by Chloe Liese
As far as Nairne knew, I had an eventual plan to get out of my life here, but no immediate steps available to me yet. She would nose her way in to try to help and insinuate herself dangerously, of that I was positive, so I had to keep her outside of my agenda. Did she sense distance on my end because of that? Or did she need distance from me as preparation for her imminent and inevitable departure?
Her shoulders dropped. “Zed, no. I don’t want that one bit. I’ve been preoccupied, that’s all. Please don’t read into it.”
The amount of relief that answer gave me felt incredibly irrational. I smiled and kissed her palm. Then I slid her hair behind her ear. Slipped my hand down her neck until my fingers dipped into her blouse.
“Zed!” She playfully smacked my hand away, but I grabbed her fingers, held them down on the table. Brought my other hand back to the edge of her top where light met darkness, milky skin against sheer black.
“Matt was staring at your tits.”
She rolled her eyes. “I know, but you’re not punishing me for that, you brute. Go punch his lights out if you need to indulge your inner caveman.”
I smiled as I traced the sine waves of her breasts with the pads of my fingers. Swell, then dip, then swell. Back and forth. “I debated it, but he’s actually not as bad a writer as I first thought. Finding a new one would be a pain.”
Her skin was warming up, glowing like it did when I revved her engine. She licked her lips and squirmed a little as she glanced from the door to me. “Someone could walk in.”
“Who fucking cares, Nairne.” I dipped my head, kissed her hard. I’d been gone all weekend travelling for a game, and forty-eight hours of minimal texts from her and not being inside her had pushed my limits. “You need to cut class, I need to skip practice, and we need about five hours in the sunroom.”
She shook her head, even as she opened wider and sucked my tongue the way she sucked my cock—like a freaking prodigy. “Can’t. Meeting with my thesis advisor. You can’t either.”
I groaned and pressed my forehead against hers. “This is terrible. One of us needs to be less disciplined. More impulsive.”
“I don’t know about that. I think our mutual stringency leads to mighty pleasurable things, Zed. Lose that, and what kind of love life would we have?”
I took her jaw, kissed her again, then let her go. “An exceptionally compliant one. What’s the problem with that?”
Nairne threw her bag on her back and led the way. “The problem would be that for all your tough talk, Salvatore, you’d be woefully bored. You’d miss my intractability.”
I grinned as I held the door for her. Tony called my name. Nairne turned, seeing I would be stuck for the time being, then waved goodbye. I watched her turn down the sidewalk and disappear. She was going to do that for good soon, and she was right—when she did, I was going to miss the hell out of her.
Four
Nairne
By meeting Nella, I had meddled in the dangerous realm of Zed’s world, exactly as I’d promised him never to do. And it was probably inadvisable to spend that much money from my recent windfall. In short, I was being reckless, for me. For New Nairne. Old Nairne? This was nothing.
I just couldn’t help myself. I was a problem solver. I’d identified the issue, homed in on the pertinent variables, and formulated a solution. Turning away from its resolution was impossible, even if it did involve aiding and abetting criminals.
Because I loved Zed. I still couldn’t believe that I’d let it happen, but I couldn’t deny it either. Now it was just a fact that I needed his sharp mind, his readiness to laugh at my odd humor. His passion and tenderness, tinged with a roughness I loved to reciprocate.
No, I had no idea where love could take us, or even what it meant, necessarily. But I knew I looked at him and felt protectiveness and care, an investment in who he was and would become, that I’d never felt for any man before. And I knew that loving meant acting. Doing. Because love was a verb, not a vague sentiment. A conclusion to a statement of logic. I love Zed, therefore…X. X being whatever upheld that fact from one minute to the next.
So, acting on that premise, after Christmas, I’d made my plan to bribe Nella. Problem was, I was ill-equipped for it, without the most important bargaining chip for greedy crooks—money. Until a few weeks later, when I suddenly became a ridiculously lucky investor. At the end of January, the tech company I’d invested in during the previous summer had started to see some nice profit from around my birthday last year, went public, and dropped more cash in my bank account than seemed remotely plausible.
