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greenconversesTitle: Death's Dare
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Rachel/Nico, with appearances from the rest of the cast and the gods
Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians
Summary: After an attempt on her life, Apollo decides Rachel needs a bodyguard and who better to take the job than a certain son of Hades? Too bad they're not going to make things easy for each other, especially when it comes to their feelings.
Notes: I had most of this chapter typed out before I went to Belize, but had issues with it once I came back. I ended up cutting a bunch for this chapter, and saving it for the next because it was just getting too long.
Chapter Nine: Slow
In the past five or so years since he had developed a substantial sex drive, Nico had, thankfully, never had any awkward, morning after encounters with any of the parental units of the girls he had been intimately involved with. There had been that one time in Italy on his birthday where his dad had appeared, quite literally out of nowhere, but then again, his dad was a Greek god; walking in on his son getting a hand job was probably the least surprising or awkward thing he had seen in a hundred years.
Of course he would ruin that streak when it came to Rachel. He never seemed to have any luck with her, which was unfortunate, because Warren Dare was one scary motherfucker.
It wasn’t that Rachel’s dad was particularly tall, buff, or otherwise physically intimidating that made him scary, because Mr. Dare was a fairly average looking guy with a receding hairline in his late forties.
No, the scary part was that the most powerful man in Manhattan – the one who had just been named the world’s most influential billionaire two years in a row, and had finally settled a fifteen year turf war with Donald Trump that had left the other man crying into his ridiculous hairpiece on Larry King three months later – was glowering at him from across the room and probably thinking of a hundred different ways to break him mentally, financially, and then possibly physically.
He might not be a Greek god, but Warren Dare was not someone to make an enemy out of, that was for certain.
Nico supposed he was lucky that Mr. Dare had only caught him kissing Rachel rather than in a more compromising position – he had heard rumors that Mr. Dare had connections with the mafia and other shady organizations that probably wouldn’t hesitate to break Nico’s kneecaps for dabbling with the boss’s daughter if it came around to it.
“Um,” Rachel said, blushing furiously as she tried to untangle herself from his arms. “Hi Daddy. What – what are you doing here?”
Rachel gave him a hard shove in the chest, dislodging his hold on her, and causing him to stumble backwards a couple of inches. He regained his balanced after a moment, and ran a hand through his hair nervously, trying to look anywhere except at Mr. Dare or Rachel’s mussed hair and wet lips.
“Your mother and I hadn’t heard from you in a while so I just thought I’d check up on you, Rachel,” Mr. Dare said tightly, glancing at his daughter briefly. “And now I think I know why.”
His gaze returned to Nico almost immediately, and Nico gulped. He hadn’t even said anything to Mr. Dare, and he could tell that the older man hated him already.
“You couldn’t have called first?” Rachel asked, using the same tone she did when she thought he had done something particularly stupid. “Seriously, Dad, you can’t just drop in without calling me – ”
“Who’s your friend, Rachel?” Mr. Dare interrupted, moving into the kitchen and pausing on the other side of the island. Except for an arched eyebrow, his expression was relatively impassive, but his shoulders were tight with tension. “I don’t think I’ve met him before.”
“Um,” Rachel said, flicking a piece of hair behind her ears and glancing over her shoulder at him. “This is…”
“Nico,” he said, his voice coming out as a squeak. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Nico di Angelo, sir. It’s nice to meet you.”
Mr. Dare looked him up and down speculatively, still not betraying an iota of emotion, before he said, “And how long did you know my daughter before you put your tongue down her throat, Mr. di Angelo?”
It was then that Nico wished Rachel had a first floor apartment so he could will the ground to open up and swallow him whole. Gods, he hated parents. Could this get any more mortifying?
“Dad!” Rachel exclaimed, her cheeks turning a spectacular shade of red and Nico knew his face was probably the same shade, if not deeper in color. “That isn’t any of your business! I’m almost twenty-four years old, and you can’t do this overprotective bullshit anymore!”
