NICCO

Over the next few moments, I feel torn as I observe my assistant. Regret mixes with indignation. Her soft expression hardens, but, tactfully, Aria supplies in light, unaffected tones, "If you're hungry, then we should eat."

Without another word, she reaches for my trousers and fishes out her panties from the pocket, her legs slide off of my lap, and, immediately, I miss the weight and warmth of her body on mine. I tuck in my cock and zip up my pants. Paying me no mind, Aria gets partially dressed again and returns to her chair wearing only her shirt and underwear.

Oh, fuck me.

My assistant is not even trying to seduce me at this moment, she might even be upset with me, but already I am distracted by her long, bare legs and shapely ass. The tiny scrap of lace that is her underwear does nothing to hide her feminine curves. With her back to me, she walks away, and every step she takes, every sway of her hips, is grace and sensuality defined. My hands itch to pull her back on my lap and—

No.

I am not an animal. I am a gentleman. Surely, I can keep my eyes and hands to myself over the next thirty minutes of our meal.

Aria takes her seat, and I pour her a glass of wine. We begin to eat. After a few bites, Aria's eyes close, and her chewing slows down. She seems to be savoring every flavor of each dish. It is clear that she is a girl who loves to eat. Aria's obvious enjoyment is infectious. It melts away some of my surliness.

"How is your dinner?" I ask quietly.

Aria breathes out, "Fucking delicious. You've outdone yourself, Nicco."

Pleasing her, again, pleases me. A smile pulls at my lips, but I refuse to let it out. The food should be fucking delicious. Earlier today, I hired a private chef to prepare everything for us. From scratch.

This was all I wanted, really. To make Aria happy. To see my girl enjoy herself. Against my better judgment, it makes me want to engage with her some more. Perhaps, I reason with myself, if I can draw out a few of Aria's secrets, then I will finally be able to overcome this ridiculous infatuation of mine.

I recall what my assistant once said to me about her parents.

My mum and dad expect... perfection.

As her admissions echo through my mind, I decide to ask about her childhood, hoping to uncover some of the mystery that is Aria Yue Senarath.

"My childhood?" she repeats.

I nod, taking a bite of my pasta. "What was it like?"

Aria sips her wine and shrugs. A rosy glow kisses her cheeks. She is on her second glass for the night. "Nothing special. My parents got divorced when I was a kid, so I lived with my mum during the school year and visited my dad over the summers. What about you?"

"What about me?"

"I imagine you grew up very differently from me," she notes in droll tones.

"I suppose you could say that I had a blessed upbringing. My parents showered my sister and me with everything we could ever want."

Aria teases, "Did you go to a private boarding school in Switzerland and vacation in San Tropez?"

I grin sheepishly. "Maybe?"

She is not too far off the mark. In high school, my parents sent me to several different boarding schools across Europe, including one in Switzerland, and I have been to San Tropez more than once.

"Where did you go to school?" I ask.

Her gray eyes dim as she gives a slight pause. "A place called... Hawkins Prep. Hawkins isn't quite on par with boarding schools in Switzerland, but it was pretty elite for San Francisco."

I watch her closely. "Did you like it?"

She hesitates again. "Not really."

My eyebrows rise. I cannot imagine staying at a school that did not agree with me. "Why did you stay? You could have transferred elsewhere."

A grimace lines her mouth. "After I was accepted to Hawkins, my parents poured their savings into my tuition. It didn't feel right to give up my education after everything they sacrificed for me."

I wince for her sake. "Sounds like a lot of pressure. On you."

"It's fine. I graduated. Everything is water under the bridge at this point."

"I am surprised that your parents did not notice how unhappy you were at Hawkins."

"I wouldn't say that my parents were blind to how I felt, but they were big fans of tough love. Pushing me to excel was the only way my mum and dad knew how to show that they cared."

"I hate that for you." Her sentiment resonates with me once more. Mamma and Papà are also stubborn to a fault.

"It wasn't so bad." Aria tries to laugh it off, but the glimmer of pain in her eyes does not escape my notice.

I sense she is hiding something else, though, something that has little to do with her parents, so I continue pressing her, "How come didn't you like going to Hawkins?"

"I guess... I never felt like I belonged there," she finally admits with a downcast expression, "and some of the kids may or may not have given me a hard time for being... different."

I strive to read between the lines of what Aria has left unsaid. It sounds like she was not as wealthy as her classmates at an elite institution like Hawkins. I presume they must have bullied her over it. My old boarding schools were packed with these types of rich bitches and entitled assholes. Hell, I had been one of those entitled assholes.

"I wish we had known each other back then," I murmur intently.

"Why do you say that?"

"I would not have let anyone touch you at school."

