18. Serena #3
His hips falter.
“Serena.”
“I missed you wanting me.”
“I never stopped.”
So immediate I believe the wanting, if not the rest.
“Even when you thought?—”
“Yes.”
The answer is raw.
“I hated myself for it. I hated you for making me want you while I thought you’d betrayed me. But wanting you never stopped.”
That shouldn’t be hot. It’s too much. It’s also exactly the kind of ugly truth I need from him.
“You don’t get to hate me for a lie,” I say.
He exhales.
“Rocco.”
“I don’t now.” His hand flattens gently over my stomach. “I hate what I did with it.”
He thrusts deeper, and my anger melts into a moan I can’t control.
“That’s it,” he murmurs. “Tell me. Just like that.”
The old filth. The old husband. But softer around the edges now. Listening.
I push back against him.
“More.”
He gives me more. Not reckless. Not the full roughness I remember. But enough that the bed creaks and the monitors blink and I’m very glad no one is sharing this room.
His mouth stays on my neck. His fingers find me again, rubbing where I’m swollen and sensitive while he moves inside me.
Pleasure builds fast. Too fast.
“I’m close,” I gasp.
“Good.”
“Don’t sound smug.”
“I’m not smug. I’m grateful.”
That does it. Ridiculous. Emotional warfare.
I come around him with my face pressed into the pillow and his name breaking in my mouth. My body tightens hard, pulsing around him, and he makes a sound like it hurts.
He keeps moving, slow and deep, drawing it out until I’m shaking.
“Can I?” he asks, voice wrecked.
It takes my brain a second. He’s asking if he can come.
My chest cracks wide open.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Rocco, yes.”
He buries his face against my shoulder and comes inside me with a rough, broken sound, his hand spread over my stomach, his body shaking around mine.
He doesn’t collapse on me. He holds himself off my body even at the end. Careful. Always careful now.
I should be relieved. I am. I also want his weight. Complicated woman, party of one.
For a while, neither of us moves. His breath is hot on my neck. My body is soft and heavy and tired in the good way for the first time in what feels like years.
Then he pulls out carefully, ties off the condom, and handles everything with the kind of quiet efficiency that would be funny if I had the energy.
“Do you want me to go?” he asks.
There it is. The old test.
Maybe small to someone else. Huge to me.
Tonight the world is burning—Rafe, Claudia, Vittorio, blood on the floor of my sister’s flat. Once, he’d have kissed me and gone cold and left the bed, sure I was safe because the problem was elsewhere.
He should leave. This time he asks.
“No,” I say.
Something eases in him.
“Then I’m staying.”
Just that. No flourish. No promise carved in marble.
He gets back into bed carefully, wincing at his side but trying to hide it badly.
“Terrible acting,” I mutter.
“I’ll work on it.”
“Don’t. I like knowing when you’re in pain.”
I shrug.
“That sounded meaner than I meant.”
“No, it didn’t.”
His arm comes around me. Loose. Easy to leave.
I settle back against him anyway. He pulls the blanket over us. He doesn’t touch my stomach until I take his hand and put it there.
His breath shudders.
“Baby’s fine,” I say.
“Good.”
“Matteo’s fine.”
His hand stills for one second. Then relaxes.
“Good.”
I hate that so much matters.
“Lucia’s going to make everyone buy her a new rug. And a door.”
“Already ordered.”
I turn my head just enough to glare.
“Rocco.”
“I’ll let her choose it.”
“Better.”
His mouth brushes the back of my head. Not a kiss exactly. Almost.
“Sleep,” he says.
“Bossy.”
“Hopeful.”
I’m tired enough that the room starts softening at the edges almost immediately. Which is unfair. I have a whole list to worry about. Claudia. Vittorio. Rafe. The fact that I just had sex with my husband and liked it.
Loved it.
No. No using that word.
I drift anyway. For once, he’s warm behind me when I let go.
When I wake, the room is darker. Hours later, maybe. The monitors are quiet. Rain has stopped. My body aches in three different ways, but none of them scare me.
Rocco’s still there. Awake. Of course. His hand is still on my stomach. His breathing is controlled, too controlled for sleep.
“You didn’t leave,” I whisper.
His arm tightens slightly.
“No.”
My throat closes.
I stare at the window, at the faint reflection of us in the glass. My body tucked into his. His bandage white against the dark. His hand over the baby.
This is dangerous. Not because he might hurt me. Because I let him back in and the ceiling didn’t come down. Because it felt like relief. And relief is exactly how a woman gets robbed the second time.
This is the thing I wanted so badly I once almost took less than I deserved to get it.
I have his weight at my back. His child under his palm. A whole speech in my mouth about how none of this changes anything.
Only one line survives the trip out.
“Rocco.”
“Yes.”
“This doesn’t mean I trust you.”
His face lowers to my shoulder. He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t tense. He just kisses the small pale mark there once.
“I know,” he says.