My mind warred with my soul. My heart screamed at my body. Though I knew I needed to walk out the door and stay as far away from him as possible, that part of me that was tied to him won out.
I stopped.
Like he was approaching a wounded animal, and maybe that’s exactly what I was, he cautiously moved closer. With each step, my resolve melted. When he stopped in front of me, I sucked in a sharp breath.
He wet his lips and tentatively brought his hands up to touch me, then he paused. My heart crashed.
“I have an idea,” he said, then went to his bathroom, and I heard a drawer open.
My brow furrowed in confusion, wondering what he was doing. When he came back, he had something black clutched in his hands.
“They’re what I wear when I tattoo my customers,” he explained as he pulled on black disposable gloves. He gave me an apologetic shrug, and hope blossomed in my chest.
He cradled my face in his gloved hands, and I ignored the smooth feeling of the plastic separating us. Instead, I reveled in the fact that he was touching me. My lids fell when his thumbs circled up the sides of my nose to smooth my brows. Tenderly, his fingertips traced over my face like a blind man trying to visualize what he was feeling.
Then he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into his warm, strong body. For several moments we simply held each other. Our souls rejoiced at being together, and my heart raced in time with his.
“I need you,” I whispered.
“I’m here,” he said as his lips pressed to my crown.
Knowing he misunderstood, I leaned my head back to look at him. “No. I need you. I need you to make me forget.”
“But you said….” He trailed off.
“As long as you keep the gloves on, you can’t read me, right?” I questioned as I searched his face.
He sighed. “Mostly. When my mouth touches you I get faint ripples of foggy memories, but nothing I can see clearly.”
“Something you can handle?” I asked, hopefully.
“Yeah,” he reluctantly admitted.
“Then give me memories to overshadow the ones I can’t shake. Let me remember us together instead of that… time,” I begged. Desperate, I clutched his wrinkled T-shirt and stood on my tiptoes to reach him.
When my lips brushed over his, I paused to gauge his reaction.
His answer was to swoop in and deepen the kiss. Diving in, he acted like he needed to coax me—he didn’t. I wanted this. I wantedhim.
No. I needed him.
Desperate, I tasted him. I stroked my tongue along his and catalogued what pushed him over the edge. Hands on my ass, he lifted me, and I hooked my ankles behind him. He proceeded to fuck my mouth the way I was desperate for him to take my body. Consuming, desperate, bold, our tongues dueled and curled around the other until we were forced to break for air.
“Please,” I begged, needing him more than the breath I’d greedily brought into my lungs. Nico would never hurt me. He wasn’t like the asshole who’d hurt me. He was safe.
A few steps and we were against his bed. Lips fused to my neck, he laid me down and crawled up over me as he worked his shirt off. He kissed, licked, and bit every inch of uncovered skin, then he began to undress me to reach the rest.
My hands pushed at his sleep pants, and my feet took over when they got down too far for me to reach. Hungry for him, I kicked them to the foot of the bed once they cleared his feet. The heat of his erection burned into my thigh where it rested.
Unable to control my baser instincts, I sank my teeth into his shoulder as my panties were the last casualty of this war we fought to have nothing between us.
A groan escaped him as I licked over the tender spot I’d left. He reached between us and separated my folds with his gloved hands. One finger, then two slid through my wet lips before he slowly pushed them into my core.
“Nico, God, Nico. I need more than your fingers. I need you,” I gasped as I clutched him to my breast where he was flicking my nipple with his tongue before he pulled it into his mouth and sucked. When he repeated the action on the other, I wiggled my hips, searching for what I wanted.
Except, he kept his fingers stroking and scissoring inside my wet pussy.
“Dammit, Nico,” I whispered, because despite how good his fingers worked me over, I needed him inside me. In that moment, he was all I could think about. My only memories were the first time we were together. The way he’d owned my body that night and by doing so, stole my soul.