We dance until our clothes are damp and my feet ache and our mouths are pressed so close together that words aren’t necessary.
And when we step back out into the night, the Miami air clinging to our skin, I think:
This.
This is what equilibrium feels like.
The hotel where we’re staying, where May is getting married, is absurd. All sleek marble, soaring ceilings, and enough velvet to make a burlesque dancer blush. The suite Nico booked has a balcony with a view of the ocean and a bed that looks like it belongs in a music video. I don’t even want to know what this cost.
Nico doesn’t brag, though. He just opens a chilled bottle of champagne and pours two flutes like this is something we do all the time.
We’re still dressed from the club. I kick off my heels and sink my toes into the plush carpet with a groan. He sits on the edge of the bed, hair a perfect mess, his shirt half unbuttoned, pants unbuttoned and unzipped, skin golden from the dance floor heat.
He pats his lap.
“Come here, sweetheart.”
I sit on his lap and notice the giant mirror that spans the opposite wall.
He moves each of my legs on either side of his thighs, my dress riding up as he settles his hands on my hips.
"Look at that," he murmurs, voice thick. "Look how fuckin’ good we look together."
I see it. My gold dress glinting in the dim light. His strong hands sliding up my sides. My flushed skin, his blown eyes.
He pulls the straps of my dress down, exposes my breasts. He dips a finger into his glass of champagne and drips it down my neck. The cold shocks me, and then his tongue is there, lapping it up.
"Could live off this," he groans. "Sweet, fizzy, and fuckin’ mine."
I can feel the hard steel of him beneath me.
“Watch,” he says, indicating to the mirror with his chin. He peels my panties to the side and takes himself out of his pants, cock angrily hard. “Watch,” he repeats, and he slides in, and I watch as every inch of him disappears inside me. He doesn’t give me time to adjust. Just rocks us both in front of the mirror, gripping my hips, fucking me slow but deep, in and out, each thrust purposeful in the mirror and bouncing my tits like he wants it burned into memory.
"Look," he says again, voice rough now. “This is us. You see that? Look how perfectly we fit together.”
I do. Every inch of him, coated in my arousal.
He makes sure I come first and watches my face in the mirror before finishing in me with a growl, pulling me tight to his chest. But he doesn’t stop. He slides down and lays me back on the bed, peeling my dress off, throwing it somewhere behind us.
Then he reaches for something.
I don’t even see it coming until I hear the soft glug-glug-glug of liquid being poured. Cold champagne streams over my belly, down my thighs, pooling in the softest, most sensitive parts of me. I yelp at the shock.
He disappears between my thighs like a man starved.
Lapping, groaning, drinking our combined release in like it’s all nectar and indulgence. Like we’re something decadent, meant to be consumed.
His voice is hoarse when he finally lifts his head, lips slick with the both of us.
"We taste good together, too."
I break apart in his mouth.
When he tucks me into his arms in a bed sticky with champagne and come, I realize I’m wrong. I am afraid.
This is what fear feels like.
Real fear.
