Chapter 18 Serena #2
The orgasm hits me like a slap, ripping through my body in violent waves, my pussy spasming wildly around him, juices mixing with the water as I cry out, back arching, nails raking his thighs.
He doesn't stop, flipping us over in the slick puddle so I'm on my back, legs hooked over his shoulders in a pretzel fold that stretches me impossibly, his cock plunging back in with renewed force.
The new angle is savage, his body folding mine nearly double, every thrust bottoming out as he chases his release, grunting with each snap of his hips.
"Fuck—your cunt's pulling me under," he rasps, eyes locked on where we're joined, the sight obscene with water and slickness.
I claw at his back, drawing red lines that well with blood, the metallic scent cutting through the steam, and he comes with a guttural roar, spilling hot inside me, pulses flooding my walls as he grinds deep.
We collapse in a heap, breaths mingling raggedly, the shower still pouring over us like an endless rain, washing away the evidence but not the fury that's only banked, not extinguished. His hand lingers on my thigh, possessive even in the afterglow, and I shove it away weakly, the anger flickering back to life amid the sated haze.. He tries to speak afterwards. I shake my head. I’m not ready for words yet.
He accepts that and leaves, quiet in his understanding.
Morning comes wrong and bright, the kind of winter sun that pretends it’s warm when the air still bites your knuckles.
I wake to the sound of wheels on wood—little plastic ones—and a whisper that means negotiation.
“Cars don’t sleep under pillows,” Marco tells the stuffed elephant, very serious. “They sleep on roads.”
“Roads,” Dante echoes, voice low and worn, and I don’t have to open my eyes to see him crouched on the rug in the chair corner, jacket off, shirt sleeves rolled, the whole posture saying, I’m staying right here whether the world likes it or not.
He looks up when he feels me watching. The man has radar for my eyes.
He touches two fingers to his own chest like he’s taking attendance. “Present.”
I push the blanket back and stand into the cold, rubbing my arms. “You should have slept in a bed.”
“I slept in the chair,” he says, like that’s the victory he wanted. “Marco wanted a guard.”
“Guard,” Marco repeats, satisfied, and rams the car into the baseboard softly so the dog doesn’t feel left out. Pippo lifts his head from the rug, decides we’re all accounted for, and thumps his tail twice.
I don’t forgive him right away. I don’t know how to do it quickly.
The ache that lived in me when I saw the empty bed last night is still there, a bruise under the skin you can’t see until you press it.
He wasn’t there when our son went missing.
He was out in his war and we were in ours.
And then I saw him carry Marco through the dark, one hand spread over the small of his back like he was holding the roof up with his palm, and another ache arrived, different and older, the one that knows what it looks like when a man chooses the right thing in the exact second that matters.
I pull a sweater on over yesterday’s shirt and brace my hands on the sink.
The mirror in the little bathroom is the kind that shows what’s true without helping you lie.
My eyes say tired. My mouth says stubborn.
My hands say kitchen. I splash water, tie my hair, and when I step back into the room, Dante is holding Marco’s shoe in one hand and the laces in the other, crouched low, shoulders broad, the whole picture so domestic, it stings.
“You remember the knot?” he asks.
Marco nods like he invented it. “Bunny goes around the tree and into the cave.”
“Twice,” Dante says, voice soft, patient. “So it doesn’t come loose when you run.”
They look up at me together, and I can feel the forgiveness putting its hand out. I let it touch my sleeve. Not my throat yet. Not my heart. But I don’t push it away.
“Breakfast,” I say, and Marco cheers like I promised him Rome.
In the big kitchen, the air is cold and clean the way a room feels right before you make it yours.
Gabriella is already there with coffee, which means I love her in ways that don’t need words.
She presses a cup into my hands and another into Dante’s and tells Marco the saints said good morning.
He salutes the copper pots in case they tell the saints.
We eat simply, bread warmed in the oven just enough to wake it.
Jam from a jar with a label that looks like someone’s auntie wrote it.
Eggs soft with a little lemon folded in because the three of us have a language now and that’s one sentence in it.
Marco eats like a man with work soon. Dante watches him like a man who found oxygen again and doesn’t trust it to stay.
