by Chloe Liese
She sighed, ran a finger along my lips, confusion etched on her features. “I don’t get you.”
I slid my hands along her thighs. “You don’t have to. For what it’s worth, I don’t get you much either. But I like you, and the part of you that I do get is pretty important. I think the same goes for you with me.”
She tilted her head and scraped her nails along my stubble. “Sometimes, the past few weeks, I’ve looked at you and I think—I know him, his heart. The way his mind works. What’s going to worry him or settle him down. Then there are other times where…I don’t know. I feel like you’re keeping a huge part of yourself locked away from me. And you ask me for everything, Zed. You want to know when my leg cramps and my arse hurts. When I’m thinking dark thoughts, and when I’m dreaming about my future. I’ve told you more than I’ve told anyone, except maybe Elodie.”
I gripped her waist. Stared her in the eye. I gave her an answer, just not one that spoke to the heart of her problem. “I’m here.”
She sat back and her hand dropped. “You’re here, but you’re not mine, not the way I’m yours. It’s part of why the whole dominance thing works for you, because that inequality is allowable. And by now, you know I’m amenable to it in some situations. But I want more, too.”
My chest felt like it was in a vise. I couldn’t breathe enough. “What is it that you want?”
She shook her head. “I want your honesty. Your trust. I want equality in that.”
She wanted my walls lowered. My answers straight, not diagonal. It wasn’t part of the deal, and she knew it. “I trust you,” I said.
Nairne shook her head. “But you don’t entrust everything to me, the way you ask me to entrust it to you.”
“That’s the nature of our relationship, innamorata. That’s the dynamic.” I rolled my shoulders. Tried to stave off the pinch of panic in my trapezoids and neck. She and I weren’t long-term material. My life was a train wreck, in no way hospitable to a partner who would just become a target for enemies. She had a life in front of her, dreams to chase, and none of them needed to involve looking over her shoulder and being a pawn for retribution.
She sighed and moved back. I stood, shoved my hands in my pockets. I couldn’t tell her what she wanted, couldn’t promise her that kind of exposure. That wasn’t how I operated. I didn’t have the luxury, and it wasn’t where my strength came from. So, I blew by it entirely, because I was a master at persuasive evasion.
“Come spend Christmas with me and my family.”
Her eyebrows arched. “Hell of a deflection, Zed. Thanks, but I keep Christmas best on my own.”
I toed her foot bar and dragged her closer. “What, drinking Lagavulin and watching the Doctor Who marathon?”
“Precisely. I’m crabbit on Christmas. Bah humbug.”
“Nairne.”
“Zed.”
I sighed, scrubbed my face with my hands. Her sitting alone drunk on her couch for the only Christmas I’d have her was bullshit. It wasn’t happening. “It’ll only be my dad and Teo, and maybe Zio Gianno. Dad keeps it low key. Makes a bunch of seafood, then we just sit around and get tipsy and play Trivial Pursuit after mass.”
“Hm.” She hid her mouth behind a hand, and I watched her gears turn. “That’s why you want me. You’re dying to win.”
“I wouldn’t mind crushing the old man for once. You’d think thirty years practicing surgical medicine would keep the guy too busy to accrue that much trivial knowledge, but no dice.”
Her eyes had a little of their old light, and when her hand fell, I caught a glimpse of a smile. “All right,” she said. “I’ll come.”
Twenty-Nine
Nairne
I knew it was a bad idea. That sharing a holiday like Christmas would only tangle us tighter, make our eventual unraveling even more painful. I watched three heads of dark waves huddled over a Trivial Pursuit board, profiles a study in the dominance of Brando Salvatore’s genetics. Dark lashes, sharp cheekbones, lips that pouted as they thought and bickered. All that fine beauty roughened by long noses with a slight bump. I’d ascribed that bump to Teo and Zed beating the piss out of each other in childhood, but apparently it was all Brando’s Y chromosome at work.
I sat uncharacteristically warm, in a chair right next to the fire. Flames snapped as it roared, the sound echoing around the vaulted ceiling of their family room. It faced the river, which I could see clearly, thanks to a pearl of a moon that hung low in the sky.
