182

Nadia
Awkward.
This is so awkward. I mean, what did I think would happen when I pitch a guy on having friend-sex with me on a Sunday morning in an empty music studio? It’s not exactly a romantic location or time.
But then, romance isn’t what I’m going for. I don’t know exactly how I expect this to work, though.
Flynn studies me like he’s trying to figure it out, too. “Want to go get a coffee?” he asks after a beat.
Oh wow. A coffee.
To a normal girl, that would be an easy yes. Coffee with a hot rock ‘n roll star. A guy who just agreed to have sex with no strings or expectations.
But I don’t do spontaneous, and I don’t do outings. The chance for me freaking out is way too high.
But I don’t want Flynn to know that. He doesn’t know I never leave the building except to see him play. He doesn’t know how pervasive my agoraphobia has been. How damaged I am.
I don’t want him to know. With him, I feel like I could be another person. Not the old methat girl is forever gone. But someone new. Someone interesting. Exciting, even.
So I say, “Sure. Yes.”
“Do you want to get a jacket?”
I hesitate. If I go back to the apartment, Adrian will be there. He’ll doubt I can make it out. Maybe he’ll insist on going with me. I’ll feel weak and brokenthe way I always do around him. It’s not his fault. I have been weak and broken. He stopped three suicide attempts the months after he rescued me. He saw me through the most debilitating depression.
But Flynn doesn’t know me that way, and I like the me that I imagine Flynn sees. She is light and carefree like him.
She can leave the building without getting upset. Without clinging to the elevator door or the door jam.
But hey, if I can do all those things, I can tell Adrian to give me some space, tooright?
“Yes. Come with me?”
“Sure.” He puts his hand on my back and guides me to the elevator. “I had trouble getting to you this morning,” he says with his pirate smile. “I didn’t know your apartment number. I didn’t have your phone number. Nikolai almost kicked my ass for texting his girlfriend to get in the building.”
I hold out my hand, still feeling like the bold version of myself. Like anything is possible and might even not be hard. “Give me your phone.”
He hands me his phone, and I text myself with it. “Now you have me.” I hand it back with a smile.
“Keep smiling, Peaches.” He strokes a thumb across my cheek.
“I don’t know this word,” I tell him.
“Peaches? The peach is a fruit.”
“You are calling me a fruit?”
He gives a casual shrug. Like always, he fills the available space with his presence, but it’s not in that powerful, oxygen-stealing way the bratva men do. It’s with this casual grace that says he can handle anything you throw at him without batting an eye. Like nothing ruffles this guy. Around him, there’s more oxygen to breathe, and he makes me feel safe.
“Because you’re beautiful. And sweet. Also, you have what we call a peaches-and-cream complexion.”
“What?” I touch my cheeks with an embarrassed laugh.
The elevator dings at my floor, and we get off. Flynn follows me off and to my apartment. “Kat and Adrian are still sleeping,” I say before I open the door. “Or more likely, in bed not sleeping.” I waggle my brows, and Flynn quirks the grin that makes my belly flutter.
“I can wait out here.”
I’m relieved by his offer. I’d rather not deal with Adrian if I don’t have to, and Flynn’s manly voice in the apartment would have my brother out of his bed in a flash.
I really need to move out.
The thought is accompanied by the usual sense of constriction in my lungs, but I picture myself moving in with Flynn, and it completely disappears.
But, of course, I won’t be doing that. Flynn doesn’t stick around for relationships.
Although he did say he wanted to stick around longer with me. But without sex. And now we’re having sex. I mean, we’re going to have sex. Ack! I have no idea what it all means. I slip inside, grab my jacket and a knit cap and quickly return, shutting the door softly.
“Oh!” I stop on my way to the elevator. “I didn’t get money.” I seriously have forgotten how these things work. I haven’t been out in so long. Never in America. Not without clinging to Adrian and begging him to take me back.
Flynn’s lips quirk. “I’ve got money.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I’ll pay next time. I know we’re not dating.” I punch the elevator button several times because I’m embarrassed.
