True North

by Nicole French

  He lays me on the bed, but when he tries to stand up, I snake a hand around his neck, keeping his face close for a moment more.

  “Please,” I whisper. “You know. You know how I need it right now.”

  Nico stands up, clearly checking me over. It’s not often I make this request, and when I do, it’s usually because I’m scared of something. Sometimes he doesn’t know what. The demons that used to visit me from time to time rarely stop by these days, but our life has replaced them with some others. I have more to lose now, just like him.

  I stare as he removes his shirt, reveals every delectable muscle, every beautiful line of his chest and stomach, one button at a time. The funny thing is, I don’t even think he notices the way I’m drooling over him. He’s too busy thinking about what I’m asking, making sure I’m really okay.

  “I don’t––I don’t want to hurt you. Either of you,” he says, though I can see by the way his hands are clenching at his sides that he wants to do exactly what I’m asking. Today, we’re both scared. We’re both searching for a bit of control, in the best way we know.

  “If it’s going to happen again, it’s going to happen again,” I say, struggling to keep my voice from warbling. It’s one thing to think it to myself, but it’s another completely to say it out loud. “But you remember what the doctor said. Sex has nothing to do with it. Neither do any of the other things we normally do. The best thing we can do is just be ourselves. Together.”

  Nico swallows, causing a muscle in the side of his jaw to tick. His hands flex again––he’s dying to do it. Flip me over. Ram inside. Release his frustrations onto my body the same way I’m dying to let him.

  But still, he pauses.

  He thinks too much. At least, that’s what I always tell him. Even though we’ve been together for as long as we have, Nico still doesn’t always believe I completely understand what I’m asking for. Or maybe he still can’t believe I like it as much as he does. Nico understands that deep inside, there is always going to be a part of me that burns a little, an anger that needs to be let out, a need to hurt, just a little. He gets it because he feels it too. But that doesn’t stop him from feeling bad about it.

  Even though he spends most of his down time at the firehouse working out, he still has to take off for Frank’s a few times a week just to rid himself of the tension that builds up. Sometimes it’s just too much for my man to bear, and hitting something, whether it’s one of the heavy bags or Nate’s mitts, is one of the only ways to get rid of it.

  This is the other. I wish he didn’t feel guilty about it, but the reality is, we both get what we need when he takes control, gets a little aggressive. I need to feel just a little pinch of pain. And sometimes he needs to give it.

  I get up on my knees and shuffle to the edge of the bed, where I slip off my shirt and skirt so that I’m kneeling in front of him, almost naked. He watches me unbuckle his pants and pull them down so that, after he removes his shoes, he can shimmy out of them the rest of the way. I toy with the elastic of his boxer briefs, but only tug them a little lower than his hip bones. There is something so crazy sexy about the combination of muscle, bone, and tendon that converges right above that band. I lean in and lick the spot, then sit back up to kiss him properly.

  “Please,” I whisper against his lips. “I’m not going to break. We’re not going to break.”

  Then I clap his hand to my ass, which is still his favorite part of my body. Seriously, I could probably get this man to do anything I wanted if I kept his hand right here. It’s not a privilege I take advantage of a lot, but it’s nice to know it’s there.

  Nico moans into my mouth, and his hand automatically kneads the full flesh.

  “Fuck,” he breathes before sucking on my lip again with a slight bite. His other hand grabs the other cheek, and he massages them together, pulling me up against his hard length. “Jesus. Christ.”

  I reach behind and cover his hands with mine. Then I clamp down, grabbing with him, and make him do it hard. Hard enough to leave a bruise.

  “Ah!” he bites out.

  Suddenly, I’m flipped over so I’m on my knees, my face pressed into the bedding while my hands are held together behind my back. My underwear is dragged down my legs, and before I know it, he’s pressed against my entrance, sliding in slowly at first, and then thrusting deeply into that warm, slick place where he still fits so perfectly.

