The body wants what the mind refuses to name, and tonight my body has been screaming loud enough to drown out every rational thought I possess.
I am already in Nico's bed, already lost in the rhythm we have established over these strange days, when I allow myself to wonder why Dante has not made a single move since I refused him at dinner.
The question surfaces between waves of sensation, unwelcome and persistent, disappearing only when Nico's mouth finds a new way to scatter my thoughts.
His hands know my body now. They know where to press, where to linger, where the lightest touch will make me gasp. I arch into him with a desperation that should embarrass me, but I have stopped cataloguing embarrassments inside these walls. The list grew too long to carry.
He slows without warning, his fingers stilling inside me at the exact moment my thighs begin to tremble. He holds me there—on the edge, suspended—and watches my face with dark, patient eyes while I writhe against his hand, chasing friction he refuses to give.
He waits until a sound escapes me that is closer to begging than breathing, and only then does he resume, rewarding my surrender with a curl of his fingers that makes my spine bow off the mattress.
I hate that this is what I need to stop spiraling. I hate that he knows it without being told, that he read the look on my face when I walked into his room tonight and understood immediately what I required.
That understanding—the precise, practiced way he calibrates his body to my damage—is both his greatest skill and the thing that makes him most dangerous.
His mouth traces a path down my throat while his fingers work between my thighs, two of them buried inside me, curling against the spot that makes my vision blur.
My back arches off the mattress. My nails rake down his shoulders, leaving marks I will pretend not to notice in the morning light.
"Fuck," I breathe, the word torn from me as his thumb circles my clit with maddening precision. "Nico, fuck—"
He responds by adding a third finger, stretching me, filling me, his pace quickening until I am trembling on the edge of release. The tension coils tighter, tighter, my thighs shaking around his hand, my breath coming in ragged gasps that sound like begging.
Then he pulls back.
Not away—just enough to reach toward the nightstand. I see the rope before I understand its purpose, dark and coiled beside the lamp I never noticed, and when comprehension arrives my body reacts before my mind catches up.
Every muscle locks. My spine goes rigid. The breath I was drawing stops somewhere in my chest and refuses to continue.
Nico reads the tension. He always reads me. He does not rush, does not push, does not pretend he has not noticed the transformation that has turned my willing body into something frozen and watchful.
Instead, he holds the rope loosely between his hands. Visible. Unhidden. The playfulness I have grown accustomed to has vanished from his expression, replaced by something more honest. More raw.
"I want to bind your wrists." His voice is steady, stripped of seduction. "I have wanted this since the first night."
"Compass." The stop word comes out sharp, automatic, a reflex built from the contract we signed. "The word is compass."
He does not drop the rope.
"The word is not for this time." He says it as a challenge, not an override. "I am asking you to examine whether this is actually a boundary or simply a reflex."
I am not afraid of the rope. I am afraid of what wanting the rope means about who I am becoming inside these walls.
Nico sets the rope on the mattress between us—visible but untouched—and his hands return to my body.
He does not give me time to think. His mouth finds my throat, teeth grazing my pulse, and his fingers slide back inside me without preamble.
I moan at the sudden fullness, my hips bucking against his hand, and he laughs low against my skin—not mocking, but delighted.
"There she is." He curls his fingers and my whole body jerks. "God, you're dripping. You want this so badly you can't even pretend otherwise."
"Shut up," I gasp, but my hips are already moving, fucking myself on his hand while he watches with dark, hungry eyes.
"Make me." He adds a fourth finger, and the sound that escapes me is obscene. "That's what the rope is for, you know. So you can stop fighting yourself. So you can blame me for every filthy thing your body is begging for."
His thumb presses against my clit and I nearly scream.
"Think about it." His mouth drags down to my breast, tongue circling my nipple before his teeth close around it. The sharp sting makes my back arch off the bed. "Your hands above your head. Nothing to do but take what I give you. No decisions to make, no control to maintain, just—"
He thrusts his fingers deep and holds them there, pressing against that spot inside me until my thighs are shaking.
"—this. Over and over. Until you forget your own name."
"Fuck you," I breathe, but it comes out like a moan.
"Eventually." He grins against my skin, then bites down on the curve of my breast hard enough to mark. "But first I want to watch you come so hard you cry. And you will, Arianna. With your wrists bound and your legs spread and absolutely nowhere to hide from how good I'm going to make you feel."
His fingers start moving again, relentless, and I am drowning in sensation.
"I will not tighten them beyond what you can slip," he murmurs, his lips brushing my ear now, his voice dropping into something softer beneath the heat. "You can free yourself anytime. I will show you how before a single knot is tied."
His thumb circles my clit while his fingers fuck me slow and deep, and I am trembling on the edge, so close it hurts.
"Nico—please—"
"I am not taking your control." His voice is rough now, wrecked by my responses, by the sounds I cannot stop making. "I am asking you to set it down. And I promise—I fucking promise you—I will give it back."
The distinction lands somewhere deep in my chest. Setting it down is not the same as losing it. I can pick it back up whenever I want.
His thumb presses harder against my clit while his fingers maintain their relentless rhythm, and I feel myself hurtling toward the edge again, my whole body trembling with the effort of holding back.
I look at the rope. Dark against white sheets.
I look at him. Dark eyes holding mine with certainty—not arrogance, but the knowledge of a man who has studied me long enough to know the difference between my fear and my resistance.
He is betting everything that what I am feeling right now is the latter.
He is right.
I nod.