Chapter 7 #2
His hands slide lower, bypassing where I want them, moving instead to my thighs.
He crouches behind me, soaping down one leg, then the other, his fingers working the muscles of my calves before traveling back up, up the inside of my thighs, the crease where leg meets hip.
Close, so close, but never quite touching.
“You’re doing this on purpose.”
“Doing what?” he says innocently, but then his fingers skim the underside of my balls and my whole body jerks. “I’m being thorough.”
“You’re being a tease.”
He rises, chest pressed to my back again, and his soapy hand finally wraps around my cock. I gasp, hips bucking forward into his grip.
“That better?” he murmurs against my ear.
I can’t answer. He’s stroking me slowly, maddeningly, his other hand braced on my hip to hold me still.
“I asked you a question.”
“Yes,” I choke out. “Fuck. Yes.”
“Good.” He releases me, and I make a sound of protest that would embarrass me if I could think clearly. “But I’m not done yet.”
His hand slides back, soapy fingers dipping between my ass cheeks. I suck in a breath.
“Still okay?”
“Yes.”
His fingers find my hole and circle it, slow and slick, spreading soap and water and heat. My hands shoot out to brace against the tile.
“You’re so tense here,” he says, pressing lightly.
“Hard to relax when you’re—” I break off with a groan as a fingertip breaches me.
“When I’m what?”
“T-torturing me.”
He huffs a laugh and withdraws his hand.
“Turn around.”
I do, shaky and breathing hard. He guides me under the spray, rinsing the soap from my skin, his eyes tracking every inch of me. When I’m clean, he cups my face in both hands.
“Now,” he says gently, “tell me again what you want.”
My hands slide up his chest, feeling the steady thud of his heartbeat.
It’s faster than it should be, matching my own.
Then I slide down, feeling the smooth, muscled planes of his abdomen, the trail of dark hair that leads lower, down through dark pubes, to his cock. It jolts in my palm, hard and heavy.
“I want to feel alive.”
Enzo makes a sound low in his throat, and then his mouth crashes onto mine. His tongue sweeps past my lips, claiming, demanding.
I clutch at his shoulders and kiss him back, tasting desperation and need as his tongue slides against mine.
He walks me backward until my spine hits cold tile. I hiss at the contrast, and he swallows the sound.
His hands move from my waist to my thighs, then thread through my wet hair, tugging until my head falls back. He kisses down my throat and I'm trembling, every nerve on fire.
When he grips my ass and lifts me, I wrap my legs around him without thinking.
“Tell me if it’s too much,” he breathes against my throat. “Tell me if you need to stop.”
“Don’t stop.” My fingers rake down his shoulders. “Don’t you dare stop.”
His mouth finds my bonding gland, and he nibbles on the skin there. He doesn’t bite, but my body doesn’t know the difference. Pleasure shoots down my spine like lightning, pooling hot between my legs.
“You like that, don’t you?” he murmurs, his tongue tracing the spot his teeth just touched.
I arch into him, rubbing against him.
He groans into my neck. “Fuck, Luca. You have no idea what you do to me.”
I grab his jaw and force him to look at me. His eyes are black, hungry, barely human. “Show me.”
And he does.
He shows me with his hands gripping me like I might disappear. With his mouth devouring mine like I’m the air he needs to survive. With his body pressing me into the tile so hard I’ll have bruises tomorrow.
And I want them. I want to see the evidence of this.
When he finally lines himself up and pushes inside, it’s torturously slow.
He feeds me his cock inch by inch, and I feel myself stretch around him.
My mouth falls open but no sound comes out.
His forehead drops to mine, and I can see what this is costing him, the restraint written in every tense line of his body.
“Still with me?”
“Yes.” I dig my heels into his lower back, urging him deeper. “God, yes. Move. Please.”
He pulls back and drives in deep, and we both cry out.
Then he starts to move, thrusting in a slow rhythm that quickly becomes frantic pounding.
The water pours over us, hot and relentless, and I lose myself in the feel of him filling me, surrounding me, his breath harsh against my ear as he whispers words in Italian that sound like prayers and curses all at once.
My head falls back against the tile, pleasure building to something unbearable, each thrust pushing me higher.
“Close,” I choke out. “Enzo, I’m so fucking close—”
“I know.” His hand snakes between us, wrapping around my cock, stroking fast and tight in rhythm with his hips. “Come for me, baby.”
And I do.
My whole body locks up, clenching around him, and I’m crying out, his name ripping from my throat, raw and broken. The pleasure is so intense it borders on pain, whiting out my vision.
Enzo follows seconds later. He swells inside me, and I feel the moment he loses control, his hips slamming into me one last time as he comes with a groan that sounds like it’s being ripped from somewhere deep in his chest. My name. He’s saying my name like it’s the only word he knows.
We stay like that for a long moment, pinned together against the tile, chests heaving, hearts pounding so hard I can’t tell whose is whose.
Eventually, he lowers me. My legs are useless, trembling, and he keeps his hands on my waist until he’s sure I won’t collapse.
“Okay?”
I nod, not quite trusting my voice yet.
He cleans me out and then takes my hand, threading his fingers through mine.
“Come on.”
“I’m exhausted.” It comes out slurred, fucked-out.
“Food,” he says, already guiding me out of the shower and grabbing a towel. “You haven’t eaten since this afternoon.”