“I think, as long as I’m paying your bills, I have some say over who you let stay over in this apartment,” the older man replied, his gaze still focused on Nico. “So, Mr. di Angelo. What’s the answer?”
Rachel whirled around, her eyes flashing. Nico felt heat flow through him; Rachel was hot when she was angry and that anger wasn’t directed at him. “Don’t answer him.”
“Um,” Nico said, glancing between the two Dares and feeling rather like a slab of meat being prepared to be thrown to the lions. “Okay.”
Mr. Dare’s eyes narrowed with dislike, and Nico knew that is the kissing his daughter thing hadn’t already gotten him there, that response had forever put him on the man’s shit list. But he supposed it’d be better to be on Mr. Dare’s bad side than Rachel’s, considering he didn’t have to live with Mr. Dare for the next couple of months.
“Rachel,” he said slowly, turning his gaze on her and Nico wasn’t sure how she didn’t wither under that stare. “May I speak to you in the hall? In private?”
“I guess,” Rachel said with a tight shrug. She took a step toward her father, but then she paused and turned back around, as if thinking better of it.
Before he could even protest, Rachel grabbed him by the collar of his T-shirt and tugged him downward into a fierce kiss. Nico’s knees buckled just a little bit, and he had to put a hand on the counter to steady himself. Gods, where had she learned to kiss like that?
Rachel’s father cleared his throat once again, and she released him after a long moment. He rasped her name as she smirked at him and she let go, turning on her heel.
“Coming, Daddy.”
Nico tried not to stare as she walked away and out of the kitchen, swinging her hips wickedly, but damn it was hard. He caught Mr. Dare’s frosty glower, and winced.
“Sorry,” he said, leaning against the counter. “You know how she is.”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Mr. Dare said, rolling his eyes. “Don’t go anywhere, Mr. di Angelo. I’ll be back to talk to you soon.”
Nico gulped and nodded.
*
Rachel was usually a pretty nonviolent person, but right now she felt rather punching something. Hard.
Her father had a terrible effect on her blood pressure, which is why she avoided talking to him as much as possible, especially about topics they didn’t see eye-to-eye. Topics like boys, and Rachel’s relationship with them.
Her father was almost insanely overprotective of her when it came to men, and disapproved of any male she hung out with he hadn’t already scouted and pre-approved himself. He held the opinion that any man who wanted to spend time with her was just looking for a free meal ticket and couldn’t be, you know, interested in her for reasons beyond her trust fund. It was mildly insulting and demeaning, to say the least.
“If you were trying to prove a point, you went about it the wrong way,” her father said in a low voice, putting his hands on his hips and frowning at her. “What was that lewd display, Rachel?”
“Lewd? Are we living in the 1920s all of a sudden? It was just a kiss, Daddy!” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning against the wall. “People happen to do that when they like each other.”
“He had his hand under your shirt when I walked in. That was not just a kiss, dear.”
“Why does it matter? It wasn’t like I was letting him feel me up in public or something,” Rachel said, feeling herself blush at the thought. “Maybe if you had called first, you wouldn’t have walked in on us and you could’ve met Nico properly.”
Mr. Dare stared at her in confusion. “What do you mean, properly? Rachel, that boy isn’t your – he is just some random barfly you picked up last night, isn’t he?”
It was moments like these where Rachel wished she could tell her father about her role as the Oracle of Delphi. It would just make things so much easier to say, “Hey, Nico’s my bodyguard and he has to stay here so I don’t die horribly!” than coming up with lies all the time. There’d been times where she had gotten close to revealing the secret about the gods to her father, but she had never been able to convince Apollo that it’d be in her best interests for her family to know. Mr. Dare knew she was involved in something strange, what with all the collapsing she did, the way she could predictive moves on the stock market weeks before his consultants could, and the summers at Camp Half-Blood, but as long as she kept her head down and stayed out the press, he was content to ignore her so-called personality quirks.
