Chapter 28
The guest rooms were on the second floor, both with views of the canal, and furnished with special care so people would feel welcome.
Dario showed them to Frederica without a word of preference, just holding each door open and letting her look. One had a blue-painted headboard and a window seat with faded cushions. The other was smaller, darker-walled, with a terracotta lamp that threw warm amber light over everything it touched.
"Towels are in the cupboard in the hall," Dario said, pointing. "The extra bathroom is that door there. The hot water takes a minute to come through."
"I'll survive. I've camped in worse places," she replied, meaning every word.
"Make yourself comfortable. I'll be cooking if you need anything," Dario said and went back downstairs.
Frederica had a shower and tried to stretch the knots out of her neck. The winter sun was gone by 4:30 p.m., and she was already yawning. Maybe it was the past few weeks catching up with her, or the fact that the house was designed to make people feel comfortable and relaxed.
She found Dario in the kitchen a short time later, because Dario cooked the way other people paced: with purpose, focus, and mentally burning off whatever he couldn't afford to sit with.
Frederica tended to punch things, but she wasn't going to complain whenever someone decided to cook for her.
He must have gone out or ordered groceries in somehow at the last minute, because he was doing something with seafood and garlic that made her stomach rumble. There was rice, white wine, and stock simmering on the back burner.
Frederica sat at the kitchen table, accepted the glass of wine he placed in front of her, and watched him work. She had to admit, it wasn't a bad view to have a big, handsome man cooking.
When the bowl of risotto arrived, she ate the first spoonful and made a sound she wasn't entirely in control of.
Dario looked up from his own bowl and then tried to hide his cute, pleased smile. "I don't think I've ever heard that particular moan out of you."
"It is my 'this food is obscenely good' moan," she told him, because it was. "If you were less annoying, you would be prime wife material for this risotto alone."
"High praise from you, Spartana. I'll add it to my CV of marriagable qualities," Dario said, laughing as he reached over and poured her more wine.
Frederica ate two full bowls. He ate one and a half and kept getting a dazed expression, which told her he was still trying not to drown in memories.
They cleaned up together after, falling into the same easy division they had found in her parents' kitchen in Rhodes, with her washing and him drying.
"This house is so much better than the villa," she said, handing him a pan.
"Better how?"
"Less like a statement. More like people actually lived here."
Dario took the pan and looked at it for a moment. "Leo keeps threatening to come and sort some of it out so it's less cluttered, but he hasn't yet."
"He should leave it as it is."
"That's what I told him, but I can understand wanting to update the plumbing and a few other things.
" Dario stacked the pan. "He said it was mine and Rodrigo's as much as his, and he'll ask us before he changes anything major.
It might be in his name, but he still wants us to use it as a family home when we need it. "
Frederica set down her dish towel. "Is there somewhere that's just yours?"
"Not yet," he said and pulled a face. "I've always been on the move for a job or back at the villa. My own place hasn't seemed important."
"It will be." She picked the dish towel back up and folded it over the oven handle. "When Agrippa is handled, you should have a special place of your own. Pick somewhere that makes you happy."
"I'll think about it. God knows as soon as Giana and Rodrigo start popping out babies, I'm not going to want to stay at the villa," he replied. They both pulled a face at that and then laughed because it was just one more thing they agreed on.
Frederica thought she wanted an early night, but instead she lay in the dark of the amber-lamp room, listening to the house settle around her and counting her heartbeats.
She wasn't anxious, but her brain was running its inventory when she really wanted it to stop. She thought about the journal, Niccolò's handwriting, and the entry Dario had become so upset over.
She thought about the bee, about him saying, 'I prayed to this saint when I got in trouble. It actually seemed to help,' in a quiet, shy way, because he had kept this small private practice since he was nineteen without telling anyone, and it was the last thing his father gave him.
Frederica stared at the ceiling for another ten minutes before she gave up, got out of bed, and tiptoed into the hall.
The light under his door was still on. She knocked twice and pushed it open without waiting for an answer.
Dario was sitting up against the headboard in soft pajama pants and nothing else, the journal open across his wide thighs.
"Can't sleep?" she asked him.
"Nope."
"Me neither."
She crossed the room and sat on the end of his bed, pulling one knee up. The journal was open, but his eyes weren't moving.
"You trying to find the sexy bits?" she teased.
He looked down at the journal, then back at her. "No sexy bits. I keep going back to the Rodrigo and Leo entry. Reading them in order. I know what comes next, and I still keep reading up to it and stopping."
Frederica understood that. The compulsive return to the moment before the hurtful part. Like poking a bruise that ached too much.
"Maybe you need to give it to your brothers to read," she suggested.
"I know and I will, but I don't want to upset them more than they already are."
She gave him her sniper stare. "They need to have the same moment you just had. You don't get to keep it, even if it hurts them."
Dario set the journal on the nightstand. "It's like having a piece of him back. Except it also isn't, and that's worse because it makes me realize that I will never have him back."
"I understand that, but it is also kind of nice to have one last present from him." Frederica reached out and took the journal off the nightstand and put it on the floor behind her, out of his eyeline.
"You know what the cure is for all this pouting?" she asked.
"I'm not pouting," Dario said. She pushed him back against the pillows.
"You definitely are. Lucky you're hot enough to pull broody off properly."
