“I was right,” I breathe out.
Big hands go to my ass, where he boosts me up onto the kitchen island. “About?”
“You look like a statue. One of those finely chiseled ones that stand sentry at every museum known to man.” I’m naked, save for my pretty-much-useless bra, but not even that can keep me from running my gaze over his body and that drool-worthy V leading down into his jeans. God bless construction jobs.
He pops the brass button. “You talking about the ones with the appropriately placed leaves?”
I make a noise of agreement in the back of my throat. “The very ones.”
Nick shucks his jeans, and his cock proudly bobs free. “I’m gonna need a big leaf.”
Talk about the understatement of the year. I can’t tear my gaze away. “Raphia regalis,” I hear myself mutter.
“The what?”
I flick my attention up to his gorgeous face and all that messy, dark hair. “It’s a species of palm tree. Biggest leaf in the world. I saw it on Jeopardy.”
His pewter eyes flicker with mirth. “Pick a category.”
“What?”
“Humor me.” He reaches around me to unclasp my bra. By my ear, he drops his voice to a low rumble. “Pick a category. I promise you’ll enjoy every one.”
Has he gone off his rocker? Given his firm constitution, probably not. Going along with his game, I say, “I don’t know the categories.”
“Animals. Westerns.” He pauses, drawing his tongue along the front of teeth. “Planets.”
I raise a brow. “Those are some interesting categories.”
“Got a preference?”
“I’ll take Animals for one-hundred, please.”
His grin is positively blinding. “A woman after my own heart.”
Before I can even decipher that particular statement, he’s hauling me up into his arms. I bounce against his chest, careful not to disturb his bandage, as he cuts through the kitchen to a less formal room. A TV is strung up on one wall, and a sectional sofa takes up most of the space. But it’s the wall-to-wall window that steals my breath. Lights flicker outside, and Nick, seeing my awe, murmurs, “Outdoor solar lights. It’s cold out but there’s still enough sunlight for them to do their job.”
And do their job they do, twinkling like fairy lights leading into an enchanted forest.
Nick puts me down in front of the window. He grasps my hands and presses them flat against the cold glass. “I’ve thought about this,” he tells me, reverent hands skimming my curves, “me fucking you from behind. You seeing our reflection and the outdoors all at once.”
I feel the heat of his cock like a brand against my butt. It hits me, then, that this is actually going to happen. Me, Nick, sex. Sex with Nick Stamos. Pinch me, please, or at least don’t make me wake up from the best dream of my life.
I turn my head, wanting his mouth on mine, and he gives it without question. His kiss, like the very essence of him, is hardness underlined with passion. Careful not to brush my bandages, he dips his fingers between my legs again, sinking two in deep.
“You’re so wet,” he grunts against my mouth. “Fuck, I can’t wait to feel you come against my mouth.” When I press my hips impatiently back into his, he chuckles. “Okay, after you come on my cock—better?”
And then, for reasons that I refuse to look at too deeply, I nip at his bottom lip and say, “I’m clean.” More specifically, I’ve never had sex without a condom. Have never wanted to, until now. Until him. “And on the pill.”
Nick’s fingers pause. “You sure?”
So much yes. The vulnerability of the moment squeezes my heart like a vice. “Yeah. I mean, so long as you’re . . .”
“Jesus, Mina.” His eyes take on a wild bent, like he can’t believe this is happening. “Yeah, I’m . . . right there with you. Gamóto, you drive me wild. I need this. I need you.”
The same sense of urgency pulses through me as he lays a hand on my back and eases me forward, until my forehead comes close to kissing the glass window—and I feel the heavy crown of his cock slip through the wet folds of my sex.
This. Is. Happening.
After all these years, it’s not Nick and someone else. It’s Nick and me, his sister’s best friend. His long-standing frenemy. The girl he’s known since he was eight. But this thing between us is more than all that—it’s unrelenting, combustible passion, something he proves when he mutters, “Hold on tight, koukla,” and thrusts inside me.
My mouth parts in an O.
Big, so damn big.
His cock stretches me, my walls clinging to him tightly, and I hesitate on that fine line between pleasure and pain.
And then he moves, pulling back, pulling out, before slamming home, and the pleasure turns downright euphoric. He grips my hips, hard, yanking my ass onto his cock just as he drives forward.
“Mina.” His smoky voice echoes in my ears, muddled with the rush of pressure in my head and the sound of how goddamn wet I am around him. I need to find it in myself to feel embarrassed, but I can’t. Not when he growls my name again and definitely not when he groans, “You feel so good. Never—I’ve never—”
Me either.
