Lie.
“This is nice,” he says.
“This is awful.”
He swats my ass.
More, I want to say.
“This is some beautifully mundane shit, Annie. Enjoy it with me before I break your back.”
Despite the persistent flood in my panties, Nico is right, unfortunately. It’s quiet now, the kind of hush that blankets the city when it’s too dark for tourists and too early for ghosts. We wander past wrought-iron fences and crooked cobblestonepaths, under the draping canopies of ancient live oaks. The streets shine faintly under the glow of old gas lamps, amber pools of light flickering across cobblestones slick with humidity.
“I love the Spanish moss,” I offer, nodding towards where it drapes over most visible tree branches, swinging like whispers in the slight breeze. “Soft, secretive, sacred.”
Nico stops us under a huge clump of it on the branch of a massive oak and swings me around to face him. He’s wearing a lazy smile, his eyes shining with something that looks like affection. He starts tracing the lines of my face with his fingers—god, those fingers—across each eyebrow, down the length of my nose, across my mouth. It’s all too much.
“You are disgustingly handsome,” I blurt out, and I almost regret it, expecting that arrogant smirk, but instead I get a grin that seems like it’s just for me. Soft, secretive, sacred. Enchanted.
Somehow, in the span of almost seven days, my worst enemy has made nasty, problematic, selfish Annie Li feelenchanting.
“Dance with me under the moonlight, Annie Li,” he says, andgirl, you are so fucked.
I step into my rightful place, the place he’s made for me, a place that’s strong yet pliant, that can accommodate my force field of spikes and knives and swords and other manners of sharp things—not that they’ve come out around him, lately. Wrapped up tight, his arms squeezing my entire torso, my forehead tucked against his chin—my place, I realize, is in Nico Giannuzzi’s arms.
I experience another moment of sheer panic at this, the fortieth in two hours. The first being earlier, at Nico’s allusion to “the rest of our lives.” At how, in the span of five days, I’d gone from “I’m going to kill this asshole” to “I want to spin in slow circles while hugging him under the moonlight.” At two thick fingers breaking Sister Annie’s two-year-long vow of celibacy,two days short of the goal. At being a miserable hurricane of serious issues?—
Nico presses his lips to mine, and all panic is entirely replaced by gooey warmth and a sense of belonging. This kiss is different from the others. This is a worship of my mouth, a tender caress, a slow drag and dance of our tongues, my jaw reverently cradled in a big hand. It’s one that says,I’ve got you, Annie Li. I see you, and I want you.
I’m wholly unfamiliar with this feeling. Of safety and security and something else. I am unmoored.
I take his bottom lip between my teeth and tug, trying to ramp it up and move it along. Get to the good stuff. Detour around this other stuff I don’t want to,cannotget into.
But he knows. He knows what I’m trying to do and is unbothered. He takes my hand and drops a kiss on the pointer and middle fingers, directly on top of the spade and the heart, before looping his fingers through mine and continuing our leisurely moonlit stroll.
“Can we pick up the pace?” I attempt.
“Crawfish,” he answers merrily. “I didn’t tell you about the crawfish. That’s the fun part, but it’s where people really fuck up.”
“Tell me more about fucking and upping.”
“Be good, Annie,” he chastises gently. “I’ll give it to you if you’re good,” and then my brain shuts down and enters Overachiever Autopilot so that I can not only be good, but will also be the best.
“Okay.”
He cuts a glance down towards me in contemplation. Then he leans down.
“Look at you, beautiful girl. Much, much better,” he breathes into my ear, and I trip over a crack in the sidewalk.
Nico catches me and moves me into the dark, presses me against one of those wrought iron fences so it cuts into my back with just the right amount of pain. “Data collection,” he explains, before sliding his hand down the front of my shorts and into my underwear and gliding his fingers between my lips. He chuckles, dragging back and forth in a sopping wet slide while all but holding me up with his other arm. “Noted,” he muses while pressing the hard length of himself against my hip.
I grip onto his arm with my nails like an actual cat in heat when he tries to pull away. “No, please, Nico,” I whine, and great. I’m now a whiner and a beggar along with being a giggler.
However, this does something for Nico. I feel it in the way he gets even harder against my hip and thrusts.
“Say it again, Annie,” he grunts.
I’m all but climbing him now, grinding myself along his fingers and using my hand around his neck for leverage. “Please, Nico, please. I need you.” I don’t recognize this voice. “I need you now. I need you to fill me up. It hurts.”
