Page 19 of Driven By Impulse

Ash shook his head. “I didn’t let it get that far. Even back then, the only thing that mattered to me was keeping Hanna safe. In the end, that meant walking away from her before I dragged her down with me.”

Nicco let out a long stream of smoke and seemed to consider Ash carefully. “I can definitely understand that.”

“Dante forgave you,” Ash pointed out.

Nicco shrugged. “He was right to be angry. I left him when he needed me most.”

Ash’s words were fiercer than he intended. “You were just a kid, Nic. You didn’t have a choice.”

Nicco looked at him in the dark, a shadow of a man in cuts of gray and black, lit only by the glow of his cigarette and the sprinkling of the stars above them. “We always have a choice, Ash. Sometimes all we get to choose between is bad options, but we always have a choice.”

Ash leaned forward and snatched the cigarette from Nicco’s lips, the movement so instinctual that he barely realized he was doing it until he felt the butt on his cold fingers.

Nicco didn’t let him get far with it, though. He grabbed Ash’s wrist, pinning their two bodies together in a tangle of tight holds.

“I’m not your responsibility, Ash,” Nicco whispered. His voice was low and rough, and despite himself, Ash felt it rumble through his blood and bones, stirring to life secrets he’d buried a lifetime ago. “You don’t need to keep throwing yourself on the fire for me.”

Ash tugged on his wrist, but Nicco’s grip was iron, surprisingly strong for a man who had lost so much bulk. “I get to decide what’s worth burning for,” he muttered. “And I decided a long fucking time ago that you’re one of those things, Nic.”

The words weighed them down, as if locking their tangled fingers and wrists in place, fingertips too close to parted lips, thumbs brushing against pulse points, locked and frozen in a dangerous moment with far too much said and not nearly enough spoken out loud.

Nicco swallowed, and Ash couldn’t help but follow the motion of his throat, wondering exactly how Nicco would respond with the careful brush of a finger.

Or more.

“You deserve better, Ash,” Nicco replied, so quietly that Ash would have missed it, if he hadn’t been waiting with bated breath for the next muttered words. “You always have.”

Ash released a deep sigh, which only made him more aware of Nicco’s scent, of the way Nicco seemed to invade every space, even when the man himself was wasting away. Maybe that was just how Ash saw him—a man taking up space, filling the room, filling the mind.

“You don’t get to make that decision for me, Nic. I’ve known you for a long time, and I know exactly what I signed up for.”

That wasn’t entirely true. Back in high school, and in the years that followed, Ash hadn’t fully understood himself or what he wanted. His mind had still been consumed with thoughts of Hanna, of could-haves and maybes, and he hadn’t had the language or the interest to parse out the details of what lay in the in-between.

He had known he would follow Niccolo Castiglione anywhere. And the reasons for that hadn’t changed over time, they’d only grown.

Nicco closed his eyes, as if the conversation was somehow physically painful to him, and released his grip on Ash’s wrist. As he did, his thumb brushed the pulse point there, the sliver of skin between the leather of Ash’s glove and the leather of his jacket, and despite his very best efforts, Ash felt his pulse jump and his stomach warm.

They had spent so many nights like this, surveilling, protecting, tracking, often just the two of them out in the cold when the world was quiet all around them, and Ash had to wonder if it had happened then, in the space between the leather and darkness, that he’d begun to feel something other than gratitude for his captain.

Something dangerous and unspoken.

He chanced a glance at Nicco, at the sharp slope of his cheekbones, the Roman nose that had long been found on the faces of leaders and warriors of the stories, that truly belonged on Nicco. In biking circles, Nicco had always been a little too pretty, a little too thin, sophisticated, elegant almost. He’d shown Ash a photograph of his mother just once, in the early years, and the resemblance was undeniable, dark European beauty, olive skin that tanned to a soft golden shade in the summer. Dante’s eyes were a deep blue, almost purple, but Nicco’s were the shade of coffee, the soft brown of a morning cappuccino, fading to the depths of rich espresso when he lost control of his emotions.

Ash couldn’t remember the last time Nicco had lost control of his emotions. These days, it seemed like Nicco didn’t feel a goddamned thing at all.

Which was why Ash’s blood ran hot when Nicco spoke again. Nicco’s voice was lower, barely audible in the nearly silent night, but Ash heard the tremble there, something no one else, save maybe Dante, would have known to look for, something that belied a feeling, a need, a desire…a hope.

For both of them.

Because Ash knew that harsh edge all too well, and the way his own voice had gotten low and needy and conflicted in the moment he’d had Hanna pushed up against a tree, and he’d known it from the way his own thoughts always seemed a little shattered when he dared to think of Nicco as anything other than his captain.

“Ash, I…” Nicco swallowed and shifted on the bike, the movement bringing them those extra inches closer, bridging a space that had seemed like a chasm, no longer stretching beyond what could be crossed. “I…need…”

Ash’s heart stuttered, moving too fast, too harsh, just like everything they did. Nic was close, almost too close, as if the ending between them had been inevitable from the moment the book had been opened.

Ash’s own words were barely a whisper when he responded. “What do you need, Nic?”

Nicco hesitated, and that was their undoing.