by Unknown
“It’s just because she’s so different from Maddie,” Bill’s saying now, quietly. On screen, a smiling family of four is trying to sell them a Mazda. “That’s why Alexandra is being so…Alexandra.”
Nick sighs, taking a pull off his beer. “Would it be better if I were dating a carbon copy?” he asks, leaning back and putting an ankle up on his knee. He’s thinking not—not a single one of the women Io’s selected for him so far have even come close, all noticeably fair haired, all noticeably not Greek. Alexandra loved Maddie like her own heart, and Nick bets she’d have a shit fit if he ever came home with a doppelganger. “Because somehow I doubt it.”
Bill nods slowly. “All right,” he says, muting a Swiffer jingle as Stevie and Joe troop in from the backyard. “Then it’s because she’s not Maddie, maybe. I’m not saying it’s fair. But just cut her a break, okay?”
Nick doesn’t have time to answer before Stevie launches himself in for a hug, baseball glove and all. Nick picks him up so he doesn’t track slush across the carpet. “Hey, kiddo,” he says, heaving them both out of the armchair and nodding a hello at Joe. “Your sister says you’re being a pill.”
Stevie nods proudly, wiggling so his wet boot treads mark up the back of Nick’s jeans. “She didn’t want to be cut in half,” he explains matter-of-factly.
Nick can smell the finished potatoes, Io announcing dinner from the next room in the exact same tone their mother used to use. “Yeah,” he tells Stevie, prying off the kid’s miniature leather glove. “I hear that bugs some people.”
Dinner itself is easy, casual chatter about Stevie’s recital and Erica being identified as gifted on the latest round of standardized tests. They eat in Ioanna’s brightly lit dining room off plastic place mats—Stevie gets embarrassed when it’s just him—Alexandra forcing seconds and thirds on everyone. The roast is an old recipe of their grandmother’s, lemon and cracked pepper and oregano, absolutely worth losing a belt notch over. It’s only afterward, when Joe’s giving Stevie a bath and Erica’s doing homework in her room, that Nick gets ambushed.
“So,” Alexandra says, cutting all three Kanelos siblings a slice of coffee cake in the kitchen. Bill has retired back to his armchair. “Taryn. Let’s talk.”
Nick recognizes the trap that’s being sprung just a hair too late. “Talk about what?” He sighs, taking the proffered cake.
Alexandra smiles like a person whose plan has finally come together. “Well. First of all, how old is she?”
And they’re off to the races. Nick feels annoyance flare bright and immediate in his chest. “Really?” he asks disbelievingly, leaning back against the counter and realizing he doesn’t have a fork to eat his cake with. “That’s where you want to start.”
“What do you mean, that’s where I want to start?” Alexandra is all injured righteousness even as she sees what he’s looking for, opening the silverware drawer and handing him one. “I’m curious.”
Yeah, Nick just bets she is. Still, remembering Bill asking him to go easy, “She’s young,” he allows after a moment. It’s pretty obvious, after all, even if he is pretty sure Alexandra’s only harping on it because it’s the easiest available objection. “Is that what you want to hear?”
Apparently not. Alexandra’s eyes narrow. “How young?” she prods.
Nick huffs out a noisy breath. “Why does that matter, Alexandra?”
“Well, it matters if you’re going around with some pair of legs half your age—”
“All right,” Nick breaks in. Fuck, that pisses him off—until now his irritation has been mostly about Alexandra meddling where she doesn’t belong, her lifelong habit of offering her opinion whether or not anybody’s actually asked for it. The instinct to protect Taryn even when she’s not around comes as a surprise. “Enough with the pair of legs, will you please?” he says. “That’s over the line.”
Alexandra bristles. “Well, if you’d introduce her properly instead of trying to sneak her by us like you’re sixteen years old—”
“Enough.” Ioanna’s been quiet up until now, which is also par for the course, a classic middle-child kind of thing, maybe. Could be it’s just plain Ioanna. She worked as a guidance counselor for a while before her kids were born. “Obviously you don’t need to get our say-so before you have a relationship with somebody, Niko. And I liked her, truly.” She picks at the crumble topping on her cake, powdered sugar coating the tips of her fingers. “We just don’t want you to get hurt again.”