“Nico is a friend,” she sighed, reaching up to rub her temple. “I’ve known him for years, and he needed a place to stay for a couple of months so I decided to let him live in the spare bedroom. The kissing…thing was a recent development, actually.”
“How recent?”
“Like less than 24 hours, recent. Don’t worry,” she said, catching his slightly horrified look. “It’s just been kissing, I swear. The Dare family honor is still intact.”
Her father was good at ignoring most of her issues, but it was impossible for him to miss the bitterness in her voice. His face softened just a bit and he reached out to touch her on the shoulder.
“Rachel, you know that’s not what I’m worried about. I just don’t want you to get hurt. Men can be vicious, especially when they just want money,” he replied, and Rachel might’ve been touched by his concern, had he not given her this, ‘All men are gold diggers except for the ones I pick out for you,’ speech a hundred times before. “Do you trust this di Angelo boy not to screw you over?”
“I trust Nico with my life,” she said without hesitation. “He wouldn’t do anything to hurt me.”
This declaration did not seem to impress her father at all, and he stared at her for a long time, as if he could get her to rescind her words with just a look. Finally, he sighed loudly and removed his hand from her shoulder.
“Fine. I just hope that your certainty in the boy doesn’t come back to haunt you, dear,” he said, taking a step back from her. “The boy can stay, I suppose. He has been paying you rent, yes?”
“Well, I’m so glad I’ve got your approval,” she said sarcastically. “Because it’s not like I’m a grown woman who can make her own decisions now or anything.”
“I never said he had my approval,” her father replied, glancing toward the kitchen speculatively and then back at her. “Are you sure he’s your type? He looks a little too rough around the edges for you, and I swear he looks familiar…”
“He’s Percy’s cousin.”
“Oh, is he?”
If Rachel had ever hoped to get her father’s approval of Nico (which she hadn’t, considering they weren’t dating and she didn’t care what her father thought about her friends or potential significant others), she had just blown it by mentioning that Nico and Percy were related. Her father had hated Percy the minute they had met eight years ago, and that hatred had only increased after Percy accidentally destroyed the $2 million dollar, gold-plated fountain in her family’s mansion foyer during her seventeenth birthday party. Anything that was connected to Percy in any way, shape, or form was automatically dismissed as irrelevant or unworthy of his notice…except if it was something like this, it seemed.
“Well, then,” Mr. Dare said, straightening his suit jacket in the way Rachel knew meant things were not going to get any better for her or Nico soon. “I guess this means I have even more of a reason to talk to the boy, don’t I?”
“Daddy – ” Rachel protested, but her father had already turned and was marching back into the kitchen where Nico was waiting.
Rachel put her face into her hands and let out a tiny, strangled scream of frustration. This wasn’t fair! She and Nico had just broken through their boundaries, and now she’d be lucky if Nico would even want to look at her again after her father got through with him.
*
Well, Rachel had been wrong about one thing: Nico did look at her after her father left, but it took him almost five full minutes to muster up the courage to talk to her and when he did, he simply said, “I am never touching you again,” before ducking back in his bedroom to hide from her until she needed to be dropped off on campus for class later in the afternoon.
And even then, he had still been awkward around her. He had insisted on using the subway instead of taking the demon bike, probably because the motorcycle would’ve put them in too close of proximity for his comfort. When they had been on the subway, he’d sat across from her and hadn’t looked at her once. By the time they reached her station without speaking once, she’d had enough of this avoidance crap. Her dad was not that bad, dammit.
“Hey,” she said, tugging on his arm as soon as they were free from the crowds. He didn’t turn or stop walking, but she knew she had his attention. “Don’t take anything my dad said seriously, all right? The only reason he gives two shits about me is when it concerns his bank account. He doesn’t know anything about me…or anything about you, for that matter. I don’t care what he thinks about us.”
Nico sighed, and glanced back at her finally. His expression was inquisitive, which was a vast improvement over the grim, shell-shocked mask he’d been wearing for the last couple of hours.
“So there’s an ‘us’ now?” he asked curiously.
