14. Elio #2
I pushed my tongue out and took in the taste of her.
Her back arched forward as I kept eating her out, my hands moving up and pushing her shirt along, settling it over her collarbone.
“Elio!” she screamed when she felt my tongue inside her.
“Fuck. This pussy is mine, right?” I asked her, lapping over her clit.
She let out a cry. “Yes. Yours.”
“And I can do whatever the fuck I want with my pussy, can’t I?”
“Yes, Elio,” she breathed out, like the good girl she was.
“I can pleasure it. I can love it. I can hurt it. But I won’t ever neglect it, isn’t that right, my sweet girl?”
Her soft cries filled the air as she nodded her agreement.
“Good girl,” I said, eating her out more ferociously, sucking more of her wetness into my mouth.
She jerked from the move. “Elio!”
My fingers pushed under the flimsy bra she wore and moved it up as well. I cupped her perky tits, going from one to the other as I continued to eat her out.
“No. Please. I can’t. I?—”
Her voice was cut off by her orgasm.
It seemed to surprise her. I sat up and fumbled with my jeans before she could come back down from her high, pulling out a condom from my pocket. I needed to get her on birth control because the last fucking thing I wanted was anything between us, even a fucking condom.
I undid my jeans, pulling out my hard cock. I squeezed the tip to keep from coming too soon and slipped the condom on.
I spread her legs apart and, in one move, pushed all the way inside her.
Her body seized around me, her inner walls clenching so tight I had to grit my teeth to keep from losing it right then and there. Her mouth fell open in a silent scream, eyes wide with pleasure-shock as I filled her completely.
Her hands moved to my chest, as if she was about to push me away, but she wrapped her fists around the fabric of my shirt instead, tugging on it. It took me a moment to realize what she wanted, and I pulled the shirt off.
She let out a sigh when I pressed down against her, skin on skin. The sigh quickly turned into moans as I started to move, fucking her quickly, brutally.
Our skin slapped against each other every time I pushed back inside her.
I grabbed one tit as I moved, holding on to it. She looked up and met my eyes. We didn’t look away from each other.
I knew she was close by the tremors racking through her body.
It wouldn’t take much before she was pushed completely over the edge.
I moved my hand away and down to her clit, playing with it roughly.
She shot off with a loud scream that I was sure anyone within a ten-mile radius could hear.
Her orgasm triggered my own, and I came, burying my face back into her neck as I did.
I felt her body pulsing around mine as I filled the condom, and I stayed where I was, not wanting to break our connection just yet. I would stay inside her for as long as I could.
She ran her hands up and down my back, soothing me.
“Are you okay?” she asked after a beat.
I pulled back far enough that I could see her. Was she worried about me?
How cute.
“I’m fine, baby. You?”
She reached up and played with the short strand of hair that fell over my forehead. “I’m more than okay.”
“Good,” I said, leaning down and kissing the corner of her lips.
I reluctantly pulled out of her. She shuddered from the feeling, pulling a blanket up over her chest. I quickly disposed of the condom and grabbed a napkin nearby to clean myself up before turning back over to her. I wet another clean napkin and moved back between her legs.
“I can do it,” she protested, making a move to reach for the napkin. I shook my head and held it away from her.
“Let me. I like taking care of you,” I said.
She didn’t say anything to that, but she didn’t fight me either as I gently cleaned between her thighs. She winced a little when I touched a particularly sensitive spot.
“Sorry,” I said, easing up on the pressure.
“It's okay,” she whispered, her voice soft as her eyes followed my movements with a curious intensity that made my chest tighten. I resisted the urge to rub my hand over where my heart was, ignoring the unfamiliar feeling.
When I finished, I threw the napkin aside and crawled back beside her, pulling her against me.
She gave me a part of the blanket. We were careful not to knock over any of the food we had laid out, or the picnic basket sitting on one side of the truck bed.
She was facing away from me, pushing herself back until there was no space separating us, curving her body perfectly against mine, her back against my chest, her ass nestled against my groin.
I wrapped my arm around her waist, my hand splayed possessively across her stomach.
“You're different from what I expected,” she said, tracing her fingers along my forearm in indistinguishable shapes. Electricity bolted across my skin from where she touched. I never wanted her to stop touching me.
“Good different, or bad different?” I asked, wondering if perhaps she had spent so much time over the years picturing the kind of man I was, only to realize the reality of me didn’t quite match up to that.
How would I match up to her fantasy? I knew there was too much darkness inside me to be the kind of man she needed. Fuck, I knew that.
I pressed my lips to the back of her neck at the thought.
She was quiet for a moment, as if choosing her words carefully. “Not good different, but not bad either. Just different. You’re always so quiet. I guess it’s hard to know who you are sometimes.”
“And now?”
“And now… you’re still pretty hard to figure out. But what I’ve seen so far, I really like.”
She wiggled her ass against my cock. I let out a small groan and grabbed her hip, holding her still.
She giggled.
Fuck. Sweetest fucking sound a man like me could ever hear.
“It’s okay,” she said. “There’s still time for me to learn more about you.”
My heart thudded heavily in my chest from her words, and I didn’t know what to make of this feeling.
She must have felt it because she turned back a little until our eyes met.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask for your deepest, darkest secret… yet.”
“Yet,” I repeated.
She bit her bottom lip in a small grin.
I moved my hand up to her waist, and she jolted a little. My girl was ticklish. Good to know. “And what about you? Any dark secrets I might need to know about?”
I was only half joking, but there was a fraction of a second when her expression changed, and I didn’t know why.
“I don’t have any dark secrets,” she said casually.
I narrowed my eyes on her. She was still a shit liar.
But the way she suddenly tensed in my arms told me she wouldn’t be very receptive to me questioning her about it.