I have money, too, now. I still work in the buildingcleaning and nannying for Ravil, the bratva pakhan, but that is just to give me purpose. Adrian extorted five million dollars from Kat’s father when he kidnapped her, so the three of us are now rich.
Flynn nudges me back against the elevator wall, his hands lightly resting on my waist. It’s amazing how welcome his touch is. Normally even a brush from another person gives me the hives.
He lowers his head and captures my lips, stealing my breath. I feel the reverberation of the kiss between my legsa slow pulsing that revs my nearly-dead sex drive back to life.
I drink Flynn in. He represents everything I wantthe embodiment of carefree youth, of possibility, of living moment-to-moment. Sucking the juice out of life.
When I stand at the window in our apartment and look down at the world outside the building, I yearn to be someone like Flynn. But it seems so impossible. Like there’s an invisible barrier at the door to the building, and the moment I pass through it, I go mad.
When the elevator doors open on the ground floor, I’m breathless and horny.
But then things get hard. We’re leaving the building. Going out into the worldsomething I hate.
There will be people out there. Strangers. Voices and bodies and the possibility of drowning in shadows again. I know that’s not logical. I’m safe. I’m free. I haven’t been fed drugs and chained to a bed for months now. And it will never happen again. Adrian has promised. My therapist assures me.
But my body still goes into fight or flight at the tiniest tweak of my senses.
I keep my lips closed and try to suck slow breaths in through my nose. I can do this. I’m with Flynn.
Everything is fine.
I can do this. I can do this. The sound of grinding gears grows louder around my head. My focus narrows and goes fuzzy.
Fuck. Am I breathing? I might pass out.
“Hey.” I hear Flynn’s voice, but it’s from far away. Except he’s standing right next to me. “Climb on my back.”
I blink. Flynn turns and bends his knees, holding his arms out from his sides.
“What?” The grinding gears sound fades.
“Hop on.”
I’m so confused. Did I miss something? Was the world spinning for longer than it seemed?
“Why?” My focus starts to return.
“So I can carry you,” he says as if it makes perfect sense. As if I’m in bare feet, and we need to cross over crushed glass.
I’m able to draw in a deep breath through my nose. I use it to leap onto Flynn’s back, wrapping my legs around his waist. He tucks his hands under my knees and starts to jog with me, whirling and tilting like a drunken sailor.
A surprised laugh tumbles from my lips. “What are you doing?”
“Taking you for a ride.”
The shadows lift. The mechanical whirring stops completely. I close my eyes, savoring the moment. The icy air against my face. The immense gratitude in my heart for this kind-hearted man.
Just like that, I’m firmly back in my body. I can breathe. I’m not afraid. I’m actually…having fun. It seems impossible, and yet it’s happening. To me.
“Do you want to go to the lake?” I ask. I’ve never been. I live in a building that overlooks Lake Michigan and have never even been the block it takes to walk to the shore. All this time, I’ve looked out our living room windows and watched the people down below. The joy of children running on the sand. The joggers along the walkway. The families nested under sun umbrellas and the joyful souls flying kites. I watch the boats float out on the water.
I’ve dreamed of what it would be like to come out here and join the living. But I haven’t dared. But with Flynn, it seems possible. Almost anything seems possible with Flynn.
“You want to go to the lake?” he asks. “It will be cold. But I guess, you’re from Russia, so you probably won’t mind. We could get our coffees and take them with us to keep us warm.”
“That sounds nice.”
Flynn spins our bodies in a few more whirls and then careens through the doorway of a coffee shop. There, he lowers me to my feet. I look around. There are people in the shop. People I don’t know. Strangers. But they’re all talking amongst themselves. In their own worlds. No one even looks at us. I wait for the familiar sense of panic to rise, so I can stave it back down, so I can tell myself I’m fine because I’m here with Flynn. But it never comes. I truly am fine. Flynn is magic.
