17. Salvatore
17
Salvatore
“What do women want?”
Marcel gives me a bewildered look as we drag the dead weight of Donny Lovera by his underarms. We haul the pulp of a man into an adjacent cell. He’s not a small man to move, even for the two of us, and he collapses into the dirt in a lifeless heap.
“That’s above even my qualifications, Sal,” Marcel gasps, wiping grime off his forehead. He takes out his phone. “Hey, Siri—”
“No, forget it.” I wave him off, annoyed that I even asked a question like that.
When Donny doesn’t move, I give him a diagnostic kick in the ribs. A pathetic whimper confirms he’s still alive.
I take out a cigarette as we leave. Marcel slides the wine cellar rack back into place and latches it.
After today, Contessa has me in knots.
Our interactions feel like a Rorschach test, each of us coming away from the same image with completely different impressions. It’s not working out the way I thought it would—but it’s still working out. Do I sit back and coast or grab the wheel and risk over-correcting?
“We’ll try him again tomorrow,” Marcel says.
“No. Give him a few days.”
Donny hasn’t been the most cooperative prisoner yet, but he’ll come around. They usually do. We make our way out of the deep wine cellar and into the fading evening, dim and cold. I had every intention of bringing Contessa out here with me for the first time tonight.
Having her by my side, making her watch, getting her used to this new part of her life.
Couldn’t do it.
I sent her upstairs with Ava to go over the shopping haul.
“Is something going on with Contessa?” Marcel asks, sensing the mood. “You don’t ask something like that for no reason.”
We stop in the shadow of the house.
“It’s nothing,” I say, even if I don’t believe it. “Did you look into the Lowry girl?”
“Address, phone number, employment history, family. Her uncle’s ex-NYPD, but it wasn’t a notable career. No indication that they’re close.”
“I want you to make contact. Bring her here.”
Marcel hesitates.
“Define ‘bring her.’”
If I send Marcel out to drag the girl here kicking and screaming, Contessa won’t be happy about it. I consider our options, my eyes flicking toward her window by sheer habit. It’s empty.
“Send an invitation for this weekend. Contessa’s engagement party. If she doesn’t accept, then we’ll have to make different arrangements."
“Is this a real engagement party or is that just the bait?”
“A small party will be the warm-up everyone needs to learn how to behave at the wedding.”
“A rehearsal for the rehearsal,” Marcel says, his own subtle way of calling out my flimsy reasoning. I’m truthfully just looking for any little excuse to try and make her happy, to see her smile at me how she did today. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Before he can pass into the house, I call after him,
“And hey. If you see Vinny, tell him no more alcohol with Contessa’s dinner. Water only.”
I see the moment the meaning clicks for him.
I finish my cigarette as the light dims over the horizon. High heels stomp on the stairs just beside me. My expectations stir, and for a half-second, I expect—maybe hope— to see Contessa.
As if I wouldn’t have to lay into her for wandering around unsupervised.
It’s Vera who stumbles halfway down the handful of steps. I barely reach out in time as she slings into my arms.
“You reek,” I snarl at her, pushing her back onto her feet. She could pass for a brewery by smell alone, her glazed eyes glaring up at me.
“My housekeeper called,” she says, teetering against her own drunken rage. She shoves her phone at me. “Someone broke in. Ransacked the place. My place. Tore up my whole goddamn house. Every last room—”
She tries to show me the pictures, but between being uncoordinated and angry, it’s just a blur of light. I push it away.
“Then you should be grateful you were here. And stop sending your fucking housekeeper out there.”
“My plants,” she spits, as if the word means something significant. She pushes her hands against my chest, almost sending herself to the ground again and drops her phone. Her sunglasses go lopsided on her face. “When does it end, Sal? How do you tie a bow on this one because Gio, he’s not gonna stop. Not when you marry her. Not when she’s on your fourth fucking baby. It won’t matter. He’ll keep coming. I want to go home , Salvatore.”
“You are home,” I snap. “Why are you sobbing over some fucking house. Where’s Nate?
How about that? Do you have the first fucking clue where your son is?”
She slurs her half-answer.
“He’s with his sister.”
It’s no answer at all.
“Right, because god forbid she get to have a childhood, too busy raising the both of you.”
“Didn’t ask where Lana was though, did you?” Vera asks, in that cold voice. Her voice.