Her eyes glimmer with vulnerability, and, somehow, it manages to chip away at the defenses I had just set in place.

"It's okay," Aria hums faintly with a distracted, hard-to-read look on her face, "they can't touch me anymore. I escaped."

Interesting choice of word. "Escaped?"

She flashes me a tight smile. "Enough about me. Why don't we finish eating and then..."

"And then?"

Her gaze pierces mine. "I'll let you fuck my brains out again."

Aria's heated offer shoots straight to my cock. The muscle becomes solid, stirring, rising, in an instant even though my brain is not ready for our conversation to end. Grimacing, my mouth flattens into a strained line. Aria appears to be using sex to distract me again. It will not work. Not this time. Now—I am aware of how she plays her games.

I decide not to call her out, though. I can be tactful, too. There will be a more opportune moment to interrogate her. A moment when her guard is no longer up.

Following dinner, I drag Aria into my shower. Our clothes fall away once more. She sucks me off with steam and hot water spraying around us. I have one hand splayed against the tile, the other is gripping her head as I fuck her hot, greedy mouth with my cock. Then, I carry her to my bed and eat her out on the edge of the mattress until she writhes and screams and sees stars. Before Aria can even recover, I start fucking her again. Over the next few hours, I intend to drain her. To exhaust her. Mentally. Physically. To make her so fucking tired from coming and fucking and coming and fucking that she can no longer think straight.

That is when I will strike.

For now, I have her on all fours. My bed creaks and bounces beneath our naked, glistening bodies. I mount Aria from behind, pounding into her pussy for the fifth time this evening. I have been coming inside my girl all night. My milky seed mixes with her essence, dripping, pouring, oozing from her pretty, pink slit. The lewd visual makes me goddamn feral, and, for a perverse moment born from purely biological male impulse, I want to claim Aria as mine, mine, mine. I almost shoot my load at the mere thought of it.

Grunting fiercely, I ram into her even faster. Harder. My taut, heavy balls are practically slapping her pussy.

Tears stream down Aria's face as she nears her peak again, whimpering, pleading, "I can't, Nicco, this is too much, I feel like passing out!"

"If you can still walk, I am nowhere near done with this pussy," I growl, chasing after my own pleasure while my blissed-out dick swells and throbs inside her. "One more. Give me one more."

"Oh, fuck!" Aria gasps as I fist her long, dark hair and thrust inside her at a rapid, unforgiving pace. Face down, ass up, my beautiful gray-eyed girl cries out as the side of her face slams into the mattress over and over again.

"Touch yourself," I command hoarsely.

Like a good girl, Aria's hand snakes between her legs to strum her clit. A minute later, her sex starts to convulse around my dick. I pound my girl through her explosive orgasm until I, too, come undone.

"Dio," I groan into the throes of my release, "such a perfect fucking cunt."

My body feels like it has melted into a pool of sheer liquid satisfaction, but I am careful not to crush Aria's smaller body under my weight. I should probably clean her up.

Beneath me, Aria's chest rises and falls in heavy breaths. She looks utterly spent.

Shit.

I may have gone overboard. Aria appears too tired for pillow talk and definitely too far gone to answer any of my burning questions.

Weakly, she insists, "No more, Nicco. Please. You have officially fucked out my brains."

"Rest then," I mumble against her bare shoulder. "I will be back."

Barely acknowledging me, she rolls over with a sleepy grunt and dozes off within seconds.

I plod into the bathroom and wet a clean towel with warm water. I return Aria's side. I splay her legs and, carefully, gently, drag the cloth through her creases and folds.

She stirs and mumbles drowsily, "What are you doing down there?"

"Taking care of you," I reply, "go back to sleep. I will be done soon."

She yawns. "That's... sweet of you."

Aria relaxes into my touch and soon drifts off again.

It is then I spot something I have not noticed before. A few small scars line her lower belly. They are faint. Old, healed wounds. Barely visible. Over the last few days, I had been too preoccupied with fucking Aria to notice them. Now that I see her scars, however, I cannot unsee them. I am no doctor like Mamma, but these do not look accidental to me. The cuts are neat. Precise. Five in a row. Like tally marks. They look very intentional. Unease sinks into me.

Did Aria do this to herself?

Or did someone do it to her?

After I dispose of the towel, I return to bed and try not to obsess over her scars. I lay there, resisting the urge to haul Aria into my arms. She is sleeping peacefully. When I catch myself staring at her like some kind of creep, admiring the sweep of her dark lashes and the pout of her full lips, I immediately turn away.

What is wrong with me?

I do not know what the hell I am doing anymore, at least, not when it comes to this beautiful gray-eyed girl who keeps one too many secrets. This girl who has managed to take possession of my cock and sanity without even trying. These are my final troubling thoughts before exhaustion pulls me under. I have lost track of time when I am awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of a soft female cry. My entire body jolts. Alert. Awake in an instant.

