Jesus.
“I want to fuck you, Ermione.”
Facing the windshield as I am, all I can do is imagine her eyes going wide at my confession. “Then why—”
“Because when I do, it’s gonna be an all-night affair.” The rubber of the steering wheel under my palms grows hot when I tighten my grip. Keep your eyes on the street, Stamos. The street’s safe. Safer, at least, then how much I want to know exactly what it takes to make a woman like Mina come. I think of them all, shuffling through each option like a gluttonous man standing before a buffet. Me on my knees with my tongue playing with her clit. Me seated behind her, one curvy leg drawn up with her foot planted on my knee, exposing all of her to me as I thrust in, hard. Like my mouth has a mind of its own, I tack on, “Me, you, and that pussy of yours I want to devour.”
She releases one of her trademarked whimpers, and out of the corner of my eye, I see her push her beanie cap back like she’s too hot to keep it on. “I never took you for a dirty-talker in bed,” she says, voice brimming with need.
I cast my gaze over her, a quick sweep that sends heat straight to my hard-on. “Never have been,” I admit bluntly, “but every time I say something that makes those pretty lips of yours part in shock, it’s a win in my book.” It’s not only a win—it’s satisfaction like I’ve never known. I pause, collecting my thoughts before I give too much of myself away. “I like the way you gasp when I catch you off guard . . . more than I should.”
Silence greets me, hanging over my head like a guillotine of disapproval. But Mina only chuckles softly, as if she’s game to be surprised by me every day of the week. “Nick Stamos, the man who will go to any length to prove a person wrong.”
“Ermione Pappas,” I return in a voice carved from granite, my eyes locked on her flushed face, “a woman determined to bring chaos into my life. Careful, or I’ll get addicted.”
I watch her bite down on her bottom lip, and I know her well enough to recognize the tell; she’s doing all she can to stop from smiling. And then the tapping begins, a gentle drumming of her fingers on the center console.
“Do I want to know what you’re thinking?” I ask, slowly.
“Honestly? Probably not.”
I place my hand over hers, and the restless tapping eases into stillness. “Tell me anyway.”
23
Mina
“Do you ever just want to . . .” I drop my head back, trying to gather my thoughts. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“The beginning might be a good place.”
At Nick’s good-humored sarcasm, I feel another smile working its way onto my face. Which is nuts, honestly. There hasn’t been a single time in years where I’ve smiled when thinking about my mom or dad, and definitely not right after a trip down memory lane. Except that since stepping onto my parents’ front stoop, Nick has made me temporarily forget. First with the pom-poms and then with our hot-as-heck make-out session.
God, my sex clenches just thinking about it. His hand on my breast, his mouth ravaging mine with such slow, persistent thoroughness. The man is a walking sex machine. It’s like he knows what I need before I even realize what I need. It’s an alarming thought, and I immediately glance to where his hand swallows mine.
When was the last time I held a man’s hand? I honestly can’t remember, and I’m not sure what that says about me. That I’m scared of commitment, probably. That I’m terrified of deep, complicated relationships, most definitely.
I think back to the last entry in my notebook and my sloppily written letters to GSN. I’m not completely clueless; I’m fully aware that my father’s attitude toward me all my life completely impacted the way I react to men and to dating. I guess I just never realized quite how much—not until tonight, when I stared at my life through a seventeen-year-old’s lens.
Nick’s fingers ghost over the back of my hand, pulling back.
I grab them before he can retreat fully, catching us both off guard by my assertiveness. He quirks one brow but goes along with it. This time, he sets the back of his hand on the center console as my fingers intertwine with his.
Don’t overthink it, I warn myself. After all, if I’m okay with letting him cup my breast, I can totally hold his hand.
Swallowing past the nerves lodged in my throat, I glance at the dashboard and breathe out through my nose. “Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning in my own skin. It’s a weird way to put it, I guess. Maybe . . . maybe it’s better to say that I feel like I’m trying to claw out of myself.” I huff derisively. “That doesn’t make sense either.”
Nick squeezes my hand, and his deep, smoky voice swirls around with me like a ribbon of encouragement. “Try again, koukla.”
There he goes again with that endearment. I hate that I love it. I hate even more how it makes my toes curl and my knees clench together in a silent plea of yes, more.
