Page 56 of Owning Nicci

“I’m going to go up with you, anyway.” I ignore her attitude, too worried about the lingering possibility of her being injured to let it get under my skin. I lead her to the stairs and up to the second floor, where there’s just the bedroom and the adjoining bathroom. I crack open the door, and she steps into the small space, looking around. “I’ll go see if there are any clean towels.”

By the time I get towels and washcloths out of the linen closet and go back to the bathroom, I can hear the sound of the shower. When I step inside, the small room is already warm and steamy, and I see the pile of Nicci’s bloodied clothes on the tile floor. It hits me that she’s naked on the other side of that curtain. Water streaming down her pale skin. Her hair darkened and clinging to her. My cock instantly stiffens.

It’s been days since I fucked her last—and only a couple since she snuck into my bed and I stopped her mid-blowjob and threw her out. Right now, with my cock suddenly straining against myzipper, iron-hard, it’s difficult for me to remember why I told her to stop sucking it. At the moment, there’s nothing I can think of that I’d like more than to have her plush mouth wrapped around my length.

I grit my teeth, rubbing my hand against the stiff ridge as I set the towels down. “Here’s something to dry off with,” I tell her, hoping she doesn’t hear the lust in my voice. Then I back out of the room, shutting the door firmly behind me. Whether I own her or not—aching cock or not—the last thing I’m going to do after the events of the day is try to come on to her.

Maybe I’m not as much of a monster as I thought earlier. But I still have a great deal to atone for—not that I think she cares. I imagine she wants nothing to do with me, and never has.

Except for that night in the car. And the night I made her make herself come on top of me.My cock jerks again, throbbing, and I force the image out of my head—Nicci grinding herself against me to her first orgasm in God knows how long—as I go downstairs to collect the bags with our clothes.

I deposit them on the bed, getting my own things out and putting them away in the pine dresser in the bedroom. I check the bedding, making sure the room feels comfortable—as a distraction. By the time I hear the water shut off in the adjoining bathroom, my erection has just about gone away. Until the door opens—and I turn to see Nicci walking in, a towel wrapped around her body and nothing else.

She pauses in the doorway, and I can hear my heartbeat pounding in my ears. Her gaze sweeps around the room, and I see her bite her lip. In an instant, my erection is back, worse than before.

“Is this the only place to sleep?” She looks around again, looking a bit unsettled, and I can’t tell if it’s because of the single bedroom or because, for the first time in weeks, she’s not isolated in her own room with the door locked on the outside.Her gaze flicks to the bed, and I grit my teeth against the pounding throb of my arousal.

“It is.” My voice sounds tight. Nicci pauses, then walks through the room to the other side of the bed, her hand clutching the towel at her chest.

“Do you have to stand there and watch me get dressed?” Her voice is sharp, defensive, and I see the way she looks at me—warily, like I might bite. Like I’m a predator, and she’s prey. She has been all along, but she’s never looked at me quite that way before.

“No.” I clear my throat. “I’m going to go shower, too. I’ll get rid of your old clothes. I don’t think there’s any salvaging them.”

She shakes her head. “No, I don’t think there is.”

Everything in me aches to stay—to watch her drop that towel, to take in her naked body. It’s not as if I haven’t seen it already, many, many times, but something about right now feels different. I haven’t demanded that she be naked. I’m not keeping her here that way. It doesn’t feel as if I’m her captor any longer. And something has blatantly shifted between us, whether I like it or not.

I retreat to the shower instead, feeling her eyes on me as I leave. I’m so hard that my cock slaps against my abdomen when I undress, the tip brushing the taut skin just below my navel. I groan as I wrap my hand around it, squeezing.

I’m never going to get anything done if I don’t take the edge off. I give myself one long, slow stroke as I reach over and turn on the water for the shower, bracing myself against the sink as I wait for the water to warm up. I can faintly hear Nicci moving around in the next room, and I can’t help but picture her naked body, long and lithe and slender, now lightly muscled from all the training we’ve been doing together. I rub my thumb over the swollen tip, and I’m aching for her lips around me, to tangle my hand in her silky hair while I thrust into her throat.

Right now, I’m not sure that I’ll ever get to fuck her again. I’ve lost the taste for commanding her, for punishing her, and what I want now is not her submission, but her willingness. I want what I woke up to the other morning when she was in my bed—but not as a favor for something I did for her. I want her to wantme.

When the fuck did that happen?I let go of my cock abruptly, my jaw tightening. Somewhere along the way, as I grew to admire her, as I saw all the things about her that I hadn’t known until I was confronted with them—her resilience, her wit, her steely spine—culminating in the truths that I’ve only just found out about her. Somewhere in all of that, I stopped wanting to own her. And I started wanting her to give herself to me instead.

Fuck. I run my hand through my hair and step into the shower. I’m still aching—my cock demanding attention—and I tip my head back under the water, trying to ignore it. It’s easier said than done.

What the fuck am I going to do?I could just tell her to leave, but her association with me puts her in danger, too. If I go ahead with my plans to remove Gallo and take over his mafia, Nicci will be made a target by anyone wanting to strike out at me. If I cut and run, leaving the city the way I’ve been told to—a prospect that still sends a hot jolt of anger through me—then leaving her behind leaves her vulnerable to anyone who still might want to hurt her. Her father and brother will be dead, if I have anything to say about it, but there might be others. Associates of theirs. Nicci and I are cutting a swath of violence across the city, and that always comes with consequences, in time. I can’t leave her to face those alone.

If I keep her with me, then what? My cock throbs, reminding me that there’s no way I can keep her and not fuck her. It’s been proven over and over again that I’m not strong enough to resist whatever this thing between us is—call it chemistry, lust,or something else altogether, but it’s made me lose control time and again. But I feel sure that given a choice, a true choice, Nicci wouldn’t touch me. And I’ve lost my taste for imposing my will on her.

“Cazzo!”I curse aloud, bracing one hand against the tile as I reach down to grip my cock again. Three hard strokes and the memory of her mouth wrapped around me, and I’m coming hard, cum spraying against the tiles of the shower as I groan aloud. My cock pulses in my fist, pleasure coursing through me as I grit my teeth, and I’m panting by the time the orgasm recedes.

I press my forehead against the shower wall.Fuck.

It wasn’t all that long ago that I thought my plan to take Nicci for myself was brilliant. The first step in my grand plot for revenge.

Instead, I’ve caught myself in a web of my own making.

—

When I walk backinto the bedroom, Nicci is curled up on one side of the bed, in a pair of silky pink pajama pants and a matching camisole made of thin pink silk with a lace edging. I can see the tight peaks of her nipples pressing against the silk, and despite the fact that I came all over the shower not fifteen minutes ago, my cock twitches back to life.

Fuck. That one word seems to have become my new mantra. I grit my teeth, feeling my jaw ache from how tense I’ve been, and cross the room to where I’d put my clothes away earlier. I know I’m playing dirty, but I’m beyond caring as I drop the towel to the floor, standing next to the dresser completely naked as I rummage around for a pair of pajama pants of my own.

I can feel the air in the room shift. I can feel her go still from across the room, feel her eyes on me. My cock thickens and swells, and I draw in a slow breath.

I turn towards her. She’s looking at me—and she doesn’t quickly look away. Instead, her mouth twitches, and she lets her gaze slide over me—starting at the taut muscles of my shoulders, all the way down my chest to the ridges of my abs, and the v-cut of muscle at my hips that leads down to my cock—now once again thick, long and rock-hard under her gaze.

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