Page 85 of Omega
I had no clue what time it was. I had no idea how long I’d slept last night before waking up and sucking some epic cock. How long had that taken? I still tasted his come in my mouth. My pussy still ached. I could almost feel his finger in my ass. I felt him around me, behind me, above me, inside me.
I smelled him: sweat, sex, faint deodorant. Leather. Gunpowder, or whatever they used in bullets, now. Cordite? Who the hell cared? It was a sexy as hell smell.
With a start, I realized hewasbehind me, spooning me. I was still naked, and as previously stated, a snotty, lip-quivering, blubbering, rat’s-nest hair, sex- and sweat-stinky mess. He had a hand on my hip, nose in my hair, chest against my back.
“I’m no good with words.”
“No, Nick, I—”
“Shut up and listen a second, Layla,” he interrupted. “Just let me speak. I’m no good with words, with expressing myself. Hell, I’m no good with people. I’m good at one thing: assessing and eliminating threats. It’s all I know. I’ve never been in a relationship. Nothing has ever lasted longer than a weekend. I’m not the commitment type, you might say. I’m gone too much, and my job is too dangerous. And I just…no one has ever captured my interest, much less held it. I’ve neverwantedto make anything last for more than a few days of feeling good. And now, I feel like I’m just too damn old to change my ways.”
“How old are you?” I asked.
“I’m forty-two.” He flattened his palm over my belly, low, fingers splayed, pressing me back against him. “I’m not done. Just listen. My point is, I fucked it up with you, a bit ago. I have no right to demand anything from you, to act like I did. And then I fucked up even more because I heard you crying and I stayed outside. I can face down men with guns and not flinch. I’ve been shot and I’ve been tortured and I’ve been stabbed and beaten and left for dead. I’ve had malaria, typhus, dysentery, and dengue fever and survived it all. But I didn’t know how to deal with a woman I’d made cry.”
“I’m glad, honestly. I wouldn’t have wanted you to see me like that. It was ugly.”
“No part of you is ugly, Layla. Not one thing. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, inside and out.” He spoke just above a whisper, his voice a heady, buzzing murmur in my ear. “You don’t owe me shit.”
“I do, though.”
“How do you figure?”
“You were right. I’m scared shitless of what I’m feeling for you. Like, where the fuck did it come from? Why is it so strong, so fast? What does it mean? I don’t know how to do it. How to be—that kind of girl. How to let you in. How to be…I don’t know. Like I said, that kind of girl. Because I’mnot, Nick. I never have been. You said you’ve been with a lot of women, and I for real wasn’t judging you for that, because I’ve been with a lot of men.”
“Still don’t get why you think you owe me anything, though.”
I sighed. “Because…god, I don’t even know. Because you were right. Because you had the courage to own up to how you feel, and I didn’t.”
“That’s stupid. It makes no sense.”
“Well gee, Nick, don’t mince words or anything. Tell me how you really feel.”
He laughed. “I’ll never bullshit you. I can promise you that much.”
He was still fully clothed, the holster pressing against my back, the butt of the gun cold on my bare skin, his zipper scraping my butt. He rolled to his back and unhooked the holster, setting it on the floor beside the bed, and then turned back to resume spooning me, and this time his hand slid just beneath my boobs, just barely brushing the undersides.
“I can tell you one thing, though,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“It wasn’t quick, for me. My attraction to you, I mean. You forget, I followed Kyrie around for years. Just under seven years, to be exact. I was there when she met you, watching from a distance through a telephoto lens. I was there watching everything that happened between the two of you. I have a drawer full of memory cards with thousands of pictures of you, and her. You two together. At the bar, at school eating lunch together. Moving into your first apartment together. Every boyfriend you brought home to that apartment with Kyrie, I’ve got him in a picture, and I’ve got a file in a cloud account full of dossiers on all of them, criminal records and transcripts and medical records and financial information. Ofyourex-boyfriends. If you hooked up with a guy more than once, I’ve got a file on that, too.”
“That’s a lot of files. I’m trying not to be creeped out, to be honest.” The idea made me a little sick, actually. “Why? Why are you telling me this?”
“Full disclosure, I guess. And because I…” he stumbled over his words for the first time since I’d known him. “I fell for you a long fucking time ago, Layla. Those guys in that ambush back there; those weren’t the first men I’ve killed on your behalf. When I wasn’t trailing Kyrie, keeping an eye on her, making sure nothing happened to her, I was following you. Protecting you. I couldn’t help it. I never got paid for it, because I never put it on the books for Roth to pay me for. I wouldn’t have. It was personal. I had to make sure you were safe. I know about that guy in high school. I found him, by the way, and I made sure he paid in fucking blood for what he did to you.”
“Holy hell, Nick.” I felt tears trickle out of my eyes. My heart clenched.
“I wanted you. But I didn’t dare approach you. How could I explain any of it? There was just no way. Finally, when you joined Kyrie and Roth on theEliza, it all came to a head. You were there, lying on the deck all day long in those goddamned tiny-ass bikinis, teasing me. Torturing me. You know how many nights I jerked off, thinking about you? Picturing you in that yellow bikini, the one that’s just basically strategically placed strings. Picturing you tugging the top down and—fuck. Every damn night for months. I couldn’t think about anyone else. I went ashore more than once and tried to get it out of my system with someone else, but I couldn’t follow through. I haven’t been with anyone since you came aboard.”
Something clicked into place. “Did you jerk off thinking about me, Nicholas?” I asked.
“Yes. I did. A lot.”
“A lot?” Should I have been grossed out? Because I wasn’t. It…turned me on, actually. “How much is a lot?”
He hesitated for a moment. “Every night. Every morning. Why do you think I was such a grumpy asshole all the time?”