“Because to me, you’re little.” His hand drifts from my hip to my lower back, pushing me right up along his body. No room between us. He’s not even hard and the bulge in his shorts presses against my abdomen. He looks at me knowingly—knowing that I can feel him, knowing that he’s outsized me, knowing that his dominance is beginning to melt my bones.
With his height and size, compared to mine, I can’t even begin to fantasize how big he is fully erect. How small I’ll be.
He lowers his head to kiss me, pausing a breath away. I unconsciously buck against him, and his chest collapses in arousal. When his lips touch mine, the intensity bursts, and he grips me hard, pressure building everywhere as his tongue dances. As his hands roam. His thumb skims my nipple, the leotard thin, and he continues the back and forth rhythm over the barbell piercing.
My nerves prick, and I stand on the tips of my toes, aching to be even closer.
He hears my silent plea, lifting me up around his waist, my legs split. He’s right. Every part of me is little to him. My limbs, my size, my lips, my eyes—and every part of him is large to me. His arms, his shoulders, his jaw, his thighs.
I feel myself become wet.
My lips swell behind the force of his aggressive, non-stop kiss, the kind that blinds me. I want his hands everywhere. All at once. He explores the bareness of my arms, of my neck. My mind is combusting into a million thousand shards. I can’t…I break the kiss and rest my forehead on his shoulder, panting for breath.
“I just…” I try to collect myself.
He holds the back of my head protectively, caringly. His breathing is as heavy and staggered as mine. I feel him studying my movements, fluent in body language. I’m still a novice, but if anyone is going to teach me, I’d want it to be him.
I can’t stop thinking about our size difference. “We’re not going to fit together,” I say aloud.
He cups my face to look at me. By his strong, unshaven jaw, I’m deeply aware of his age again. “Physically or metaphorically?” he asks with raised brows.
My lips part, slightly wishing I kept my thoughts to myself.
“Physically,” he answers off my expression. “I’ll be able to fit deep inside you. And when I do, you’re going to be entirely full of me.” Sex. His voice is sex. Everything is liquid sex. He kisses my forehead, my body shuddering one last time before he gently sets me on my feet.
I’m rethinking my “slow” proclamation, but I remember the last time I had sex. After the fourth date. It was lackluster, and while I doubt that word belongs to the attraction I have for Nikolai, I want to solidify something more permanent before we take that step. I want this to be different. Better than that.
He leads me to the elevators, arm around my shoulders. “Can you be back here around seven?” he asks me.
“Yeah. Are we practicing again?” I frown as he pushes the button on the wall. It lights up while we wait.
“No,” he says. “I’m taking you out.”
My body responds with those anxious flutters and tightened muscles again. A date, I realize. I’m going on a date with the devil.
Act Twenty-Three
“Sorry about that,” Nikolai states. He pockets his cell, one that has been buzzing since we sat down. We’re on the balcony patio of Rush, metal torches flaming along the railing. It adds to the heat of the summer, my hair down, the pieces curling by my face, the rest probably frizzing.
Despite the view of Vegas being gorgeous tonight, I feel dazed by my surroundings and my own body. Camila helped me pick out a teal empire dress with a silver Aztec necklace, and so that’s what I’m wearing.
“It’s okay,” I say. “My phone isn’t behaving any better.” Just as I say it, another text pings. This one from my Mom.
Tanner placed first in science wars! Be sure to text him. – Mom
I already did with about fifteen emojis. My brother called me lame. But my parents have been proudly group texting photos of his project all night. And the buzzing won’t end. I thought about turning off the notifications but stopped after the guilt set in.
After I pocket my phone, I stir my straw in my tequila sunrise, a drink I’ve grown accustomed to, no more choking on the liquor.
“Everything okay?” He nods to my phone and then leans back in his wooden chair, red wine his choice of beverage.
I meet his gray eyes that seem to say you can tell me anything. He looks supremely handsome tonight: black slacks, black button-down, his hair pushed out of his face, the longer strands a bit higher than the base of his neck.
One of his arms stays on the table, his hand near me. Like if I reach up, he’ll thread his fingers with mine. It’s tempting to test the waters.
But I stay still, legs crossed and hands in my lap, more rigid than him. “My brother won a science contest. It’s a big deal for my family…” I trail off when his phone buzzes on the table, lighting up. “What about you?”
I stare at him for a long second, and he keeps my gaze. I can tell his interruptions don’t derive from good news. He lets me see that in his stormy grays.
“Timo,” he finally says, pocketing his cell. “My cousins are texting me about him. He’s…stuck on some three-card poker table. Down a couple hundred and won’t get off. I’d like to say this isn’t the usual. But it is.”
My heart sinks. I think I’ve known this all along about Timo. I just hoped it wasn’t true.
He reaches for his wine. “I’d take him out of Vegas if I thought it’d help, but he was this way in New York.” He takes a larger swig of his drink.
No holding back, I reach out and place my hand on his, beside my knife and fork.
He doesn’t seem too surprised, and I wonder if he was waiting for me to do it. He traces the lines in my palm, his eyes flitting to mine, a smile behind them. It warms my soul.
He says a few words in deep Russian, and he even kisses my fingers.
“What’d you say?” I ask with a growing smile, one I can’t suppress now. The pull between us is mellow, but hot, like magma that slowly rolls down volcanic rock.
“I said, you’re very beautiful.”
He could have his pick of any girl in Vegas. It’s hard to believe he’d fall for me. “What do you see when you look at me?” I ask in a whisper.
He’s quiet for a moment, soaking in my features.
And his expression only floods with more and more intensity, the kind that says I am attracted to you on many, many levels. It shallows my breath.
“I can’t describe my demon,” he tells me with rising lips. “I just feel her.”
I scowl. “And I’d say you avoided the question, but I think I can read you now.”
“You can?” His brows rise in surprise. “What am I thinking then?”
His penetrating eyes descend to my lips, to my collarbones, to my breasts, creating a sweltering trail. All the way until the table blocks the rest of my frame.
My eyes widen. You want to fuck me.
It’s clearly the answer, but I struggle to say it out loud. I open my mouth, close it, open it, close it.
He smiles into his sip of wine, knowing the effect he has on me and possibly every girl he’s ever encountered.
“And now?” he asks, setting down his drink and looking at me with the most sincerity, the most genuine sentiments, traversing into me, like a gunshot that propels clean through.