  There’s no wait. No gentle touch or kisses to get me ready. He doesn’t take the time to lick or play with his hand––but he doesn’t need to, not today. His little game on the patio had me ready and willing well before he picked me up, and he knows it too.

  And he knows I’m looking for something else anyway.

  The crack of his hand meeting my flesh echoes through the air, and I shudder, in the best possible way.

  “Again,” I call, low because my voice is muffled in the sheets. But he hears me.

  His hand smacks my ass again and again, alternating between a light, brushing swat, and a full-on smack as he pounds harder, filling me completely with every push, every grunt. I press my elbows down, pushing back against each blow, groaning into the sheets every time his palm lands on my skin. I’ll be bright red by the time he’s done, and I’m absolutely loving it.

  With the last, particularly rough slap, I scream into the sheets, and Nico pauses.

  “Layla,” he barks. “Up. Now.”

  I push up awkwardly, and he helps me the rest of the way so that I’m resting against his chest, both of us on our knees together while he remains buried inside. He twists us toward the shelves mounted over the bed, the ones that are doubly reinforced for moments like these, and sets my hands on the edge of the lowest one so that I’m bent at a slight angle, It’s one of our favorite positions, one that allows me to take him deeply, yet gives him full access to the front of my body.

  He lifts one knee and sets his foot down on the bed, almost in a parody of a proposal, except he’s buried seven inches deep and giving me one of the hardest fucks of my life instead of an engagement ring.

  “Is that how you want it, baby?” he asks as his hand slams down again. “You want it hard like this?”

  “Ummmmmmm, yesssssss!” I shout, holding onto the shelf for dear life. When he takes me this way, I can barely think, much less speak in full sentences.

  Nico’s hands float up my sides, resting briefly over my ribs, where my half of our matching tattoos stretches over my skin: in his handwriting, saudade para tí. His fingers trace the lines as he continues to thrust, harder and harder, while his fingers curl and his nails scrape my skin just a bit as he drops that hand down between my legs.

  The effect is instantaneous. He pinches my clit, and it’s that tricky combination of pleasure and pain, the one that Nico always manages to find exactly right, that sets me off.

  I begin to shake. He pulls the hand away.

  “Nico!” I cry out hoarsely as my muscles tense. “Oh…fuck! Baby, I’m so close, sooooooo close.”

  He slams in again, and again, but his words are no longer intelligible. I can feel him expand within me, growing bigger, longer, harder. It only brings me even closer to that critical edge, the place where I can’t hold myself back any more.

  “Hold on, baby,” he grunts. Thrust. Smack. He winds a hand into my hair and yanks me back up against him. The hand at my clit works a little harder, then pinches a bit and pulls.

  “Now, Layla,” Nico croaks. “Come with me, baby. Now!”

  His teeth find my neck, and he bites. Hard.

  “FUCK!” I shout as my orgasm launches through me.

  My entire body shakes, seizing up against his strong, solid warmth, kept from toppling over by the arm around my hips and the other hand clasping my hair. I don’t know how he doesn’t come apart too, but it’s Nico’s strength that keeps us from falling over together. He’s shattered too––I can tell by the way every part of him wound around me is flexed, muscle, vein, and tendon all in high relief. His teet
h still clamp down hard enough that I swear he’s going to draw blood, and he emits a long, almost pained groan against my skin as his release floods me.

  Our life together has never been easy. We’ve had our battles to fight to be together, both coming from inside and outside of ourselves. Money. Family. This city and all the memories it holds.

  We both have our outlets, our ways of coping, so that when we come together, we can give each other the best we have to offer. Most days they work, but sometimes they aren’t enough.

  But this. This connection. This outlet. This heat. This love. This is always enough.

  ~

  The End…for now. (Click here for the Extended Epilogue)

  Thank you for reading!

  If you’d like to know more about Nico’s life as a young man, please enjoy the first two chapters of Broken Arrow, the prequel to Bad Idea, below, or click here to download the entire thing.

  If you would like to find out first about chapter reveals and new information about True North, the third and final book in the series, you can sign up here or join my Facebook reader group, La Merde.

