Chapter 320: Chapter 321
Chapter 321 Nina’s POV
His words hung in the warm, humid air between us, vibrating against the wet skin of my collarbone like a physical touch.
Nikolai’s hands slid completely around my waist, his long, thick fingers gripping me with a sudden, fierce possessiveness that made all the air rush out of my lungs. He pulled my body flush against his chest, the heat radiating off his soaked, rock hard muscles instantly melting away the cool spray of the fountain.
My heart hammered wildly against my ribs. I tilted my head back, my wet hair clinging to my shoulders, my lips parting as I looked up into his dark, burning eyes. There was no coldness left in his face. No tactical distance, no guarded walls, and no hollow detachment.
“Nikolai…” I breathed out, my hands rising on instinct to grip his broad, bare shoulders.
He leaned down, his mouth pressing hard and desperate against mine before I could say another word.
The kiss was heavy, intense, and completely intoxicating. It was not gentle. It was the kiss of a man who had spent a lifetime starving behind stone walls and had finally succumbed to the fire burning inside him. His tongue brushed against my lips, and I opened to him instantly, letting out a soft, breathless moan against his mouth as I wrapped my arms tightly around his neck.
Nikolai let out a low, rough growl deep in his throat, his grip on my waist tightening until I was practically lifted out of the water against his chest. His lips moved over mine with a fierce, demanding rhythm that made my entire body melt into pure liquid heat.
Every fear, every doubt, and every mention of other men completely dissolved in the warm, bubbling waters of the spring. In this hidden cave, under the golden morning light, there was only him.
When he finally pulled back a fraction of an inch to let me breathe, his forehead rested heavily against mine. His chest heaved in rapid, irregular cycles, his dark eyes wide and darkened with raw, uninhibited desire as he stared down at my swollen lips.
“You are going to ruin me, Nina,” Nikolai whispered, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that sent a delicious shiver straight down my spine.
I let out a soft, shaky laugh, resting my hand against his warm, stubbled cheek. “Good. It is about time something broke through that thick skull of yours.”
Nikolai gave a short, breathless chuckle, his eyes softening as his thumb gently traced the wet contour of my jawline.
Then that softness cracked.
His thumb slid down my throat and stopped over the frantic beat there. He watched it like it was the only clock in the world.
“Say stop,” he said. Quiet. Rough. “Say it now and I put you back on the stone and I walk into the sea.”
I did not say stop.
I pulled his mouth back to mine.
The second kiss was messier. Wetter. Fountain water ran into our mouths and we swallowed it with each other. His hands left my waist and dragged up under the soaked cloth stuck to my ribs. Palms hot. Fingers shaking once, then not shaking at all. He found the weight of my breasts and made a sound I had never heard from him, low and almost angry at himself.
“Nikolai,” I gasped against his teeth.
“I know.” His forehead knocked mine again. “I know.”
He backed me under the fall of the fountain until cold sweet water hammered my hair flat and ran in sheets down my chest. The shock made me gasp. He used that gasp. His mouth left mine and opened on my throat, then lower, sucking water off my skin like he had been dying of thirst for years and I was the only spring left.
My fingers dug into his wet hair. “You planned this.”
“No.” His laugh was broken against my collarbone. “I planned to keep you breathing. This is the opposite of a plan.”
“Liar. You jumped off a cliff and then you said trust me.”
“I said trust me about the dolphin.”
“Same man.”
He bit, soft, right where my neck met my shoulder, and my knees went useless in the water. He caught me. Of course he caught me. One arm locked under my hips and lifted until my legs had no choice but to wrap his waist. The hard length of him pressed up against the thin soaked fabric between my thighs and a helpless noise left my mouth that echoed off the cave walls like I had shouted.
Nikolai went still.
“That sound,” he muttered. “Do that again and I forget I am a gentleman.”
“You were never a gentleman.”
“I was trying.”
“Stop trying.”