Not the alcohol. For the briefest moment, she looks up at me from those skewed glasses, razor-sharp clarity glimmering in her black eyes. The same eyes we both share. She can dye her hair, shape her face, and sculpt her nose under scalpels—but her eyes remain, the last link to the family she just can’t shake. She hides them, but I wonder if one day she’ll have one of her fits and scratch them out, too.
“No, you just wanna know where the little soldier is.”
“Because he’s six .”
“Because he’s useful ,” she slurs, her smile verging on insane, so sure that she has the whole world figured out in this one manic moment.
I push past her, trying to get into the house before I really lose my temper on her. She can’t follow me up the stairs, falling over herself. She tries to crawl after me on all fours like a dog.
“I know what you’re going to do!” she yells after me, her voice cracking on the words.
“How old are you going to let him get before I bury him?”
I slam the front door, putting it between me and Vera. It’s probably unnecessary. It’ll take her a half hour to make it up the handful of stairs, if she even does. In her state, she might end up sleeping out there. If she doesn’t want to be in here with her family, let her fucking freeze outside for a night.
Marcel hovers just inside the doorway, on standby and waiting to intervene if necessary. We trade exasperated stares, a dozen thoughts shared in a single look.
“Should I bring her inside…?”
I swallow a few angry remarks before I find something worth actually saying.
“Just send someone to make sure she doesn’t wind up in the pool.”
He falls into step with me.
“So,” he says, carefully, “Is Vera off the engagement party guest list, or will she be attending as the entertainment?”
I don’t have it in me to match his humor.
“I’m about to tear through this whole house and pour out every fucking bottle.”
“Being sober hardly makes her any better,” Marcel points out. “Maybe a little more coherent. Not sure that’s a good thing.”
“Do you know where Nate and Lana are?”
“No,” he admits. It’s not his responsibility to know when he has a thousand other little things to keep track of.
“At this rate, I’m about to have to add babysitter to our list of ranks.”
“I can—”
“No, forget it. I’ll find them.”
We go our separate ways.
Vera is rabidly convinced I will raise Nate into a soldier and get him killed. I am just as convinced that with a mother like her, he’ll never grow old enough for me to have the chance.
The kids aren’t in the split bedroom they share with their mother, nor in the kitchen or even the entertainment room. A garish and obnoxiously loud YouTube video plays to an empty room.
I climb higher in the house, my temper fueled by concern like gasoline to fire. Every empty room grates against my annoyance, until I reach the third floor, where too many voices drift from Contessa’s bedroom. The door is cracked open a sliver, spilling gold light into the hallway. Inside, the room is brimming with more life than I’ve ever seen.
Contessa, Ava, Vinny, and Lana crowd in front of the vanity mirror, surrounded by all the shopping bags from earlier today. The girls—and apparently Vinny— are fussing over makeup.
Nate has stripes of lipstick like war-paint on his face, and he jumps up and down on Contessa’s bed while Ava pathetically pleads with him to stop.
Contessa doesn’t seem to mind, grinning ear to ear as she brushes something soft and powdery over Lana’s cheeks.
Anger drains out of me like a lanced wound.
I push open the door.
All faces turn to me. Vinny’s eyelids are bright blue.
The joy in the room cools a few degrees at my arrival.
“Mr. Mori,” Contessa smiles, the only adult who does not flinch. “How nice of you to make your appointment at my makeup studio. Come in.”
I’ve felt more comfortable held at gunpoint, but I step into the bedroom regardless.
“Why are they in here?” I growl, ignoring Contessa’s attempts to roleplay.
“It wouldn’t be a very good makeup studio if I didn’t have multiple customers, would it?”
She crosses over to me and feigns inspecting my hands.
“They saw all the bags being brought up from downstairs,” she whispers under her breath. “They followed Ava and Vinny, and then we heard the yelling through the window. I didn’t know what to do, so I just tried to distract them.”
I fight back a sigh.
“We’ve been having fun, haven’t we?” she asks the children.
“Tessa has a lot of nice makeup,” Lana nods.
Ava has shrunk down beside the vanity until she’s almost as small as Lana, avoiding my stare.
“So,” Contessa continues, a dangerous grin in her voice. “What would you like for your appointment, Mr. Mori? A makeover? Maybe a manicure?”
“Is ‘no’ an option?” I grumble.
“Not on my menu.”
“She’s a natural artist, Sal,” Vinny declares.
“You could pass for a clown,” I tell him.
