The scent of making love and Nico still lingers on my skin. He is driving with one hand on a steering wheel and the other on my thigh, and I rub my thumb over his knuckles, tangling our hands, wanting more contact. It's physical touch with Nico that I wasn't even aware that my body had been missing, yearning for until suddenly I was stripped off it. And now I don't want to keep my hands off.

He looks so hot like that with just a seatbelt across his naked torso, his chest completely hairless and tanned to a golden shade. And he's all mine. The problem is that we're headed to Nico's house, where he invited me so I could shower and eat some food and even though I know I have to return to Madrid as soon as possible, I couldn't say no to him. But anxiety shows its ugly face when I realize what going there means—lying to his family about the reasons why I'm there, pretending we're nothing more than friends.

"I could say we just became good friends since I moved to Madrid, hm?" I ask him, bringing our tangled hands to my mouth, pressing a kiss to his palm. "Or that you reached out to me asking for Real Madrid tickets and we hang out sometimes?"

Nico glances at me, eyes almost rolling under those dark lashes. "My whole family supports Valencia FC, not Real Madrid, Jordan, they'll be really fucking suspicious if all of a sudden I start going to Real matches."

We both stare out at the road in front of us. After a few minutes Nico tilts his head gently.

"I told Marc about you," he says carefully.

"Oh."

"He won't tell Sonya, he promised not to say anything. I said it's up to you to share that if you decide."

"What did he say?" There's multiple missed calls from my sister that I ignored in the last few days while I was miserable about Nico. I will have to call her eventually and explain why I was in such a bad mood.

"That he knew I would be the one to bring another scandal into our family."

"Another?"

"Remember the guy I fucked when I met you, Marc's best friend?"

"What do you think?" I raise an eyebrow at him. I'm not prone to intense jealousy or possessiveness but thinking of other men before me makes my blood boil. Especially when I was present for that specific sexual encounter.

"Right," he grumbles. "Well.. his wife found out, I don't know how. But she called Marc and then my whole family got involved. Basically, she wanted to crucify me."

"Well...even though you technically aren't to blame because he's the one who cheated on his wife with his best friend's brother, still... You had it coming when you put yourself in that situation."

"Yeah. Look... I need you to know that, um... I'm not interested in casual sex anymore. And those stupid games. If that's not obvious already," he says, turning his head to look at me. His expression is so lovely, so open, it lifts a weight off my chest that I didn't know was there. "I don't care about looking for attention like that now... You make me feel wanted. You make me feel valued and important in a completely different way than my influencer job does. And I've done a lot of thinking and realized that I want to do something with my life that I would be proud of, something other than partying hard with people I don't really know or like."

My heart rate begins to speed up. He's becoming a man, right in front of my eyes—growing, looking beneath the surface, learning from his mistakes. If there were any doubts about whether Nico Silva is the man of my life it's this. I have never been so certain. And he didn't even have to say the words. Just based on how his eyes crinkle, shining at me, Nico doesn't have to.

I turn my head to look at him when he stops at the red light. "You know I'll support you with whatever you decide," I say holding Nico's gaze. I lean to kiss him and Nico meets me halfway. "Was Marc upset about us?"

"We're good, he's not upset..."

"Are you sure?"

"Well, he said as long as you are serious about him and you don't hurt my wife's little brother I'm happy for you both, something along these lines. And I know that I will never ever hurt you again, because I love you so fucking much so I told Marc, yeah don't worry about it."

I laugh at the way he mimics the voice of his brother, feeling a little bit like floating. And he just smiles at me like I'm the king of the fucking world. His world.

"So we're telling the families?"

"It's up to you, babe... It's kind of a big deal. There's no need to rush if you're not ready to come out to them. "

"You mean, like, telling my parents I'm gay? The thing is, I don't think I'm gay."

"Says a guy who just had my dick in his ass."

"Nico!" I reprimand with no heat, rolling my eyes.

"Sorry, sorry...I'm joking. Look, you could be a lot of things— bi, pan, demi... That's what I'm talking about, you don't have to rush these things. Take your time to figure it all out."

I turn to look back out the window at the glimpses of evening sea in the distance. "Labels really confuse me. I don't know what half of those you just said mean. And I don't really care, I know I like you and it's that simple."

"That's cool too. You don't have to label yourself. You know, I know some gay men who are very sensitive about it and don't trust their partners who don't want to label themselves. I guess they're scared or worried that the guy would just change his mind eventually. But I don't care what you are— be whoever you want as long as I'm the one you love. You can say you're straight as much as you want as long as you keep sucking on this dick, baby."

"Christ, the things that come out of that mouth."

"I thought you liked this mouth?" He smiles goofily.

"I like it better when I shut it up with something,"I snicker.

"Woah, woah you made a gay sex joke! I'm so proud!" He laughs and I join him too, the car bubbles with laughter while I'm fiddling with his fingers that are still resting on my thigh.

A/N

Hold tight, next chapter is coming tomorrow, I just had to split it in two parts because it was too long. Thank you for being patient and for loving this story! Hope you're having a lovely day wherever you are in the world!

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