why are you telling me this?”
“Full disclosure, I guess. And because I…” he stumbled over his words for the first time since I’d known him. “I fell for you a long fucking time ago, Layla. Those guys in that ambush back there; those weren’t the first men I’ve killed on your behalf. When I wasn’t trailing Kyrie, keeping an eye on her, making sure nothing happened to her, I was following you. Protecting you. I couldn’t help it. I never got paid for it, because I never put it on the books for Roth to pay me for. I wouldn’t have. It was personal. I had to make sure you were safe. I know about that guy in high school. I found him, by the way, and I made sure he paid in fucking blood for what he did to you.”
“Holy hell, Nick.” I felt tears trickle out of my eyes. My heart clenched.
“I wanted you. But I didn’t dare approach you. How could I explain any of it? There was just no way. Finally, when you joined Kyrie and Roth on the Eliza, it all came to a head. You were there, lying on the deck all day long in those goddamned tiny-ass bikinis, teasing me. Torturing me. You know how many nights I jerked off, thinking about you? Picturing you in that yellow bikini, the one that’s just basically strategically placed strings. Picturing you tugging the top down and—fuck. Every damn night for months. I couldn’t think about anyone else. I went ashore more than once and tried to get it out of my system with someone else, but I couldn’t follow through. I haven’t been with anyone since you came aboard.”
Something clicked into place. “Did you jerk off thinking about me, Nicholas?” I asked.
“Yes. I did. A lot.”
“A lot?” Should I have been grossed out? Because I wasn’t. It…turned me on, actually. “How much is a lot?”
He hesitated for a moment. “Every night. Every morning. Why do you think I was such a grumpy asshole all the time?”
“I thought you just didn’t like me,” I said.
“I felt guilty as hell about it. But I couldn’t stop. I felt dirty and sick and fucked up, coming into my hand while thinking about you. And then I’d have to see you and talk to you, and that’s all I could think about, what I’d done while thinking about you, just a couple hours before. And then you’d prance around in a slinky bikini and your tits would be bouncing and your ass would be swaying and I swear to fucking god I’d pop a semi just looking at you.” He rolled to his back and scrubbed at his face with both hands. “Doesn’t help that I’m damn near twenty years older than you. Makes me feel even dirtier.”
“You’re forty-two, you said?” I rolled to my other side, so I was facing him. He nodded. “I’m twenty-seven, so that makes you fifteen years older than me. Not twenty. And it doesn’t make a difference, anyway.”
“Fifteen years, Layla. I was a sophomore in high school the year you were born. I was a decorated combat veteran by the time you graduated from high school. It does make a difference.”
I put my hand on his chest. “Your age is honestly the least of my concerns, Nick. For real. I don’t care.”
“You will. At some point, you will.”
“Why? What makes you so sure?” He didn’t answer. I sat up, faced him sitting cross-legged. “I can answer your question now, Nick. I could have when you asked it before, but I just…was too scared. I do need you, Nick. I need you. I want you. I’ve fought it for…a long time. I don’t want to need you, even now. I still don’t want to need you, but I fucking do. Not just to get me out of here, to keep me alive and out of Vitaly’s hands. I need you…inside me.”
He finally glanced at me, lips quirking. “Reeeeally?” He drew the word out and infused it with lecherous sarcasm.
“That’s not what I meant, but yes, that way too.”
“What changed? Between then and now?”
“The fact that I felt scared and empty when you walked out. The fact that even with everything I’ve been through in my life, the thought of losing you made me cry when nothing else ever has.”
His eyes fixed on mine, green and roiling. “Layla, god. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“Yes you did.”
“I let you cry. Alone. For nearly a fucking hour.”
“I needed it,” I said. “For you, for all that back there, Cut and Vitaly and everything. For…so many things. I needed to cry alone. I needed to wake up, I guess. To see things for how they are.”
I scrubbed my hand over my face, letting out a sigh.
“Fucked up. I’m fucked up. You’re fucked up. This whole situation is fucked up.” I let out a breath. “But I know now that I don’t want to go back to Detroit. I don’t want to go back to living alone, working three jobs and going to school. After what I’ve been through, sitting through lectures and taking tests seems…stupid.”
“What do you want, then?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll have to figure that out when we’re back on the Eliza, I guess.”
“Thresh has our flight out of here covered. So we can head out whenever we’re ready.” He rolled off the bed, stood up, and then bent to retrieve his shoulder holster.
“Wait,” I said. “We’re not done.”
He shot me a quizzical look. “We’re not?”
“Nope.” I scooted to the edge of the bed, set my feet on the floor. Gazed up at him. Let him see the heat in my eyes, the need, and the desire. “You left before we were done.”
