“Hello, baby. I’m fuckin’ ecstatic about our weekend away.”
Her mouth quirked and she murmured, “That works too.”
He smiled at her.
Her mouth stopped quirking and she smiled back.
The plane started reversing from the gate and the flight attendant began the safety address.
*
7:45 – Vegas Time
“I hope you’re hungry,” Olivia said while wandering into their suite at the Cosmopolitan, Nick following, his carry-on over his shoulder, rolling her huge-ass piece of luggage. “Because I’m famished and I need to inspect that Swarovski chandelier much closer, hopefully doing it holding a cocktail…oh!”
The oh! was due to the fact he’d dumped their shit, and when she got close to the bed, he’d thrown her on it.
He didn’t delay in shoving up her skirt.
“Nick, sweetheart, I’m hungry.”
Chest to the bed, hips over the side, he pushed her legs open, looking to her to see she’d lifted up on her elbows.
“So am I.”
“But, Nicky, I’m really hungry,” she whispered in that voice of hers, words he didn’t give a shit about but he still felt them in his dick.
He took hold of the gusset of her panties and twisted them aside.
Her eyes went hooded and her legs melted open.
“So am I,” he growled in repeat.
She made no reply.
He dropped his mouth.
Her head fell back.
Nick ate first.
He fed his woman later.
*
10:52 – Saturday Morning
The curtains closed, the Do Not Disturb sign on the door, front to front on their sides, Nick lay naked and entangled in the king-size bed with his Livvie.
“The mountains,” she whispered into his throat, her body warm and peaceful, her arms holding him lightly, her breasts brushing his chest, her legs entwined with his. “A house in the middle of nowhere but with a town close by so I don’t have to drive too far in bad weather to get groceries.”
He’d started their day making love.
Now Olivia was in the mood to whisper to him.
Whisper about everything.
Not everything in the sense there were a lot of words.
Everything in the sense the words she was saying said a lot.
But Nick said nothing. He gave back only his silence as indication he wanted more of Liv’s everything while he wove his fingers in her soft hair.
“House big, but not ostentatious. Rustic. Homey. Lived-in,” she went on quietly.
Nick remained silent as she told him her dream future.
“Good people in town,” she continued. “They know me but don’t know me. Friendly. I’ll be friendly back. But my life will be at home.”
At that, Nick spoke.
“Kids?”
This time, Liv stayed quiet.
He dipped his chin to see the shadowed top of her head.
“Livvie?”
“I can’t,” she told his throat.
She couldn’t?
Reflexively, he stopped playing with her hair and wrapped both arms tighter around her.
“You can’t?”
She tipped her head back. “Not safe.”
She could.
Because of those jackals in her life, she just wouldn’t.
“I’ll make you safe, Liv.”
She shook her head.
“Not safe,” she repeated.
He gathered her even closer, pulling her up so they were eye to eye. “We get there, we get to that place, we want kids, I’ll make it safe.”
“They can’t have anything to use to get to me,” she told him and finished, “or you.”
“They won’t factor in the equation.”
“Nick—”
“Livvie, honest to God, don’t want to sound like a conceited asshole, but I know I’m not hard to look at and you’re fuckin’ beautiful. It might have taken me a while to demonstrate I had a brain in my head, but I eventually did. I’m not dumb and you’re far from stupid. We get to that place, we gotta have kids. It’s our duty to this earth to give it that beauty.”
In the light eking around the curtains, he saw her lips part, she pressed closer for a moment, only to move slightly away.
He pulled her close again.
“I don’t want a child of mine to become me,” she said.
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” he stated, steel in each word.
“You know what I mean, Nick,” she replied, each word soft and edged in pain.
“I know what you mean and that’s just not gonna happen.”
“And maybe my mom thought that before she had Georgia and me, gave up and took off,” she noted.
“And maybe your mom is a stupid, weak, useless bitch,” he returned. “What’s not a maybe is you’re not.”
“Nick.”
His name was all she said.
So he kept at her.