The silence stretches.
“You followed me,” I finally say. My voice comes out hoarse. “Across the city. For ninety minutes.”
“Yes.”
“That’s insane.”
“Yes.”
“You almost hit him. A man who did nothing wrong.”
A muscle ticks in his jaw. “Nothing wrong? I beg to differ.”
I should kick him out. I should be furious. Iamfurious.
But I’m also lying here next to him in my rumpled sheets, marked by his mouth, wrecked by his cock, and still trembling from the aftermath.
What does that make me?
“This changes everything,” I whisper.
He turns his head to look at me. In the darkness, I can barely make out his features. The scar. The sharp lines of his face. The vulnerability he tries so hard to hide.
He doesn’t answer.
Maybe it doesn’t change a thing.
More silence. Neither of us reaches for the other. Neither of us makes promises.
We both know better.
Somewhere outside, the city hums with late-night traffic.
I just slept with my boss.
Again.
Complete and total idiot.
But when Nico’s hand finds mine in the dark, his fingers threading through mine with surprising gentleness, I don’t pull away.
I hold on.
16
Nico
Five thirty in the morning.
Gray light filters through cheap blinds that don’t quite close all the way. The kind of blinds you get when you’re twenty-eight and have student loans and you take a job as someone’s secretary, even though you’re over qualified.
Yep. That’s right.
I’m lying in Bree’s bed.
Again.
She’s asleep beside me, her breathing soft and even, one hand tucked under her cheek like a child. The sheets are tangled around her waist, leaving her back exposed. Smooth brown skin interrupted only by the faint indentations of my teeth. I marked her last night when I was inside her and couldn’t get close enough.