“I know,” he cries dramatically, clutching his chest, “it brings out my true nature so beautifully…”
“He did that to himself,” Contessa explains, wanting no credit for the monstrosity on Vinny’s face.
“Here you go, Uncle Sal,” Nate says excitedly, coming at me with a tube of lipstick. I disarm him and scoop him up off the bed.
“Uncle Sal’s allergic,” I tell him.
I expect that to put an end to it, not to make Nate swipe his face against my shirt claiming that he’s allergic, too. When he looks back up at me, he could be mistaken for a county fair winning tomato. He leaves the rest of the color in an imprint on my shoulder.
I set him on the ground, but the damage is done.
“Oh, no,” Contessa says, caught between laughing and being faintly horrified. She goes after Nate with a makeup wipe, erasing the rest of the evidence. I can’t help but notice how she looks like this—down on his level, laughing as she chases down the endless smudges of red all over his cheeks and nose. Like she’s done it a dozen times before. For a brief moment, it’s easy to picture her with a baby of her own on her hip, and another in her belly.
But I catch the sight of the lipstick out of the corner of my eye, just brief enough that I could mistake it for blood. I scrub my hand over my face, trying to chase out the image. Christ, she ignores the way he fights like a cat getting a bath.
“Ta da, magic,” she says, when Nate is cleaned up. She bounces back onto her feet, then winces at the sight of the stain. “I don’t have any magic that works on that.”
As if I care about a single shirt. One of my black suits in my ‘black suit collection’ as she put it. That little observation shouldn’t still be living at the back of my head, but apparently, it is. I wonder if she doesn’t like the monochrome nature of my wardrobe. Then, I wonder why it fucking matters.
“Ava, go put the kids to bed, and see that they stay there,” I say. “I don’t care if they sleep. Just make sure you keep an eye on them.”
“Yes, sir.” Ava corrals the kids out. I catch Vinny on the way by.
“I need you to cater an event for this weekend. Maybe 20 people. Nothing heavy, just a Sunday afternoon engagement party. Can you manage?”
“Short notice and high stakes? That’s my element,” Vinny grins. He claps my shoulder. “I’ll have it done.”
“You can leave the makeup off. If I want a clown at the party, I’ll outsource.”
He hangs his head.
“One passion at a time, I suppose.”
His dramatic rendition of something from I, Pagliacci fades in the stairwell, taking the last of the energy in the room with him.
Contessa stands alone in the chaos, makeup littered over the floor, glitter sparkling over the vanity like a minefield. She stands rigidly, as if lined up for the firing squad.
“Don’t bother,” I growl, shutting the door. “I’m too angry at her to be angry at you, too. How much did they hear?”
“With the window closed? Nothing much. Some yelling. Nate didn’t seem to care, but I think it bothered Lana. We could tell it was their mom’s voice, at least. What happened?”
“Vera’s just drunk and letting her kids run wild in the meantime.”
“She sounded a little bit more than just drunk.” She hesitates, obviously torn between wanting to ask and thinking better of it. She sits down on the end of her bed. “What happened between the two of you? Not just out there, I mean…in general.”
“You mean why does she hate me?”
I throw one of the purses out of my way and sit next to her.
“I can’t speak for her. I don’t know if she hates you or not—”
“She does.”
There’s no question of that, no chance for misunderstanding. Vera’s made sure of that over the years.
“Then sure. Why does she hate you?”
It’s not a complicated answer.
“Her husband died. Nate and Lana’s father. He had good connections, met Vera in law school, came from a political family. I wanted him involved. He wanted to be involved. The only person who didn’t approve was Vera. You can imagine which one of us won him over in the end.”
Contessa winces softly.
“And then he died because of it,” she surmises.
“.22 to the back of his head in a parking lot outside of his law office. Staged to look like a mugging.”
Contessa frowns, quickly swerving away from the details.
“It doesn’t sound like you made him get involved,” she reasons.
As if reason would mean anything to someone like Vera.
“No. But if you ask Vera, I may as well have.” I brush past it. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, he’s dead. And in some way, that’s my fault. Vera will always see it like that. She swore she’d never come back here, but right now, she doesn’t have another choice. So, she’s making it everyone’s problem.”
“I’m sorry,” she says softly.
“For what? I don’t need Vera to forgive me. We were never close to begin with, and I never asked for it. The women in this family, I don’t know what it is, but they mourn for life. No one tells them they should, but they always do. Something in the blood, maybe.”
Her attention drifts down to my shirt. Her fingers trace the buttons on it as she thinks, pursing her lower lip.