His big body settled back into the bed while she moved up him and got a hand to the waistband of his pajama pants. He watched her do it with dark, attentive eyes.
"Frederica—"
"Shh," she said. "I'm helping you feel better."
She tugged the pants down and off, dropping them over the side of the bed, and took a moment to stare.
"On second thought, maybe this is to make us both feel better."
Seeing all of that muscle in the amber lamplight, and the dusting of hair on his wide chest, made her want to rub herself against him like the ginger cat had done to him in Rhodes.
She wrapped a hand around his gorgeous dick, felt him thicken immediately in her grip, and tilted her head up to look at him.
"You were obsessing too much," she stated and stroked him.
"I was," he agreed, his voice already rougher.
"This is a better way to relax before bed."
"I'm starting to see that."
Frederica stroked him slowly, watching his face, as his head tipped back against the pillow. His eyes closed, and the line between his brows that had been there since the study went away. Good. She wanted it gone.
She moved down the bed and settled between his muscular thighs. Without warning, she ran her tongue up the underside of his cock, base to tip, slow and deliberate, just to feel his whole body shudder with it.
"Dio," he breathed.
The heft of him was something she was never going to get tired of. Long and thick and already leaking for her. Fucking perfect.
She took the tip into her mouth and sucked, soft at first, watching him grip the sheets. His stomach contracted, the muscles pulling sharply, so she did it again.
"Frederica…" he was already breathy, and she loved it.
She hummed around him, and his thighs tensed.
He could probably crush her head with them, and she wouldn't complain.
She took more of his cock, working her tongue against him, finding the places that made him exhale in the controlled way of someone trying to hold themselves together.
Dismantling his control was one of the better things she had discovered she could do.
He looked wrecked already. Dark eyes and dark curls, and his chest rising and falling a little too fast.
Dario's hand sank into her loose hair. Not pushing, not directing. Just his fingers threading through the curls.
"Stop being careful," she growled at him.
"I'm not—"
"You are." She raised an eyebrow. "You've been doing it all day. You're allowed to just feel something without worrying about it. You want to pull my hair and fuck my mouth, do it. If I don't like it, I will tell you."
Something shifted in his expression, and his hand tightened in her hair. "Then get back to it, Spartana. My dick isn't going to suck itself."
She grinned at him and took him back into her mouth with a satisfaction that ran all the way to her toes. His grip in her hair tightened further, and she sucked harder.
She worked him with one hand at the base, her mouth taking the rest of him, and listened to the sounds she was pulling out of him, the Italian he muttered under his breath when he was past the point of composing himself.
She liked him losing his mind and being the reason for it. Her fingers ran over his balls, gently squeezing before moving down to lightly rim him. Some men loved it, others didn't.
Dario whimpered, which put him firmly in the former category. When she did it again, he fumbled for the drawer beside him and tossed a small bottle of lube onto the bed.
"Use that if you're going to play those games," he said, and she grabbed it without taking her mouth off him. She squeezed a small amount on her fingers and took her time to slick up the base of his cock, squeezing him in ways that had him writhing.
Frederica lightly scraped her teeth over his tip, and he trembled. "I want you to beg," she said, her voice husky.
"I don't beg," he replied.
Frederica moved her hands off him and took off her shirt, leaving her naked. His eyes went to her breasts. "If you beg for me, I'll let you come all over them."
"Fuck…" he groaned.
Frederica grabbed his slick cock again and gave it a rough pump. "I'm not going to let you come until you beg, so it's your decision."
She licked and sucked her way back down, her breasts and loose hair brushing over him. She kept one hand on his cock, holding him tight to stop him from coming, as the other slipped down to rim him again.
Dario's warm brown skin shone with sweat, and every time he got close to coming, Frederica would slow down or let go, anything to throw him off.
"Fucking hell," Dario groaned, his lips lifting off the bed, chasing her mouth. His hands twisted back in her hair. "Please, please, please, let me come, Frederica, for the love of fuck woman."
Frederica hummed in delight and sucked him harder. Her finger worked gently inside of him until she found his p-spot, and then he was fucking her mouth with everything he had.
The carved muscles in his thighs tensed, a broken sound coming out of his throat. She pulled her mouth off as hot come poured out of him and all over her breasts, just as she promised.
"Holy… I…" Dario stammered, sprawled out, and completely spent in every way.
"There now, don't you feel better?" she teased lightly, running her nails over his abs. "You stay there. I'll be right back."
Dario only whimpered, which made her laugh wickedly all the way to the adjoining bathroom. She cleaned herself up before running a cloth under the warm water.
Dario still hadn't moved, which made her smile widen even further. He groaned as she wiped him down in gentle swipes.
"Come here."
"Let me finish…"
"I'm clean enough." Dario pulled her up beside him without asking, his arm going around her waist, tucking her against his side.
He took the wet cloth from her and tossed it toward the bathroom. Frederica sighed, her cheek finding the perfect place between his shoulder and pec.
Dario ran his fingers through her hair slowly. "Frederica."
"Mmm?"
"Thank you."
"Don't make it weird, Colleoni. I did it for me, not for you."
Frederica felt him smile against the top of her head. His hand kept moving through her hair, slow and steady. Frederica closed her eyes and told herself she would let him drift off before sneaking out again.
She was asleep in four minutes. She never did make it back to her own room.