Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
LUCA
T he setting sun through the fur of the pines is beautiful. If I could choose where I would eternally rest, this would be at the top of the list. The Ricci men chose a spot away from the house but with a clear view of the setting sun this time of year—not that Rich could see it. We like to believe loved ones linger around and are grateful for how their bodies are handled after death. It’s natural.
I haven’t had to perform a death prayer in some time. Of course, I often do last rites in the hospitals, but this felt different. Close to home.
Sloane is beside me, my arm around her as everyone says kind words over the makeshift casket they’d built this afternoon while I held her together inside the cabin.
She picked flowers on the way here, shaking in her unsteady hands as she gripped them tightly to her chest.
She hasn’t stopped crying. Guilt does that to us.
It’s not her fault, though.
One can’t control how someone else behaves or lives. Our choices are our own; it’s the beautiful thing about life: the chance and the choice to carve our own path.
They lower his body down the best they can so the casket doesn’t hit bottom too harshly, and then they begin covering him over with dirt.
I turn Sloane for the cabin, but she steps forward, and all the men freeze.
She tosses her flowers into the grave, and they land with the lightest sound against the wood.
When she turns for the cabin, she walks past me, leaving me in the dust as she picks up her pace and runs.
I let her go.
Sometimes, we need solitude.
When I get back to the cabin, she’s sitting on the first step, sobbing.
I sit beside her, straightening my legs and crossing one ankle over the other. I’d chosen slacks, loafers, and a button-up shirt in respect for Rich.
Sloane chose a tight-fitting dress that made me dizzy.
“God, how does anyone live with guilt?” she asks.
I shrug, even though she’s not looking at me. “Your guilt is misplaced, as I’ve already explained. It hurts right now, but that’s how grief is: overwhelming.”
“Even if it was his choice, he shouldn’t have been out there with me.”
I laugh softly, brushing my hand over her bare shoulder. “It was his choice, and that’s the point, Sloane. He lived his life to the fullest. He wanted to run with you, so he did. His last moments weren’t spent hiding inside or lying in a hospital bed. They were spent living.”
“Do you think there is an afterlife? You don’t think he’s trapped here anymore, right?”
I look around at the beauty of the Pacific Northwest surrounding us. “It’s not a terrible place to be trapped,” I answer.
She turns towards me, a scowl on her face.
“What?”
“No one should be trapped somewhere that has no visitors. Who will he haunt?”
I laugh at her absurdity, and her scowl deepens.
“I’m sorry. It’s just… Oh, you’re serious.”
She turns on the step and crosses her arms over her chest. It’s the youngest I think she’s looked since she walked into the nave of St. Andrew’s Cathedral.
“I think he’s gone home—his true home, where we all hope to go in the end.”
“Even with blood on his hands?”
I sigh. “God knows the righteous when he sees them. And some of the fiercest warriors belong to God, to his army. Rich will run beside them, unafraid and without pain from here on out.”
Her eyes soften. “That’s a beautiful idea: that he’s free from pain and worry now.”
I tug her into me, putting my arm over her shoulder. “Mm, it is.”
It’s nearly dark now, and I stand and put my hand out to Sloane to lead her back inside.
“I’m going to stay out here awhile longer,” she says, and I nod.
She needs time to process today’s events, and I need time to cool my blood from everything that’s happened.
“I’ll start dinner, shall I?” I ask her, holding the outer storm door open with my back, my hand on the handle of the inner door.
“Yeah. Dinner sounds nice,” she replies, her eyes traveling through the darkness as if she can see Rich still running through the yard.
I head inside to see what I can throw together for dinner.
Loss is an impossible thing. It’s like something vital has been cut out of your heart, and it has to learn to beat without it. A new rhythm is created each time you lose someone. Each time that you have to mourn. Sloane knows this better than anyone. She needs time to get her heart to its new rhythm.
Dinner is herb-rubbed chicken, green beans, and potatoes from the massive stock of food the Riccis brought with us when we came.
Sloane is pushing her food around on the plate as tension builds between us, and I don’t know what will happen or which of us will snap first.
“You alright?” I finally ask once my food is nearly gone.
She’s barely eaten, but I expected it. She’s lost in her head.
“I am. It’ll just take time. Being so close to death always makes me uncomfortable.”
I lift my brows in understanding. “It’s not something everyone gets so close to, you know? I’m sorry you had to see it happen.”
“I think we should have been there, don’t you?” she asks.
“Well, not if it made you uncomfortable. You have the right to protect your peace, Sloane.”
Her eyes narrow. “No. For people you care about, you’re there for them.”
“I agree. But I wouldn’t judge someone for not wanting to be. It’s a chilling experience.”
She sighs in agreement. “That it is.”
I take our plates and clean up, turning back to look at where she still sits at the table, eyes far off.
For some ungodly reason, my mind wanders to the future. To when we leave this place and one another behind. To when she’s safe.
A sharp, piercing pain lances through my heart, causing me to gasp as I clutch at my chest. It’s an emotional jolt that leaves me reeling, breathless from its intensity.
Sloane looks at me, and something changes.
Something unspoken and raw passes between us, an unwitting awareness of what will happen.
That life is about to change as we both know it.
As if something otherworldly propels us together, I step for her as she stands and the chair skids back on the floor. Even the noise of its feet grating the wood doesn’t stop us.
We collide like two winter storms, converging and creating something new and volatile.