Not like this. It’s never felt like this.
“More,” I urge him, craning my head to look over my shoulder at his powerful body. The veins in his chest and neck strain with each of his thrusts, his chest burns a ruddy red, and those wild pewter eyes are locked on his cock slipping in and out of my sex.
Heat curls through me, and I lose every inhibition.
I push back, greedy for the way he makes me feel. Sweat beads on my brow. My thighs cramp from the bent-over position he’s folded me in. My breasts, unbound by a bra, small as they are, sway with the force of his hips.
It’s divine.
Raw as hell.
And utterly perfect.
Throat tight, I cry out his name. “I’m so close. Please—”
My fingers dive between my legs, needing that direct bit of stimulation to throw me over the edge—but Nick bats my hand out of the way. I’m so wet that when he fingers the tight nub at the hood of my sex, they slip. His breathing audibly hitches as he goes back for more, circling, faster and faster, as his thrusts pick up speed.
I hear nothing but the slap of his hips meeting mine, the sound of our groans as we teeter on the verge of orgasm.
“Come all over my cock, koukla. Fuck, yes . . . just like that.”
My inner walls clamp down on his hard-on. His fingers apply more pressure until I’m so fired up, so strung tight, that I have no choice but to do what he says. I come on a cry, my legs spasming as I struggle to keep up on my feet. It’s a futile battle, one that Nick rectifies by bolstering me up with his arm banded around my stomach.
He plows forward, that big cock of his hitting me in all the right ways, until he gives me the slice of knowledge I’ve wanted to know since my teenage years when I used to slip my fingers under my panties and get off at the thought of him—with one, masculine groan, he disproves every hypothesis I ever had about him coming silently.
His hands sweep over my back, and he bends over far enough to kiss me right between my shoulder spines.
“I think I died,” I whisper.
“That good, huh?” He’s all smug masculinity when he playfully slaps my ass. “Tell me you saw the pearly gates of heaven the minute you came.”
Laughter climbs my throat. “Your ego, Nick.”
“It’s almost as big as The Great One.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Yeah, and you love it.”
I don’t, I tell myself. I really, really don’t. Yeah, I don’t believe myself either.
Nick gently pulls out of me, and with a casually asked, “Bathroom?” we both hurry for the half-bath just off the parlor. I shoo him out while I pee, and Nick doesn’t even blush when he cleans himself off in front of me.
Men. No shame whatsoever.
Washing my hands, I watch as he leans a hip up against the bathroom counter. He studies me avidly, his gray eyes flitting over my legs and my hips and my breasts. “I don’t regret any of tonight. I need you to know that.”
My heart hiccups. “I don’t either.”
With a satisfied grin, he nods his chin toward my body. “Tattoo reveal time.”
Nerves spring to life in my belly. “Yeah, okay.” I hope he loves what I chose for him. Earlier tonight, I was so confident that he would, but now, standing here naked with him, I worry. If he hates it, it’s going to be one heck of a painful removal process. I gulp audibly, and then reach for the clear tape binding the bandage to my chest.
“Let me,” Nick says, interrupting my hands with his own. With his head ducked, a mask of concentration falls over his face. I stand, back straight, as he works to carefully remove each bandage from under my boobs. Already the soreness from the needle has worn off—for me, at least—and I hold my breath as one bandage lands on the counter. “We’ll look at the same time. Naí?”
The second bandage lands on the floor, and we leave it there.
“Do me now.”
I quirk my lips at the innuendo in his words but get to work unwrapping him. “Eyes on me, Stamos,” I warn playfully.
“Trust me, koukla,” he murmurs with heat, “I’m not lookin’ anywhere else unless I have to.”
Goddamn him for making me want to swoon after he already had me orgasming on command! I laugh, because his good humor is contagious, and finally ease the bandage from his skin. The tattoo looks gorgeous against the ropes of muscles that work as the backdrop. As much as I want to trace the intricate black lines with my finger, I force myself to step back and give him space.
“Okay, we’re doing this then?” I ask.
He grins. “You sound nervous. Need to hold my hand?”
I swat his arm. Draw in a deep breath, then face the mirror. Immediately I drop my gaze to my breasts—the high-peaked nipples standing at full attention, thanks to Nick’s close proximity—and then lower, to the feminine cursive script. The words follow the natural, underside curve of my breasts, inked in delicate and thin font. It looks wispy, like if I breathe a little too roughly, the words might scatter away on a wild breeze.