Brando cleared his throat and played the trombone with his card until it focused for him. “Zed and Nairne.” He commandeered my name with his Italian accent, adding an upswing at the end. Nairnah. “In 49 BC, Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, and began his military campaign to rule the Roman Republic, saying these words. Is it—”
“Alea iacta est.” Zed deftly pinched a yellow pie and dropped it into place. “The die has been cast.”
“Show off,” Teo grumbled. “And you didn’t even consult your partner.”
I waved it away and sipped my whiskey. “We agreed to allow each other unanimous answering if we were confident.”
Zed smiled to himself and drew a card to read.
Brando laughed. “Bene fatto, mimmo. See, you do appreciate my lessons on your heritage and its history. Teo, dov'è il Rubicone?”
Teo rolled his eyes as he took a healthy drink of his red wine. “Cesena. Flows to the Adriatic.”
“Bene. Molto bene.” Brando stood with hands slapped on his thighs. “Now, I make dinner.”
I smiled my thanks, then went back to staring at Zed as he stood and joined his father. It wasn’t hard to track his steady movement. His profile as he bent his head to a task, as hands that had tied me in knots and unknotted every resistance inside me went to work. A blade’s flash as he filleted the fish, chopped herbs and spices, palm leveraging his knife as he worked. Lips pursed, brows furrowed. Just beautiful.
The die is cast. Crossing the Rubicon. The point of no return. Unless you believed in time travel—and much as I loved Doctor Who, I didn’t—you had to concede that the past was unreturnable. Why, then, were some moments so impossibly hard to leave behind? I watched Zed and cursed myself for doing exactly what I told myself I wouldn’t—letting him sink deeper than surface level, a place where he couldn’t be brushed off and forgotten when I had to go.
When had our chance meeting in the quantitative minutes of my existence become qualitatively singular? We were more than the strategic chemistry of two opposites that had attracted. Elements that could dissolve and break away. We were alchemy, something ancient that bound and tied the material to the immaterial.
Zed caught me staring and smiled, then dropped his eyes back to his cooking. I’d crossed the bloody Rubicon all right, and hell if I knew how to get back.
Brando and Zed bickered in the kitchen. Two deep voices lobbing Italian, hands on hips when they weren’t flying in the air. The content was lost on me but not its tension.
“They’re cute, aren’t they?” Teo grinned over his shoulder as he stoked the fire. “Two peas in a cranky pod.”
I turned my whiskey on my knee and glanced him over. He looked more like Brando than Zed, but he didn’t feel like him. “They do seem quite alike.” I sipped my whiskey, then set it down. “Are you more like her?”
Teo faced the fire. “I think so. She was independent and intuitive, also insanely messy, all of which made Papa crazy. I’m more like her than Zed, for sure. Papa and Zed are disciplined and principled. Still waters, but below the surface, if you get deep enough…” He tipped his head. Thought about it. “Raging current.”
I grinned and sipped again from my glass.
“Teo!” Brando clapped his hands. “Come help your papa. Zeddo did the cooking with me, now you help me serve.”
Their house was blissfully free of carpets but for a few flat oriental rugs that I didn’t have too much trouble negotiating. I sat at the table, trying seven different kinds of seafood dishes and watching the Salvato
re men repeatedly dip into Italian before remembering their audience.
“Nairne, you don’t eat much.” Brando leaned his elbows on the table and pointed a butter knife my way. “Do you not like i pesci?”
I laughed. “I grew up along the North Sea. All we eat is i pesci. I like it very much.”
“But?” Brando tilted his head. Examined me. It reminded me of Zed.
Fidgeting came naturally with three pairs of eyes on me. “I’m just…” Zed’s eyes on mine were different than the others. His gaze had a molecular weight—heavy and warm, sunlight on a cold day.
“Christmas is odd for me. When I’m not eating my feelings, I tend to starve them. That make any sense?”
Zed’s eyes fell from mine. I watched his throat as he swallowed a sip of wine, and wondered how I could convince him to fuck me later. I’d already asked and been put off.