My tongue sweeps into her mouth as I lift her off the floor, sitting her on the edge of the table. Spreading her legs, I step between them as her dress rides up impossibly high.
“Luca,” she whines, and I look at her, honestly look at her.
There’s a longing in her eyes that speaks to me.
It says this is it, make your choice.
“I know, little dove. I know.”
Our mouths move in tandem as I peel her dress off and pull it over her head, tossing it aside. Her breasts fall heavy and full, her dusky nipples drawing up in little sinful peaks. I drop my mouth to her neck, kissing my way to them before I close my lips over them and suck.
Her head falls back. “Yes!”
Her moans only spur me on as I work her panties off and trail kisses over her stomach.
Her hands fist in my hair as I kneel, pressing her thighs open.
The pretty, pink pussy I’ve longed for glares back at me, glistening with arousal, and I can almost see the deep pulse of it at the surface. I tug her to the very edge of the table, and she places her feet on my thighs.
“Luca,” she begs, but I want to savor her.
To taste every mouth-watering flavor she offers.
I bury my face in her cunt, my tongue ravishing her in amorous flicks. Her flavor is tangy and succulent, and I can’t get enough. I moan as I suck her clit, feeling as she lays back and arches off the table for me.
“Luca, God, your mouth…”
Adding two fingers inside her, I move them back and forth, keeping pace with my tongue as I ascend the stairs of heaven where only she’s in charge. Where only she and I exist in.
Her orgasm comes hard and fast, her cries of ecstasy frantic and avid.
I stand, licking my lips and fingers clean as she moves to sit up. I press her back, my hand dominating the space between her breasts.
“I’m not fucking done with you,” I growl, and it sounds as if the Devil himself has inhabited my body in a full-on takeover.
“But Luca, we…”
I free myself from my pants, letting them fall to the ground around my ankles.
This isn’t how I thought I’d lose my virginity. But, in my defense, I never thought I’d lose it. The heat between Sloane and I is consuming, and it’s fitting for how possessive and obsessed I feel, and it makes sense why I’d fuck her on a table for our first time.
I can’t wait.
I don’t have time to move her elsewhere.
Blistering flames of arousal makes my cock throb as I slap it on her pussy a couple of times, using her cum to stroke myself as I try to steady my mind.
Sloane moves off the table, pressing me backward with a fragile hand on my chest, and her eyes are rousing. I don’t think I should question her motives.
“Sit,” she says, and I stumble to listen, dropping into the chair she left behind when I hefted her onto the table.
My cock springs up and slaps my stomach, pre-cum leaking from the tip.
The moment my brain thinks about asking if she possibly has a condom is the moment she grabs my dick, lines it up with her entrance, and sits down on it like it was always hers.
It’s like it’s her throne, and it’s been waiting for its queen this entire time.
Fuck, she’s tight.
She feels right. Perfect and supple.
I grip her hips as she lifts and drops on my cock, rolling her hips to give herself friction with each stroke.
“Fuck, Sloane, you feel so goddamned good,” I say with a sharp intake of breath, as she increases her speed.
Her eyes grow crazed as I fill and stretch her around me, her breathing small pants that are driving me mad.
Even as she fucks me, I want more. I want to be deeper; I want to become the ache in her body right as she explodes.
I grip her hair in my hand from behind, pulling her to me as I bite her neck, lapping at the wound right after.
I don’t know who I am, but I know one thing: she’s mine.
This is mine.
And there’s no going back.
Ever.
It’s intense and passionate—fevered and rapturous.
I’ve never felt like this before. So close to someone. But just as it’s begun, I feel the orgasm that’s going to end it, building from the base of my spine. My moans and groans of delirium are bleeding into one another as she fucks me wildly; a burning flame of madness is about to swallow us both whole. And I’ll go willingly.
“You going to come for me, Father Russo?” Sloane taunts and panic sets in.
She’s on top of me; I can’t pull her off to come anywhere else.
“Sloane,” I warn, and as if she knows what I’m about to say, she leans in and skims my ear with her lips.
“I have a birth control implant, Father. I want your cum deep in my body. Baptize me in it, make me yours.”
Fuck. Her words.
My eyes roll back as I lean back in the chair and let the feeling of her unmerciful pussy take hold of me like I’m taking Death’s hand and walking through the gates of another life.
I guess I’m walking out of the gates to another life, am I not?
The thought stalls as my body short circuits.
“Coming, fuck, Sloane…. Don’t stop…”
My face contorts, my mouth dropping open, as I fight to keep my eyes on her.
She smiles, her sinful eyes alight with mischief. “I’ll follow you.”
We both come, our screams of bliss decorating the air, painting the cabin a salacious color of red as ropes of cum seal my new fate as they burrow inside her body.
“Holy fuck,” she whispers, body shuddering as the last powerful waves leave her muscles.
“You can say that again,” I joke, shivering as my body breaks out in goosebumps.
She opens her mouth to do so, and I sit up and capture it with my lips, kissing her with voracity as she melts against me.
“Does this mean…” she trails off, panting.
“I choose you, Sloane.”
Was it ever going to go in another direction?
“You choose me,” she whispers, kissing me lightly, over and over.
It’s not long before another storm is building between us, and she’s moving languidly again, my cock hardening inside her, ready to stir up more trouble.
“Ah, it feels good to be the chosen one,” she jokes, and I bite her shoulder, making her squeal.
“Shut up and fuck me before I have to make you repent.”
“Yes, Father.”