My best friend Elodie was the child of savvy wealth managers who ran the portfolios of France’s most affluent, and they were grooming her to take over. So, I’d rang her over video call for her input since I honestly couldn’t believe it was real.
She’d yawned, taken a look at the business news, then sipped her coffee and shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. Sometimes you gamble, and you win. You won big time.”
I lay on the bed in Zed’s sunroom, turning it all over in my head. With a financial nudge from me, Nella had extra incentive and means to unseat the boss. If the boss were gone, and Nella knew the men would choose Zed, it only followed that Nella would want him out of the way. She obviously loved power more than she loved anything else, even if I’d gleaned an ongoing affection for Zed on her part. It felt safe to conclude that Nella would prefer unadulterated power if it cost her Zed, rather than staying second fiddle indefinitely.
So, assuming she found some way to help the boss finish burying himself in the fraudulent mess he’d made of things, she’d then be free to use her newfound funding to influence the vote on replacing the boss in her favor. Zed had their economy running to minimize violence and maximize petty crimes, and that lined Nella’s pocket generously, so she had no reason to change a thing. Meaning Zed would be free to make an escape without compromising his morals, Nella got her money, and I got Zed. It was perfect.
But how would it unfold? I wanted a deeper hand in the situation, an entirely controlled environment with a predictable outcome. Not just tossing money at a sociopath and banking on her greed freeing up the man I loved, at some uncertain point in the future.
I stared at the grey February sky and watched geese skim over the icy Charles River. In just a few months, I’d be gone. Would Zed be able to leave by then? How his liberation would unfold, and what he’d make of that newfound freedom, even for all my meddling, was still a mystery to me.
Not to mention the emotional side of it. We’d admitted what we meant to each other, but it had been in a moment of raw feeling, tinged with the sadness of a definite ending. Now that I was mapping out a plausible long-term future for us, I had to consider if our love was sustainable. We bickered more than most couples I knew. I drove him insane with my fierce stubborn streak, and his highhandedness gave me a headache when he waded from attractively attuned to downright controlling.
We were an explosive dynamic, no doubt, but I was burning bright in the reaction, and the thought of dimming to a steady, faint flame again made my insides hurt.
My thoughts were interrupted, as Zed shut the door and strode into the sunroom. As always, I went from warm to hot as I looked at him. Faded Sox shirt, black joggers. He stripped off his clothes unceremoniously and crawled over me. When his lips met mine, I sighed at how good he tasted. Smelled. Felt. Damn pheromones made me desperate for him.
“I’m going to be straight with you.” He spoke between kisses. “I’m not real level-headed right now, so you need to have your word ready.”
I tensed as he sucked down my neck and slid a hand over my entrance. “What do you mean?”
“You met Nella.” He practically growled it, then bit my nipple.
I moaned as a current of lust shot from that bite down to my sex. “Wanted to discuss finding my inner dominatrix.”
He laughed but it was empty. “You’re plenty dominating outside this room, Nairne, and we both know that’s not
what you met her about.”
I grasped his shoulders, but he slammed my hands back against the mattress. “All right,” I countered. “If you’re so sure, tell me what was said.”
He sucked my nipple hard and dragged the head of his cock against my clit. “I don’t know. Nella said it was just a woman-to-woman talk, but I don’t believe it.” He drove into me and I cried out. “I’ve warned you before, don’t fuck with my world, Nairne. You could get yourself killed.”
His pace was punishing, which meant everything inside me burned bright, aching to come.
“I love you,” I whispered.
He faltered as he drew back and glared down at me. “I love you. And if you actually fucking love me, stop endangering yourself. Promise me that.”
I thought about it. My word mattered to me. I didn’t make promises I didn’t plan to keep. My risky work was done though, and now it rested in Nella’s hands, so technically it was a vow I could honor.
“I promise.”
