I nodded, cleared my throat. “Yes. We’ll go to his wedding and we’ll be happy for him, for them.” And I meant it.
“And we’ll be happy.”
I tightened my arms around his neck. “Always.”
“Well . . .” He lifted his chin, his mouth curved into a devastating, charismatic, sex on an Italian stick smile. “Almost always.”
Epilogue
Part 1: Meet seventeen year-old Nico
Soft skin. Shaking hands. Hot breath.
She swallowed. I felt the movement of her throat under my mouth. She was nervous. So was I. My hands were also shaking. Shit. This was crazy.
But, just because it was crazy didn’t mean I was going to stop. Stopping hadn’t even crossed my mind. What did cross my mind? More.
My insanity was fueled by fifteen years of wanting to touch her and six years of watching someone else do it. I was seventeen, but jealousy and envy burned long and cut deep.
I knew I wanted to be with her since before I knew how to eat with a fork. The wanting to touch her part started when I was four and she was three. Obviously it wasn’t sexual, that came later accompanied by the resentment of rejection. It was about being close to her, kissing her big cheeks, petting her soft skin, sharing her warmth. My earliest memory was thinking that I wanted her to stay with me always. My mother liked to remind me that I used to ask if we could keep her.
My present reality—her naked, yielding breast beneath my hand, her hips straddling mine, her underwear and my jeans separating us—was its own kind of torture. She didn’t respond like the other girls. She wasn’t waiting for me to undress her.
She was tearing at my clothes, pressing her breast into my palm, and rocking against me. I wasn’t waiting for her. She was waiting for me.
This was crazy.
I should have questioned it. I should have stopped her. But when the girl of your dreams climbs in your bedroom window and starts taking off her clothes, thinking has very little to do with what happens next.
I only knew I wanted her. I wanted her loyalty, I wanted her acceptance, I wanted her admiration; I wanted all the things she gave to others without thought, but had withheld from me for years.
She reached between us and beneath my pants, lifting on her knees and slipping her hand inside my boxers. The sheets rustled. She stroked. I shuddered. I was already painfully hard and I wondered if she knew the difference. Probably not. Her blue eyes, naïve and unsure, were assessing. She stroked again.
“Stop—don’t.” I grabbed her wrist to still her exploration, gritted my teeth. “What are you doing?”
“Am I doing it wrong?” She whispered; her eyes were narrowed, as though she were calculating a solution to a problem.
“No.” I breathed out. Definitely not.
“Good.” She licked her lips and I was mute.
I didn’t respond. I didn’t have a chance. Her mouth crashed to mine—all slippery lips, teeth, and tongue. It was untutored, sloppy, insistent. I withdrew her fingers from my pants and placed them on my shoulder. My hands lifted to the hot, tortuously silken skin of her back and brought her completely against me, her naked chest meeting mine. I groaned.
I was aching.
I was in pain.
She rocked her hips against me again—a jerky, instinctual, unpracticed movement—and I couldn’t breathe. She broke the kiss, roughly tugged off my pants and shorts, discarded the last of her clothes, then pulled me on top of her. The bed squeaked.
I came to her willingly. Her legs were open. I wanted to feel her everywhere. My hands were greedy as they stroked, touched, grabbed every inch I’d been denied. Her eyes were fixed on mine.
“Let’s do this.” She nodded, her nails dug into my back as though anchoring me to her.
“What are we doing?” I didn’t know who I was asking—me or her.
When I hesitated she lifted her hips to mine. “Nico. . .” Elizabeth placed a tiny kiss on the corner of my mouth. “Please. Please do this for me.” She was looking at me with trust, like she needed me; that look annihilated any remaining capacity for thought.
If I’d been thinking I would have done something to prepare her. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t thinking about anything except her softness, the wet warmth between her legs, and the painful stiffness between mine.
She gasped as I entered her. Her gaze moved to a place over my shoulder and tears gathered in her eyes. She gritted her teeth. She was tense everywhere.
She was holding her breath and the only sound in the room was my labored breathing. I told myself to go slow. Her leg brushed against mine, the inside of her thigh against my hip. I wanted to touch her so I did. I skimmed my fingertips up the back of her leg, from her bottom to her knee, as I moved inside her.