Full Frame – Book 2 [Teaser]

CHAPTER 1 

Nico

The fuck do you want, Mara?

I hover over the send icon for a second, then press it before I change my mind.

There. Done. Stupid, probably, but done.

I need a shower. I need to get her off my skin. Out of my head. Short of taking the green side of the sponge to my skull, the shower brush is going to have to do.

It doesn’t work.

Mara. Back in my life, definitely bringing trouble, and standing in the one place she has no business being.

At the studio.

Where I work. Where Cat works. Where Noah trusts me.

I always knew she would come to collect eventually. Women like her do not leave loose ends undone. They file them away, wait until the timing hurts, then pull the line.

And fuck me, the timing hurts.

I’m still trying to keep my head straight after spending yesterday afternoon on my knees between Cat’s open thighs, her warmth on my mouth. Close enough to know exactly what I was not allowed to touch. Still, every decent thought in my head packed a bag and left town.

We did the responsible part before I left the studio. Water. Laughter that sounded almost normal. Three separate check-ins. Cat hugged me. Noah clasped the back of my neck and told me we were good. I even believed him for a few hours. 

What the fuck are we doing?

We had joked too many times over the years. Me being a lovable cocky asshole. Noah threatening to murder me with studio equipment. Cat rolling her eyes like the line was obvious and we were all idiots for standing so close to it, but still playing along.

It had always been safe because it wasn’t real.

Then Mara turns up, the business account freezes, and an absurd sex commission shows up dressed like salvation.

Things aren’t adding up to coincidence. Not with Mara in the frame.

I turn the water hotter and brace one hand against the tile.

My head is spinning, and it doesn’t feel like the shower wall is enough to hold me straight up. I still see Cat looking at me like she had decided to stop pretending she didn’t know exactly what I wanted.

That’s the thing that keeps hitting me.

Not her legs. Not the black lace, although Christ, I am not dead.

It’s the look.

Cat looking at me like I had been caught. Like she already knew. Like the part of me I’d kept locked down for years had been sitting there in plain view, making itself comfortable like a fucking idiot.

I tell myself to think about something else. It’s not cooperating.

The bank freeze. Mara.

The fact that my past just walked into my present wearing Prada and a face I would have been happy never seeing again.

My hand slides lower anyway, because I’m apparently determined to make every bad decision available.

“Great,” I mutter. “Beautiful. Excellent work.”

My cock is already half-hard. I wrap my hand around myself mostly to make the ache shut up. It does not shut up. It gets worse, because the second I touch myself, there she is again.

Cat. Her hand in my hair. Her voice.

Kneel.

My knees hit the floor before the smarter parts of me could object. I had obeyed her. I should be more worried about that.

I stroke myself once, slow, and my forehead drops to the tile.

The water beats over my neck, too hot now, but I don’t move. My eyes close and I’m back there. Studio lights. Leather couch. Noah behind the camera, watching every inch of me not touching his wife.

Cat’s knees open around me. Her fingers in my hair. Her breath catching when I got close. The smell of her. Fuck me.

And Noah, Jesus Christ, Noah telling her not to hide it from him.

I stroke again, harder this time, and my whole body tightens.

This is how men ruin things. 

It starts with an inch. One inch between my mouth and her skin. One inch of air that felt more obscene than contact.

One woman looking at her husband while she kept my head between her thighs. One man I love like family holding a camera instead of telling me to get the fuck away from her.

He didn’t stop it. He watched. He wanted to watch.

And I wanted him watching. Fuck me.

I bite down on the inside of my cheek until the thought cuts off, because that one is too much. That one opens a door I don’t know how to close.

I should not want this. I should not want Cat. I should definitely not want Noah in the room, seeing it happen, seeing me lose whatever grip I have left.

It has been there for years, if I’m honest. Buried under loyalty. Under the fact that they were married, and good, and mine in the only way they were ever allowed to be mine.

Friends. Bosses. Family. Off-limits.

