I laugh, and it surprises both of us, low and a little wrecked. "I had a whole speech ready about being careful with you."
"Good thing I don't listen to your speeches."
"Clearly, or we'd still be looking for a condom.”
She laughs too, breathless, and the sound of it undoes something in my chest that her sharp tongue never once touched.
Her skin is still slick against mine when I gather her up off the table, her legs still wrapped around me, both of us sticky and spent and not caring in the slightest, and she yelps against my ear.
"Where are we going?"
"Upstairs." I carry her through the dark house, past the ruined dinner, past the window where the storm is still working itself into something bigger. “I’m not done with you yet.”
"Promises, promises."
"Piccola." I set my mouth against her hair. "I don't make promises I don't keep."
24
LYDIA
Thunder wakes me first,then Nico's arm, tightening around my waist like even asleep some part of him is still standing guard over me.
We've been at this since the dining table. The shower, where he had me against the tile with the water gone cold around us and neither of us noticed, his mouth on my breasts until my knees gave out and he had to hold me up by the hips. The bed after that, slower, his mouth everywhere, my thighs, my nipples, my neck, and places I didn't know could feel so good, until I begged him to just get inside me already, both of us so sweat-damp by then the sheets stuck to our backs every time we moved.
The floor at some point, I don't even remember whose idea that was, only that his cock filled me from behind while his hand worked my clit until I couldn't tell which sensation was going to break me first, my palms sliding on the hardwood from how much we'd both sweated through.
The balcony, rain soaking us both, my hands white-knuckled on the railing while he fucked me slow and deep and told mefilthy, tender things against my ear. Lightning lit the whole coast in flashes below us, the rain the only thing cool enough to cut through how hot we'd both gone.
I've lost count. I'm not looking for it. My skin feels permanently damp at this point, sticky in the creases, hair stuck to the back of my neck, and I've never wanted a shower less in my life.
Now the room is hot and close, the window thrown open, rain blowing in sheets across the sill, and Nico's already sliding out from under the sheet.
"Where are you going?"
"Lemonade." He says it like it's obvious. "You've earned it."
He comes back a few minutes later with a sweating glass jug and a bowl of ice, sets both on the nightstand, and climbs onto the bed like a man with a plan.
"Nico."
"Hold still."
He drags a piece of ice down my collarbone and I gasp, half laugh, half shock, my whole body jerking away from the cold. The meltwater cuts a clean line through the sweat already gathered there.
He follows the melting trail with his mouth, sucking one nipple and then the other until they're peaked and aching, and I fist both hands in the sheet, damp under my palms from everything we've already done to it tonight.
"You're going to ruin the sheets."
"Don't care about the sheets."
The ice traces a line down between my breasts, over my stomach, and his lips follow until I'm shivering and burning at the same time. Every nerve in my body argues with itself.
He watches my face the whole time. Not the rest of me. My face, like the only thing he actually wants is to see me come apart for him.
"I just want you to feel good," he says. "That's the whole plan tonight."
"Bold plan for two in the morning."
