"You feel that?" I say, barely words at all by now. "Nothing between us."
"I feel it." His voice comes out rough, wrecked all the way through. "Fuck, I feel every fucking inch of it. You're squeezing my cock so tight. You're going to make me come before you do."
"Don't you dare, not yet, not until I..."
The storm outside picks that exact second to crack the sky open, thunder rolling right over the top of us, and I come again with lightning white behind my eyes and his name breaking out of me into the rain-loud room, my whole body clenching around him hard enough that he curses under his breath. He follows right after, both hands fisted against my hips, my name in his mouth like it's the only prayer he's got left, and I collapse against his chest, both of us drenched in sweat, skin sticking wherever it touches, neither of us in any hurry to peel apart.
After, I lie against his chest with the window still open, rain cooling the sweat on both of us, his fingers tracing slow circles on my back, and for the first time since I put on his ring, nothing in me is standing guard.
I just listen to him breathe under my ear, steady as anything, and let myself have this.
"Stay right there," he says, voice gone soft, softer than I've ever heard out of him. "Don't move."
"Wasn't planning on it."
His hand finds mine on his chest, and he laces our fingers together. Neither of us says anything about what that means. We don't have to. The rain says enough, easing now, the thunder rolling further out over the water, taking the worst of the storm with it.
We doze like that, tangled up together, until the storm finally breaks.
Grey light comes first, then gold, sunrise burning through the last of the clouds, the room gone soft and warm and quiet. Iwatch it happen against Nico's shoulder, half asleep, thinking I could stay in this exact hour forever and never once complain.
My phone rings on the nightstand.
I know that ringtone. I set it myself, months ago, for exactly one person.
Mom.
25
NICO
The Mercedes takesthe coast road too fast, tires cutting through gravel on the shoulder, and I have the phone against my ear before we've cleared the gate.
"Anastasio. Now."
"Boss."
"Bianca Carpenter, Brooklyn Presbyterian, ICU or wherever they've got her. I want two men on that floor before she's out of triage. Nobody talks to her, nobody photographs her, nobody from the NYPD gets near that room without my say. You understand me?"
"Already moving."
"Call Dr. Renna. I want a second opinion sitting next to whatever attending the hospital assigns, and I want it there before we land."
"On it."
I end the call and start the next one before Lydia has even turned her head. Twenty minutes ago the phone rang on the nightstand while she was still curled into my chest, still soft from what we'd done, what we'd said. Then her mother's name flashed on the screen, and everything in that room went cold at once. Bianca found on the bathroom floor. Pills. Frank out of the house when it happened, which tells me nothing and everything.
I remember the sound Lydia made when she read the message. One breath in, sharp, and then nothing. No scream, no crying. She was already reaching for her clothes before I'd finished reading it myself.
I call the house staff next, tell them to have the car ready, tell them I don't care that it's four in the morning. Then Renna again, to confirm he's already airborne out of Naples. Then a number I keep for nights exactly like this, a man who used to work hospital security in three boroughs before I hired him away, and I tell him what I need and he tells me it's already done, which is the only answer I want to hear from anybody tonight.
Lydia sits beside me now with both hands flat on her knees like she's holding herself down. She hasn't said six words since the phone rang. I watch her out of the corner of my eye while I talk, the whole ride, and she doesn't look at the driver or the road or me. She looks straight ahead at nothing, her eyes fixed on some point past the windshield only she can see.
The car swings onto the airstrip access road and the jet is already lit up, stairs down, engine spooling. I'm out before we've fully stopped, pulling her door open, and she moves slowly, stiff and unsteady, each step uncertain. I put a hand at the small of her back and she doesn't lean into it and doesn't pull away either. She just goes where I put her.
At the top of the stairs she stops for one second, just one, both hands on the rail, and I think she might be sick. Then she keeps climbing.
We're in the air in eleven minutes.