“I feel restless,” I confess, barely above a whisper. “I feel restless in my skin, in my life. When I said I wanted to move, it’s more that I need to get out, go somewhere, do something that makes me feel anything but the anxiety pulsing through me.”
With his thumb caressing mine, Nick murmurs, “Being at your parents’ makes you feel like this?”
He doesn’t even know half of what he’s asking. And the kicker is, I can’t exactly tell him the truth about the unknown man. My sperm donor, if you will. Sure, I can—but what good does that do? I spent near-on ten years asking my mother for information she refused to give me. Re-hashing the details is like picking at an open scab I won’t let be.
That’s me in a nutshell: picking at scabs, watching the blood rise once more, and then hastily bandaging it up, never doing a good enough job for it to heal completely.
On habit, I start to tap my fingers—only for Nick’s fingers to wrap around mine again.
“You don’t need to be nervous with me, Ermione,” he says, voice rumbling. “I’ve told you this before: there’s nothing you can tell me that’ll make me look at you any differently.” He tugs on my hand, a silent command for me to look at him. So, I do. Full-on, with my emotions bleeding on my sleeve and this ridiculous sense of hope clawing its way up my chest. “Nothing,” he repeats in that classic, no-nonsense way of his. “You got that?”
I meet his gaze. “It’s when I get a tattoo.” He pauses, and I see the confusion in his pewter eyes. “When I get like this”—I put a hand to my chest, over my coat—“this restless, on-edge feeling . . . it usually results in a new tattoo. Those snapshots I told you about, I wasn’t all truthful about it. I mean, I was and I wasn’t.”
Releasing my hand, he leans forward, and, on instinct, I do too. His palm makes gentle contact with the side of my face, then delves deep into my crazy, untamed hair. I stare at him as his fingers graze the shell of my ear, and then my breath catches when he traces the sensitive skin behind my ear—right over my soaring-wings tattoo.
He remembers.
It’s crazy how you can know a person your entire life and yet it’s one moment, one sliver in time that tells you everything you need to know about their soul. And Nick’s soul? I’ve never met anyone else with his quirky humor, his good nature, his damn kindness that radiates from every inch of him.
“I got all night,” he husks.
I don’t get addicted to men, not ever, but I could get addicted to Nick—so easily.
Tilting my head to give him more access, I curl my fingers into a fist when the need to start tapping kicks back in. “Each of my tattoos are always the opposite of what I’m feeling. When I got the one on my foot, I lived each day like I couldn’t wait to get to the next big thing. I needed—”
“Patience.”
I nod, feeling more exposed than I ever have in my life. “It was a reminder to cool my hungry ambition. You can’t rush certain things. You can’t make them happen just by wanting them to happen. Dreams need time to prosper and grow—and I firmly believe that they unfold when you can personally handle them manifesting, never before.”
“And the one behind your ear?”
His fingers graze it now, and I fight the urge to nuzzle his hand. “A pair of wings,” I tell him, “during a low point when everyday felt like a struggle, a constant stream of disappointment.” I may not want to come clean about my mother’s infidelity, but this I can tell. It’s my story to tell. “I don’t have the same outlook on marriage and kids as you because my parents just . . . I couldn’t breathe. It was stifling living under their roof. They told Katya and Dimitri to reach for their dreams, but never said the same to me. I got the you should be married by now speech one day and the very next, they were telling me no one would ever want me because I’d accomplished nothing.”
“Who said that? Your mom or your dad?”
I almost laugh. How can he read me so damn well?
“Mostly my dad.”
“Your dad’s an ass.”
“You won’t hear me tell you otherwise.”
He gives a quick, teasing tug to my earlobe, and then pulls back. “You’re one of the most accomplished, ambitious people I know. Don’t listen to their bullshit.”
My heart, traitorous, rebellious thing that it is, flutters to life. Down, heart. “No need to lay on the sugar, Nick.” I pointedly look down at his crotch. “We both know you’re just trying to get into my pants.”
He grins wolfishly, and it’s so surprising, so unlike him, that I audibly gulp—like the true, awkward person I am deep down inside.
“Later,” he says before shifting the car into drive.
“Later?”
“Yup.”
“But—” I cut off, completely befuddled. Men don’t just ignore their erections for what, a random drive through town? Most men aren’t Nick-fucking-Stamos. Too damn true. I’m sitting next to a guy with steel resolve. It’s dreadfully unfair.