Page 23 of Driven By Impulse

Nicco and Dante, with their dark hair, light brown skin that tanned deeper in the summer, with noses their mother had called strong, but looked as though they belonged on ancient silver coins, they would never be invisible.

Niccolo pulled the cigarette from his lips on muscle memory alone before remembering it wasn’t lit. Strange, that when he felt his tether to the natural world weakening, he fell back into thoughts of his family.

Or perhaps not so strange at all.

Lombardo had been his father, despite both of their best efforts to forget that. And Niccolo had been the one to shuffle him off this mortal coil, so to speak.

You joke about a kink three times, it’s no longer a joke.

Ash had said that to him once, on a late-night surveillance job when there had been nothing to do but hope they would have nothing to do. If Nicco’s mirror image had dimmed, he knew the dimming hadn’t stopped with him alone. These days, Ash didn’t laugh like that, didn’t joke the way he once had, filling quiet moments with a kind of softness that made a difference for men who had only lived between hard choices.

Gray and Xander had teased Ash, asking him exactly what kinks he was referring to, but Nicco had turned his head away, hoping his hair would hide a flush he hadn’t wanted the others to see.

He hadn’t wanted to feel.

Because the tangled thoughts of Ash and kinks had short-circuited his mind, tightened his riding pants, and driven Nicco to very unwelcome distraction.

There were some things a good Catholic boy just didn’t do—even if his mother was no longer around to see them.

Coveting their best friend’s filthy secrets was one of them.

That had been years before, and Nicco had found a path forward from the guilt and shame the church loved to preach. Something about committing the ultimate, and ultimately biblical, sin of killing his own father, even in a desperate act of self-defense, had really put the other sins into stark relief.

But overcoming a fear of damnation and eternal hellfire and crossing a line with the one person who had always had his back felt like two different worlds.

Which, of course, hadn’t stopped him from almost dragging Ash into his chest the night before, hadn’t stopped him from almost commanding that Ash drop the cigarette or find out the consequences. It was almost a relief of sorts, to know his cock could still harden and throb, even when he felt so completely separate from his own body.

Maybe it was the person.

Or people.

At that, Nicco almost did light the cigarette.

His feelings for Ash were a tangle of memories and emergency landings and finish lines crossed with broken ankles and skinned knees. A man could fall in love in the haze of battle for a million and one reasons.

But that went nowhere toward explaining the curiosity that Ash’s Greek Fury of a foster sister piqued in him. Nicco wasn’t fool enough to think that lust was a reason to stay on the right side of the soil, but he could appreciate an entertaining reprieve.

And Hanna Van Rijn was most definitely entertaining, with her fiery hair and her temper to match. She was bold, brash, and unapologetic, a survivor who could stand at the end of the world and hold her head up high. Nicco knew that both he and Ash could recognize like in her, even if she had grown up on a pretty little street in a pretty little town.

“That is absurd. Dashiel, I swear to fuck…”

As if on cue, Nicco heard shouting from the living room. Hanna’s voice was rich and throaty, and it carried through with confidence of commands spoke from the diaphragm. She was no wilting flower, not even standing toe-to-toe with a man nearly a foot taller than her, covered in tattoos and piercings. The night they had arrived, she’d nearly cut Ash’s throat without a second thought.

Nicco looked down at the cigarette in his hand. He hadn’t even gotten around to lighting it. It was just a prop on a stage of a play only he would see. Ash popped in sometimes, but Nicco was afraid they both knew how the show would end.

Instead of nicotine, he sucked in one last lungful of cool mountain air, and stepped back into the house.

Hanna stood halfway up the staircase. She wore a long green dress, the color of the forest after a heavy rain, a shade as rich as the red of her hair, and a pair of strappy black heels to match. She had knotted her hair up in some complicated style, and long earrings spilled from her ears, matching the elegant necklace draped around her neck.

And, of course, she wore a scowl on her face directed at Ash.

Nicco took just a moment to appreciate the scene. He’d only seen Hanna in her uniform—and the night they had arrived, in her pajamas, if an oversized tank could be called that—and the dress clung to her every curve, making her look statuesque and strong, making her look like a queen.

A queen at odds with her knight, because Ash still wore his riding jacket and boots, and the scowl on his face matched Hanna’s own.

“Neighbors can hear you,” Nicco said, stepping into the living room.

Hanna and Ash turned to him at the same time. “There are no neighbors.”