“You’re not quiet at all,” he’d said with a laugh. Then I’d promised him I’d be as quiet as a gene silencing. That had just made him laugh harder. “My beautiful nerd. We’ll see, innamorata. We’ll see.”
Brando sipped his wine. “Zed says you have no family, fragolina. That must be hard. But here with us, you have family, capisce?”
Feelings welled up inside me at his kind words and their short-lived applicability. I cleared my throat and drank some water. “Thank you, Brando.”
He nodded, smiled as he spun his glass. Zed had been quiet, eating with singular focus. Brando’s eyes flicked from him to me. “So, what are your plans after you graduate, Nairne?”
“Papa, it’s not an interview,” Teo muttered. He glanced uneasily between Zed and his father.
Brando waved his hand. “I’m getting to know la bella fragola.”
Zed’s eyes were down on his food still, and I didn’t like not having them. “I’m applying to fellowships right now, mostly around genetic research. I’d like to have a bit more experience before I move into full-time consultancy or instruction.”
Brando threw up a hand. “Thank you. Someone who actually wants to do the work to learn her field before she starts shaping policy. This country could use more of that.”
“She won’t be here.” Zed speared his fish and bit it off.
Brando glanced between us. “Oh? Perchè?”
Zed chewed and didn’t answer. I gave my standard explanation. “Lots of reasons. Mostly that I feel the greatest affinity for Europe. The UK, specifically. Not to mention my healthcare is prohibitively expensive here, and I have a dear friend who’s like my sister in France. I’d like to be closer to her again.”
Brando sat back and ran a hand over his mouth. “All good reasons.” You could cut the tension with a knife. “Well, fragolina, I wish you well. Wherever you go, you’ll be an invaluable asset.”
“That’s kind of you. I’m hopeful I can do my part to advance the causes that matter to me.” I felt guilty as I sat there, speaking of my ambitions. But why should I feel shame for my dreams? Zed had choices that he wouldn’t acknowledge, as far as I could tell. I knew he’d involved himself in a corrupt system that he somehow managed to try to make less terrible from the inside out, and I could imagine that would be hard to leave, but not impossible. Not if you wanted to desperately enough.
Brando smiled. “A worthy pursuit. Nobility is hard to come by these days.” He reached out and gripped Zed’s shoulder. “But sometimes it distorts our lives. I hope you won’t lose sight of who you are, as you pursue your values. The life of loyalty that holds no room for one’s own heart is an empty existence.”
Zed stood abruptly and sent his chair scraping back. “The pans need to soak.” He spun out and shouldered the swinging kitchen door.
“Papa.” Teo scrubbed his face with his hands.
“What?” Brando shrugged. “He needs a nudge. He’s stubborn as an ox.”
I glanced between them. “Excuse me, I think I should go talk to him.”
“Yes, please do.” Brando sighed. “And while you’re at it, talk some sense into him.”
I pushed the door ahead of myself and made it through. Zed stood at the sink, arms wide. A pyramid of dark waves and fingertips white against the counter’s edge.
I stopped by his side, locked the brakes, and leveraged myself up. Normally he’d thread an arm around my waist, since he still didn’t trust me not to fall on my arse. But he just stared out the window at the river.
“Zed?”
“Hm?”
I braced a hand over his. “Talk to me.”
His face turned my way slowly, eyes a storm of emotions I couldn’t read. “It’s nothing, Nairne. An old argument between my dad and me. I don’t want to talk about it.”
I itched to press him, to let me share his burden. What Brando had said made it sound like Zed was tangled in something he couldn’t get out of. What if I could help him?
But who was I to make such a demand? To invite him to lend me his heart, just to hand it back to him when I left? So, I accepted his silence and set my head on his shoulder, watching the moonlight weave a lace of snowflakes before us. The river swallowed each one that fell from the sky. I always marveled that something so fleeting and tiny—each microscopic snowflake—was structurally one-of-a-kind, never to be seen again.
Like this moment. Zed. How my heart burned as I stared into the storm and contemplated my path without him.
Zed was an explosive variable, an outlier I could have never predicted. When we’d collided, I’d done everything I could to diminish his effect. And judging by how I felt in that moment, I’d failed miserably. He sighed and I leaned deeper into his solid arm. Strength and warmth. Power and passion.
