Chapter 36
The door to Dario's room was open. Frederica stood in the corridor with her bag over one shoulder, Despina's rifle case in her left hand, and a second bag of weapons braced against her hip.
Dario was on the edge of the bed in a T-shirt and pajama pants, a copy of the tunnels under Cologne printed and spread across the mattress in front of him. He looked up when she appeared in the doorway.
His gaze moved across the bags, the rifle case, the way she was standing, and she saw him understand exactly what she was doing before she had to explain it.
"Okay, I'll make some room," he said, and moved the plan off the bed. That was all. No ceremony about it or smug smiles.
Frederica set Despina's rifle against the wall, placed her bags down beside it, and shut the door. She turned back and found him watching her with his elbows on his knees.
The problem was that Frederica had a plan for tomorrow. She had been running it in her head since the briefing, taking it apart and reassembling it the way her father rebuilt locks, just for the pleasure of understanding every mechanism.
Entry through the east catacomb passage, get Dario inside the chamber before the blood moon peaked, Altun on the wards, Rodrigo on the outer guards, Kon and Athena through the north access. Extract her mother. Kill anything that moved to stop her. She knew how to do that.
This thing with him was the real issue.
"I don't know how to do this," she admitted, needing to be honest about it. "The mission with Agrippa, I can do that with my eyes closed. This. Us. Thing. I don't know how to be someone who needs people and who worries about how I could lose them."
Dario was quiet long enough that she knew he was choosing his words, not scrambling for them.
"You've always had people, Spartana," he said eventually. "Your parents. Altun. Kon. You just convinced yourself you didn't need them to show you that they cared."
Her throat tightened. "Maybe I feel like I don't deserve it. I'm not an easy person to like and be friends with. I kill people, Dario."
"So do they, and you're a lot more likable than you seem to think you are."
Dario crossed to her in three unhurried steps and took her face in both hands, tilting her chin up. His hands were warm and large and steady, and she leaned into him because she was so tired of fighting him.
"Your mother is alive because five hundred years ago, Serapis pulled a woman out of Cologne and put her on a road south.
Lisette Brun walked until the danger was behind her, and her line continued, and eventually it became you.
" He held her gaze, his dark eyes calm. "Tomorrow night, you are going to go back to that city and pull your mother out of the same man's hands, because that is who you are. You protect the people you love."
Frederica's throat had almost closed entirely. She tried to swallow through it.
"I'm terrified I'm going to fuck it up," she whispered.
"I know." His thumbs moved along her cheekbones. "Me too, but I would rather be terrified with you than safe without you."
She gave in and kissed him hard, both fists in his T-shirt. The space between them had always been a lie, and she was done maintaining it.
He made a rough sound against her mouth and kissed her back with the same force, his hands sliding from her face and into her hair. They were pulling each other's shirts off seconds later with a mad urgency to get skin on skin.
"I could make this slow," Dario said against her mouth. "All sweet and tender if you need it. We have all night."
Frederica pulled back enough to look at him. Her expression communicated what she thought of that in a single flat stare.
Dario grinned. "No, I didn't think so either. Not our style, is it, tesoro?
Frederica laughed. "No, it isn't. I want to feel alive. I want to take you the way I want to without hesitating about it."
Something shifted in his face, and he tilted her head so he could kiss and nip his way along her jaw to her sensitive ears.
"Then I'm yours," he whispered. "All of me. Do whatever you want, just leave enough of me to fight tomorrow."
Frederica kissed him hot and fiercely before stripping off the rest of her clothes and getting down on her knees. The sound he made when she looked up at him went all the way through her chest.
She got his pajama pants off and wrapped her hand around his cock.
"Frederica—"
She took his tip into her mouth, and any other words died on his tongue. She worked him slowly, finding what made his thighs tighten, and his breath go ragged. The drag of her tongue on the underside, the pressure at the base where her hand gripped him.
Dario's grip tightened in her hair, and she took him deeper. He controlled the pace, and she let him because she wanted the full weight of his wanting.
"Cazzo," he swore on an exhale, and the shaking started in his thighs.