“Thank you.” He thrust hard and rough, his body heavy against mine.
His punishing rhythm concentrated my thoughts into one notion. I didn’t have a lot of room in my schedule for guilty pleasures like quantum mechanics these days, but I read enough to keep up. Timelessness as a concept was bouncing around theoretical physics circles, thanks to special relativity and a strain of highly complex math. The notion of space-time as a construct rather than concrete reality pointed to how one person could experience phenomena happening simultaneously while another could experience them as sequential, with the simple adjustment of perspective—being either stationary or moving.
Zed’s body in mine. His weight compressing my bones. I was stationary, he was moving, and Christ was that sunroom dangerously close to making me believe in timelessness, because the place felt like a wormhole. I’d been here and come a hundred times, and they all felt startlingly different and indistinguishably the same. I was safe. I was known. I was weightless and painless, and free to love and be loved how I needed to be. And it might have been three minutes or thirty minutes until I felt myself grow closer. Then he pulled out.
“Damn it!” I cried.
He smiled evilly and turned me on my stomach, then spanked my arse, which just sent me closer to orgasm.
“You actually thought I’d just let you come on my cock like that? After whatever stunt you pulled?” He thrust his fingers deep inside me and brought me right to the edge. “You’re in for a long night, fragolina.”
I moaned into the pillow and slammed my fist. “As much a brute as ever.”
I heard the smile in his voice as he drove into me from behind. “I’m consistent, at least. You gotta give me that.”
Ever since I could remember, I’d woken up with the sun. As soon as morning light hit my eyelids, my brain snapped awake and I was ready for the day. Zed on the other hand, slept deeply, and light didn’t seem to affect him at all.
I tried not to stay over often, because it felt too intimate and cozy, something I could get used to and miss too much when I moved away. But that morning I indulged myself. Watched the sunrise peek over his profile then dance across his nose and eyelashes. His chest rose and fell steadily, and my hand itched to touch him. He slept naked, tangled in my legs, with an arm pulling me against him. His body was hot, and each time we slept together, he never once complained about my chilly legs and feet. He’d just wrap them up in his and fall asleep.
He spoke out of nowhere and it made me jump. “It’s creepy how much you watch me sleep.”
“I barely do it.”
He stretched, drew my head against his hard chest, and dropped back into the mattress. “Sure, Nairne.” His hand trailed softly down my waist and massaged my arse. “Creeper,” he murmured, turning himself and his impressive morning erection my way.
“You’re hardly innocent, lad. You watch me fall asleep every time.” I gasped as he gently rubbed himself against me. Sighed as he slipped inside, then withdrew.
He shook his head while nuzzling into my neck, nipping then soothing that sensitive spot above my collarbone. “You keep trying to talk, then your eyes start to droop, and then you say the funniest shit when you’re half-asleep.”
“That’s rude. Taking advantage of me when I’m tired.”
“You’re right.” He pressed me onto my back. A kiss behind my ear made me shudder. “Let me make it up to you.” He sank inside me, head of tousled waves buried in my neck. His whole body pinned me to the bed and his arms slipped between my back and the mattress, crushing us together.
“I love you,” he whispered.
I kissed his hair and breathed through my tears. “I love you, too, Zed.”
Then I wrapped my arms around the broad expanse of his shoulders as he rocked into me, tugged me tighter, and seated himself deep inside. I felt every thrust of his hips, his length stretching me.
A radiating swell in my belly built. And a quiet burst of air left him with each deep strike into me. For how dark and chaotic we’d been last night, this morning was quiet and light, the whisper of sheets drifting to the ground, the steady groan of his bed as Zed lost his rhythm and finally broke the silence with one pained yell of relief.
My release came sharp and hard, robbing me of air as Zed emptied himself into me. I felt his mouth biting me, his tongue laving my skin as he claimed and marked me. He liked those proprietary love bites, even though I’d told him they were superfluous. Because his imprint glowed from a place far deeper than the few broken capillaries on the surface of my skin.