I couldn’t love him.
What if you already do?
Thirty
Nairne
Zed shut the bedroom door behind him, then tugged off his shirt from the back how men do. Hard pecs. A solid eight pack. Yes, eight pack. He did exercise for a living after all. Those divots at his hips pointed toward a cock I spent an unadvisable amount of time thinking about. Bronzed skin that never faded with the lack of sunshine. I shifted in bed because there was a planetary weight of need between my legs and his surliness was a turn-on rather than a deterrent.
There was a fireplace in the bedroom, roaring with heat, and it had to be twenty-five Celsius, easy. The house’s sauna temperature had nothing to do with offsetting winter weather, and everything to do with their thoughtfulness about my poor circulation.
Zed dropped on the bed and ran a hand along my legs. Glanced out the window. “Sorry about earlier. My dad took over the mothering when my mom got too sick for it. He hasn’t stopped since.”
I knuckled fists into the bed and sat higher. “You don’t need to apologize, Zed. He cares about you. He’s concerned.”
He nodded as he leaned back to tug off his jeans, then briefs, and a sea of muscles in his back rippled. “Yeah. I know.” His eyes finally met mine and he smiled halfheartedly. “Nice shirt.”
I glanced down at my Harry Potter tee, then back up. Ripped it off and left myself topless before him. “Nice, and accurate. I solemnly swear I am up to no good.”
His eyes narrowed and his jaw ticked. “Topping from the bottom, and I’m not even pissed. I must be coming down with something.” He crawled my way, slid a hand between my breasts, to the base of my throat. One rough thumb pressed against my pulse. “I want to defile you right now.”
“Do it.” God, it was all I could think about.
That dark brow furrowed, lips pursed in concern. “No. I’m emotional, and I don’t trust myself to be in control. You’re still healing. I should be gentler.”
“Fuck, no. Take me like always, Zed. I won’t break.”
“Not true,” he whispered. His hands moved along my waist, then cupped my breasts. He twisted my nipples hard and I hissed as pain Venn-diagrammed with pleasure, two circles of intensity converged. Then his hands left me. He sat back and ran fingers through his hair.
Bastard. I stuck a hand under the s
heets and shoved three fingers in my sex, rough like he would. Not even two strokes in, his hand gripped my wrist.
“Stop,” he warned.
“You won’t do it? I’ll take care of myself.”
He groaned, shook his head. “You’re pushing me, Nairne. Don’t push me.”
“I want you, and you’re telling me no. So, I’ll get myself off if I want to.”
It happened very quickly. Sheets whipped back, pillows thrown aside. Flat on my back with absolute gentleness, then I was looking up at him.
Glowing eyes, a dark Adonis of muscles and power. That cock. Thick, the head dark and glistening with arousal.
“Tell me if it hurts.” He rammed into me and I gasped. “Your back, not your cunt. That, I’m brutalizing.”
“Yes,” I moaned. The headboard rammed into the wall and my eyes flicked up it. “They’ll hear us.”
“Yeah,” he grunted as he drove into me. “They fucking will. And they’ll know exactly what we’re doing. That a problem?”
“No.” My nipples hardened. Arousal flooded between us.
“Jesus, you’re soaked. You like it, that they’ll know that I’m taking you, and you’re mine.”
I bit my lip as he ground against my clit. “Yes, damn you.”
He bent and bit my breast, sucked, and kissed, then bit some more. Gave each tit their adoring punishment. My clit was a pulsing point of light that was dangerously bright. The circuit lit up deep inside as he stretched me with each thrust. Either this was turning him on more than usual, or I was tighter.
“It hurts,” he said. A statement, not a question.
I groaned my answer, because it felt brilliant. I wanted it even harder. I tried to press my weak hips toward him.
“You want more.”
“Please.” There I was. In the depth of my depravity. Begging. Throbbing for his brutality. Drenched for the brute who cared deeper, saw more, than anyone had. Who bent my pain into a beautiful shape and melded it with pleasure, an alloy of pure, sweet relief.