“Talking about Vera won’t fix anything. All of us are like this, in one way or another. Me, her, my brother.”
“ Brother ?” she asks, her touch skipping in surprise.
“Nico. He’s in prison,” I tell her quickly, waving off the so-called revelation. “Let’s just say, he isn’t getting out on good behavior. You’ll never meet him, and as a rule, the family doesn’t talk about him.”
“Why?” she asks, searching my face as if looking for damage. She doesn’t find any.
“Because he isn’t our problem anymore. There’s what Vera and I are—irrational in our own ways, and then there’s what Nico is. What Vera feels for me, Nico feels for everyone. He wasn’t good for the family.”
I see Contessa’s eyes waver a moment, more questions bubbling up in the quiet. Maybe she feels that way, too. Not suited for her own family. But it’s not the same.
“I want you to stay away from Vera, at least for now.”
“I’ll stay out of her way,” she promises me.
Her touch reaches the lipstick stain, smearing red across her fingertips.
For a brief moment, the image of Donny’s broken nose and split lip flashes before my vision. It could be either one, really. Lipstick or blood. It’s the second shirt I’ve ruined in as many days. I push her hand away, annoyed, a headache building behind my temple.
“You’re so tense,” Contessa says softly.
“Vera’s uncontrollable when she’s like this. I don’t like being out of control,” I explain shortly. “That’s all.”
Maybe it’s not the whole truth, but it’s close enough.
Contessa interrupts me before I can get up and change clothes.
“Here, then,” she says urgently, the words all but a whisper as she holds my gaze. She hesitates a second, then twists off her shirt. In one motion, she has my attention. She slides off her shorts, too, leaving herself in just a lacy pair of underwear and dark stockings, with the diamond necklace that soaks up all the light in the room.
Like something out of a magazine spread, Contessa slides herself into my lap.
It doesn’t matter if I didn’t see it coming. The wanting smoothly shifts into gear, drowning out any surprise or suspicion.
Fuck, her eyes put those diamonds to shame.
“Find something else to be in control of in the meantime,” she whispers. Her bra unsnaps, breasts swelling free.
She offers herself up, offers me that gorgeous body like a medicine I can take.
She takes my hand, puts it around her delicate little throat, and closes my fingers around her neck.
Control.
My vision narrows, tension tightening in my thighs, my pulse pumping low at the base of my spine.
I scoff.
“Is that how you always want to fuck, girl? Always one of us pissed off, taking out our problems on your poor cunt?”
“It’s cheaper than therapy.”
“And it might actually fucking work,” I growl, chasing off that throbbing in my head with the taste of her sweet mouth. With one motion I have our roles switched, her pinned down beneath me. She tumbles against the mattress, gasping with anticipation as I get her beneath me, nails sliding across my skin.
She offers herself up to me like a hunted thing.
Even with a quarter million bouncing on her collarbones, my eyes snap to the steep plunge of her cleavage, the swell of her breasts. I hold her by the throat with one hand. I rub her breasts until her nipples are pink and straining, begging for more attention.
Contessa offers me control and I take it, even if I don’t really understand the why behind it. All those tedious, complicated questions are drowned out in the heat of my want for her, reducing its meaning down to pure, simple need.
I tease the little nubs of her nipples raw and aching, then salve them with my tongue.
She whines sweetly the longer I spend on her. She has the kind of tits you could drown in, so much real estate to leave my marks on. I map out the topography of her body with my mouth.
I reach the peak again and lave my tongue in circles around the bud, the way I know she wants me to do to her clit.
The girl always fucking underestimates me. Always thinks I’ll be simple and go right for her pussy, like an arrow to a target. She never seems to expect the side quests that have my lower teeth scraping against her nipple until her toes curl and her eyes glisten.
I take my time getting there, but finally, I slide my hand down to Contessa’s pelvis and her soft, freshly split cunt.
She runs her hands over her blazing pink tits, squirming with anticipation. I cut off her moan with the clench of my hand, making her eyelids flutter and her legs open wider.
I haven’t given her enough air to beg me, but she telegraphs it with her body—thighs apart, hips lifting, begging for attention.
She must still be sore from last night, and she still wants me to be rough with her.
Sometimes, I can’t decide if Contessa is brave or stupid. Or maybe, she’s like me. Maybe she’s just greedy, too.
There is always some part of me that wants her, some beast in me that never really sleeps.
