Vi Keeland - Worth the fight

“Good to know.”  Nico’s smile has grown from a smirk to a full-blown, panty-dropping grin and I feel the red creep up over my face.  God damn it, I’m a grown woman who accepted an invitation to stay at a man’s house tonight, but yet I blush at the site of birth control pills.  What the hell is wrong with me?

I quickly scoop up the rest of my personal life on display on the sidewalk and I’m relieved that I had removed the flavored condoms that Regina had shoved into my purse before I left yesterday.  Bacon flavor.  What woman wants to taste meat while, you know, tasting meat?

Nico stands and doesn’t offer to help me get up.  He just does it.  After I’m balanced he leans in and plants a soft kiss on my lips.  Not much more than a brush, but I feel it all the way down to my toes.  And we are standing in the middle of the sidewalk.  There aren’t any people around, but still, it’s out of character for me to have a public display of affection.  Or at least it was before.

“You didn’t bring a bag?”  Nico’s face looks so disappointed, like a little boy who was just told he couldn’t have the puppy he’d been planning on bringing home.

“I did, I just left it in the car.”  Nico tilts his head and squints his eyes at me.

“You’re not sure if you want to stay?”  I can hear the disappointment in his voice.

“Umm.”  How do I respond to him?  Of course I want to stay, but it felt funny walking into his house with an overnight bag, even though he invited me.   Almost presumptuous.

Nico takes my hesitation as confirmation that I’m not sure if I want to stay.   He takes a step forward and wraps one arm around my waist, resting just north of  my ass.  The other hand moves to behind my head and he kisses me.  Fiercely.  His tongue seeks mine, then he sucks on the tip of it as he pulls it away to add teeth.  His teeth bite down on my bottom lip and just as I begin to feel the pain from his bite, he sucks and licks away at the spot he just wounded, making it more than better.

I feel his hand that was holding my lower waist travel down and he pulls me flush against him tightly as his hands roam over my ass and he cups almost my whole cheek in one large palm.  Tingling sensations shoot through my veins and I feel the sensitive skin between my legs swell.  Nico growls and squeezes me harder before he pulls back slightly, releasing my mouth, tugging at my lip between his teeth as he pulls away.

I have no idea where I am.  My senses are all keenly focused on the man who just stole my breath and I’m panting when he finally releases my mouth fully.  His breath is fast as his mouth drops to my ear and he speaks in a strained voice.  “I’m about ten seconds away from losing my self-control, Babe.  Think I can get that bag for you and move this inside so we don’t give the whole neighborhood a show?”

Nico pulls his head back and waits for my answer.  But I can’t speak yet, so I nod my head yes and just watch as he takes my keys out of my hand.  He kisses me again on the mouth, this time much softer.  “Not that I would mind.  I don’t give a shit who’s watching as long as I get to do that to you.”

I force myself to close my mouth as I stand there watching him grab my bag from the car and return to me, his disappointed face now replaced with a megawatt smile that reminds me of his fighting name.  Lady Killer.  If the name fits…

Inside, things cool down, which I’m grateful for.  Or, at the rate I was going on the street, I would have been in his bed within fifteen minutes of my arrival.  Nico picks me up and seats me on the kitchen island, so we can talk while he cooks.  Watching him breeze around his kitchen, I realize how sexy a man who knows his way around the kitchen can be.  There’s something instinctually alluring about a man who wants to take care of his woman.  Not that I’m the barefoot-and-pregnant-in-the-kitchen-type of woman.  But this is different.  An almost natural role that he takes in our relationship and I find that I like to be taken care of.  It’s something I have never allowed anyone to do before.

Nico

I need to slow things down.  I almost took her on the street for fuck’s sake.  I feel like I’m stuck in a bad movie, with a little devil sitting on one shoulder and an angel on the other.  But the goddamn devil is twice the size and my angel is a fucking mute.  Great, I have a fucking mute angel.

She looks so cute up on the counter, I get the urge to bring her with me wherever I go and just plop her up on a pedestal near me.  But as I grab a bottle of water out of the refrigerator, I see her reflection in the stainless steel.  She crosses and recrosses her legs and I catch a glimpse of the top of her thigh for a split second.  Damn it, I can feel myself starting to get hard from a damn reflection of a thigh.  Freakin mute angel.  Think thoughts of my grandmother.  Grandmother Ellen.  Ellen, hey that’s just Elle with an n.  Elle’s legs.  Shit this isn’t working.

