Chapter 9
MILA
My back is against the door in the dark. The household went quiet hours ago.
Sofia’s paper on top of the empty cup beside me.
Insieme. Together.
My thighs have been pressed together a long time and they will not loosen.
I am thinking about the skin above his wrist. The two inches the sleeve rides up when he shifts. The gearshift warm under my fingers where his hand had been the whole drive.
I should not be thinking about it.
I am wet.
I stand.
The folding knife stays in the dress pocket. The chain stays at my throat. I do not change.
My door opens an inch. The hallway is empty.
Nonna keeps the bulbs honey-low at night, enough to walk by. Bare feet on wood. The floors do not creak in this house. I have learned where every board sits.
I pass Sofia’s door. Dark. His hallway is shorter than I remember.
His door is open an inch. Moonlight cuts a strip along the gap and a lamp burns inside.
My palm flat against the wood. I don’t push.
Protocol. Scope the exits. Map the room. Count the windows. You know this.
I push the protocol aside.
The door opens without sound.
He is on the bed.
He is in black pajama pants slung low. His chest is bare. I can see the dark line of hair down his stomach, a scar across his ribs, and another at his collarbone. His feet are bare. The watch is off on the nightstand. The Akhmatova lies face-down on the bed by his hip.
The lamp throws low warm light down the length of him.
His head turns when I come through the door.
His eyes find me. For one breath he does not move. His mouth opens half an inch.
“Cara.” Rough. Stunned. “You’re here.”
His jaw tightens, the muscle at the corner working once. His hands curl white in the sheets and then flatten.
He stays where he is. The sheet at his waist. He does not reach for a shirt.
His eyes move down me from my bare feet to the hem of my dress to the chain at my throat to my mouth. He does not hide the looking.
My hands at my sides have curled into fists.
I open them. One finger at a time.
His exhale comes out too long.
“Are you all right?” His voice is careful. “Do you need.” He swallows. “Tell me what you need, cara.”
I don’t move from the doorway.
He waits. I step inside. I close the door behind me.
The latch is loud.
His eyes close. When they open, the look is different. Relief so sharp it looks like pain.
“Okay.” Small nod. “The lamp. On or off?”
Not a question. An order I am allowed to give.
The lamp shows me his shoulder. The slope of his collarbone. It shows me to him.
“On.”
My voice is hoarse.
Relief crosses his mouth. He flattens it. “It stays on.”
His hand goes back to the sheet, the fingers curling white at the knuckles.
I take a step toward the bed, and his knuckles go whiter.
I cross the room.
He sets the book on the nightstand. As I pass the foot of the bed, he has moved to his edge. A foot of mattress on my side.
I walk to the wall side and look down at the bed.
Then I lie on top of the covers, facing the wall.
Behind me, his breath catches.
“Cristo.” Barely a sound.
There is a foot of mattress between us. His breath is to my right and the lamp burns on the wall in front of me.
His heat reaches me from here. The dress is too thin. My nipples have hardened against the fabric. The wet has soaked through the underwear I haven’t let myself think about since I put it on this evening.
He breathes a long time before he speaks.
“You don’t have to do anything.” His voice has dropped. The gravel I didn’t know was there. “Tap the mattress twice. If you want me to stop talking.”
I don’t answer.
“I have kept the doors open since the night I heard you scream.” He pauses. “Not waiting. I wouldn’t let myself wait. I wanted you to be able to come through if you needed to.”
“I’m not going to touch you tonight, cara.” Rougher. Tighter. “If you want my hand. You tell me. With your mouth.”
His fist goes into the sheet. The fabric protests.
“Cazzo.” Through his teeth. “Not because I don’t want to.”
A breath comes out of him, uneven.
“Because you haven’t had a yes you got to give. Not in a long time. I’m not taking that too.”
He pauses again.
“Sat outside your door tonight. Thought you wouldn’t come.” His voice cracks. “And then you did.”
The dress is wet against me. My hips shift on the bed. Small. I do not mean to do it.
He hears the fabric move.
The room smells like him. Soap. Cotton sheets. Jasmine through the magnolia. I have smelled these things on him in the SUV for weeks. Inside a closed room they are different.
Heat starts at the back of my knees and moves up the inside of my thighs without stopping.
Years of going somewhere else when my body did this. Tonight I am not going anywhere.
My nipples are hard against the dress. My underwear is soaked through. I shift my hips against the comforter again. Looking for pressure I will not give myself.
Behind me his breath leaves him, stops, and restarts.
“Cara.” Soft. Tender. “Your hand.”
My right hand has gone white on the comforter, the thumb folded under, gripping so hard it hurts.
“You’re going to hurt yourself, milaya.” Barely a whisper. “Let go for me. Cara. I’m right here.”
I open the hand. One finger at a time. I let it lie flat against the comforter.
“Good,” he breathes. “Brava. Just like that.”
The fabric shifts on his side, his fingers curling into the sheet and flattening.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says. “I’m not reaching for you. I’m right here.”
Heat between my thighs sharpens.
The silence holds.
Then his hand moves slow across the sheet and settles on the comforter on his side, the palm turning up and open, six inches from mine.
He does not slide it closer or tell me it is there.
He goes back to breathing. Badly.
I look at his hand a long time, and the wanting to touch it is a physical ache in my fingers.
Scars across the knuckles, the width of the palm, the spread of his fingers — the same spread he keeps on the gearshift between us every Tuesday.
I move my fingers three inches across the comforter.
The back of my hand brushes the side of his palm.
He makes a sound in his throat that does not become a word.
His palm stays open. Mine to do what I want with.
His skin is hot. Mine is hotter. The chain moves at my throat.
I press my wrist against his palm.
“Cristo.”
The sheet shifts. His hips. I did not see it. I heard the fabric.
He is hard, the shape of him under the sheet between us, and he cannot hide it.
My thighs press together. A pulse there sharp enough that my hips shift again. Involuntary.
He hears.
I turn my hand over. Slow. Until my palm is against his palm.
“Brava.” Wrecked. “So fucking brave, cara.”
His hand stays open under mine. The fingers do not close. He is letting me hold him.
A long silence holds, and I can hear how hard he is breathing inside it.
“Spi.” Sleep.
The voice that has been coming through my door for weeks, now an arm’s length away with gravel in it I didn’t know was there.
The heat between my thighs sharpens. My hips shift again. I cannot stop them.
A sound starts in my throat. I close it behind my teeth.
He hears it, and his hand under mine goes rigid, every muscle pulled tight, but the palm stays open.
His breathing is ragged.
“Whatever you’re feeling, cara.” Rough. “You’re allowed. I’m not moving. I’m staying right here.”
I will leave before dawn.
My palm against his palm. His bare chest a foot from my back. The lamp on low. His breath coming wrong behind me. I am here and he is not allowed to touch me. We are both paying for it.
He doesn’t go quiet. His breathing doesn’t slow.
“Nico.”
It comes out cracked and small and whole.
The first time I have said his name aloud.
He does not turn his head.
His inhale stops halfway. Has to restart.
“Sono qui, cara mia.” Whispered. I’m here, my dear one. “Sleep, milaya. I have you.”
His hand under mine is open. The fingers do not close.
I press my palm harder against his.
A sound against his teeth.
“Brava. Whatever you need. I am yours.”
I close my eyes against his hand.
The heat between my thighs is the last thing before sleep takes me.