26. Mel #2
“Then I’ll just have to try harder.”
He hooks his fingers in my underwear and drags it down my legs, and then his mouth is on me, no warmup, no mercy, tongue flattening over my clit while he hooks my thigh over his shoulder and holds my hips still against the window with one forearm braced across my stomach.
I’m gripping the sill so hard my fingers ache and I still nearly go down.
“Santi-” I choke. “Oh my - that’s-”
“Mm.” The vibration of it nearly finishes me.
He pulls back just enough to look up the length of my body, mouth wet, eyes black.
“You taste exactly like I remembered. I used to lie in that empty apartment and think about this. About getting my mouth on you again. About making you scream loud enough to forget you ever left.” He drags his tongue up through me, slow. “So scream.”
He gives me two fingers, thick and sure, curling into the spot that makes my knees buckle while his tongue works my clit relentlessly, and there’s a distant, mortified part of me thinking the neighbors, the walls are paper, everyone in this motel is going to hear, and the rest of me doesn’t care even a little, is grinding down onto his face shamelessly, is fisting a hand in his hair to hold him exactly there.
“Good,” he growls against me. “Louder. I told you I’d make you forget the neighbors even exist.”
The climax tears out of me so hard I do cry out, loud and unashamed, my whole body seizing around his fingers while he works me through it, relentless, until my legs are shaking too badly to hold me and I’m sagging off the windowsill.
He rises in one fluid motion, catching me before I can collapse, and walks me backward toward the heart-shaped bed.
“Your turn,” I manage.
“Not yet.” He tips me back onto the red velvet comforter and settles his weight over me. “I’m not done with you.”
“Santino-”
“Two years.” He kisses my jaw, my neck, the hollow of my throat. “I have two years of making up to do. We’re going to be here all night.”
He’s already hard against my hip, straining against his jeans, but he ignores it in favor of mapping my body with his hands. He traces the changes, the softness at my belly, the fullness of my breasts, the silver stretch marks that trail down my hips like lightning.
“Beautiful,” he murmurs, kissing each one. “These are beautiful.”
“They’re from the pregnancy-”
“I know.” He looks up at me, eyes bright. “They’re proof. Of what you did. What you survived. They’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
My eyes are burning. I pull him up by his hair, kiss him hard, and reach for his belt.
“Off,” I demand. “Now.”
He laughs against my mouth but complies, shucking his jeans and boxers in one motion. And then he’s bare above me, all golden skin and dark ink and the lean muscle he’s built with grief and hope, and I take a moment to just look.
The tattoo over his heart. The quote on his ribs, Italian, which Chiara told me means “what is lost will be found.” The geometric pattern on his shoulder that he got after some board meeting he refused to talk about.
The way his body fits against mine like it was made for this.
“I love you,” I tell him.
“Every day of my life.” He settles the head of himself against me, holding my gaze. “That’s the deal.”
He slides home in one long stroke.
We find a rhythm fast, savoring for about ten seconds before it turns desperate. His hips drive into mine while I hook my legs high around his waist and pull him deeper, and he props himself over me on his forearms and just watches my face while he wrecks me.
“Look at you,” he pants. “Taking all of me. You were made for this - for me - say it-”
“I hate you-”
“Say it anyway.” He punctuates it with a thrust that shoves me up the mattress.
“I’m yours,” I sob out, because it’s true, because it’s been true for five years. “God, I’m yours, don’t stop-”
He gives me harder. The headboard cracks against the wall in a rhythm neither of us bothers to hide, and I’m climbing again, that white-hot coil drawing tight, my nails raking down his back, both of us slick with sweat, filthy and loud and completely unhinged.
And then my phone rings.
“Ignore it,” Santino pants.
“It might be-”
“Ignore. It.”
The phone keeps ringing. That specific ringtone, Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5,” that I set for Hattie because she thought it was hilarious.
“It’s Hattie,” I gasp. “The twins-”
Santino’s hips still. His jaw clenches. And then, with the expression of a man being led to the gallows, he reaches over and grabs my phone from the nightstand.
“Answer it,” he says through gritted teeth.
“While you’re still-”
“Answer it or she’ll call the police.”
He’s right. I grab the phone, swipe to answer, and try to make my voice sound normal.
“Hattie?”
“There you are! I’ve been calling for twenty minutes!”
“Sorry, I-” Santino shifts inside me, deliberate and devastating, and I choke on a gasp. “We got a flat tire. Had to stop for the night.”
“A likely story.” Hattie’s voice is dry. “Where are you?”
“A motel. In Marigold.” Another shift, deeper this time, and I have to bite my lip to keep from moaning. “Is everything okay? The twins-”
“The twins are fine. Perfect angels. But Gerald got into the toolshed again and I need to know if you moved the bolt cutters.”
“The bolt cutters?” I’m having trouble focusing. Santino has started moving again, slow, shallow thrusts that are absolutely not helping my concentration. “Why do you need bolt cutters?”
“Because Gerald has somehow locked himself inside the chicken coop and if I don’t get him out soon, General Custard is going to commit murder.”
I want to laugh. Or scream. Or throw this phone across the room and ride my husband until we both forget our own names.
Instead, I say, very calmly: “Check the back of the hay barn. Top shelf.”
“The hay barn. Right.” A pause. “Mel, honey, why do you sound like you’re running a marathon?”
Santino chooses this moment to shift angles and hit the spot that whites out my vision. I clamp my hand over my mouth and glare at him.
He grins. The bastard.
“Just - stairs,” I manage. “Lots of stairs at this motel.”
“Uh-huh.” Hattie sounds deeply unconvinced. “Well, you kids have fun with your… stairs. I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“That leaves a lot of options.”
“That’s the idea.”
She hangs up.
I throw the phone across the bed and grab Santino by the shoulders.
“You absolute menace-”
“You loved it.”
“I’m going to kill you.”
“After.” He kisses me, deep and filthy. “Kill me after.”
And then he stops teasing and gives me what I need, deep, hard strokes that have me arching off the bed, his name spilling out of me in broken pieces. The orgasm hits like a dropped floor, and I’m still shaking through it when he follows, burying himself deep and groaning my name into my neck.
We collapse together on the red velvet comforter.
The cherubs on the wallpaper seem to be judging us.
“Best flat tire ever,” Santino mumbles against my hair.
I laugh until I cry.