He leads me up to the counter and says, “What would you like?”
I am unafraid. Absolutely fearless. I look the barista right in her eye and say “I’ll have a mocha.”
“Make that two.” Flynn pulls a ten dollar bill from his pocket.
I beam, marveling at how simple and easy that was. How I’m not even scared right now. We take our mochas outside where we walk toward the shore side by side. The drink is warm and sweet. When I slow to sip it, Flynn matches my pace.
That seems to be his gift.
“Where did you and Story learn to play guitar?” I ask.
“Our dad teaches guitar and plays in a local bandthe Nighthawks. They do 80’s rock covers.”
“So you take after him.”
“That’s what they say.” There’s something hollow about the way Flynn says it. With anyone else, I wouldn’t pry. Hell, with anyone else, I wouldn’t attempt small talk. But we have a connection. He’s seen me cry and didn’t act like I was broken.
“Is it a bad thing?”
Again, I’m certain there’s a ripple of discomfort in Flynn. A little flinch, perhaps. But he shakes his head. “No, he’s cool.”
“I would like to see his band, too.”
This earns me a wide grin. “You would?”
Oh wow. Did I say that out loud? “Well” I start to backpedal, panicking at committing myself to any outing, but Flynn says, “That would be fun. They don’t play that often anymore, but I’ll find out when their next gig is.”
I draw in a breath, again bracing against the panic that doesn’t come. All I sense is…excitement. A future date with Flynn. Getting to know him better.
But when we get to the lake, the crowd thickens. My steps falter, and I crowd closer to Flynn. He takes my mocha from my hand and turns around. “Hop on my back again.”
I want to refuse. I want to go on like there’s nothing wrong with me. Like I can make it through this. But he’s offering me a branch, and I’m about to drown, so it take it. The mochas spill and slosh over his wrists when I jump on him. “Oh no!” I start to slide back down, embarrassed.
“No, no, no, no. We are fine.” He hands one mocha back and uses his free hand to hold one of my knees. “Let’s do this, Peaches.”
I shriek and giggle when he takes off running again. I hold my coffee cup out to the side, so it won’t spill on his head. He carries me to a park bench and holds me over the seat, releasing my leg. I stand on the bench and accept the hand he offers to jump down.
My stomach clenches when I see all the people, but Flynn sits and catches my waist. He tugs me forward, facing him, gently urging me onto his lap, straddling his waist.
It feels both natural and crazy at once.
“Look at me,” he says, taking the mocha from my hand and setting it on the bench beside us. “It’s just you and me out here,” he says. “This is our world. No one else’s.”
I know what he’s saying isn’t true, and yet I cling to it as I lock onto his warm brown gaze.
He holds the eye contact, daring me to look away. “Kiss me.”
I do. I lean forward and cover his lips with mine. He hasn’t shaven today, so his face is scruffy. I like the contrast of rough stubble framing his soft, supple lips.
He grips my ass through my soft leggings, kneading it roughly, surprising me by working a finger between the seam of my ass cheeks.
For as much as I hate physical contact, as much as every nightmare is about intrusion, and my body not being under my own command, nothing about the way Flynn touches me is a trigger.
Not only does it not trigger me, but it stokes my fire. I squirm over his lap as my body comes to life, that pulsing between my legs growing more insistent. I grind down, seeking friction against my most sensitive parts.
When I feel the answering bulge in his jeans, I feel more triumphant than frightened. I was right in asking Flynn to be the guy who helps me get over my captivity. My doubts clear. I do want to have sex with him. I’m not afraid. With him, I could find sexual healing. I wish we could go back to the apartment right now, but Adrian is there.
I am so into the kiss I don’t notice the people around me or the cold. Nothing takes my focus away from my own physical pleasure. The tangle of my tongue with Flynn’s, the pressure of my clit over the seam of his jeans.
Nothing distracts me until I hear a woman’s Russian-accented voice say with delighted interest, “Oh my God, is that Flynn? Looks like he met someone at the show again last night.”