Rachel flushed. Although she hadn’t quite meant for it to sound like that, at least it was getting him talking.
“There’s always been a general ‘us,’ in regards to the whole bodyguard thing. We’re obviously in that together,” she explained, following him up the stairs to the street level. She took a deep breath and continued, “But we haven’t really talked about whether or not we want it to become a different sort of ‘us.’”
Nico paused and she bumped into his back, causing her to wobble a little precariously on the stairs. He wrapped a hand around her elbow to steady her, and stepped down beside her. A subway station was probably the worst place to have this conversation, what with all the people milling about and bumping into them, but it was what needed to be said, especially after the events this morning. They needed to honest with each other, in terms of what they were expecting from here on out.
“Hasn’t this already been decided for us? Your one rule is that you can’t – ”
“Have sex, not that I can’t have a boyfriend,” Rachel interrupted, her heart pounding loudly against her chest. “The rule is that I have to remain a virgin, nothing more, nothing less. I’ve never really considered any other options because…well, because there’s never really been a reason before now. I’d be willing to try, if you would.”
Every little bit of that was true. She hadn’t felt this strongly for another person for a long time – not since the early days of her crush on Percy – and it wasn’t just physical attraction either. Under all her exasperation and frustration, she had found she genuinely liked Nico, and she wanted to see if what they had between them could be more than just quick, stolen kisses in her kitchen. If there was anyone she was going to test the limits with, she wanted it to be Nico di Angelo.
“You’re sure?” he asked, tracing the skin on her arm with the tips of his fingers. “Because this is bigger than me just telling your dad to fuck off, which I would never do, by the way, because he is creepy – ”
“My dad is nowhere near as creepy as yours,” she quipped, and the look he gave her implied that he certainly didn’t think that was true. “And I wouldn’t have brought it up if I didn’t know what I was getting into. I just want to us to try. Is that too hard?”
Nico sighed, and let go of her arm. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket and motioned for her to start moving up the stairs again.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I just need some time to think about it,” he replied, falling into step beside her.
“Did my dad freak you out that badly?” she asked, puzzled. She was sure if she would’ve asked Nico the same question just a few hours earlier, he would’ve said yes in a heartbeat. Had her father’s lecture made him realize that maybe she wasn’t what he wanted after all?
“Not really. It’s just…everything that’s gone on between us has happened pretty fast, and I think we should slow down a bit. We – well, I haven’t had any time to digest it yet, anyway.”
“You mean brood about it.”
Nico frowned at her as they reached the street level. “I don’t brood.”
“Liar. You’re the king of brooding,” she said, knocking shoulders with him playfully. “It’s all part of your creepy, ‘I talk to dead people,’ package.
“Whatever,” he rolled his eyes as they exited the subway and started walking along 8th Street. “But all I’m saying is that we shouldn’t just jump into something right away. I’ve still got to be your bodyguard over everything else, so maybe we should just take it slow. See how things develop from here.”
Rachel nodded, realizing that he had a valid point. They were both fairly impulsive people, and that impulsiveness usually generated some pretty disastrous results. The last 24 hours had been a roller coaster of emotion for the both of them, and right now, they could be on an extreme upswing. For all she knew, they could be back to barely tolerating one another by tomorrow night.
They stopped at the intersection, waiting for the light to change, and Rachel let out an restless huff of air.
“I understand. That’s actually a pretty good idea,” she said. “I suppose I just got a little worried, with my dad and all. He likes to scare all my friends away from me, and most of the time he succeeds.”
Nico reached for her, threading his hands into her hair as he pressed his lips to the top of her forehead.
“I’m not scared off that easily,” he said, and she could feel his lips curving into a smile against her skin. “How else do you think I was able stand being around you this long?”
“Oh, very funny,” Rachel replied, pushing him away from her. “Come on, bodyguard, let’s see if you can walk me all the way to campus without running into something really scary.”
The light changed as she spoke, and as they walked, Nico looped an arm with hers and Rachel couldn’t quite help the ridiculous grin that crossed her face at this.