“I can’t change that I wasn’t in the room when it went wrong,” he says, low, when Marco drops to the floor with Pippo to “teach” him how to park a car. “But I can change where I am when it happens again.”
“It can’t happen again,” I say, because that’s the rule, not the hope.
“It won’t.” He sets his cup down, palm flat on the counter. “I will move mountains with my hands.”
“You can’t move everything,” I remind him, and he nods, accepts it, and then looks at Marco again like he plans to try anyway.
The day builds itself the way big days do—fast and long at the same time.
The villa hums under the polite noises people make when they bring old grudges to a holiday and dress them in cologne.
Drivers back into gravel like ballerinas pretending to be trucks.
A cousin laughs at nothing on the steps like he’s paid by the decibel.
Camilla’s phones blink, then stop, then blink again like little metronomes.
The saints in the hall watch with the same raised hands they had yesterday. They don’t bless. They witness.
I put on my apron and build a day I can win. The Morettis like big flavors and food that remembers Sicily. They like to be reminded the sea exists to feed them. So I make swordfish stew that tastes like a story your grandmother told you and you only half believed until the spoon touched your mouth.
The fish comes in thick steaks, firm and almost sweet when it’s right, treacherous when it isn’t.
I trim it myself, sliding the knife under the membrane, feeling for the line where the skin gives.
The bones go into a pot with onion ends and fennel tops and the stubborn parts of parsley, covered with water and kissed with white wine and a coin of orange peel.
I bring it just to a simmer and keep it there—no violence—so the stock stays clear and honest.
In the big rondeau, I warm olive oil until it sighs and then slide in the soffritto—finely chopped onion, fennel bulb shaved thin, a clove of garlic smashed so it knows it wasn’t invited by accident.
It goes glossy and soft, the fennel waking up sweet under the heat.
I add a spoon of tomato paste and let it toast until it goes brick red and smells like a street in summer.
Then crushed tomatoes go in, San Marzano from a can because the good ones know how to wait, and I stir until the oil paints the sauce and the sauce answers back.
Capers get rinsed and tossed in, little bombs of salt and history.
A palmful of green olives, pitted and torn with my fingers because the knife makes them behave too much.
A pinch of chile—Calabrian paste today, dark and round, heat that rolls rather than stabs.
A few raisins for the Morettis because their aunts would approve, and a scatter of pine nuts later, for texture and memory.
I pour in a ladle of the fish stock, then another, and let the stew breathe.
The room smells like a chapel by the sea.
The swordfish goes in near the end, cut into fat cubes that will stay tender if you treat them like they’re listening.
If you boil it, it will punish you. If you wait, it will reward you.
I season the cubes with salt and a thread of lemon zest and slide them into the simmer so they poach in the sauce like they’re being told a secret they want to hear.
I don’t stir hard. I nudge. The heat does the rest.
“Bread?” Gabriella asks, already reaching.
“Two kinds,” I say, because you don’t make a stew like this and then starve the plate. “Garlic rubbed. And plain, for the saints.”
She smiles because she knows. She always knows.
I move through the kitchen like a woman who trusts her hands.
I taste. I adjust. I add a spoon of stock and watch the line of oil on top go from too proud to just right.
I squeeze half an orange into the pot because Sicilians understand sunshine in a bowl.
I chop parsley and fennel fronds together and make a rough gremolata with lemon zest that will wake the stew at the pass.
I set aside a little bowl for Marco, no chile, extra bread, because we teach him with tastings and he learns fast.
Dante doesn’t hover. He ghosts in and out, jacket on now, coat open, hands empty, eyes always cutting to the places that matter.
He stops at the door twice to watch me and doesn’t speak because he knows the language.
The second time, he leans and kisses the top of my head, quick and sure, then goes without making it a thing.
My heart stumbles and continues walking. I let it.
The kitchen has a rhythm and the room knows it.
Knives talk to boards. Pots whisper. The dishwasher hums a tune I almost remember.
Staff move around each other in those little near-misses that mean trust. Then Paolo walks through the swinging door, and the whole room inhales and forgets to let it out.