Chapter 13 Lucia #2
The scent of her hits me first—warm, musky, intoxicating—and my cock twitches, leaking against my stomach. Fuck, I want her. I want to bury my face between her thighs and never come up for air.
But I don’t rush.
Instead, I let my breath ghost over her, hot and deliberate, my lips brushing against the inside of her thigh. She shivers, her fingers tightening on the headboard, a soft whine escaping her.
“Giovanni, please—”
As sweet as the pleading is to hear from my feisty wife, I don’t make her beg again.
My tongue presses firmly against her, flat and broad, dragging up through her folds in one long, hungry stroke.
She cries out, her hips jerking forward, her body trying to chase the sensation.
I do it again, slower this time, savouring the way she tastes—sweet and salty, like honey and sin.
My hands slide up to cup her breasts, my thumbs rolling her nipples between my fingers, pinching just enough to make her gasp.
“Fucking beautiful,” I mutter against her, my voice muffled, my accent bleeding into Sicilian without thought. “Così dolce, mia dragunnida. So fucking sweet.”
She moans and her head falls back, her body arching as I delve deeper, my tongue spearing into her tight little hole before dragging up to circle her clit.
Her hips rock against my mouth, desperate, needy, and I hold her steady, my hands gripping her waist as my fingers dig into her soft flesh. I can feel her trembling and her thighs quivering around my head, her breaths now sharp, desperate gasps.
“That’s it,” I growl, pulling back just enough to speak, my lips drenched with her. “Ride me, Lucia. Fuck my face like the good little virgin you are.”
She whimpers, her hips rolling in slow, unsteady circles at first, but I don’t let her hold back. I grip her ass, my fingers spreading her open so I can lash at her clit with my tongue before I suck it between my lips, hard.
She cries out as her fingers claw at the wall. As her body moves faster now, riding my face with abandon. I groan against her, the vibration making her shudder, her moans growing louder, more desperate.
“Giovanni—I can’t—”
“You can,” I snarl, my voice rough, my tongue never stopping. “You will. Come for me, Lucia. Let me feel you.”
I redouble my efforts, work her in relentless strokes as my fingers tease her entrance before slipping inside. I curl it just right to hit that spot that makes her see stars.
She’s so fucking wet, so tight, her walls clenching around my fingers as I fuck her shallowly with them, my mouth never leaving her clit.
“Oh God—” Her voice breaks and her body tenses, her thighs locking around my head as she grinds down against my mouth. “I’m—I’m coming—”
I don’t let up.
I can’t.
Not when she’s this close, not when I can feel her on the edge, her body coiled tight like a spring. I suck her clit between my lips, my tongue flicking against it fast, merciless, and she shatters with a cry, her back bowed tight.
Her pussy floods my mouth with her glorious release. I groan at the taste of her as my cock throbs painfully, leaking against the sheets.
My hands hold her steady as she collapses forward, chest heaving and breaths shattered in ragged gasps.
For a long moment, there’s nothing but the sound of her trying to catch her breath, the way her body still twitches with the aftershocks of her orgasm.
Slowly, carefully, I lower her down my body until she’s sprawled across my chest, her skin slick with sweat, her heart pounding against mine.
I kiss her softly, letting her taste herself on my lips in slow, possessive glides of my tongue against hers.
“Giovanni,” she whispers, her voice shaky, her fingers tracing idle patterns against my chest. She can feel how hard I still am, my cock trapped between us, throbbing with need. Her hips shift slightly, just enough to rub against me, and I groan, my hands tightening on her waist.
“You’re greedy, aren’t you?” I murmur, my voice a dark chuckle. “Already thinking about what’s next?”
She blushes and I laugh.
My sweet contradiction. A siren and a virgin.
I kiss her again.
And when I finally pull back, her eyes are dark, her lips swollen, her body taut with wanting she refuses to let tip over the edge. I rest my forehead against hers, breathing her in, marvelling again at the fact that I am content, content, to stop.
That thought alarms me.
We shower together, steam fogging the glass and hands lingering where they shouldn’t. Restraint frays but holds. And it’s there, under the spray, slick tiles cold beneath our feet, that she drops the bomb.
“I’m meeting Ella for coffee,” Lucia says lightly, as though she hasn’t just tossed a grenade into the space between us.
“No,” I reply immediately.
She turns to face me, water streaming down her face, eyes sharp. “That wasn’t a question.”
“You’re not going anywhere without me,” I say. “Especially not now.”
“Especially now is exactly why I’m going,” she fires back. “I’m not going to start living like a ghost because men are playing games with knives.”
I step closer, crowding her space, irritation flaring. “Bellandi has gone quiet. La Fratellanza has gone quiet. That is not peace, cara. That is preparation.”
She lifts her chin. “Then I’ll take my guards.”
“They stick to you like glue,” I warn.
She smiles, wicked and soft all at once. “Like glue? Are you sure you want them that close?”
The image that conjures does not help my mood.
“Fine. Not that much like glue,” I snap. “Some of these men have been with me since I was a boy. It would be a shame to kill them for touching my wife.”
