“LET’S toast to the fact I’ve been inside this treehouse for the past two hours and haven’t freaked out yet.” Nico tips his glass to mine, and we sip on white wine, the first bottle we’ve cracked open for viewing the sunset this evening.
I laugh. “You also won’t go anywhere near the edge.” “Hey, no need to call me out.”
Nico booked a slight detour a few days after landing in Cyprus. A boutique hotel in a secluded part of the Paphos Forest. It’s probably the most interesting of our stays. We lie on our oversized bed, staring out into a canopy of trees in the roofless bedroom, warm air dampening our skin.
His inventory of distractions seems to have no end. We’ve toured local villages, explored nature hikes, and roasted in the sun on white sand beaches.
A gust of wind blows the lone strip of faded black hair out of Nico’s face. I wrap one of my fingers around his stray curl, playing with the strand. The sky swirls with bursts of bronze and marigold, not a cloud in sight.
“Are you feeling okay?” He nudges his knuckle against my knee, shattering the semblance of peace between us.
I knew it was too good to be true.
I realize I can’t forget my problems forever, but I was content being here today with Nico and not in the fog of worry in my head.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I lie, popping a stray sour grape into my mouth and putting on my best attempt at an Academy Award–winning smile.
“Well, beautiful girl, there’s the nail-biting, the constant phone checking even though we have absolutely no service, and—”
“Alright, I get it.”
Each passing hour has added another notch of weight around my neck. The chain of thoughts pulls me into the ground and makes it more difficult to truly articulate what I’m feeling.
“Lil, you can talk to me. How can I be here for you?”
“I don’t know.” My mind is still overflowing with a jar of what-ifs.
He pulls me closer to him. We lie in silence for a while, watching the last drops of color bleed from the sky until the first stars appear like freckles across the ether.
The courage I’ve been summoning balloons to the surface.
“While we were in the Azores, Ave made me realize something I wasn’t quite ready to come to terms with.”
“You finally figured out I’m the better-looking Navarro brother?” He faces me, a cheesy grin plastered across his face. “I already know that.”
“Still up for debate.” I sigh, angling my face away from him to hide the twinge of frustration nipping at my chest. No matter the situation, there hasn’t been a time when Nico hasn’t tried to brighten the mood with a laugh or a joke, but right now, it only seems to sting.
He glides one of his thumbs along my jaw, tracing my cheekbones until his fingers rake through my hair. “As long as I win in your eyes, I think it’ll be enough.” I give him a half-hearted smirk, feeling more adrift on an island of my own making than when the conversation began. “I’m sorry, Lil, I’m only trying to make you smile. It hurts when we’re together but it’s like you’re somewhere else entirely.”
“I don’t really feel like myself.” I sigh deeper this time, turning back to his comforting gaze.
“Who do you feel like you are right now?”
It’s a question I’ve been grappling with for several days.
“Like a figment of my own imagination. I feel like I’ve put up all these walls around me and now I’m trapped.” Nico brushes the back of his hand along the slope of my neck. “Now, I don’t feel like either Lily or Zoe. I feel like a shell of both.”
“You may not like hearing this, but the person you’ve grown into this summer is much more complex and beautiful than a set of carefully planned identities. I like every part of you I’ve seen. So yeah, love, you may have walls, but after spending every day with you for over two months, I can see those walls are made of glass.” When I doubt there’s a semblance of
seriousness in his body, Nico manages to throw me off-kilter, turning into one of the wisest people.
“Glass is fragile and breaks easily.” Maybe that’s exactly who I am now, the same girl I was ten years ago, shattered into a million pieces across the kitchen floor.
“It doesn’t crack under pressure, and it doesn’t shatter when held by the right people.”
“Are we still talking about glass?”
“We’re talking about my favorite person in the world with a mind so sharp, it’s caused me to drop to my knees on several occasions.” Nico places a kiss on my forehead. “Eyes that spend a long time leering at me when I get out of the shower.” He grazes his mouth over my eyes, but I pull away with a giggle.
“I do not leer.”
“A mouth so soft and wicked at the same time, it has a witty retort for everything I say, and that’s an accomplishment in itself.” His lips finally reach mine and stay there long enough for my heart to pass two beats. “Then there are your beautiful freckles that make me so jealous…”
“You? Jealous? Never,” I tease as he plants a soft kiss on my nose. “They make me so jealous because they get to spend all day kissing
you.” Nico pulls away, and all I want to do is wrap my hands around his neck and drag him back to me. “Of course, there’s my favorite neck, supple and perfect for sucking blood.” He gently sucks at the dip of my throat. A breathy moan skips off my tongue.
“You’re such a creep.” I giggle, my fingers already skimming his shirt’s buttons, tugging each one open.
“I’m your creep.”
A genuine rush of excitement fills me when Nico’s bout of virility comes to play. I crave him more than I’ve craved anyone before. “Maybe.”
He trails kisses down my neck until his hands cup my breasts. “Now, these were created in heaven.” The pads of his fingers brush over each of my nipples, and his tongue rolls onto the fabric covering each peak.
“I’m beginning to think every part of me is your favorite,” I say with a trembling breath.
“I love it when you keep up, Rodin.”
He turns me on my back. The weight of muscle and skin climbs over me until my clothes lie on the floor next to his.
I’m bare before him.
His scent fills my senses like a drift of smoke that causes heat to crackle through me. Each of his movements is thrilling and comforting at the same time.
“Nico.” His name trickles out of me in a helpless moan. “I need you.”
It’s true. I need him more than I need peace right now. More than I rely on the oxygen filling my lungs.