His eyes flashed. Then his mouth was on mine again and his hand shoved the wet cloth of my top up until the fountain painted my bare breasts in clear running light. He looked. Really looked. Like a man committing a crime to memory.
“Beautiful,” he said, and it did not sound like flattery. It sounded like a fact he hated because facts could be used against him.
He bent and took one nipple into his mouth. Warm after the cold water. Tongue slow, then greedy. I arched so hard my head tipped back into the spray and water filled my open mouth. I swallowed and moaned and the moan made him suck harder. His other hand found the other breast and rolled, pinched, soothed, pinched again until I was writhing against the thick heat trapped in his trousers.
“Nikolai. Please.”
“Please what.”
“Do not make me say it like a report.”
His mouth smiled against my skin. Rare. Dangerous. “Say it like Nina.”
“I want your hands on me. I want your mouth. I want you inside me before I lose my mind in this water.”
He made that growl again.
He carried me two steps to the slick inner ledge where the fountain sheeted over stone. He sat me there so the fall of water hit my shoulders and ran down my stomach. He stayed in the pool, chest deep, and dragged my soaked bottoms down my legs like they had insulted him. The cave air kissed the heat between my thighs. I should have felt shy. I felt starving.
Nikolai looked at me spread on wet stone with water shining on every inch of me and his throat worked.
“If I am rough,” he said, “you hit me.”
“If you stop,” I said, “I will hit you harder.”
That earned the real laugh. Short. Stunned. Then he put my thighs on his shoulders.
The first stroke of his tongue was slow enough to be cruel. He licked a long line through me like he was learning a map. I jerked. He held my hips down with both hands and did it again, firmer, then found the swollen peak and sealed his mouth there.
“Oh God.”
He hummed. The vibration shot up my spine. Fountain water ran into his hair and over his closed eyes and he did not care. He licked like the world outside the cave had been cancelled. Two fingers slid into me, thick, careful at first, then curling when my hips chased them. The wet sound was filthy and loud in the hollow rock. I should have been embarrassed. I grabbed his hair and pulled him closer.
“Yes. There. Nikolai, there.”
He gave me there. Relentless. Fingers stroking that spot inside while his tongue circled and sucked. My thighs shook on his shoulders. The golden light coming through the cave mouth painted him bronze and shining and I thought, wildly, that if anyone found us now they would see a monster on his knees worshipping.
The thought pushed me over.
I came with a broken cry that bounced around the cavern. My body clamped on his fingers. Water and my own slick ran down his wrist. He licked me through it until I tried to twist away and even then he only slowed, kissing the inside of my thigh like an apology he did not mean.
I hauled at his shoulders. “Up. Now. I want your mouth on mine when you do this.”
He stood in one motion, water sheeting off him. I tore at the fastening of his trousers with clumsy wet fingers. He helped. When he sprang free he was thick and dark and heavy, the head flushed, a bead of wetness already there. I wrapped my hand around him and his whole body flinched.
“Nina.”
“I know.” I stroked once, watching his jaw lock. “Ruin you. That was the deal.”
He caught my wrist. Not to stop me. To line himself up.
The first push stole the air from both of us.
He was a lot. Even after his fingers. The stretch burned sweet and deep and I dropped my forehead to his and breathed through it while the fountain hammered our joined mouths. He did not slam. He fed himself into me inch by inch, shaking with the effort of not taking.
“Look at me,” he said.
I looked.
His eyes were blown black. A muscle jumped in his cheek. When he bottomed out he stayed there, buried, breathing like he had run a war.
“You feel,” he started, then lost the sentence. “You feel like I already died and this is the part they do not put in the report.”
I laughed, wrecked, and clenched around him on purpose. His forehead hit mine hard.
“Do that again and I last three seconds.”
“Then move, Aquaman.”
He moved.
