Page 87 of Made in Love and Blood

Nico sucked air through his teeth, still eagle-eyeing her all the while. “Do you just want me to say it, or something?”

Frankie was starting to feel like a parrot. “Say what?”

“That we’re a thing.”

Her nose scrunched up. “A thing?”

“Together.”

That sounded better.

“Like boyfriend and girlfriend, together, or...” she trailed off.

Nico made a face this time, but he fell forward, too. Catching himself with his hands flat on either side of her against the mattress. He left the shirt she wore pulled high enough to expose her breasts, but his attention stayed locked on her even as her skin pebbled and her nipples peaked. He came closer until he hovered right above her. She didn’t need the weight of his body on top of her this time to feel that same sensation of the two pulling away from the rest of the world to go somewhere else.

“I don’t know if I like that—boyfriend.”

“You don’t want me to be your girlfriend?”

He shook his head, gaze dropping to her mouth. “It’s not right for this, is it? It doesn’t feel right.”

“Well, what does?”

Nico kissed her again, taking away her breath, words, and whatever questions remained. Especially when he stopped to kiss a path down her neck and then between her breasts. His lips inched away from her skin so he could ask, “Who does this with you?”

She swallowed thickly. “You.”

He came back up to her fast, dropping an open kiss to her mouth. “And that?”

“You,” she repeated.

“What else would you let me do?”

Frankie’s breath caught hard in her chest, but the truth slipped out before she could stop it. “Whatever you wanted.”

“Who else gets to do that to you? Who else has?”

“No one.”

Not even him, yet.

But he could. He could.

Nico tipped his chin up slightly, the glow from the windows and lights outside casting shadows across his already devastating features. “As long as I’m the only one doing those things with you, I guess that makes you mine.”

•••

Frankie didn’t realize some churches required parking passes after certain times in the day, which left her scrambling to find a spot on a nearby street before two in the afternoon. The Church of the Holy Redeemer in Brooklyn was one such establishment. She still couldn’t figure out why her father sent her a message asking if she would meet him that afternoon there, but she also couldn’t refuse him.

Salvatore could have just shown up to the penthouse. He didn’t have to make the effort to request they meet, if she was able. That was an important part of his message that she couldn’t quite shake off.

It took an extra fifteen minutes for her to find a place to park, and then another five minutes to walk to the church. By the time she came upon her father waiting on the brick-and-mortar steps, it was already ten minutes past the time she promised to be there.

“Sorry, parking was—”

“Yeah, it’s shit,” Salvatore interjected, chuckling. “It always was.”

She looked up at the tall peak of the church where the gray bricks continued to climb straight up to a massive silver cross pointing toward the cloudless sky. “It feels like we haven’t been to church in a while.”