Which is all well and good, but Nick doesn’t want to be protected. “I think the odds of her dying from a rare genetic disorder are probably pretty slim, don’t you?” he snaps, then immediately feels like an asshole of the first order. Alexandra flinches like he’s slapped her. Nick scrubs a hand across his face.
“Look,” he says, setting his untouched plate down on the kitchen table. “Can you just—you realize that I literally haven’t done this since high school, right? So can you just give me twenty minutes to figure it out before you crawl all over me about it?” He looks at Alexandra, who’s stationed by the pantry with her arms crossed. She used to come to the house and read fat paperbacks to Maddie while he was at work. No way in hell is this actually about Falvey’s age. “As far as Taryn goes, I don’t know how you could possibly have decided you don’t like her already, because I’ve hardly even decided how the hell I feel about her yet.” He forks off a corner of coffee cake and shrugs. “All right?”
It’s not true, that he hasn’t decided how he feels about her. The rest of it is, maybe. But that part isn’t true at all.
Alexandra sighs noisily, uncrossing her arms and taking a seat at the kitchen table. She’s been larger than life since they were kids, all-knowing and all-seeing. She’s ten years older, and Nick still isn’t used to the idea that he can hurt her. “All right, Niko,” she says, pinching a crumb off the top of her own cake. “If that’s what you want.”
“We just want you happy,” Ioanna adds, sitting down herself. “Now, like I said—we’re not doing this in my kitchen.” A little late, maybe, but Nick appreciates the effort. Alexandra huffs again, but she doesn’t say anything more.
They eat the rest of their coffee cake in silence, Io pouring out three glasses of milk and putting on a pot of coffee. Alexandra leaves to smoke a cigarette in the backyard before it’s even brewed, huddling to one side of the collapsible swing set without her coat. Nick and Ioanna exchange glances.
“Maybe it’s time to call it a night,” Io murmurs, patting his arm.
I lost a wife, Nick doesn’t say. You two lost a sister-in-law. But he heads upstairs to say goodbye to the kids anyway, stopping by Erica’s pastel-green room first. She shows him the words for her spelling test, and they make fun of people who struggle with silent Es—a one Jeremy Henderson in particular, Nick is made to understand. Then it’s a stopover in Ioanna’s kid-friendly bathroom to receive a damp hug from Stevie, whose curls are slicked down against his head everywhere but his funny-looking cowlick. Nick makes vague plans with Joe to watch the Bruins game later this week, and then he troops back downstairs to Bill and CNN.
When he gets there, Ioanna is the family room’s sole occupant. “They’re outside,” she explains, picking coasters off the coffee table. “I would maybe knock.”
Nick laughs uneasily. “On what, the sliding door?” Io just shrugs, retreating back into the kitchen with her wash-up cloth.
In the end that’s exactly what he does, rapping his knuckles off the thick glass. But Alexandra and Bill must be too far away to notice, because the first thing Nick hears after the hiss of the door’s seal breaking is, “I know, I miss her too,” and a soft, wet sound. Like a sob.
Jesus. Nick inhales a lungful of chilly air, fast enough that his chest seizes. He’s a coward, maybe, but he one hundred percent doesn’t want to face whatever this is. “Hey guys?” he calls, kicking at the snow and feeling about fifteen years old. “I’m heading off now.”
Bill’s the one who heads over to shake his hand, leaving
Alexandra silhouetted by the swing set. “Sorry,” he says tiredly, reaching under his glasses to rub at the bridge of his nose. “We’re having a day.”
Nick scrubs a hand over his own face, wishing for the hundredth time he’d begged out of this stupid dinner. “Look, tell Alexandra I like her for real, okay?” he says finally, grasping at any straws that might help. “Taryn. Tell her I like Taryn.”
“I think she knows already.” Bill smiles, but he claps Nick’s shoulder an extra time before walking back over to the swings. Nick exhales.
By the time he’s tucked away inside the Tahoe, warm and protected from the night, his hands have started shaking, rattling on the gearshift like the aftermath of a serious adrenaline rush. Nick used to have a real problem with that when he was a rookie, always getting through the first procedure of shift only to find himself twitching too much to handle the next. Lynette’s the one who finally showed him how to hang on to the high.