I need all of him just one last time.
His skin connects with mine, and the hard press of his cock drags over my thigh as he lowers his lips against my ear. “I have to get a condom, sweet girl.”
“Not this time.”
He nods until the words register. “You’re still on the pill?”
My mind falls victim to his fingers tracing slow strokes around my wetness gathering at my center.
“Yes,” I say as Nico lowers himself between my legs.
“Are you really going to let me fill you with my cum?” Before I can respond, the swipe of his tongue on my clit curls my spine off the mattress. “All of you, just for me.”
Nico deliberately sucks and licks, drawing out each trapped gasp in my lungs until I’m dazed.
“Fuck me,” I say, demanding and desperate.
“We’re not going to fuck tonight, beautiful.” Nico returns to the gentle, heavenly laps of his tongue. One of his fingers enters my swollen center; a second one follows. “I’m going to make love to you.”
I fall apart.
Each thrust is agonizingly delicate. I try to grind against his fullness inside me. Nico’s uncompromising hand steadies my hips. A well of desire pours over me, dampening my skin as I greedily chase my orgasm.
“I want to come.” I moan again, shuddering at the building tension coursing through my veins.
“You will.”
“Now.”
Nico shakes his head between my thighs. “You’ll be patient and you’ll do as I say because this perfect pussy belongs to me. You belong to me, and I need to savor every second of this gift.”
He swipes his tongue against my clit again, feasting on me.
Maybe he understands what we’re doing right now. This may be the last time we do this, and dragging it out is the best way to savor the moment.
I’ve made my decision, so for now, all I can do is succumb to his tender touches.
He increases his pace inside of me, and I’m trembling on the horizon of my climax. The coil of nerves at the base of my spine aches in anticipation for the moment I let go. My own hands work the hardness of my nipples.
“Be a good girl, Lily, and look at the way you wrap around my fingers.
So beautiful and all mine.”
My body follows his words, and I climb onto my elbows, trying to focus the haze in my eyes on his. “Don’t stop.”
“Never. Now, open up wider, let me see my precious girl fall apart in my hands.” Nico keeps the steady rhythm of his tongue on my clit, until my moans echo into the indigo-blue skies above us. Tempestuous pleasure spears through me. My body thrashes and purrs all at once.
A full-circle moment of me at his mercy under the sky. “I’m yours.”
It’s both a truth and a lie. We both know I am Nico’s in the rawest part of my soul, despite the web of complications hanging between us. But commitments aren’t carnal. They’re not a dip in the ocean of lust.
They’re something more; they have to be. It’s not as simple as this.
It can’t be.
Nico maps another pathway of kisses up my torso until our lips connect, and the weight of his body melts above mine. The taste of me on his tongue fills me with enough pleasure to last a lifetime.
We kiss for what feels like hours, savoring every drop of each other, until silent cracks form in my chest. The rusted clatter of a key against a lock and then, between the swollen touch of our lips, the inevitable fall of a chain.
There, in the gaping crevice of my rib cage, is my heart, already in Nico’s gentle embrace.
Because I love Nico, and I think he loves me. “I want to feel you,” I whisper.
“I do too.” He smiles, dragging the swollen tip of his cock to my slick entrance. “I need to feel you, Lily.”
There’s no time to nod. In a short breath, Nico’s hardness stretches into the deepest parts of me with one rough thrust. The feel of his bare cock
inside of me, without a condom, is like a shot of morphine.
Euphoric.
“That okay?” He breathes onto my lips. “So good.”
The strokes start slow, Nico lazily driving himself in and out of me. My fingers rake through his hair. Our eyes don’t break away for a single moment. This is like no other time we’ve had before.
“You’re the most important thing to ever happen to me, princesa.” The slap of his hips on my thighs grows louder as Nico drills his cock into me, marking my pussy as his own. I clench my walls around the considerable length of him, tensing around each of his thrusts.
“Fuck, that’s it,” I moan, tugging his hair and sealing a lock on his lips.
Nico burrows himself deeper, grinding over my clit in a rhythm that makes my sanity bleed away.
We aren’t fucking anymore. We are doing what I promised myself I never would. We really are making love, and I’m devoted to every moment.
“More, Nico.”
“You’re everything I’ve ever dreamed of, Lily.” I can feel his dick grow harder inside of me. “I love the way you take me. I love the way you moan my name. I love the way I need you.”
Love. The word hangs between us.
“More.” I grab at him. “Please. I—I want you closer.”
A drop of his sweat falls on my skin, ripping at something primal and potent inside me. We’re a tussle of heated limbs and insistent moans until our eyes mirror a look of scorching desire.
“I’m doing my best, love, but I—” Nico’s darkened gaze beneath the glimmer of moonlight rumbles another ache in my chest. “Fucking you like this, feeling your tight pussy around my cock, you—you’re too perfect.”
“You’re the best I’ve ever had.”
We exchange breaths like two souls talking in our own made-up language. In a few blissful moments, the climb of our release crescendos together.
“I’m yours, Lily.” Nico forces a vicious thrust into me, knotting the nerves in my body together in a way that only he knows how to pull apart. “And you’re mine.”
“I am, Nico.” I moan in a torturous sob. “Always.”
The promise and the lie are enough to flood pleasure through us both. The release avalanches over my cries and Nico’s growl of rapture. A hot shot of his cum fills every inch of me to the brim. I convulse around the throbbing inside me.
“There’s never going to be anyone else but you.” Nico collapses on top of me. A soft press of his lips against the damp skin of my cheek.
There’s never going to be anyone else like you, either.
