15. Serena #3
I come with one hand over my mouth and the other in his hair, trying not to wake the entire building. My knees go weak.
Rocco catches me carefully. He stands, pulling my underwear and leggings back up with hands that shake worse than before. Then he braces me against the counter and kisses my mouth.
I taste myself on him. I’m not embarrassed. I’m turned on and furious and suddenly close to sobbing, a very inconvenient cocktail.
His cock presses hard against my hip. He doesn’t grind. He doesn’t ask. He holds still and kisses me like he can live on that.
I can’t. Apparently.
I reach for him again. This time he lets me touch his belt. My fingers fumble because I’m shaking.
He covers my hands. “Serena.”
“Ask.”
His eyes burn into mine. “Do you want me inside you?”
The words go straight through me. Dirty. Plain. Ours.
I close my eyes. I see him in the office. Silent. Cold. Watching my face and choosing the tape. My eyes open. He’s here. Hot. Shaking. Waiting.
“Yes,” I say.
He makes a sound. Not triumph. Relief and agony.
He turns me slowly, one hand on my hip, one braced on the counter beside mine. My back is to his chest.
This position used to destroy me. I loved being held like that. Protected. Wanted. Surrounded.
Now the counter bites into my palms, his breath hot against my ear, and I want him so badly my whole body aches.
He lifts my sweater from the counter and folds it under my stomach where I lean forward. That small care nearly undoes me.
He lowers my leggings enough, then opens his own belt. The sound of the buckle is filthy in the quiet kitchen. My body clenches at it.
Rocco’s breath catches like he knows. Of course he does.
The thought hits right as he presses against me. Not inside. Not yet. Just there. Hard and hot between my thighs, his hand flat on the counter beside mine, his other palm spread over my stomach.
“Serena,” he says, voice wrecked. “Tell me again.”
I close my eyes. I want to. God, I want to. I want him inside me. I want ten minutes where my body wins and my brain shuts up and my husband feels like my husband again.
But the thought keeps bleeding.
He knew my body. The mark on my shoulder. The freckle on my wrist. Every sound I make. He knew all of it. And he still chose a blurry woman in my coat over the wife standing in front of him.
The man at my back is the husband I remember. The man who watched that tape and let my call ring once is the one who failed me. Same hands. Same mouth. I cannot make them one person again. I cannot let one in without the other.
It hits all at once. Not fear of him. Grief. Huge and sudden. It fills the kitchen so fast I can’t breathe around it.
“Stop,” I say.
Rocco stops. Instantly. Before the word has finished leaving my mouth, his hands are off me and his body is back. Not far enough to make me fall. Far enough that I’m not touched.
His breathing is rough. His cock is still hard. His whole body is shaking with the effort. But he stops. No question. No why. No wounded male pride trying to make me take care of him.
Just stop.
The kitchen is silent except for the rain and both of us breathing like we ran.
I pull up my leggings with shaking hands.
Rocco turns away. Immediately. Gives me his back while he fixes himself.
That is the thing that makes the first tear fall. Not the almost sex. Not the orgasm. Not even the stop. His back. His immediate privacy. His refusal to make me feel watched after I changed my mind.
“Serena,” he says, still facing the sink. “Are you all right?”
No. Yes. I have no idea.
“I wanted you,” I say. “I still do. That doesn’t mean I’m ready.”
“I know.”
This time the word doesn’t annoy me. This time it sounds like he actually does.
I wipe my face with my hand. “You knew my body. And still?—”
My voice breaks. I hate crying half-dressed in my sister’s kitchen after my husband gave me an orgasm and didn’t get one himself. This isn’t a dignified genre of pain.
Rocco turns slowly. His face is wrecked. Not sexually frustrated, though he’s that too. Wrecked.
“I knew,” he says. “And I failed anyway.”
That’s the awful thing. He’s not defending it. There’s nowhere for my rage to bounce. It hangs between us, heavy and tired.
“I hate you a little,” I whisper.
He nods. “I know.”
“I hate that less than I should.”
His head bows. Pain. Want. Love, maybe.
No. Not yet.
“I should leave,” he says.
I nod. Then don’t move. Neither does he. The kitchen feels too small for all the things we just almost did.
The front door opens. Matteo’s voice comes first. “Serena?”
Rocco goes still. I go still.
Then Matteo appears in the kitchen doorway. He takes in everything in one second. Rocco’s shirt open at the collar. My sweater on the counter. Me crying. The air practically on fire.
Matteo’s face changes. Not much. But enough. Hurt flashes there. Then he kills it. Fast. For me. Because he’s that good.
“Sorry,” he says. He steps back immediately. No accusation. No making me feel dirty.
Rocco’s shoulders go tight. He says nothing.
Matteo looks only at me. “I’ll wait outside.”
Then he leaves before I can explain something I don’t even understand.