  BROKEN ARROW

  CHAPTER ONE

  Johnstown, NY

  1994

  The tall, metal gates bang shut with a clank that echoes across the surrounding fields. I look up at the security cameras that stare at me with black eyes, perched over the curling barbed wire.

  Tryon. The detention center where I just wasted the past two years of my life.

  I turn to the road, where K.C., my best friend, and Alba, his mother, are waiting. I feel bad that they had to make the trip all the way out here to get me. New York is two bus rides and an expensive cab drive away from Tryon, but I’m still a minor, so the state wouldn’t release me without a custodian. And because of my mother’s immigration status, that’s been her best friend, Alba, my whole life and will be for another three weeks until I turn eighteen.

  “Come on, baby,” Alba says as she clasps my head briefly.

  K.C. punches me playfully in the shoulder, but he’s a little shy. It’s going to take some time for me to get back to my old self. But we’ve literally grown up across the hall from each other. K.C. knows me better than anyone else in the world. He’ll be patient.

  It’s over. Two years of being watched by creepy security guards, trying not to get the shit beat out of me by them or other inmates, counting the seconds while I stare at the gray walls of this fuckin’ jail for kids––I don’t care what they call it; that’s what it is. It’s over.

  The bus ride to New York is quiet. Alba sits up front, working on her knitting and paging through a magazine. K.C. and I lounge in the back, and he lets me take the window seat after I shove my small backpack into the compartment overhead. I don’t have much. My sketchbook. The clothes I brought with me, which are now too small. Some pictures of my sisters and my brother. My mother, who I haven’t seen in two years.

  “How you feelin’, Nico?” K.C. asks after the bus gets under way from Albany, and the dull roar of the pavement can mask our conversation.

  I blink, almost not recognizing my own name. How many times have I actually been called Nico in the last two years? I barely spoke to any of the other kids––most of them were either too doped up to talk or else spoiling for a fight. When the guards or teachers talked to me, I was always Nicolas, Soltero, or sometimes Mr. Soltero if the teacher decided to try that day. Every now and then Nick, though I wouldn’t answer. But never Nico. Never my real name. I never gave them that.

  There aren’t many people on board. The hum of the tires fills the air, but it’s a good sound. Almost soothing. A different kind of quiet from the tension of Tryon.

  I sink into the cushioned seats, scratching at the red sweats covering my knees. I didn’t have pants I could wear out of the center, so they gave me a pair of the uniforms. I fuckin’ hate this color. I will never wear red again for the rest of my life.

  It’s been a long time since I sat in a chair with cushions. We had our rock-hard mattresses and lumpy pillows at Tryon, but otherwise, everything in the place was hard plastic and metal. Apparently, criminals don’t deserve soft seats, even if they’re only fifteen.

  “I’m good,” I say, edging away from him toward the window. I need a little space. I’ve barely been alone in two years. With someone, whether it was a guard, other inmates, or those assholes they called teachers watching my every move. While I ate. While I brushed my teeth. All day long, right next to someone. My mother’s apartment won’t be too different––there’s five of us that share the tiny one-bedroom––but at least I’ll get to take a piss by myself again.

  “You look different,” K.C. remarks. “Went in lookin’ like Chicken Little, come out lookin’ like Rocky. Shit. Nobody’s gonna fuck with you now.”

  I shrug. We’ve both changed. K.C. came to see me a few times over the last two years, but only when he could save up the money. He’s about six inches taller than when I left. Still pale with short black hair, but his light mustache has darkened, and now he has a goatee. He doesn’t look like a kid anymore. Now he’s a man.

  Which I guess I am too. They gave us disposable razors while the guards stood over us. I didn’t need them when I arrived, but I started using them almost every day over the summer. I’m not as tall as K.C., but I stand at almost five-eleven now, which is still taller than a lot of people in our neighborhood. At Tryon, a lot of the kids played basketball or walked around the track during rec hours, but I did the boxing program, the same one that produced Mike Tyson, and now my chest and shoulders are filled out. I don’t look like the scrawny, scared-shitless kid who left Hell’s Kitchen in the back of a secured van. I look like the kind of guy who could beat the shit out of someone. And you know what? I probably could.

