Chapter 69: Take it off
Nicholas didn’t kiss her right away.
Even after all the words had been said, after the quiet unraveling of the walls she’d carried around like armor for years, he still waited.
His hand slid up from her thigh to her waist, fingers curling just lightly against the fabric of her worn sweatshirt, as if testing the shape of permission. His gaze dropped to her lips, but his breath hitched like a man fighting restraint with everything he had.
Ella’s heart thundered in her ears.
It wasn’t nervousness now—it was anticipation. The quiet, shivering ache of being seen and wanted for the first time, not as decoration or convenience, but as something precious.
"Tell me to stop," Nicholas murmured, the words barely audible, "and I will."
Ella looked at him, really looked at him. This billionaire. This sharp, ruthless man the world either feared or envied. And here he was—steady hands, eyes burning with careful hunger, speaking to her like she was the most fragile, sacred thing in the universe.
And God help her, she didn’t want him to stop.
"I don’t want you to," she whispered, her voice breaking slightly with how true it was.
Something inside him seemed to snap loose at her admission.
He cupped her jaw gently, brushing his thumb across her lower lip as if committing the shape of her mouth to memory. Then finally—finally—he kissed her again, slow at first, a lazy drag of his mouth over hers, tasting her, savoring her like a man who’d been starving and didn’t trust that this wasn’t a dream.