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Rachel/Nico, with appearances from the rest of the cast and the gods
Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians
Summary: After an attempt on her life, Apollo decides Rachel needs a bodyguard and who better to take the job than a certain son of Hades? Too bad they're not going to make things easy for each other, especially when it comes to their feelings.
Notes: I had most of this chapter typed out before I went to Belize, but had issues with it once I came back. I ended up cutting a bunch for this chapter, and saving it for the next because it was just getting too long.
In the past five or so years since he had developed a substantial sex drive, Nico had, thankfully, never had any awkward, morning after encounters with any of the parental units of the girls he had been intimately involved with. There had been that one time in Italy on his birthday where his dad had appeared, quite literally out of nowhere, but then again, his dad was a Greek god; walking in on his son getting a hand job was probably the least surprising or awkward thing he had seen in a hundred years.
Of course he would ruin that streak when it came to Rachel. He never seemed to have any luck with her, which was unfortunate, because Warren Dare was one scary motherfucker.
It wasn’t that Rachel’s dad was particularly tall, buff, or otherwise physically intimidating that made him scary, because Mr. Dare was a fairly average looking guy with a receding hairline in his late forties.
No, the scary part was that the most powerful man in Manhattan – the one who had just been named the world’s most influential billionaire two years in a row, and had finally settled a fifteen year turf war with Donald Trump that had left the other man crying into his ridiculous hairpiece on Larry King three months later – was glowering at him from across the room and probably thinking of a hundred different ways to break him mentally, financially, and then possibly physically.
He might not be a Greek god, but Warren Dare was not someone to make an enemy out of, that was for certain.
Nico supposed he was lucky that Mr. Dare had only caught him kissing Rachel rather than in a more compromising position – he had heard rumors that Mr. Dare had connections with the mafia and other shady organizations that probably wouldn’t hesitate to break Nico’s kneecaps for dabbling with the boss’s daughter if it came around to it.
“Um,” Rachel said, blushing furiously as she tried to untangle herself from his arms. “Hi Daddy. What – what are you doing here?”
Rachel gave him a hard shove in the chest, dislodging his hold on her, and causing him to stumble backwards a couple of inches. He regained his balanced after a moment, and ran a hand through his hair nervously, trying to look anywhere except at Mr. Dare or Rachel’s mussed hair and wet lips.
“Your mother and I hadn’t heard from you in a while so I just thought I’d check up on you, Rachel,” Mr. Dare said tightly, glancing at his daughter briefly. “And now I think I know why.”
His gaze returned to Nico almost immediately, and Nico gulped. He hadn’t even said anything to Mr. Dare, and he could tell that the older man hated him already.
“You couldn’t have called first?” Rachel asked, using the same tone she did when she thought he had done something particularly stupid. “Seriously, Dad, you can’t just drop in without calling me – ”
“Who’s your friend, Rachel?” Mr. Dare interrupted, moving into the kitchen and pausing on the other side of the island. Except for an arched eyebrow, his expression was relatively impassive, but his shoulders were tight with tension. “I don’t think I’ve met him before.”
“Um,” Rachel said, flicking a piece of hair behind her ears and glancing over her shoulder at him. “This is…”
“Nico,” he said, his voice coming out as a squeak. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Nico di Angelo, sir. It’s nice to meet you.”
Mr. Dare looked him up and down speculatively, still not betraying an iota of emotion, before he said, “And how long did you know my daughter before you put your tongue down her throat, Mr. di Angelo?”
It was then that Nico wished Rachel had a first floor apartment so he could will the ground to open up and swallow him whole. Gods, he hated parents. Could this get any more mortifying?
“Dad!” Rachel exclaimed, her cheeks turning a spectacular shade of red and Nico knew his face was probably the same shade, if not deeper in color. “That isn’t any of your business! I’m almost twenty-four years old, and you can’t do this overprotective bullshit anymore!”