I took the holster from him and set it carefully on the floor. Reached up and unbuttoned his shirt from the bottom up, and when the last button was freed, I ran my palms up and down his chest, leaned in and kissed his stomach, roamed my palms over his shoulders, brushing the shirt off. He let out a breath that was equal parts relief and pleasure as I unbuttoned his pants, shoved them down over his hips.
His dick swung free, unfurling and swaying and hardening to full erection as I gazed at it. I curled both hands around his shaft and stroked him slowly. And, of course, because it was right there at the perfect level, I had to taste him. Between my lips, tongue sliding over the tip, tasting flesh and a hint of my own essence on his skin.
But then he pulled himself free and pushed me backward. “I don’t think so.” Nick lowered himself over me, climbing onto the bed, and his mouth descended to mine, his tongue slid over my lips and two fingers brushed over my clit. “Jesus, Layla. You’re wet already.”
“You do that to me. You have this effect on me, and I don’t get it. I mean, I’m always ready, but…there’s something about you that just makes my pussy drip, all the time.” As if to emphasize my point, his fingers speared into my opening with a wet squelch. “See what I mean?”
He pulled his fingers out of me and lifted them to his mouth, licked my juices away. “I love the way you taste. Sweet as fucking sugar.”
“Liar. I taste like pussy.”
He laughed. “True. But a very delicious pussy.” He moved down my body. “In fact, I think I need a better taste.”
I was torn. I wanted him inside me, wanted—needed—to feel that connection to him. But I also really, really liked the way he ate me out. “Nick…”
“Yeah, baby?” He spread me apart with his thumbs. Flicked his tongue over my clit.
“I need you.”
“You’ll have me.”
“I need you now.” He ignored me, licking at my pussy like he was eating ice cream off a cone. Lapping, lapping, lapping. I moaned, and buried my fingers in his hair.
“I don’t think you’re ready. I think you need to come at least once, first.” He punctuated his words by sucking my clit into his mouth and sucking on it and flicking it with his tongue tip until I was writhing and gasping and grinding my core against his face.
“Fuck yes, Nick. Eat me, baby. Jesus, that feels so good.”
He pushed two fingers into me, and then added a third, and then pulled them back and thrust them back in, over and over, until I was grinding against his face and riding his fingers and moaning nonstop, riding the waves until I crested the climax, and I screamed when I came, gripped his head in trembling fingers and kept him tugged against me, writhing and rolling my hips into his madly fluttering tongue.
And then he was inside me.
All at once, hips between my thighs, huge thick hard smooth cock filling me and stretching me and leaving me breathless with the perfection of it all, my spine arching up off the bed, my hips crushed to his. “Oh Jesus oh shit oh fuck.” I let my knees fall apart and drew my heels up to my ass cheeks, grabbed two handfuls of his taut backside and jerked at him. “Fuck me, Nick. I need it.”
“No.”
My eyes flew open and met his. “No?” I sounded a little shrill, a little panicked. “Why not?”
“Because I’m going to do so much more than that.”
“Oh.” One syllable breathed from my lips, pure relief.
He lowered his forehead to mine and stared into my eyes from millimeters away, his breath on my lips, and pulled back so he could thrust into me. His lips met mine, and I eagerly deepened the kiss, demanded his tongue, held onto his flexing ass with one hand and cupped the back of his head with the other. Kissed him and kissed him and kissed him until we were both breathless.
I felt my heart expanding as he moved inside me, felt my pulse thundering as another orgasm rose up within me. This time, I welcomed the feeling, welcomed the emotion. I felt it, and let it burgeon.
I moved with him, planted my feet in the bed and lifted my hips to meet his.
I can say, without equivocation, that I’ve never enjoyed missionary sex as much as in that moment. Physically, it felt like nothing had ever felt before. Emotionally, I was a mess, but a beautiful, delirious mess.
“Layla.” His voice was low, intense.
“I’m here, Nick. I’m with you.”
“Do you feel this?” He placed my hand over his heart; it pounded as hard as mine.
I put my hand over his and let all the vulnerability I felt shine out through my eyes. I pulled down the walls and defenses and just…felt. “Yes, Nick. I feel it.”
He pulled his knees beneath himself, pulled my heels over his shoulders and pushed so deep into me my eyes watered.
Okay, fucking fine. I’ll admit it: I was crying, because it felt so good. “Oh god, yes. More, Nick. More.”
He thrust, slowly and rhythmically, unhurried. I reveled in each slide, closed my eyes and focused on the stretch, on the way his cock felt sliding in and out of me.
“Watch us, Layla.”
I opened my eyes and watched where our bodies were joined, watched his cock pull back, coated in my essence, and then slide back in. And god, that was sexy. Watching us, watching him, his abs flexing, his hands wrapped around as much of my thighs as he could grip in one hand—which wasn’t much—watching his face show his emotions.
“I masturbated thinking about you,” I said, apropos of nothing. “I would lie in my bed and picture you just like this, and I would touch myself.”
