Page 84 of The Viper's Wife

Lacey and I have offered each other money before, but we’d never accepted. We both have obligations. Knowing your friend would offer, that the support was there if you needed it, was more than enough.

I’ve never had someone just give it to me.

After his call outside the furniture store, Nico let me drag him from one ridiculous couch to the next, relaxed and slinky as a cat in a sunbeam. Like solving the problems that have plagued me for years madehimmore at ease.

And when he pulled me back from the turning car at the crosswalk, I’d been so flustered, I could barely meet his eye after.

It’s getting harder to ignore how he makes me feel.

I set my phone face-down on the table.

I need to talk to Lacey about all of this—I don’t trust myself to be an impassive observer, not when his every touch and glance leaves me breathless.

“Did you need the shower?” Nico asks. A white towel hangs off his perfect v-cut abs, and even though we’ve had sex multiple times, it’s still shocking to see his lean, muscular body in the daylight, tattoos fully on display.

He’s so fucking hot.

And judging by the smirk on his mouth, he knows it.

“Yes.” I could use some alone time to think.

He purposely gives me the smallest sliver of space to pass by him in the doorway, and as I brush past his naked chest, he dips his head down and smells me. His soft, teasing laugh follows me into the bathroom.

Under the running water, my thoughts spill out.

Is this what the rest of the year is going to be like?

Shopping trips and intentional glances and delicious home-fucking-made carbonara?

His hand on my back, firm and protective.

His promise to give me a baby.

I bite my lip so hard, pain lances into my mouth.

I’ve been nothing but cruel to Nico, and all he’s done is take my cruelty and shape it into kindness.

Well, not exactly kindness.

Something like it though. Something sweet—certainly not the venom I spit at him every chance I get.

And it’s more than the money and the protection. I like how playful he is about being teased, how his eyes light up and his mouth curls into that little smirk that gives me butterflies.

I like how confident he is, how it smoothes out the sharp, anxious edges of my thoughts.

I like his homemade pasta and the stack of cheap thrillers next to his armchair.

I hold myself completely still under the spray of hot water, hands filled with pools of body wash.

I amfondof him.

Maybe even more than fond, if I could admit something like that to myself.

But I can’t keep him. I should let him go.

For the first time, I think of Nico leaving me for a new wife, and instead of relief, it fills me with profound dread. Would she make him smile like I do? Would he treat her with the same fascination as he does me? Would their sex be as passionate and intense as ours?

I turn off the water, my thoughts loud in the silence that follows.