“When did you first know? That you liked me?” he asked, his voice hushed, like he was in church.
“That I liked you, or that I wanted you?”
“Either. Both.”
She took her time to think about it, her fingers toying with the elastic of his boxer briefs at his hip, then sliding up over his ribs.
“I was attracted to you from the beginning, I think. Before we even started on the house. Just seeing you around…it was hard not to notice you. I tried to fight it for a long time. But when I saw your paintings, that was the moment I couldn’t deny it anymore. It wasn’t just physical. It wasyou.”
“Really?” His chest felt like an overfilled balloon. Hearing someone whom he respected so much, who had achieved so much, compliment his work, which he’d never had the courage to take seriously—it overwhelmed him. Still, something nagged at him. “Is it because you saw my dick?”
She laughed, a soft gust of air against his neck, then pulledhim closer. “No. But that didn’t hurt. You didn’t throw that one away, did you?”
“No, I still have it.”
“Good.”
He leaned in and pressed a soft line of kisses from her jaw to her shoulder, savoring the way her breath went ragged, her body pliant. He closed his lips over the ink on her shoulder—a stylized crescent moon, partially obscured by clouds.
“If you say you were into me after seeing me in my towel…” she murmured, amusement hitching her voice.
He pulled away. “No, of course not. I mean, I barely saw you. You ran out of there pretty quickly. But do you remember your and Olivia’s birthday party? It was a few weeks after that.”
She nodded, the rustle of her cheek against the sheets sending pleasurable shivers down his spine—or maybe it was her fingers tracing gentle shapes on his back that was doing it.
“You were wearing this dress…” He paused, overtaken by the memory. “And you were kind of keeping to yourself. Like, you were part of conversations, but you weren’t really talking to anyone. But I couldn’t stop looking at you. It was like you had this…spotlight on you, or something. The way you were watching everyone, it was so…”
“Judgmental?” Merritt laughed self-consciously. “That’s just my face sometimes.”
“No, observant. Like you could see everything that was happening, and you saw down to the core of it. I wanted to go over and ask you what you were thinking, but everyone had already scared me off. Including you.”
She was quiet for a moment, then the corner of her mouth curled up. “You remember the dress I was wearing two years ago?”
He nodded. “And you had that dark lipstick on. You looked like a vampire.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Like, one I would definitely want to suck me.” His face heated as soon as he realized what he’d said. “I mean…”
She buried her laugh in his throat, then opened her mouth against it, sinking her teeth into the side of his neck, just hard enough to draw a sharp exhale from him. She soothed the spot with a kiss, then her tongue, gently pressing on his shoulder to roll him onto his back.
She threw the duvet off them, the air shockingly cold after the heat of their cave, and straddled him just below his navel, the mood instantly shifting from dreamy to charged as she leaned down to kiss him, hot and deep and intense.
Niko brought his hands to her hips, grabbing two soft, full handfuls of her ass, feeling like he needed to devote a full day to giving each part of her body the attention it deserved. Maybe a week.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt like this—that exhilaration of being with someone new, someone he was this crazy about, every moment a new discovery.
When she braced her hands on his shoulders, giving him a glimpse of the dark, soft-looking hair in her armpits, something that he’d never thought much about but that, on her, was surprisingly arousing.
When her tank top rode up to reveal a small scar above her navel where a piercing used to be.
When he was able to roll her over and pin her on her back with only the slightest effort.
Which led to his favorite discovery so far: when she looked up at him with that laser-focused intensity that made him feellike he’d never been more desired in his life, like maybe no one else in the world ever had been.
He settled over her, their hips finally aligning, her legs wrapped around him, the shock of sensation making them both gasp. Niko couldn’t help but roll his hips slowly, dragging his length against her and back again, and he was gratified to see her eyelids flutter, feel her nails dig into his biceps.
“You’re going to have to tell me what ‘taking it slow’ means to you,” he said through gritted teeth, already holding himself back from the edge.