“How? Show me, baby.”
I slid my fingers over my slit, used my fingers to spread my lips apart and circled my ring and middle fingers over my clit, gasping at the intense ramping up of sensation. “Like this, Nick. Hard and fast.”
He matched my rhythm. “What would you think about?”
“This. Us. Together. I’d picture us fucking. I’d picture you eating me out like you just did, and I’d—” I broke off with a grunt as I came, suddenly, arching forward and clamping down around him. I heard him growl and felt his rhythm slow, felt him tense as he focused on holding back.
“What, Layla? What did you fantasize about? Tell me.”
I didn’t tell him, I showed him what I wanted, instead. I pushed at his chest, and he pulled out, rolled off. I rose up onto my hand and knees, stared at him over my shoulder, my hair falling in a black curtain of curls. Sweat beaded on my spine, and my skin pebbled as he moved to his knees behind me.
“Like this?” he asked.
I moaned. “Like this.” I bowed my spine in, pushing my ass toward him. “This is how I want it. I want to feel you come inside me like this.”
He palmed my ass with both hands, caressing each globe slowly, tenderly. “God, I love your ass.”
I took him at face value. The way he was staring at me, touching me left no room for doubt. He loved my ass. My tits.
I did wonder, though, if he loved the rest of me, too. I suspected he did. I suspected I returned the feeling. I didn’t know what love was like, how it was supposed to feel, either giving or receiving, so I wasn’t sure.
But he loved my ass.
I was totally okay with that. It was a big ass, and not all guys appreciated that.
My train of thought was derailed when he pulled my ass cheeks apart. “I want you here, Layla.”
I groaned. “You can have me there. But not now. For now I just…I need to feel you in my pussy.”
He reached between my legs and feathered a gentle touch over my clit, found my entrance, guided his cock by feel into me. I reached down and nudged him into better position, and he slid deep.
We both groaned in unison.
I pushed back to get him deeper. “Don’t hold back anymore, Nick. Just…take me.”
Oh fuck, did he take me. It wasn’t hard and fast. It was hard and slow. And I loved it. I moaned and groaned and let myself scream as he thrust into me over and over, holding my hips and pulling me back into his crushing thrusts. He didn’t relent, and this time I felt him let go, felt him release control and just…take me. No pleasing me, no manipulating admissions out of me. Just taking pleasure, fucking to release.
I touched myself as he fucked me. Rested my head on my forearm and reached between my thighs to finger my clit until I was aching and trembling.
“Layla…”
“That’s right, baby,” I said, voice rasping and gasping. “Say my name when you come. Shout my name.”
“Layla, I’m almost there.”
I was close too, but I abandoned the effort and braced myself with both hands and rolled my hips to grind my ass against him, writhing into his frantic fucking. “Give it to me, Nick! Fuck yeah, just like this, fuck me hard, baby.”
He fucked me hard, and it hurt so good I didn’t need to touch myself, just needed to let him hit inside me and feel lightning burst inside me with each pound of his cock into my pussy.
“Layla…” His voice was ragged and his thrusts faltered. He pushed deep, thrust until my ass cheeks were flush against his hips and he couldn’t get any deeper, and still he thrust, harder, growling. “Oh fuck, Layla, I’m coming…I’m—Oh—Jesus, Layla…”
He came as he said my name, filled me with his come, a river of hot wet seed flooding me. I touched my clit once, and that’s all it took to join him in release, thunder detonating inside me, making me shake and go limp and breathless.
Moments later, I was wrapped up in his arms, head resting over his beating heart, listening to his pulse slow from a frantic thunder.
I love you. I felt it bubbling up in my throat, and I shook with the need to say it, the desire to say it.
To hear it said to me.
Kyrie St. Claire was the only human being to ever utter the words “I love you” to me.
I desperately wanted to hear Nicholas Harris say it first, and I couldn’t get the words past my lips.
“Layla?” His voice was a sleepy murmur.
“Yeah, Nick?”
“I’m not going to say it. I know you feel it. I know you see it.” He sighed. “I will say it, because it’s real and it’s true. But not like this. I don’t want you to think it’s got anything to do with how hard I just came. I mean, it does, but that’s not why.”
He sounded almost awkward, and Harris was never awkward. It was cute.
“Nicholas?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t say it if it’s not forever. I can handle just about anything. But don’t say that if you don’t mean it, and if it’s not…for forever.”
“Layla, I wouldn’t—”
“I don’t want to talk about it right now. I want to enjoy the afterglow.”
He tightened his grip on me, his arms coiling tighter. He may not have said he loved me in so many words, but he’d made it clear he did.
It was enough for right now. More than enough. Maybe even all I could handle, at that point.
Baby steps to falling in love.
“I do, though,” Nick murmured.
“Me too.”