She laughs, then sobers, palms flattening against my chest. “I’ll be careful,” she says quietly. “I promise.”
I study her for a long moment, weighing risk against inevitability, knowing I’m losing this argument even as I calculate how to control the damage.
“Dinner,” I say finally. “You’ll meet me after. Let me feed you.”
She nods.
We dress in silence, broken only by the sound of zips and cufflinks, the ordinary rituals of a life that is anything but. At the door, I pull her back for one last kiss, hard enough to remind us both what we’re resisting. And what we’re facing.
She walks towards her car. I’m escorted to mine.
And as we separate, a familiar unease settles in my chest, not fear, exactly, but the sharp awareness that some days begin too quietly.
And those are always the days that promise carnage and spilled blood.
Lucia
The café Ella chooses is small, sunlit, and stubbornly ordinary.
It sits on a forgotten corner of New York and smells like roasted coffee and warm bread, with scratched wooden tables and a chalkboard menu written by someone whose handwriting suggests optimism rather than profit margins.
It’s the kind of place where people argue about oat milk versus whole and no one carries a gun under their jacket.
Which is exactly why I relax the moment I step inside.
Ella’s already there, perched on a stool by the window, fingers wrapped around a mug like she’s anchoring herself to the day.
She looks up, spots me, and her face breaks into a smile so open and unguarded that something in my chest eases despite my better judgement.
“Hi,” she says, standing too quickly and nearly knocking her chair over. “You made it.”
“I did,” I reply, surprised to realise how much I wanted to. “Sorry I’m late. Traffic.”
She laughs. “I live here. Traffic is a lifestyle choice.”
We order coffee, strong, no nonsense, and pastries we don’t need but absolutely deserve. For a few blessed minutes, the world narrows to steam curling from mugs and the hum of conversation around us, and I almost forget to look for exits.
Almost.
“So,” Ella says cautiously, stirring her coffee. “How are you… really?”
I consider lying. It would be easier. Politer.
Instead, I say, “Confused. Angry. Weirdly happy about things I shouldn’t be happy about. You?”
She snorts. “Relentlessly under-qualified for my life.”
That gets a real laugh out of me, the kind that surprises us both.
We talk about inconsequential things at first. Her work. My uncles. Books we love. Films we hate. She tells me about growing up adjacent to power without ever being allowed to touch it, how men like her father decide futures over dinner while women are expected to smile and pour wine.
“Last week,” she says dryly, “someone told me I’d make a great ‘asset’ someday. I asked if that came with stock options.”
I grin. “Did it?”
“No,” she sighs. “Just expectations. And babies. Lots and lots of babies.”
Something unspoken settles between us, recognition blooming quietly. We are very different women standing on the same edge.
For a while, it almost feels normal.
Then I notice the man across the street.
He’s pretending to check his phone, leaning against a lamppost with studied casualness, but his gaze lifts too often, tracking the café door, the window, me.
My spine tightens.
I shift slightly. He shifts too.
“You see it too?” Ella asks softly.
“Yes,” I murmur.
“I thought I was being paranoid.”
“You’re not.”
We don’t panic. We finish our coffee. We laugh louder than necessary. We pretend this is just another afternoon in New York, because that’s what survival looks like sometimes: refusing to give fear the satisfaction of being obvious.
But when we stand to leave, I feel it. That prickle along my neck. The sense of attention tightening, focusing.
“Text me when you’re home safe,” Ella says quickly, squeezing my hand. “Please. I’d…I’d love to do this again. If we can?”
“I will,” I promise. And I mean it.
Outside, the air feels sharper, edges newly honed. My guards appear with seamless efficiency, too quick to be coincidence, their presence both comforting and ominous.
The man by the lamppost is gone.
That’s worse because I’m not sure if I’m relieved or if I was being paranoid.
The car ride to meet Giovanni stretches, the city sliding past like a film I’ve already seen once but didn’t fully understand. I replay the morning. The quiet. The way he kissed me goodbye with startling but thrilling intensity.
I spot him the moment I arrive.
Giovanni stands near the entrance of the restaurant, suit immaculate, posture deceptively relaxed. But his eyes are scanning, measuring, already calculating something I can’t see yet.
Our gazes lock.
Something passes between us, recognition, tension, a shared understanding that the air has shifted.
“Get in the car,” he says quietly as I approach, indicating his fleet of dark-tinted SUVs idling six feet away.
I frown, glancing at the restaurant. “Dinner—”
“Is cancelled,” he finishes. “Now.”
I don’t argue.
As the door closes and the car pulls away too fast to be casual, Giovanni’s hand finds mine, grip firm, grounding.
“Something is happening, isn’t it?”
A brisk nod. “You felt it?” he says.
“Yes. I hoped I was wrong.”
“So did I.”
The city lights blur outside the window, and the normalcy of the afternoon collapses in on itself, fragile and gone.
Whatever has been watching us is done waiting.
And as Giovanni’s thumb presses into my palm, a silent promise of protection or possession, I can no longer tell, I know with cold certainty that this was the last quiet moment we were ever going to have.
The next one will be loud.
Violent.
Unavoidable.