Slow at first. Deep. The water around his hips churned. Every thrust pushed a splash against my thighs and a gasp out of my throat. The stone was slick under my ass. He hooked my knees higher and the new angle made stars pop behind my eyes. I dug my nails into his back and felt the old scars there, raised and slick, and I kissed his mouth so I would not say something too big.
“Harder,” I whispered.
“You just learned to kick in this water yesterday.”
“I am not kicking. I am taking.”
Something in him snapped kind.
He drove in. The sound of our bodies meeting under the spray was obscene and perfect. My breasts bounced against his chest. Water ran between us and made every slide filthy. He kissed me like he was angry at how much he needed it. I kissed him back the same way.
“Talk,” I panted. “You always go quiet when it matters.”
“I am counting.”
“Counting what.”
“Ways this can get you killed. Ways I do not care.” He thrust deep and held. “Your voice. That little sound you make. The way you said my name on the cliff like I was already gone.”
“You jumped, you idiot.”
“I came back.” Another thrust. “I will keep coming back.”
My second orgasm gathered low and mean. I told him. He slipped a hand between us and found me with his thumb, rough circles timed to his hips, and I broke again, tighter, wetter, crying his name into the roar of the fountain. He cursed in a language I did not know and then in English, simple and wrecked.
“Nina. I cannot. I am.”
“In me. Stay in me.”
He slammed home twice more and came with a groan that sounded like it hurt. Heat flooded me in pulses. His whole big body shuddered. He crushed me to his chest so hard the fountain water had to fight to run between us. I felt him throb and throb and I held his head and kissed his temple and the wet edge of his ear while he came down.
We stayed like that.
The cave returned in pieces. Drip. Echo. A bird far above the hole in the rock. My heartbeat slamming against his. His still inside me, softening only a little, as if even his body refused to leave first.
Nikolai’s mouth found the damp hair at my temple.
“I said I was sorry,” he muttered.
“For the jump or for this.”
“For how long I made you wait for a man who knows how to be soft.” He pulled back enough to see my face. Water beaded on his lashes. “I do not know if I can do it outside this water.”
I traced the scar that cut through his left brow. “Then we steal the water. We steal mornings. I do not need you soft in a gunfight, Nikolai. I need you like this when it is only us.”
He searched my eyes like I might be lying for his sake. Then he kissed me, slower than the first time, almost shy after everything he had just done to me.
When he finally slipped out I hissed at the empty ache. He looked down, saw his release mixed with the spring water running down my thighs, and his expression went dark and pleased and a little feral.
“Do not look at me like that,” I said, breathless. “We will never leave this cave.”
“That is not a bad plan.”
“You said plans keep me alive.”
He scooped water in his palm and washed me with a gentleness that did not match the way he had just used me. The contrast made my throat tight. He fixed my clothes as well as soaked cloth could be fixed. He fixed his own. He lifted me off the ledge and into his arms in the pool so I did not have to find my balance alone.
The dolphin was gone. The outer water slapped the rocks in a different rhythm than before.
Nikolai’s head turned toward the cave mouth. The lover left his face for half a second. The bodyguard came back. Then he looked at me again and the two men stacked in the same eyes.
“We eat the rest of the fruit,” he said. “Then I teach you one more thing in this water.”
“What.”
His mouth tipped. “How to float on your back so I can kiss you without drowning us both.”
I snorted, weak and happy and still throbbing. “Romance. From you. I should write it down.”
“Write it later.” He carried me under the fountain one last time so the sweet water rinsed the salt and the sex from our skin. He did not let go of my waist. “Right now you stay where I can feel your heart.”
I put my ear to his chest and listened to that wild, uneven beat he tried so hard to hide from the world.
“Nikolai.”
“Mm.”
“You did not ruin me.” I kissed the wet skin over that beat. “You just finally let me in.”
His arms tightened until the fountain spray broke against his shoulders and fell around us like a curtain.
“Then stay in,” he said against my hair, so quiet the water almost stole it. “Because if you crawl back out, Nina, I will follow you off every cliff that exists.”