I want to argue, but my stomach chooses that moment to growl.
Enzo’s mouth curves into a smirk. “See? Your body can’t lie.”
We make it to the kitchen eventually. I’m in one of his shirts, soft and worn and smelling like him.
He’s in low-slung sweats and nothing else.
He guides me onto one of the barstools, and I watch through heavy-lidded eyes as he moves around the space with surprising ease for a man who probably has people to do this for him.
“You cook?” I ask.
“When I need to.” He pulls eggs, cheese, and bread from the fridge. “My nonna insisted all her grandsons know how to feed themselves. Said we’d never make it in life if we couldn’t manage a basic meal.”
“Your nonna sounds like a wise woman.”
“Was.” He cracks eggs into a bowl and reaches for a whisk. “She passed when I was seventeen.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” His mouth curves into something genuine and warm. “All I have of her are good memories and her recipe for carbonara. Which, according to her dying words, I still make wrong.”
I can’t help but laugh. “She criticized your cooking on her deathbed?”
“Said the pancetta was too thick and I was disgracing the family name.” He shakes his head, still smiling. “Stubborn woman. I loved her.”
He makes scrambled eggs with cheese, toast with real butter, and pours me a glass of orange juice.
“Eat,” he says, sliding the plate in front of me.
“Bossy.”
“You haven’t seen bossy yet.” But there’s warmth in his voice as he says it. “Eat, Luca. You need your strength.”
I pick up the fork, and suddenly I’m ravenous.
Enzo leans against the counter across from me, eating his own portion, watching me with those dark eyes.
“What?” I ask around a mouthful of eggs.
“Nothing. Just…” He shakes his head. “You’re here. In my kitchen. Wearing my clothes. Eating food I made you.” His voice drops. “I didn’t think I’d get this.”
“This?”
“You. Like this. Without the anger or the heat or the pretense.” He sets down his fork. “Just you.”
I swallow hard, the food suddenly difficult to get down. “I’m still angry. About everything that happened. About Marco.”
“I know. But maybe not at me anymore?”
“No,” I admit quietly. “Not at you.”
We finish eating in comfortable silence. Enzo takes the plates, rinses them, then takes my hand again.
“Bed.”
“Now that, I agree.”
By the time we make it to the bed, I can barely keep my eyes open. Enzo pulls me against him, and I go willingly, letting him tuck me into his body with my back to his chest. His heartbeat is steady against my spine.
“Enzo?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m scared.” The admission is barely a whisper. “Of this… What it means.”
His arms tighten around me. For a long moment, he doesn’t respond, and I think maybe I’ve said too much. Pushed too far into territory we’ve been carefully avoiding.
Then he speaks, quietly, almost lost against my hair. “Me too.”
But I hear it. Feel the truth of it in the way his heartbeat picks up against my back, in the way his grip on me shifts.
“I’m scared I’ll wake up, and you’ll remember you hate me,” he continues. “That you’ll realize what we’re doing is insane and walk away.”
My throat goes tight. I turn in his arms until I can see his face, and there’s something raw in his eyes that makes my chest ache.
“I’m scared I won’t want to walk away,” I admit. “That choosing to be with you means betraying Marco’s memory.”
“Luca—”
“But I’m more scared of not exploring this.” My voice cracks.
His forehead drops to mine.
“I don’t know how this ends,” he says quietly. “Don’t know if we’re making the right choice or the biggest mistake of our lives.”
“Me either.” I close my eyes, breathing him in. “But I know I don’t want to walk away. Not yet.”
“Not yet,” he agrees, and his lips brush my temple.
It’s not a promise that everything will be okay, and it’s far from a declaration of forever.
And somehow, it’s exactly what I need.
I fall asleep to the sound of his breathing, the warmth of his body, the safety of his arms.
For tonight, it’s enough.
I dream of Marco. Not the nightmares I’ve been having of the prison cell or the morgue or the funeral. Just Marco. Alive and whole, sitting across from me at the shitty diner we used to go to when we were kids.
“You did good, little brother,” he says, and his smile is proud.
“I killed someone.” The words feel important even in the dream.
“Yeah.” Marco shrugs. “He deserved it. And now you can move on.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Sure you do.” He reaches across the table, ruffles my hair like he used to when I was a kid. “You let yourself be happy. You let someone take care of you for once and stop carrying me around like dead weight.”
“But—”
“I’m gone, Luca.” His expression is gentle. Sad, but accepting. “You did what you needed to do, and I’m grateful. But now you need to live.”
“With him? With Enzo?”
“If that’s what you want.” Marco leans back. “Is it?”
I think about Enzo’s hands on my knuckles. His voice saying you did good, baby. The way he kissed me in a warehouse full of blood, like I was something precious.
“I think so,” I admit. “Is that wrong? Is it—betraying you?”
Marco laughs. “Luca. You spent six months planning to kill a mafia boss to avenge me. You infiltrated his organization, almost died from a catastrophic heat, and then shot my murderer in the face. I think you’ve proven your loyalty to me pretty thoroughly.”
“So what do I do now?”
“Live.” He’s starting to fade, the dream dissolving at the edges. “Just live. Be happy. That’s all I ever wanted for you.”
“Marco…”
“I love you, little brother. Now let me go.”
I wake up with tears on my face and Enzo’s arms around me.