Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal #1)(39)

*



4:54 a.m.

My head spins. Buzzed. No wait—I teeter, sans heels, on my bare soles. The sidewalk hot, even in the summer night. Definitely beyond buzzed. I drank past my limit. They just kept comin’ and I kept grabbin’. I think I was dazed and confused by Nikolai’s offer.

“It was a real offer?” I ask him, his hands firmly on the crook of my hips beside me. I think I slurred a bit of that. But he smiles in my foggy vision and mutters out a response. I only caught: …again… I’ve asked it multiple times?

I’m the sloppy drunk.

And judging by his roaming hands, he’s the flirty one.

It’s everything I imagined in life.

At least my sarcasm is internally on point right now. My mind is amused. I think we’re waiting for a cab, his cousins—lots of cousins—and Timo surrounding us.

We’re back in a group.

It’s hot.

I shed my coat and sling it over my forearm. It whips out of my possession and into Nikolai’s. He blazes me with his intensity, searing trails down my corseted waist, pushed-up cleavage and my thighs in black fish-net. He’s thinking about sex. I’m thinking about sex.

We’re all thinking about sex here.

“Those eyes…” I point a finger at him, my breath shallow. “…are bad.”

His lips rise. And all I hear from his response is myshka. My nickname, whatever that nickname means, has never sounded more sexual off his lips. And then his hands fall low to my hipbones, too close to more sensitive places.

He knows this.

Right?

I rest my palms on his sculpted abs. “You’re touching me.”

“I’ve touched you before,” he says huskily.

Truths.

Lots of truths tonight. Barefooted, my head reaches his chest. Literally. His bedroom eyes are things made from sin. “The devil is…very, very…hot.” I wonder if that went smoothly or not.

Probably not.

I feel his lips brush my ear with the heat of his breath. Then he lifts me, so effortlessly that we may as well have been on stage.

I’m closer to his jaw, his mouth…

One of his hands clutches my ass, and my legs hook around his waist. “What am…I doing here?” I say aloud. Did I say that out loud?

“You’re in my arms.” He holds the back of my neck, his thumb putting the right pressure on the right tender muscles. A pleasured sound tickles my throat. I’m not even sure if I contained it.

His cousins begin to shout. I think. I hear a couple car horns and laughter.

“Why am I in your arms?” my drunken, sloppy-self asks.

He tries to hide his smile, but I see it peek from the corners of his lips. “Because you’re little. And I’m not.” He combs my flyaway hairs, and he rests his palm on my cheek, sliding it to the back of my neck again.

His touch electrifies my skin. I shiver. Or shudder. Maybe both.

Timo speaks, somewhere close to us. “You’re a Grade-A flirty drunk…”

Nikolai replies in Russian, and my thoughts fly with the scene. I become fragmented. Like snapshots of a whole night, and I vividly recall only certain moments.

I straddle Nikolai’s lap, my head on his chest while I listen to his heartbeat. His voice vibrates against my ear while a taxi bumps along a road. It takes a lot of energy to look up at him, but I do, tilting my head. He stares down at me, his hand stroking my tangled dirty-blonde hair, no longer in a pony.

“I can walk,” I whisper. Why am I whispering?

“Prove it,” he says deeply.

I place my palms on his chest again and try to lift myself off him, and I recognize that we’re in a taxi again. Where I cannot walk. Even if I tried.

He laughs.

I scowl.

His hand travels up my corset, to my chest, and his humor fades, replaced by a more desirous, hungry look.

Shockwaves course through my body, and a noise, like a high-pitched moan, rumbles inside of me. I can’t discern whether he hears the needy plea—one that I’ve never made before.

Not with anyone.

Not even drunk.

He pulls me even closer to his body, and I’m welded against him. In his care, and his lips close over my jaw. I swear they do.

I’m on a bed.

I’m on a bed. In my corset and stockings. Metallic-colored sheets and comforter beneath me. The corset wire pokes into my skin, and the weight of someone else undulates the mattress, rocking my body. I prop myself on my elbows.

Nikolai is shirtless.

He is very, very shirtless.

Even in the darkness, moonlight creeping through the white curtains, I notice the ridges and lines in his muscles, his perfect set of abs. A body that belongs to an athlete or vampires and werewolves, the supernatural in general.

He hovers over me, his fingers untying the front of my corset where it all binds together. We’re going to have sex. It’s a lingering thought.

We’re both drunk.

That is true too.

My mind soars to new heights. “I’m floating,” I whisper. Or spinning.

“Close your eyes, myshka,” he breathes in a soothing, deep tone. I don’t close them though. His forearm rests beside my head, his body less than an inch from descending into me.

“What does that mean?” I ask softly. “Myshka?”