AllFreeNovel
Share Us
NICU
Jewel was drunk.
My hands curled into fists.
At a frat party, of all places. I knew this because I was outside, watching as she’d left her dorm with a group of girls. I followed them as they made their way to a frat house on 113th Street, where giddy girls and rowdy bros mingled outside and streamed in and out of a brownstone.
After following her for days, I’d learned my little doll’s habits. For one, she liked to coffee shop hop, although she had one particular favorite, The Hungarian Pastry Shop, on Amsterdam Avenue. It was situated across the street from the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, whose gardens she often wandered around in afterward.
One day, after she left, I went inside and grabbed a coffee to feel closer to her by simulating her experience. I almost spit the sludge out. Sure, I was a coffee snob, having practically grown up in a café. Tasa went through a phase in high school when she worked in our family shop daily, modernizing it and adding newfangled drinks, like the flat white. What in the fuck that was, I still didn’t know.
I could tell Jewel had been drinking before leaving her dorm, but instead of slowing down, she continued to drink from the moment she arrived at the party. My instincts pricked up. Something must’ve happened in the past twenty-four hours to unsettle my little doll, and I didn’t like it. As I milled around the front of the frat house, I peered in the front room of the brownstone. Beside me, two frat boys exchanged their thoughts about Jewel. She was slumped back on the couch, drunk, and some fucker had his hands all over her, his lips on the side of her throat and—my control snapped.
Roaring out loud, I elbowed my way through the thick crowd of college students. Storming into the brownstone, I stomped through another throng of kids to get to her. I reached the couch and yanked her out of the groping hands of the little prick. He glared up at me, sober as fuck. Way too sober to be touching a woman in her position. Dragging her off the ratty couch, I placed her on her feet. Giggling, her head lolled to the side. She was too drunk to be angry at me, her usual reaction.
“Nicu,” she hummed. Normally, her humming my name would’ve gotten me going, but I was fuming at the situation she’d gotten herself into. Where were her friends? I scanned the crowded room and recognized no one.
The little piss-fuck tried to protest, rising to his feet and putting a hand on my forearm to stop me.
Oh, fuck no, he didn’t.
Jewel swayed toward me, and I wrenched my arm away, cradling her to my side so he’d have zero chance of touching her again.
“It would be my pleasure to cut off your balls and feed them to you,” I growled in his face. Then, I flicked my jacket open wide enough for him to see my piece.
The coward stumbled back and ran off so fast I almost burst out laughing. Please, motherfucker, I only gave you an inkling of who I am.
“W-what are you doing here?” Jewel asked, blinking up at me as my hands tightened around her waist.
She leaned into me, rubbed her nose into the lapel of my jacket and inhaled deeply. “Hmm, you always smell so good. It’s the bergamot in your cologne, isn’t it? What’s the name of it?” she chattered.
Her own sweet rose scent seeped into my pores, wrapping my head in a fog, getting me drunk on her.
Focus, Nicu.
“I’m taking care of you,” I grunted out. “Since you’re clearly not in a state to take care of yourself.”
She frowned, giving me a little pout. “I always take care of myself. Only me. It’s always only been me.”
“Not tonight, it isn’t,” I replied between clenched teeth. If I allowed myself the freedom to speak my mind, I would’ve replied that her night was a date rape waiting to happen. “Not tonight, and not from now on. It’s my job to take care of you. Your job is to stay in your lane.”
“H-how did you know where I was?” she asked, a little crease between her brows as she swept the room to see where I’d come from.
I ignored her question with a grunt and prodded her to walk. She stumbled in her first step, and I caught her before she face-planted into the sticky floor of the frat house. It wasn’t a hardship to keep a tight hold on her so she wouldn’t slide down to the ground as I got us out of there and to my Bugatti, which I’d conveniently left double-parked a little way down the street. When I saw her and her dorm mates weaving their way through the streets on their way to the party, I sensed I wouldn’t last long waiting and got my car to follow them.
Gently, I helped her inside my car, putting my hand on the crown of her head to guide her inside so she didn’t bump her head. Heat suffused my chest when she sank into the leather seat and let out a sigh of relief. As if she was where she was supposed to be—in my care. She wiggled her shoulders and butt, settling in deeper before dropping her head back and closing her eyes.
I rounded the hood of the car, started up my baby, and jetted down the street, taking a sharp turn onto Amsterdam Avenue in the direction of my penthouse apartment.
Flapping a hand behind us, she slurred slightly, “I live thataway.”
“You’re not going home,” I gritted out, eyes focused straight ahead, fists clenched around the steering wheel.
“What do you mean? W-where are you taking me?”
“To my place,” I replied succinctly. My patience having snapped long ago, there was no way I was about to take any shit from her. If I had to kidnap her, so be it. She wasn’t going back to her dorm room where she could get into trouble again. And when she was sober, we were going to have a serious discussion about her behavior tonight. I was done with this bullshit. She didn’t overhear the frat boys outside whispering about their intentions, like I had. She’d put herself in a precarious position. For the first and last time.
From a side-glance, I saw her brows furrow.