It just waits, quieter sometimes than others. Now it stirs. Rises. Possessive and hungry, its intent fixed on her.
I kiss the frantic breaths from her lips, wedging her soft body open beneath me. Her chest is pink, nipples training, her cunt dripping hungrily. She stares up at me, mute, mouth caught in a silent gasp as I slap my hand between her legs and roughly grope that soft, trembling pussy.
Her legs twist, breaths ragged with want. God, she wants to beg me. A vibration hums against my fingertips around her throat. I soften my hold.
“Tell me what you want,” I growl against her ear. That same question that keeps coming back, again and again, never leaving me alone. The fly buzzing around my head.
Contessa doubles down. Her fingers tighten around mine, making me gently squeeze against her neck again, giving her no room to speak. Her dark eyes say it all.
Fuck it.
I’ve known from the start what gets her off. She is always at her wettest, her most wild, when I take charge of her. When I make that little cunt do what I want. I knew damn well she couldn’t handle that for her first time. I don’t know if she can handle it for her second. But eventually, she’ll have to, and it might as well be tonight.
I roll her onto her side, tearing those panties down her thighs. I twist them up and bind her hands with them, forcing her arms above her head. I link them on the headboard, leaving her trapped like that. She glances up at it, twisting against her restraints, her breath hitching.
“You offered me control,” I remind her, running my hands freely down her body. I wonder if she expected how far I would take it.
“Take it,” she gasps sweetly.
My hand closes on her throat again, squeezing until she smiles with the pleasure of it. Her breath is frantic with anticipation. I’ve taken her hands, her voice, her breath. I’ve left nothing but her bare cunt, all mine for the taking.
I plunge my fingers plunge at her pussy. She groans as I scissor two digits into her cunt and swirl the pad of my thumb into her clit. She learns the game quickly, how she can fight against the binds on her wrists, writhing against my hold as I tease her, harder and harder.
My fingers come away soaked and dripping.
I smear the taste of her across her own open lips.
“Look how badly you want me to use you.”
She sucks on my fingers as though I’ve given her a treat.
My cock twitches hard at the sight, throbbing with a phantom pulse of pleasure.
“So fucking eager to spread your legs around my cock, aren’t you? Does it get you off, taking it raw? Knowing that I’m going to fill you up in every way?”
Her pupils are dark and wild with the fantasy, teeth biting into her lip.
I push inside that gripping heat. I’m not gentle, but I am cautious. Too fast, and it’ll still spoil the game. She chokes on her own gasp, but I feel it—the jolts that travel through her whole body, tensing in her thighs around my waist, clenching in her pussy around my dick.
She goes tense, bracing. Her mouth opens around a breath she can’t take. A cry she can’t utter. I grind inside her, her expression twisting, showing me a glimpse of those pretty teeth. I release her throat, letting her get some air. She gets enough for a single word—“ Harder .”
I’ve always said it—Contessa gets what she wants.
I hold her by her throat and fuck her cunt. Our motions shudder together, become one single-minded pursuit of pleasure. I love the way she looks at me like this. She surrenders everything to me. Every last part of her: her body, her pleasure, her safety. She begs me to take her to that edge, to that dangerous place just on the precipice of pain, but trusts I won’t let her fall into the other side of it. Fucked to the point of breaking without being broken. Surrender without sacrifice.
There is no better control than this.
Pleasure rolls in waves as I fuck her, pushing her onto her back and stroking my cock between her legs. Her mouth opens wordlessly, eyes meeting mine as the tension shakes in her body.
“Look at you. Completely at my mercy.”
She nods, body rolling and twisting in time with mine.
“But you always are, aren’t you? Even if you had your hands, they couldn’t even get you off. It’s me or nothing, Contessa. It always has been.”
She looks at me like she believes every word, eyes wide and face pink with exertion, like I am the only thing in the world that can make her feel.
Christ, that does obscene things to a man’s ego.
I give her another break. I let her breathe, slowly stroking myself inside her, like tending a fire that I can’t let go out. She lets out all those little pent-up moans and whimpers while I’m barely moving in her.
“Tell me—” she tries to beg between breaths, twisting underneath me, utterly lost in the fantasy and dragging me down with her. Her hand slides over her belly, fingernails dragging. “Tell me how you’re gonna use me.”
Her begging sets loose that instinctual, pent-up desire always chained up at the back of my thoughts. The single-minded drive that takes over when I spread her legs open. I roll my hips against hers again until a little sound chokes on her lips.
