Nico was in front of us in a whoosh of displaced air. I jumped and screeched. “Holy fucking Flapjacks, Nico. You scared the shit out of me!”
His lips curled. “Apologies, Raine. I thought I’d get the ovens preheated before you arrived. Maybe we could talk?”
I swallowed hard, scraping my lip between my teeth. “Okay.”
Brody stepped back, kissing me gently on the cheek. “Me and Pup will be over at the diner if you need us.”
Tex stepped up, kissing me hard. “You belong to me, no matter what, okay? You’re stuck with me until the day I die, and then even longer if I can help it. I love you.”
I ran my fingers through his shaggy black hair, in desperate need of a cut. “Love you too.”
Brody slapped Tex’s back. “Come on, we’ll gross out Beatrice and have a hot dog eating competition.”
“Fair warning, I have no gag reflex,” Tex quipped back and I snorted a laugh.
Brody reared back. “That is way too much information, Pup. Let’s go.”
I watched them wander off, and then turned back to Nico. He led me back into the kitchen, which was already warming from the huge industrial ovens.
“Raine…” he started, his eyes searching my face for something. If he wanted to know my feelings, he could compel them from me easy enough. But instead, he sighed and dragged me into his arms. “I’m going to kiss you.”
I didn’t know how the French did cooking school, but I was pretty sure it didn’t involve tongue. Or maybe it did. It is called french kissing after all. Ooh la la.
I kissed him back, pouring everything into the embrace. My frustrations and fear. My desire for him, and my hesitancy that I was somehow going to bewitch him.
Nico and his lips burst right through all my doubts, and when he sucked on my tongue, I moaned. “If it’s okay with you, Raine, I would very much like to make love to you. I want you to know the depths of my feelings. That Miranda’s news means nothing to me.” He leaned over and sucked my earlobe into his mouth.
My brain fritzed. It was my weakness. The Kryptonite to my blue spandex. The heel to my knock off Louboutins.
I launched myself at him because he was right. I didn’t want to wait. I didn’t want to wonder what it would have been like to make love to him when they inevitably kicked me out for being a fox in the hen house.
Mentally humming the words to You Can Leave Your Hat On, I slowly peeled off my clothes. However, skinny jeans weren’t invented for a striptease, especially when you had thick thighs. I kicked out of my boots, peeled out of the jeans like I was slicking off a sausage skin, my boobs kinda hanging in the breeze. The sound of Nico’s chuckle was quickly followed by the feel of his lips placing soft kisses down my spine.
I stood up, taking a half a step away from him so I could judge his response. My nipples pebbled in the cool night air despite the warmth of the oven. Or maybe my hard nipples had nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with Nico. I tried not to feel awkward as I stood there in front of him, bare.
Nico’s eyes seared my skin as he looked at my underwear-clad body. It was like he was memorizing me, or plotting the course his tongue was about to travel. He stepped toward me, his fingers tangling in the long red strands of my hair.
“You are so beautiful. Like a ray of sunshine after a century of darkness,” he purred at me, his lips so close to mine that if I poked my tongue out enough, I would lick his full lower lip. So I did.
He growled low in his throat. “I know you don’t understand. Your heart is so pure that you worry about little things like free will. But I promise you, Raine, that it matters not to me. Whether this feeling is real or artificial means nothing. Because you’ve given me something I never thought I’d have again.” His fingers ran down my cheek and I sucked in a shuddering breath. “But I’m going to give you something now. I’m going to give you freedom. I am going to give you all the love I possess.” He gripped my chin in his fingers and tilted my head back gently. “I’m going to take control, and you are going to let me. If you want me to stop, you only have to say the words. Do you want me to take control, my love?”
God, I wanted that more than anything. Ever since Miranda had returned to town and dropped her little bombshell, I’d been strung tighter than a mankini. He must have seen the relief in my eyes, because the corner of his lips turned up. “I’m going to need the words.”
I shuddered. “Yes.”
The smile he gave me then was definitely predatory, but it was the grin of something that stalked and conquered. Something you knew you should run from, but you were drawn to instead. Maybe the Twilight fangirls were onto something.
He kissed me, a soft caress of his lips on mine, and then a small scrape of fangs to make me whimper. He pulled away. “On your knees, Sweetness.”
I dropped to the floor, the gentle scrape of the tiles on my knees barely registering as I stared up at him. Standing above me like this, his tattoos almost glowed in the bright lights, and he looked like a pagan god.
He bit his lip, his eyes hooded. “Good girl.”
Fuck. Me.
I eyed the front of his flamingo printed shorts. I wanted them gone, and not just because they made my eyes bleed with their awfulness. I wanted to unwrap my present. I wanted to touch, taste, devour every inch of him.
He peeled off his shirt, showing me his trim, muscled body. His swirling tattoos spread down his body, the blue-green ink vibrant over his chest, down over his abs. I knew the patterns must mean something, and one day I would ask. One day, I would know everything there was to know about Nico. But for now, I’d settle with tracing the swirls that ran down over his hips and below the waistband of his shirt with my tongue.
“Take off my shorts,” he said, his voice with the edge of command that made my skin prickle with heat. I grabbed the waistband of the awful shorts. He stilled my hands. “When I ask you to do something, I want you to reply with ‘yes, Sir’. Can you do that for me?”
You know what, I was going to apologize to all the Fifty Shades fangirls too. This shit was hotter than Hades. “Yes, Sir.”
He nodded, leaning forward to reward me with a kiss. It was hot, filled with tongue that plundered my mouth with desperation. He wasn’t as cool and unaffected as he was pretending. This was seriously turning him on, like the hard outline of his cock didn’t give it away.
When he pulled away, I was gasping, but my hands went back to the edges of his shorts and I dragged them down, underwear and all. I slid them right to his ankles and he stepped out of them, kicking them away with his toes.
He stood in front of me in his naked glory and I swear, I was glad I didn’t need to breathe. He was glorious and wild. His body was lean marble, the swirls looking like veins beneath his pale skin. My eyes traveled down his lean abs, over the deep grooves of his adonis belt, to the cock in front of my face.
“Do you want to taste me, Sweetness?” he asked me softly, but I was already leaning toward him eagerly. I wanted to taste and touch. To make him as weak as he made me.
Again, he stilled my head, an inch away from his cock, wrapping his fingers in my hair. Seriously, Nico had cast iron restraint. “I asked you a question.”
“Yes,” I breathed, loving the way his muscles rippled as my hot breath blew across the precum on his dick.