  But honestly, I just feel tired, like I haven’t slept in two years. I’ve been too scared that someone was going to jump me when I closed my eyes, too worried that I’d wake up with my few things stolen or that one of the guards would unlock the door of my tiny cell in the middle of the night. We all knew what happened to Freddy, the kid from two doors over. We all knew why one kid literally pulled the screws out of the floor and swallowed them. We knew why some kids wanted to kill themselves rather than spend another night in Tryon.

  “Get some sleep, mano,” K.C. says, settling back into his seat.

  He gets it. No one knows me like K.C., even if I’ve been gone. We’ve known each other our whole lives, since our mothers got pregnant at the same time and raised us together in Alba’s living room. He knew me when I started running with a group of kids who used to knock over the local bodegas on dares while he started spinning records in his cousin’s basement. He knew me when I got caught the last time and ended up here.

  I lean against the window and close my eyes. When I wake up, I’ll be back in New York, and it will feel like the last two years were just a bad dream.

  ~

  CHAPTER TWO

  It’s funny the things you notice when you’ve been gone a while. The old brick building where I grew up is the same and somehow different. There are new graffiti tags on the foundation, but the sandy red color of the brick is just like it ever was. The creaky stairs going up to the third floor are just as dingy as they always were, but one of the knobs at the bottom of the railing has been broken clean off. One of the apartments has a wire hanging directly through the top of the doorway––someone bootlegging electricity so they don’t have to pay a utility bill.

  I pull the keys from my backpack, which feel strange in my hand after two years. On the other side of the door, I can already hear the noise. My sisters, Selena and Maggie, are arguing about something. There’s the blare of the TV, some kind of cartoon––I’m guessing that Gabe, my baby brother, is watching Looney Tunes. Every now and then, there’s a bark, my mother’s low voice coming from the kitchen.

  I put the keys in the lock and turn the knob.

  Everyone’s a couple years older, but just like our building, st
ill pretty much the same, I realize with relief. Selena and Maggie are on the faded orange couch going over some kind of magazine, their shifting weights making the plastic cover crackle every now and then. Gabe is on the floor working on some kind of homework in front of the TV. Yeah, I’m going to have to break that habit now. My brother is smart––always was. If any of us can go to college, it’s him.

  The door shuts behind me with a loud creak, and almost immediately, the bustle of the room stops. Selena and Maggie are actually quiet for once in their lives, and Gabe pops up, his eyes big in his thin, horsey little face. His gaze alights on me, and a second later he’s up and off the floor, launching his skinny body across the room.

  “Nico!” he shouts as he throws himself at me.

  And I laugh. For the first time in two years, I laugh out loud as my sisters also clamber off the couch to squeeze the life out of me. I am covered by my siblings, with the first touch in a long time that’s not angry. I am overcome by the smells of home: the rice floating out of the tiny kitchen, the flowery scent of Selena’s cheap perfume, the dusty musk of bodies that sleep too close together. But I squeeze them all, because fuck if it doesn’t feel good to see them. People who don’t hate me. People who aren’t indifferent to me. My family.

  “When did you get back?”

  “Did you see how big I grew? I’m almost as tall as Selena now!”

  “You got huge!”

  “Did you know Maggie’s got a boyfriend?”

  Suddenly they’re all throwing questions and comments at me as we push and laugh, my sisters looking me up and down like a piece of meat, Gabe flexing his tiny muscles while he prods at mine. I’m happy for the first time in years. I’ve seen them all a few times, when Alba took them up to visit. Selena and Maggie came for my birthday last year; Gabe always wanted to visit at Christmas. But the trip to Tryon is costly and long. It’s been months, almost a year. It feels so good to see them, no matter how annoying they used to be. God damn it feels fuckin’ good to laugh.