Frederica reached down and slid two fingers over her wet pussy, finding her clit, working herself in slow circles because she was already aching and couldn't bear it. She loved the hot, musky taste of him, the feel of his big hands on her, guiding her exactly the way he wanted.
Dario's grip in her hair went rigid. "Let me see you." His voice was rough and unsteady. "Keep going. I want to watch while you—fuck, Frederica, keep going—"
She worked herself slowly and sucked him harder, and the combination of both was making her lose herself in the sensation of giving them both pleasure. His hips moved in small, helpless thrusts, his breathing falling apart.
Dario pulled her off, both hands in her hair, lifting her head, his chest heaving.
"I need you to stop before I come all over you," he said with a ragged exhale. "And I want to be in you like I need to breathe."
Frederica laughed softly as he picked her up, her legs going around his waist, and carried her to the bed.
He dropped back onto the covers and brought her down on top of him. She could hardly believe he was all hers.
Fredrica reached around and found the bra she had stripped off earlier. She held it up.
Dario looked at it, and a slow smile spread across his mouth. "I don't think it will fit me."
"Hands up," she demanded, and he lifted them behind his head to clasp the bars of the headboard.
She crossed his wrists, looped the fabric around them, knotted it, and reached up to hook it around the bar. He tested it once, making his biceps flex, then let his arms settle above his head and looked at her with those dark eyes.
"Happy now?" he asked, wearing the little grin that drove her wild.
"Getting there." She swung her leg over him and sat on his face.
Dario's hands jerked against the binding. "You really are in a mood to drive me crazy tonight, aren't you?"
"I sure am. Now get to work," she crooned.
His hot tongue glided between her folds, and every other thought she had fell apart. She grabbed the headboard with both hands and held on.
Dario ate her pussy with unmatched enthusiasm, and Frederica reveled in it.
His tongue pushed deep, pulling sounds out of her she had no control over, and she ground down against his mouth because she couldn't get enough.
His hands strained against the headboard bar, making it shake as the fabric pulled taut.
The orgasm hit her fast and hard. Her thighs clamped against his head, her knuckles white on the headboard, a cry tore out of her so loud that she was grateful the Venice walls were thick enough to absorb it.
She stayed there for a moment, breathing hard, her legs shaking, and the pulse from her pussy thrumming all the way through her. Dario licked her gently through it until she could form enough thoughts to move.
Frederica worked her way down him slowly, because she had the time and she wanted to savor every second of it.
Her mouth found his throat, the line of his jaw, the soft skin below his ear that made him hiss in a breath. She wanted to lick and mark him all over, so he went into battle covered in her.
She dragged her teeth along his collarbone, kissed the muscle of his shoulder, pressed her lips to the tattoos on his chest.
She worked her mouth along the edges of the design at his hip until he made a broken sound against the pillow, and the muscles of his abdomen jumped and contracted under her lips.
She nipped along his obliques. Licked the trail of hair below his navel. He tried to move his arms, and it was forceful enough that the headboard rattled. The frustrated, thoroughly turned-on groan he made was one of the best sounds she had ever been responsible for.
Frederica spread her hands over his chest and smiled in deep satisfaction. All that muscle and heat, wrapped around the one person in her life who had never once looked at her and decided she was too much.
"You never make me feel like I'm too big," she said, and it came out far more honest than she planned.
Dario's expression changed, the wanting going quieter and more serious.
"You're the perfect size for me." He said it like a fact, not a reassurance. "I never have to worry about hurting you or holding back, and I can just fuck you with everything I want to give you. You're perfect for me in every way that matters."
Frederica kissed him to stop herself from doing something undignified like trying to respond to his declaration. She didn't have the right words for it anyway.
She worked her way back up him and sank down onto his cock. The stretch of him, the fullness, it was so good she exhaled roughly, and his arms strained against the headboard above them both.
"Frederica—" he moaned.
"I've got you," she said, rolling her hips. "I'm going to fuck you within an inch of your life tonight, and you're going to take everything I give you, aren't you?"
"Oh, fuck, yes," Dario gasped, the veins in his neck straining as he fought to breathe, her pussy clenching and releasing him.
Frederica found her pace with slow rolls of her hips at first, working out the angle that lit up every nerve she had.