“I’m gonna put that pretty little cunt of yours to work for me.”
She swallows, nodding along, clinging to every word.
“Beg for it,” I command her. “Beg for me to put a baby in you.”
“Please—” she says immediately, not a shred of hesitation. Her hips lift, as if she’s trying to drive me into her womb, pain and pleasure breaking across her expression as she takes me all the way to her cervix. “ There —” she gasps, the headboard shuddering as her arms jerk against the restraints. “Please, please—”
“It’ll hurt—”
She shakes her head frantically, begging me even more, soaked and moaning.
“I want you to fill me up,” she gasps.
Fuck.
I flip her onto her stomach, put her face down in the mattress, and leverage her ass in the air. I take her from behind, pound her roughly, driving deep inside her, the headboard clattering frantically against the wall.
Her cry rises. I take her roughly by the hair, forcing her head down where her voice is muffled. She grips the sheets, white-knuckled.
“That’s my good girl. So perfect. You take it so well.” Again and again, I find her limits—hell, find my own—and push through them.
From this angle, I give her all of me, let her take every inch.
“How does it feel,” I breathe against her ear, “to be made for something? Look how deep you can take me. Like you were made for me—made to be filled up with my baby. Bred like an animal in heat—”
She moans into the sheets.
I smack my hand against her trembling ass, making her body jolt under me.
For a mindless amount of time, there’s nothing but the driving pleasure inside, the force of my hips burying my cock to the hilt, strong thrusts that make her quake from head to toe. It drags a groan even from me, the pleasure flexing tight in my groin.
Contessa surprises me. She rides it out for everything it’s worth, until we’re fucking like two animals with a single-minded pursuit.
“I’m close,” she cries out.
She doesn’t need to. She telegraphs it with her body, with the rising pitch of her cries.
The rougher I am, the more she begs me for it, and it drives me wild. I rut into her hard, relentlessly driving her to that point that makes her scream. Now that I’ve given her breath back, it’s like she’s determined to get it all out of her lungs, the way she moans and cries out. She tries to turn her head into the mattress.
“Let me hear you,” I order. She obeys, her cry filling the room. “That’s it, gorgeous. You think I give a damn if the whole house hears you? Let them know how deeply and thoroughly my good girl is being fucked. I don’t have any shame. I would take you over my desk or on the dining room table if it suited me—you’re mine . I can have you whenever, however I want—"
I’m so fucking close. I want to hear it all, everything I’m doing to her. I want to hear the way I make her feel when my cock is hitting that back wall with deep, pounding thrusts that push her into a frenzy.
She orgasms hard for me, screaming raw against the sheets with tears in her eyes.
Her pleasure is a catalyst. Blinding. Sensory overload. I fuck her through the peak of it, into that tight, fluttering heat. I fill her up, snapping my hips to hers, giving her all that I can in those last moments. I fill up her cunt with a hot gush of cum, burying it deep just like she asked.
It rolls a softer, second orgasm through her as I hit my finish.
When I pull out, I leave only her slick mess between her thighs.
Mine, I don’t waste a fucking drop.
She melts into a trembling, silent mess, every breath a ragged sound. For a few seconds, I lay there in the aftermath, the relief like a frequency vibrating through me.
The haze of the room gradually grows sharp and clear.
Contessa is frozen in the moment, those soft sides rising with her breaths, hands still pinned above her head. I run my hand down her back, trying to gauge the state of her. She hums softly. I take her hands down from the headboard, throwing the panties aside and rubbing the feeling back into her arms.
“There you go,” I mumble, as she comes back into her headspace. “You did so good, baby. And only your second time.”
She curls against me on instinct.
The heat in the room dissipates slowly, bringing a clarity to the haze of raw instincts fading from my bloodstream. It feels like I waking up from a bizarre wet dream.
Contessa rolls over onto her side. I realize, with a jolt, she is also checking on me as much as I am checking on her.
Why?
I try to shove it down, ignore it, reaching for the next purposeful thing to focus on. Once our breathing is calm and synched, the room cool, I get a tissue to clean her up.
“Sal,” she calls out to me.
I know that tone.
“Is this the part where you start asking questions again?” I ask, deflecting her gentlehearted concern with the same urgency I avoided Nate’s attempt to cover me in lipstick.
She looks at me like I’ve read her mind, guilt flashing across her expression like a news ticker. Local woman makes predictable post-sex small talk. Textbook. I throw the tissue away.