Aria is still laying beside me. I glance over. Darkness surrounds us, but the lights from the city stream through my floor-to-ceiling windows, casting a faint glow across my bedroom. I can see Aria's cheeks are wet. Panic seizes me.

Is she... crying?

Why?

Was I too rough with her tonight?

Fuck!

Guilt and shame and worry roll through me in a giant ball of distress.

"Aria," I whisper urgently to her, "what is wrong? Tell me, per favore, so that I can make it better."

When Aria does not respond, I realize foolishly that she is not awake yet. Her eyes are still shut tight. Her head is thrashing around on the pillow, though. Pained whimpers keep escaping her mouth. She seems to be having a bad dream of sorts.

"No, no, please, no," Aria rasps suddenly, still asleep, still enslaved by whatever nightmare is plaguing her mind. "I won't do it again, Jaime. I promise."

My gaze grows thin and sharp.

Jaime?

Who the fuck is that?

***

ARIA

I'm running, running, running through a thick, heavy mist. The world around me is a soundless gray void.

The fuck?

I see no buildings or trees or city lights. I hear nothing but dead silence. No hum of traffic or even the rustling of a breeze. Fear and anxiety are the only things that exist here. They're what propels me forward. I can't stop. I have to keep going.

To where?

A cliff up ahead.

Someone is waiting for me at the edge of the drop.

Someone I love.

Who?

Slowly, the fog clears.

My vision closes in on a teenage girl standing about thirty feet away from me. I can't see her face. Only her back. She's wearing a Hawkins uniform. White dress shirt. Navy blue skirt. Like me. Her head is tilted downward as though she's peering beyond the ledge.

Right away, I recognize the girl's pale blonde hair. It's plaited in her signature french braid. My eyes widen with disbelief.

Maya... is alive?

Adrenaline drives me to pump my legs faster. I have to get to her. I have to reach her before, before, before—

Just then, my best friend glances over her shoulder at me. Her blue eyes are wide and round. Tears stream down her cheeks. She looks scared shitless.

My heart drops when she holds out her hand to me and murmurs in a sing-song voice, "Come with me, Aria. Let's go together."

"Wait!" I cry out.

But she doesn't wait for me. Maya takes a step away from me and moves closer to the cliff. Her foot dangles over a terrifying expanse of empty space as her body tilts forward. The sight makes my blood runs cold.

"No, Maya! Don't you dare take another step!" I scream and scream and scream, trying with all my might to reach her in time. To pull her back. To save her before she does something unforgivably stupid.

Maya gives me the world's most heartbreaking, teary-eyed smile. "I'll miss you, Aria."

Then, she lets herself free fall.

Air wrenches from my lungs as I shriek in distress and lunge toward Maya, trying to follow her down, down, down—

Suddenly, a hand captures the back of the collar on my shirt, yanking me backward. I lose my balance and stumble to the ground. When I look up again, I'm no longer on the cliff with Maya.

Four walls appear, trapping me in a box-like room. Rows of desks and chairs surround me. I'm inside a classroom with no door or windows. But I'm not alone. I sense a tall, foreboding figure standing behind me.

Fuck.

Slowly, ever so slowly, my head turns toward him, and I try not to panic as I stare up into a pair of dark soulless eyes.

It's Jaime.

"Maya was weak. She deserved to die," he sneers. "Not you, though. You're a rebellious little shit. A fighter. No matter how many times I push you down, you always get back up. I like that about you."

I spit at him.

He raises his arm, and his palm slams into the side of my face. Grunting, my head whips back from the force of the blow. Jaime growls, "Shut up, stupid bitch, and listen to me—you're not allowed to die yet. I won't let you get away that easily."

With a frightened whimper, I scramble to my feet and try to run. It's pointless, though. There are no fucking doors in this room. Roughly, Jaime grabs hold of my arm. He shoves me back down to the ground, straddling my waist between his thighs so I can't escape.

He rips my shirt away. "Where the fuck do you think you're going?"

"Nowhere," I whisper brokenly. "I'm not going anywhere."

A razor blade appears in his hand. I recognize it. It's the same one he used to mark me when we attended Hawkins together. He gave me five tallies on my stomach. One cut for each time I denied him something he wanted from me.

I feel the sharp sting of steel dig into my belly. Blood trickles down my skin, staining the crisp white of my shirt a dark burgundy red. I release a choked wail, begging him to stop, "No, no, please, no."

Jaime hurts me once more, sinking the blade into my flesh. "Don't you ever try to run from me again. Have I made myself clear?"

I gasp in pain, "I won't do it again, Jaime. I promise."