It’s stupid, but the last thing he wants to do right now is head home to an empty house. He presses speed-dial 3 right there in Ioanna’s driveway, holding the phone tight against his ear.
Taryn picks up on the first ring. “Hey,” she says, sounding surprised. Nick can hear someone laughing in the background behind her, high-pitched and young. “Thought you had a thing tonight.”
“Thing’s over,” he tells her, looking out the windshield at the neat lines of his sister’s house. The melty remnants of a carrot-nosed snowman list crookedly on the lawn. “Can I come pick you up?” It’s more forward than he usually is, maybe—for the most part he tries to let her come to him—but Nick’s not in the mood.
“Ummm,” Taryn says, slow and singsong. She’s surprised, yeah—but not, if he had to guess, unhappy about it. “Hang on a second. Are you staying in tonight?” he hears her ask somebody, voice muffled like she’s got her hand over the microphone. Then, a moment later, “Are you sure?”
Nick wonders who she’s talking to, her mom or her brother. “Is your boyfriend on the phone?” the young, giggly voice demands. There’s a spray of laughter over the drone of the TV, what might or might not be some kissing noises. Alone in his car across town, Nick smirks.
A second later Taryn’s back on the line, full volume. “Meet you at your house,” she tells him, and he can hear the smile in her voice. “Give me twenty minutes.”
Taryn’s barely rung the bell before Nick’s swinging the door open, Atlas at his feet with his tail thumping cheerfully in greeting. Nick lifts her right off the ground for a kiss. He smells like coffee and like himself, familiar after all the time they’ve been spending together lately. Taryn grins wide against his mouth.
“Hi,” she says, wrapping her arms around his neck and then, when he only sinks in deeper, her legs around his waist. Nick shifts so he’s got both hands on her ass. “You okay?” she asks when he heads for the staircase without even letting her get her coat off—he sounded weird on the phone earlier, his night cut short and him not so much as offering an explanation for why. He doesn’t owe her one, obviously—that’s not what they’re doing here—but still. It isn’t like him. “Hey. Nick.” She breaks the kiss for real when they get to the landing, one hand on his cheek so she can tilt his face up to see him in the hallway light. His eyes are so ridiculously fucking dark. “You good?”
Nick nods and doesn’t stop moving, up the rest of the stairs and down the hall toward the bedroom, carrying her through the doorway like maybe she doesn’t weigh anything at all. He drops her on the mattress so hard the springs squeak. “Off,” he orders roughly, climbing on top of her in an instant and yanking at her parka and her boots and her sweater. He presses the side of his hand up between her legs.
Taryn feels something swoop low and dark in her belly. ”Yeah,” she tells him breathlessly, reaching for the clasp on her own bra and working the buttons on his collared shirt with shaky fingers. She’d be lying if she said this didn’t work for her, how bad he seems to want it right now. She should make him stop and talk to her probably, but his teeth are quick and sharp at the side of her neck, and when she opens her mouth the only sound she makes is a sigh.
“These too,” Nick mutters, grabbing at her waistband and yanking. He hasn’t even bothered with her belt, like maybe brute force alone will be enough to get her jeans off, like maybe he doesn’t have time for anything else. Taryn whimpers, pushing herself at him. The pants stall out around the curve of her hips anyway, Nick making a frustrated noise as his bites get rougher, moving down across her chest with intent. Taryn laughs in response, automatic and nervous, but it’s possible she’s finding the whole thing the opposite of funny.
“I got it,” she says, undoing the belt buckle and lifting her hips to help. “Just—” Nick tugs, underwear and socks and jeans in one fell swoop, and then she’s completely naked under a fully-dressed Kanelos. Already he’s parting her legs with a clothed thigh, the denim biting at her sensitive skin.
“You,” Taryn has the wherewithal to gasp, trying to close her hips. He presses any harder and she’s going to make a mess of his jeans. “Strip.”
Nick stands up to do it, undershirt getting dragged off by the neck like a little boy and his boxers down around his ankles in seconds. That eagerness gets to her too, how fast he does it and how quickly his cock jumps to attention as soon as it’s free. He’s so hard, God, the head nearly touching his belly. Taryn just wants to do the most inappropriate crap to him.