“I’m going to have to start fucking you more thoroughly if you still have the energy to ask bullshit questions. If I’d still kidnap you if you were a worm.”
“Would you, though?”
“No.”
She slings a pillow at me and misses. Her smile betrays her, its softness hitting me somewhere low in my stomach. A sucker punch.
“Fine,” she teases playfully. “Fuck and run, then, if that’s all you can do.”
“You want me to lay there and coddle you?”
“Yes,” she pouts sweetly.
I didn’t expect her to agree, and it shows. I’m frozen in the moment, some deep-seated desire to appease her running up against my own uncertainty. I linger a second too long.
“You don’t really have to, Sal,” she adds softly, fingers still stroking faintly over her belly, as if tracing the path the pleasure carved through her, kindling the fantasy neither one of us can talk about when not in the heat of the moment.
And when did she start calling me that? It doesn’t feel like the first time, but somehow, I didn’t notice before. “I just wanted to know if it worked. If you feel better.”
“Can’t ask a man that right after sex, Contessa. The answer’s always the same.”
“I’m taking that as a victory anyway.”
…Why does the girl care how I feel? Stressed or miserable, the worse off I am, the better it should be for her. It brings back the same relentless question that has plagued me all day.
“My turn,” I say. She perks up, all too eager for the quid pro quo. “What do you want?” I asked her earlier, but she answered me in the moment. The immediate, carnal need.
She rolls those big eyes at me, laughing. “Sal, we just went shopping—”
“No,” I cut her off, take her face in my hand. She freezes under my touch. “What do you want from me, Contessa? You’re not fighting me anymore. You aren’t asking about your father or hatching escape plans. Twice now, you’ve let me finish in you. Maybe it just gets you off, gets you over the edge. Sooner or later, it won’t just be bedroom talk. It’ll be the real thing.”
Her neck flushes with heat, cheeks turning pink as her hand jolts away from her belly. She always looks guilty when she feels something she thinks she shouldn’t. Like life is ever that simple.
“So, what do you want?”
She searches for words but struggles to find them.
“You won’t like the answer,” she warns me.
“I don’t expect to,” I admit. Contessa probably still wants her freedom, her old life, some prince charming to sweep in and save her from this. I won’t be shocked if what she wants in the bedroom isn’t what she wants in real life.
“I want what Vera had,” she finally admits, like a confession.
A coldness creeps into my stomach.
…she was right. I don’t like that answer.
“It’s what any little girl raised on princesses and love songs wants. Loving someone so much, you’d never want anyone else. You’re not whole without them. I think that’s the kind of love most people want.”
Nobody should want that. Those kids lost their father, and now they barely have a mother because she can’t. . .the words get over it feel too cruel, even for Vera. I walk back the thought, pushing down the bitterness.
I knew when I asked that question, whatever Contessa would say would be beyond what I could give her—I just thought it would be because it didn’t serve my purpose, not because I wasn’t capable of it.
I’m still processing it when she takes my face in her own hands—the opposite of my own commanding touch, so gentle and careful. She looks me over, searching my face intently. Her expression flickers.
Hesitantly, she brings our mouths together. A slow, soft kiss. The first one I’ve ever tasted that isn’t flavored by some carnal instinct, just a steppingstone to fucking. She takes point, leading the kiss. If I move, I will shatter it. I will be too rough, too demanding. For the first time, Contessa is the more experienced of us. I don’t know how to stomach that.
“That’s what I want,” she says, barely letting an inch come between us.
I hate being at a disadvantage, hate inexperience and the uncertainty that comes with it.
But if there’s any territory I’ve never explored, it’s this.
I’m too much of a coward to give it a goddamn label, and that weakness burns me up inside.
“Christ, why can’t you just want the moon?” I nearly beg, feeling her small hand spread against my chest, my heart pounding against her palm. “I’d have better odds.”
She looks up at me, eye to eye, her smile full of delicate optimism.
“I don’t want the moon. And I’d be very disappointed if you were the kind of man who let the odds get in his way.”
She slides out of my hands, leaving them feeling numb.
She picks up my phone, and I watch as she crawls into bed with me, pushing me back down into the sheets and cuddling herself against me. She calls her father.
With her head on my shoulder, she tells him to give her up—that she has no interest in going home to him.
I stare at her, as if I don’t know what to do with her.
Before she has barely ended the call, silencing her father’s bewildered objections, I have her pinned under me again.