What kind of secrets could she possibly have?
It would have to involve her father… or the guards…
My mind ran a million miles an hour as I thought of all the ways she might’ve been hurt, and I wasn’t there to protect her.
“Tell me about your childhood,” I said casually.
“My childhood?” she asked, sounding confused.
“Yeah. You said we’re going to get to know each other, right? What better way to do it than to find out about each other’s childhoods?”
“Are you going to tell me about yours?”
“I’ll be an open book,” I responded. At least as much as I could be. There was some dark shit in my life that she didn’t need to know about, especially the shit that happened when Amadeo De Luca was still alive.
I never mourned my father’s death.
The only thing I regretted was that it didn’t happen sooner.
“My childhood was…” She hesitated, as if she was trying to find the right words to say. “As you would expect.”
I didn’t say anything to that. What I would expect?
“My mom died during childbirth, but you know that already.”
I nodded. I knew that. I didn’t know the late Mariana Gambino very well. She died when Valentino was eight, and sometimes, he would reminisce about how his mother was too kind for this world, and God took mercy on her and called her home to him early.
“So it was just Valentino and my father.”
“Did your dad ever date anyone?” I asked. Perhaps Joseph had taken home another woman who might have scarred her. But there had never been any reports of another woman taking up residence there.
“No. He never brought anyone home, if you can believe that. My father has a lot of vices, from gambling to alcohol. But women weren't one of them.”
I knew that already, too.
It wasn’t a secret that Joseph had racked up gambling debt a time or two. Had it not been for Aldo bailing him out a few times, I was sure he would have lost his home already.
“Valentino didn’t like to spend his time at home much,” she said. “He was always running with you.”
“It must have been lonely for you,” I said, wishing there was a way for me to go back in time and just… I didn’t know. Be there more?
She shrugged like it was no big deal. “That’s about it. I told you. There’s not much to tell.”
“What about your first kiss?”
“What about it?” she asked, a hint of wariness hitting her voice.
“It must have happened while you were in high school. I do remember that rebellious phase you went through.”
I smiled a little as I thought back to all those nights I helped Valentino track her down because she had snuck out once again.
Some things never changed, I supposed.
“You were my first kiss,” she answered softly.
Now it was my turn to tense up. I turned her around until she was looking at me. “Seriously?”
“Why would I lie about that?” She scrunched up her nose at me.
“Fuck, of course not, baby. I’m just surprised, is all.”
“Who was your first kiss?” she asked.
I tried to think back to when I had my first kiss. I drew a blank.
She shot me a look. “Seriously?”
I tightened my arms around her when it felt like she was about to pull away. “I don’t remember much about those years. Things had been messed up for a while.”
I knew that didn’t excuse it, but it was the truth. I didn’t remember much of my teenage years, considering they had been filled with nothing but drugs, alcohol, and sex. And sometimes, all those things were happening simultaneously.
She frowned, as if she was trying to think back to anything significant that had happened then. She was young. I doubt she would have remembered. But the thing about growing up in such a small circle, everyone talked.
“Was it around the time Massimo was taken by the Bratva?” she asked.
“That’s a part of it, yes.”
A huge part. That one week he was gone felt like a lifetime. I had barely slept, always feeling as if I was just sitting around waiting for the Bratva fuckers to send home something that belonged to him. Something that would have told me I had lost my brother permanently.
“I remember Valentino saying something about that,” she said. “You lead the rescue team to get him home. You were fifteen? It was… impressive.”
There was nothing impressive about it. It was pure fucking luck and desperation on my part to bring Massimo home. “I was scared shitless.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s not impressive,” she whispered, the awe in her voice prominent.
I shook my head. “I was afraid I might have been going the wrong way.”
“How did you know where they were keeping him?” she asked.
“We waited around Bratva territory for three days and three nights, just waiting to run into one of the fuckers high enough in rank to know where they would be keeping their prisoners. There had been a lot of waiting around. And my father only approved two handfuls of men to come with me. Everyone was getting restless.”
“Didn’t he care?” she asked.
I laughed, the sound bitter. “No. He had four sons. If one died, he still had three.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “That… that’s not right at all.”
“It is what it is,” I said. And that was the truth. It was just what it was. A reality I grew up with. I was just glad Giulia was younger than the rest of us, and she never knew our father’s cruelty firsthand.
I tightened my arms around her, and she lay her head back down on the pillow, facing away from me. It was easier to tell her these things when she wasn’t looking at me.
I always thought her face was too expressive for this world, revealing to everyone just what she was thinking and feeling. It was a weakness. But under her gaze, I felt like she saw too much of me.
It was a fucking weakness I wasn’t sure I wanted, or needed.
But hell, the alternative was to not have her at all, and that just wasn’t acceptable.
“I get it,” she said after a moment.
“What do you get, baby?”
“Why you guys are so close. You protect each other.”
“It had mostly been Massimo doing the protecting.”
She nodded, as if thinking to herself. “I’m glad you guys have each other.” She paused, her hesitancy a thick pressure in the air. “Elio?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“Don’t trust my father and his friends.”
I forced myself not to react to her words. “Why do you say that?”
I didn’t need her to remind me about that, but I was curious why she thought so.
“It’s just… sometimes they meet up at my father’s house, and their conversations… I don’t think they’re happy with the way Massimo is running things. I’m just… I’m worried?—”
“Don’t worry about anything,” I interrupted. “I’ll take care of it.”
Including her. I would take care of her. For the rest of my life.
I waited for her to ask me for the details. She surprised me when she relaxed back further into me, her hand moving over to my fingers I had pressed against her stomach, playing with them.
“Okay.” She sighed.
“That’s my good girl.”