She gets the sense she isn’t going to be in the driver’s seat tonight though, so. “Come here,” she murmurs, spreading her legs and wrapping both arms around the pillow over her head. It’s so blatant she would be embarrassed, were it not for the practically unhinged look on Nick’s face that says he doesn’t mind one bit. He’s on her in a flash, pausing to lick a rough stripe up between her legs before settling in on top, cock pressing insistently against her thigh. Taryn reaches down between them to line him up.
“This okay?” Nick asks even as he takes over, dragging himself back and forth between her inner lips until he’s good and slippery. Taryn’s breath goes weird and hiccupy anytime he gets near her clit. When she reaches for him, she finds her wrists shoved back against the mattress with a violence that surprises both of them, if Nick’s expression is any indication.
“S’okay,” she promises quickly, canting her hips up before he gets any ideas about backing off. “I want to. I want—” She really does, she likes his weight and his smell and how desperate he seems to be, all of it combining to make her feel stupidly powerful. She promised him anything the first time he brought her up here, and while she hasn’t exactly reprised the offer since, it’s possible she meant it even then. “Please. I want to.”
Yeah, that works all right, embarrassing as it is to actually articulate. Nick slides in all at once, rolling his hips to get himself situated. Then he pulls out slowly, bracing one hand up over her head before he fucks her—Mary mother of God—halfway up the freaking bed.
“Shit.” Taryn scrabbles at the sheets, looking for leverage, but he’s still holding her wrists down. “Nick. Shit.”
“That’s it,” he mutters quietly, his voice a low, humming vibration right down beside her ear. It feels insane, the burn and stretch of him inside her, how it’s right on the edge of being too much. She pushes up against his grip on her wrists just to see what’ll happen, and Nick slams them back down to the bed. “Behave,” he warns her gruffly, tightening his hold without breaking the rhythm, these deep, deep thrusts Taryn can feel all the way into her stomach. She curls her toes against his calf muscles, butterflies her hips even more.
“Make me,” she manages breathlessly. Arches her spine to meet him stroke for stroke.
“Fresh.” Nick grins back, fast and sharp and wolfish—he makes her though, collecting her wrists in one hand and reaching down to pluck at her nipple with his free one. Pinches hard enough that Taryn yelps. She feels overwhelmed and out of control in a way that’s never, ever worked for her up until now. Anythin
g, Jesus, she really would let him do—fuck. Thirty seconds later and she’s careening toward the edge of it too quick to even think about making it last.
“Nick.” She never gets off this fast on the bottom, but it’s happening now—he’s hitting some improbably perfect angle, the drag of his body so incredibly good across her clit. “Nick Nick Nick, please, I’m—right now, I’m—” As she comes she wants to tell him other things too, all kinds of insanity she’s never, ever going to actually admit to: that she’s never wanted somebody as much as she wants him, that she’s ridiculously glad he called her tonight, that he’s the biggest and the best and she loves—
Loves what, exactly?
Taryn snaps her jaws shut midmoan like she can shut her brain down that way also, panic cutting through the haze of the orgasm like a siren through a snow-silent night. God, it’s not—she definitely doesn’t, all right, they’ve been hanging around for like a month, she hardly knows him. She couldn’t possibly—whatever. It’s fine. It’s all the sex, it has to be. It’s messing with her hormones something fierce.
Nick doesn’t seem to notice, thank God. Two more hard, sloppy thrusts and he’s done for, the feel of him pulsing hot and thick between her legs. Taryn forces herself to refocus, murmurs nonsense in his ear until he’s through. “So, um,” she says quietly, once his breathing calms down. He goes to lift himself off her, and Taryn tugs to keep him where he is. Freaked or not, she likes how he feels. “You wanna tell me what that was?”
Nick shrugs, kisses along her shoulder. “Rough night,” is all he says.
Which—clearly. He shifts his weight onto the bed for real now, the mattress dipping underneath him. As soon as he moves, Taryn’s whole body feels sweaty and cold. “With your family?” she asks cautiously, propping herself up on one elbow; that’s who he was with, she knows, the casual way he mentioned it to her making it feel like anything but.
Nick nods. “Mm-hmm. Roll over,” he murmurs then, sitting up. “On your stomach.”