“I think, as long as I’m paying your bills, I have some say over who you let stay over in this apartment,” the older man replied, his gaze still focused on Nico. “So, Mr. di Angelo. What’s the answer?”
Rachel whirled around, her eyes flashing. Nico felt heat flow through him; Rachel was hot when she was angry and that anger wasn’t directed at him. “Don’t answer him.”
“Um,” Nico said, glancing between the two Dares and feeling rather like a slab of meat being prepared to be thrown to the lions. “Okay.”
Mr. Dare’s eyes narrowed with dislike, and Nico knew that is the kissing his daughter thing hadn’t already gotten him there, that response had forever put him on the man’s shit list. But he supposed it’d be better to be on Mr. Dare’s bad side than Rachel’s, considering he didn’t have to live with Mr. Dare for the next couple of months.
“Rachel,” he said slowly, turning his gaze on her and Nico wasn’t sure how she didn’t wither under that stare. “May I speak to you in the hall? In private?”
“I guess,” Rachel said with a tight shrug. She took a step toward her father, but then she paused and turned back around, as if thinking better of it.
Before he could even protest, Rachel grabbed him by the collar of his T-shirt and tugged him downward into a fierce kiss. Nico’s knees buckled just a little bit, and he had to put a hand on the counter to steady himself. Gods, where had she learned to kiss like that?
Rachel’s father cleared his throat once again, and she released him after a long moment. He rasped her name as she smirked at him and she let go, turning on her heel.
“Coming, Daddy.”
Nico tried not to stare as she walked away and out of the kitchen, swinging her hips wickedly, but damn it was hard. He caught Mr. Dare’s frosty glower, and winced.
“Sorry,” he said, leaning against the counter. “You know how she is.”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Mr. Dare said, rolling his eyes. “Don’t go anywhere, Mr. di Angelo. I’ll be back to talk to you soon.”
Nico gulped and nodded.
*
Rachel was usually a pretty nonviolent person, but right now she felt rather punching something. Hard.
Her father had a terrible effect on her blood pressure, which is why she avoided talking to him as much as possible, especially about topics they didn’t see eye-to-eye. Topics like boys, and Rachel’s relationship with them.
Her father was almost insanely overprotective of her when it came to men, and disapproved of any male she hung out with he hadn’t already scouted and pre-approved himself. He held the opinion that any man who wanted to spend time with her was just looking for a free meal ticket and couldn’t be, you know, interested in her for reasons beyond her trust fund. It was mildly insulting and demeaning, to say the least.
“If you were trying to prove a point, you went about it the wrong way,” her father said in a low voice, putting his hands on his hips and frowning at her. “What was that lewd display, Rachel?”
“Lewd? Are we living in the 1920s all of a sudden? It was just a kiss, Daddy!” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning against the wall. “People happen to do that when they like each other.”
“He had his hand under your shirt when I walked in. That was not just a kiss, dear.”
“Why does it matter? It wasn’t like I was letting him feel me up in public or something,” Rachel said, feeling herself blush at the thought. “Maybe if you had called first, you wouldn’t have walked in on us and you could’ve met Nico properly.”
Mr. Dare stared at her in confusion. “What do you mean, properly? Rachel, that boy isn’t your – he is just some random barfly you picked up last night, isn’t he?”
It was moments like these where Rachel wished she could tell her father about her role as the Oracle of Delphi. It would just make things so much easier to say, “Hey, Nico’s my bodyguard and he has to stay here so I don’t die horribly!” than coming up with lies all the time. There’d been times where she had gotten close to revealing the secret about the gods to her father, but she had never been able to convince Apollo that it’d be in her best interests for her family to know. Mr. Dare knew she was involved in something strange, what with all the collapsing she did, the way she could predictive moves on the stock market weeks before his consultants could, and the summers at Camp Half-Blood, but as long as she kept her head down and stayed out the press, he was content to ignore her so-called personality quirks.
“Nico is a friend,” she sighed, reaching up to rub her temple. “I’ve known him for years, and he needed a place to stay for a couple of months so I decided to let him live in the spare bedroom. The kissing…thing was a recent development, actually.”