It was written on my heart.
Five
Zed
I prided myself on being a well-organized guy. Playing the long game. Being patient. Level-headed. Smart. Practically any situation was navigable if you took a damn minute to get the lay of the land and form a strategy for getting through it. Historically, that had worked. Each month that had passed with Nairne, I’d told myself that my rational understanding of my end date with the spitfire of a woman was adequate preparation for her departure.
But I’d been wrong.
I hadn’t allowed for all the ways she’d settle into my day-to-day life. How hooked I’d get to the rigidity of her morning and nighttime routines, when she’d lock me out of the bathroom and all I wanted was to figure out how to earn my way to the other side of that door. The glimpses of her long body in my shower while I shaved at the sink. The smokiness of her laugh as she did something really unfunny like multivariate calculus or graphing research outcomes. The way she picked at her food some days and on others ate like a ravenous teenager.
Time had flown horrifically fast. As her studies picked up momentum, snowballed in both intensity and finality, my team rode an annoying winning streak that consumed my time and schedule. I’d never wanted to be free of a season so damn much. Then I was hustling around every fucking corner of Boston, dealing with the uptick in tension that Antonio’s stupidity had created. I’d mediated a slew of altercations, respectfully told my Irish family to get the fuck off my Italian family’s part of the water, and continued slowly siphoning information to the feds, nourishing their deep undercover efforts to eventually cripple a whole crime network that plagued New England and the northeast coast.
And in my ample spare time, continued to rack my brain for how I could possibly get out sooner, if the takedown didn’t happen as urgently as I wanted. I kept coming up empty. Who could I trust? And how could I justify pulling out now, depriving authorities of a valuable inside source when they said they were getting close to having everything they needed to incriminate and thwart the cause I pretended to serve so faithfully?
Before I knew it, months left with Nairne had dwindled to one month, which warp-speed dwindled to a paltry week.
That final week felt like dying. No fucking exaggeration. Like I couldn’t catch a deep breath or steady my heart from banging frantically against my chest. I’d practically latched myself onto her. Ignored my family. Skipped a practice because they could fuck t
hemselves, and barely did what was necessary for Cosa Nostra. We’d lain in her bed last night while I soaked in the sound of her voice and her brilliant tangential thoughts. As I held her, I ran my hands over her skin, petrified I’d forget how soft it was, the slope of her hip as it dipped to her ribs.
She’d asked me my dreams, and her guileless hope threw a momentary chink in my cynicism. But I let her ask me question after question, let her determinedly carve out a me that didn’t belong to this world. What my dream home would look like. What club I’d play for. Where I’d travel. How many babies I wanted.
I’d answered those respective questions vaguely. A house something like this. Anywhere that speaks English or Italian. Somewhere warm and quiet. None.
My real answers I kept to myself, because every single one I’d pictured with her, and telling her that would only confuse her and come out like a guilt trip.
A house that you can move through and not once feel inconvenienced or uncomfortable.
A team whose style I like and won’t make me live far apart from you.
Travel to any place where you’re topless on a beach, with no one nearby to see what’s mine or hear you scream in ecstasy.
One. Seven. I don’t care. As long as they’re ours.
She’d tapped her finger on my chest like I wasn’t being straight with her, like she knew I was miserable behind my firm smile and practical diversion tactics that spun questions back on her own life. About that future of hers that I couldn’t be sure I’d see. Someone had to give her shit when she was being too stingy with her rent budget, poke her to make real plans to holiday, as she called it, with her near-sister and only trusted friend, Elodie.
“What about you?” I’d asked.
She’d shrugged and bit her lip. “I think it depends a good bit on my partner. I can’t say I like marriage. It strikes me as an oppressive institution that fails more than it succeeds. Though long-term partnership? Children? Maybe one day.” She’d set her head on my chest and sighed. “I never really thought about it, before you Zed. If left to my own devices, I’d say I’ll turn out an old maid in a biolab.”
