The exit.
I should take it.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” I say instead.
His mouth crashes back onto mine and I’m done.
His hands find the zipper at the back of my dress. I hear the slow rasp as he pulls it down, feel the fabric loosening around my body. The dress pools at my feet and I’m standing there in my nude bra and matchingunderwear that I definitely didn’t choose this morning thinking I’d be having sex tonight.
He’s staring at me like I’m something precious, or at least worth cataloging. It makes me want to cross my arms over my chest, but before I can, he drops to his knees.
Right there on my floor.
“What are you—” I start.
He kisses my stomach. Just above my belly button. Then lower. Then his mouth is on my hip bone, and his hands are spanning my waist, and oh god his thumbs are tracing the stretch marks I’ve had since puberty decided to be extra generous with my curves.
I try to step back. Try to put some distance between his mouth and the parts of me I don’t love. “The lights. I should—”
“Don’t.” His voice is rough. Almost angry. He catches my wrist before I can reach for the switch. “I want to see you.”
“I’m not—”
“You’re fucking perfect,” he says, like he can read my mind. Like he knows exactly what I was about to say and he’s cutting me off before I can finish the thought.
Then his mouth is on my thigh, kissing a path upward, and I forget how to form complete sentences.
Jesus Christ the man has a mouth.
“Nico,” I manage. It comes out like a whimper.
“Yeah?” He looks up at me from his knees and the view is absolutely devastating. Dark eyes, messy hair, that scar pulling at the corner of his mouth in a way that should make him look dangerous but instead just makes him look hungry.
For me.
“I don’t—I mean I do but—”
Articulate as always.
“Spread your legs,” he says.
It’s not a question. It’s a command.
And I obey before my brain can catch up because apparently I’m the kind of person who melts when a hot stranger tells me what to do.
Who knew?
His fingers hook into the waistband of my underwear and he pulls them down ever so slowly. Like he’s unwrapping a present he’s been waiting for.
I step out of them and he tosses them somewhere behind him, and then I’m standing there completely exposed except for my bra while he’s still fully dressed on his knees in front of me.
“Hold onto me,” he says.
I grab his shoulders just as his mouth finds me and ohfuckthat’s good.
I mean really, truly, devastatingly good. The kind of good that makes your knees buckle and your vision blur and your internal monologue completely shut down because higher brain functions are no longer readily available.
He’s relentless. One hand grips my hip to keep me still, the other slides up to join his mouth, and I’m making sounds I didn’t know I was capable of making.