“How recent?”
“Like less than 24 hours, recent. Don’t worry,” she said, catching his slightly horrified look. “It’s just been kissing, I swear. The Dare family honor is still intact.”
Her father was good at ignoring most of her issues, but it was impossible for him to miss the bitterness in her voice. His face softened just a bit and he reached out to touch her on the shoulder.
“Rachel, you know that’s not what I’m worried about. I just don’t want you to get hurt. Men can be vicious, especially when they just want money,” he replied, and Rachel might’ve been touched by his concern, had he not given her this, ‘All men are gold diggers except for the ones I pick out for you,’ speech a hundred times before. “Do you trust this di Angelo boy not to screw you over?”
“I trust Nico with my life,” she said without hesitation. “He wouldn’t do anything to hurt me.”
This declaration did not seem to impress her father at all, and he stared at her for a long time, as if he could get her to rescind her words with just a look. Finally, he sighed loudly and removed his hand from her shoulder.
“Fine. I just hope that your certainty in the boy doesn’t come back to haunt you, dear,” he said, taking a step back from her. “The boy can stay, I suppose. He has been paying you rent, yes?”
“Well, I’m so glad I’ve got your approval,” she said sarcastically. “Because it’s not like I’m a grown woman who can make her own decisions now or anything.”
“I never said he had my approval,” her father replied, glancing toward the kitchen speculatively and then back at her. “Are you sure he’s your type? He looks a little too rough around the edges for you, and I swear he looks familiar…”
“He’s Percy’s cousin.”
“Oh, is he?”
If Rachel had ever hoped to get her father’s approval of Nico (which she hadn’t, considering they weren’t dating and she didn’t care what her father thought about her friends or potential significant others), she had just blown it by mentioning that Nico and Percy were related. Her father had hated Percy the minute they had met eight years ago, and that hatred had only increased after Percy accidentally destroyed the $2 million dollar, gold-plated fountain in her family’s mansion foyer during her seventeenth birthday party. Anything that was connected to Percy in any way, shape, or form was automatically dismissed as irrelevant or unworthy of his notice…except if it was something like this, it seemed.
“Well, then,” Mr. Dare said, straightening his suit jacket in the way Rachel knew meant things were not going to get any better for her or Nico soon. “I guess this means I have even more of a reason to talk to the boy, don’t I?”
“Daddy – ” Rachel protested, but her father had already turned and was marching back into the kitchen where Nico was waiting.
Rachel put her face into her hands and let out a tiny, strangled scream of frustration. This wasn’t fair! She and Nico had just broken through their boundaries, and now she’d be lucky if Nico would even want to look at her again after her father got through with him.
*
Well, Rachel had been wrong about one thing: Nico did look at her after her father left, but it took him almost five full minutes to muster up the courage to talk to her and when he did, he simply said, “I am never touching you again,” before ducking back in his bedroom to hide from her until she needed to be dropped off on campus for class later in the afternoon.
And even then, he had still been awkward around her. He had insisted on using the subway instead of taking the demon bike, probably because the motorcycle would’ve put them in too close of proximity for his comfort. When they had been on the subway, he’d sat across from her and hadn’t looked at her once. By the time they reached her station without speaking once, she’d had enough of this avoidance crap. Her dad was not that bad, dammit.
“Hey,” she said, tugging on his arm as soon as they were free from the crowds. He didn’t turn or stop walking, but she knew she had his attention. “Don’t take anything my dad said seriously, all right? The only reason he gives two shits about me is when it concerns his bank account. He doesn’t know anything about me…or anything about you, for that matter. I don’t care what he thinks about us.”
Nico sighed, and glanced back at her finally. His expression was inquisitive, which was a vast improvement over the grim, shell-shocked mask he’d been wearing for the last couple of hours.
“So there’s an ‘us’ now?” he asked curiously.
Rachel flushed. Although she hadn’t quite meant for it to sound like that, at least it was getting him talking.