“That smells good.  What are you making?”  I turn my head to respond to her, but it takes a minute for her question to catch up to my brain.

Not half as good as you smell.  I’d like to eat you instead.  “Couscous.”

“You make couscous?”

“Well it doesn’t taste good straight from the box.”

“Cute.”  She smirks at me.  Even her smirk turns me on.  “What’s in it?”

“Garlic, olive oil, peppers, onions, parsley…”

Elle jumps down from the counter.  I had put her there to keep her at a distance.  She doesn’t realize what she does to me every time she comes near me.

“Can I help?”  Her arm brushes against mine as she comes to stand next to me at the counter.  She leans down over the pan where the ingredients are sautéing and her eyes close as she breathes in the aroma.  Clearly, she appreciates the smell.  Her face softens and her cheeks go slack as her nose delivers the scent to her brain.  It’s the most erotic thing I’ve ever seen.  She needs to get back up on that fucking counter.

Elle

Nico lifts me as if I am nothing but a doll and seats me back on the counter.  It’s the second time he’s moved me out of the way.  The man sure is territorial about his kitchen when he cooks, oddly, I find it sexy.  The inside of his hand brushes the curve of my breast each time he lifts me and I have to recross my legs and squeeze my thighs shut to keep my body from responding to him.

“I’ve seen you cook, remember?  I think I’ll do this one on my own.”  He grins at me.  A cocky smile that should annoy me.  But instead I find myself mirroring his smile.  I’m smiling back at him after he just insulted me.  The man makes me lose all my common sense.

Dinner is delicious.  We get to know each other a little more.  I tell him about my job, my volunteer work at the battered women’s clinic, and a few things about my childhood.  I skip between the ages of eleven and seventeen.  They don’t exist to me anymore.  Nico tells me about his gym and some of the other products he endorses and I’m impressed by how much he seems to know about the products.  Clearly he doesn’t endorse something unless he uses it and feels strongly about it.  Unlike many athletes that endorse one product and use another, money doesn’t seem to buy his endorsement.

After dinner, I tell him to go relax and let me clean up.  He doesn’t listen, so instead we do it together.  It feels natural and comfortable to clean up his kitchen.  We work together easily, without effort…like we’ve done it a thousand times before.  It’s not the first time I’ve gotten that feeling when I’m with Nico.  Sometimes I feel as though I’ve known him a lot longer than I have.  Oddly familiar, yet it’s all new and exciting at the same time.

My heartbeat picks up as Nico pours me a glass of wine and dims the lights in the kitchen.  With dinner out of the way, there’s nothing left to occupy our time.  Except what I think we’re both anticipating will happen.  We haven’t known each other that long, yet I feel like I’ve been anticipating this night forever.  Since the day he walked into my office.

He takes my hand and leads me to the couch.  Nico looks up at me and his cocky grin is gone, replaced by something that I didn’t expect to see written on his face.  He looks worried.  He exhales loudly, forcing out a deep breath I didn’t realize he was holding, and his hands run through his hair nervously.  It feels like he’s mentally preparing himself to tell me something.  To deliver bad news.  My stomach lurches at the thought.

“Have you ever been to a fight?”  The loft is quiet and his voice is so low it sounds almost pained.

“You mean an MMA fight?”

“Yes.”  He waits quietly for my response.

“Once.”

Nico’s eyebrows shoot up.  He’s surprised that I’ve been to a fight.  I grin at him.  He’s right to be surprised, I still can’t believe I got conned into going.  I haven’t told him that I was at one of his fights.  Especially not the one that I saw.   He smiles back at me, but then his face falls again before he continues.

“Who was fighting?”

“You.”  It’s not like the subject has come up in our conversation and I lied to him, yet I feel like I’ve done something wrong for not mentioning that I was at a fight.  That fight.

My answer takes him my surprise.  “You’ve seen me fight?”

“Once.”

“Which fight?”

“I don’t remember the other guy’s name.”  I should remember, I remember everything.  But I’m not lying when I respond.  I’ve blocked the whole thing from my memory so well that I actually don’t remember.  I’m good at doing that.  Luckily, my brain goes into protective mode sometimes.