Cat had always been beautiful. That was obvious. But it was never just that. Beautiful is easy to ignore if you have enough practice and a strong enough instinct for self-preservation.

It was the way she saw people. The way she could walk around a client with three pins, a loose strand of hair, and one soft sentence, and suddenly that woman looked like she had remembered she owned her body. The way she could tell Noah he was wrong and make him enjoy it. The way she commanded without trying.

How she looked at me yesterday and made me feel like the line had moved because she wanted it moved.

My hand tightens. I pump myself harder, jaw clenched, shame and heat twisting together until I can barely tell which is which.

I picture her saying my name. Not like a friend. Not like an employee. Nico. Soft. Low. Right above me.

My hips jerk into my fist, and I swear under my breath.

I should stop. I know I should stop. I need a clear head. I need a plan. I need to think about Mara and the bank and whatever rotten old-money bullshit is crawling toward us.

Instead, I’m jerking off in the shower to my boss’s wife while her husband’s voice is still in my head. Excellent. Very stable. Ten out of ten adult behavior.

I come closer than I mean to. I stop moving and brace both hands on the tile, breathing like I just ran here.

I’m not giving the whole thing that easy little ending. I’m not washing Cat down the drain with a guilty orgasm and pretending I handled the problem.

Because I haven’t. And because the problem is not just her.

The phone buzzes on the sink. I go still.

The water keeps hitting my shoulders. The bathroom fan hums. For a second, I consider leaving it there. Letting Mara stew. Letting the phone buzz itself into the sea.

And it buzzes again.

I shut the water off and stand there dripping, still hard, still angry, and still stupid. I slide the shower door open, grab the towel, and pick up the phone with wet hands.

Still dramatic, I see.

We still have an open debt.

I laugh and it sounds ugly in the small bathroom. I type back before I can stop myself.

Stay away from the studio.

The little dots appear immediately. Then disappear. Then appear again.

I hate that she can still do that. Make silence feel like a room I’ve been locked in.

Careful, Nico. You sound almost loyal.

That gets under my skin exactly the way she meant it to.

Almost loyal. Fuck her. I am loyal. And that will be a problem here, too.

Noah gave me a job when my life was bad decisions, a dying laptop, and boxes I kept moving from one cheap room to another. He didn’t ask for the full story. He didn’t make me dress up my past into something respectable. He just looked at my work, looked at me, and decided I could be useful.

Cat did the worse thing. She made me feel like I belonged.

And she did it with coffee on my desk. With “you eating?” when I’d forgotten lunch. With trusting me to handle clients and files and the parts of the studio that were not glamorous but essential.

They gave me a place. A home.  And I let Mara walk into it. It had been long enough that I just didn’t see her coming. I should have.

I should have known better than to think I was safe. Mara does not forget debt. Mara does not misplace leverage. She keeps it wrapped and ready.

My phone buzzes again.

I don’t need to remind you.

My stomach goes cold, and for one stupid second I am twenty-six again, standing in a private archive room that smelled like money, and expensive rot. Scanning images I wasn’t supposed to ask questions about. Cleaning damage. Looking at files attached to names I was meant to forget.

I grip the edge of the sink.

I was done with that. I had built a decent life out of scraps and sarcasm and enough Photoshop skill to make rich people think their pores had never existed. I was safe. Or as close to safe as people like me get.

I type slowly.

• What do you want?

• 4 pm tomorrow. The Stag Room.

The bathroom is cold now, and I’m standing here with a sad half-chub. My body understands when the guillotine has entered the chat.

I should tell Noah. That is the first decent thought.

The second is that if I tell Noah, I have to explain why Mara thinks I owe her anything.

I set the phone down very carefully because if I throw it, I will have to buy a new one, and I may need that money for bail, therapy, or whatever the fuck comes after meeting Mara in a private bar.

I look at myself in the mirror. Wet hair. Tired eyes. A mouth that does not look as funny as it usually tries to be.

A man trying to keep two lines from crossing while standing on both of them.

“Yeah,” I say to the poor bastard in the mirror. “That definitely ends well.”