Page 34 of Sweet as Sin (Bad Habit 1)
Nico kissed my forehead. His hand tightened on my leg. “Easy, darlin’. I won’t go there if you don’t want me to.”
I was quiet a moment, gathering myself. Listening to the sound of Nico breathing.
I felt safe with him. Something I hadn’t felt with a man in a very long time.
Maybe ever.
I said, “Sometimes, when things get really bad, I just remind myself that life is a boot camp. We all start out soft, weak. And then we’re tested. Over and over. It’s hard. It’s painful. At the end of it—if you survive, if you don’t give up—you’re tough. You’ve earned your stripes. And you get to graduate to the next level.”
That’s what my mother had called dying: graduation. She’d believed death was just a change of worlds, but certain things—like suicide—could snare a spirit between worlds, where it would exist in a never-ending limbo. So no matter how bad things became, no matter how much pain she was in, she’d never consider ending her own life to escape.
Even when I’d offered to help.
You don’t graduate if you give up! She’d been angry with me, her words a brittle rasp in the silence of the barren hospice room as she lay gray and wasted on the narrow bed, struggling for breath. Never quit, Katherine, no matter how much you might want to. Never, ever give in.
I took a breath, trying to control the waver in my voice. “So I just focus on not giving up. It’s really the only thing I have control over.”
And it was the only way I could honor the memory of my mother.
Nico put his hand on my face. I looked at him, biting my lip.
He whispered, “You have any idea how fuckin’ beautiful you are, Kat Reid?”
Shit. I was going to cry.
He kissed me. A tear slid down my cheek, and he wiped it away with his thumb.
“Crème brûlée.”
I frowned at him, confused. “What?”
“That’s what you’re like. Crème brûlée. Tough on the outside, layer of hard-ass sugar. But on the inside, you’re all soft and creamy sweet.”
His blue eyes. That’s all I could see. Endless, fathomless blue.
“You know what makes me stop crying?” I sniffled.
His voice came very gentle. “What, darlin’?”
I tried to appear as pathetic as possible. I might have even batted my lashes. “Kisses. Lots and lots of kisses.”
His look grew warm. His smile came on slow and wicked. “Careful what you wish for, beautiful.”
Then he kissed me again, only this time it wasn’t sweet. It was scorching. He laid me down on the couch and gave me the hottest, deepest, most soulful kiss of my life. I kissed him back, spinning into oblivion, not even remembering to worry about what happened next.
I had officially jumped off the cliff, and was falling.
Nico and I spent the rest of the afternoon doing things I’d never imagined a rock star would do with a woman: Talking. Watching TV. Snuggling on the couch.
It was bliss. It was weird, but it was bliss.
He had to leave at six to go to a recording session. Apparently he’d been working on some new songs and was eager to lay down the tracks. I admit I felt a little relieved that he had somewhere else to be, because the more time I spent with him, the more flimsy my three-date resolve became.
When he kissed me good-bye at the door, it dissolved altogether. I had a sneaking suspicion he could tell, because he left with a chuckle and a gleam in his eyes.
The look of a man with a foregone conclusion.
I worked the next two days, so we didn’t see each other, though we talked on the phone a few times every day. In between the phone calls, Nico would send random texts that said things like, “You know you’re dying to see me right now,” and “I’m in the mood for a mouthful of crème brûlée,” and a simple, sexy, “Three, baby. Three.”