“There’s always been a general ‘us,’ in regards to the whole bodyguard thing. We’re obviously in that together,” she explained, following him up the stairs to the street level. She took a deep breath and continued, “But we haven’t really talked about whether or not we want it to become a different sort of ‘us.’”
Nico paused and she bumped into his back, causing her to wobble a little precariously on the stairs. He wrapped a hand around her elbow to steady her, and stepped down beside her. A subway station was probably the worst place to have this conversation, what with all the people milling about and bumping into them, but it was what needed to be said, especially after the events this morning. They needed to honest with each other, in terms of what they were expecting from here on out.
“Hasn’t this already been decided for us? Your one rule is that you can’t – ”
“Have sex, not that I can’t have a boyfriend,” Rachel interrupted, her heart pounding loudly against her chest. “The rule is that I have to remain a virgin, nothing more, nothing less. I’ve never really considered any other options because…well, because there’s never really been a reason before now. I’d be willing to try, if you would.”
Every little bit of that was true. She hadn’t felt this strongly for another person for a long time – not since the early days of her crush on Percy – and it wasn’t just physical attraction either. Under all her exasperation and frustration, she had found she genuinely liked Nico, and she wanted to see if what they had between them could be more than just quick, stolen kisses in her kitchen. If there was anyone she was going to test the limits with, she wanted it to be Nico di Angelo.
“You’re sure?” he asked, tracing the skin on her arm with the tips of his fingers. “Because this is bigger than me just telling your dad to fuck off, which I would never do, by the way, because he is creepy – ”
“My dad is nowhere near as creepy as yours,” she quipped, and the look he gave her implied that he certainly didn’t think that was true. “And I wouldn’t have brought it up if I didn’t know what I was getting into. I just want to us to try. Is that too hard?”
Nico sighed, and let go of her arm. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket and motioned for her to start moving up the stairs again.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I just need some time to think about it,” he replied, falling into step beside her.
“Did my dad freak you out that badly?” she asked, puzzled. She was sure if she would’ve asked Nico the same question just a few hours earlier, he would’ve said yes in a heartbeat. Had her father’s lecture made him realize that maybe she wasn’t what he wanted after all?
“Not really. It’s just…everything that’s gone on between us has happened pretty fast, and I think we should slow down a bit. We – well, I haven’t had any time to digest it yet, anyway.”
“You mean brood about it.”
Nico frowned at her as they reached the street level. “I don’t brood.”
“Liar. You’re the king of brooding,” she said, knocking shoulders with him playfully. “It’s all part of your creepy, ‘I talk to dead people,’ package.
“Whatever,” he rolled his eyes as they exited the subway and started walking along 8th Street. “But all I’m saying is that we shouldn’t just jump into something right away. I’ve still got to be your bodyguard over everything else, so maybe we should just take it slow. See how things develop from here.”
Rachel nodded, realizing that he had a valid point. They were both fairly impulsive people, and that impulsiveness usually generated some pretty disastrous results. The last 24 hours had been a roller coaster of emotion for the both of them, and right now, they could be on an extreme upswing. For all she knew, they could be back to barely tolerating one another by tomorrow night.
They stopped at the intersection, waiting for the light to change, and Rachel let out an restless huff of air.
“I understand. That’s actually a pretty good idea,” she said. “I suppose I just got a little worried, with my dad and all. He likes to scare all my friends away from me, and most of the time he succeeds.”
Nico reached for her, threading his hands into her hair as he pressed his lips to the top of her forehead.
“I’m not scared off that easily,” he said, and she could feel his lips curving into a smile against her skin. “How else do you think I was able stand being around you this long?”
“Oh, very funny,” Rachel replied, pushing him away from her. “Come on, bodyguard, let’s see if you can walk me all the way to campus without running into something really scary.”
The light changed as she spoke, and as they walked, Nico looped an arm with hers and Rachel couldn’t quite help the ridiculous grin that crossed her face at this.
