Chapter 13 Vasso
VASSO
Jealousy is a stupid emotion for a man like me to bait.
As I’ve recognized it in myself in the past, the memory of it hot, sour, and far too real, I can’t mistake it when I see it Naomi’s face.
And while it sends a singeing thrill through my blood, I know it’s borderline adolescent to court it in my wife. Especially when she takes another look at Lulu’s peach tattoo, winking at me like a dare, and her smile goes tight.
It’s sharp and weaponized by the time we slip under the fig tree beside the dappled shaded pergola. The resin-sweet air and the sound of the cicadas drilling the afternoon drift away as I watch my wife lose the last of her patience.
She spins on me the second we’re alone, linen whispering around her sexy legs, beautiful eyes like polished amber and just as flammable. “Did you enjoy your tour, Mr. Dillinger?”
“It had its… diversions,” I say, because yes, I’m an idiot and occasionally can’t resist poking a lit fuse.
Her chin lifts. “I noticed,” she says, cool and cutting. “She counted your biceps like rosary beads she wants to lick before she prayed to, Vasso.”
“And you watched me not touch her,” I counter, stepping in, letting my voice stay low and even. “You watched me not encourage her. You also watched me wait for you to say enough.”
“I shouldn’t have to,” she snaps, and the truth in it lands where I live. Hard and true and yup, shaming. “And if you say this is optics—”
“It isn’t.” I move until the fig tree’s shade turns our skin a little greener, a little more secret.
The pergola is twenty steps away, vine-laced and empty.
The house is far enough that our voices won’t carry, and the vineyard amphitheater catches only the softer sounds.
“It’s nothing. Means less than nothing. And you know it. ”
Her jaw flexes, a tell I pressed into memory when my life was still measured by which doorways I could and couldn’t use. “There’s a very thick line between polite and dry humping, Vasso,” she says.
Heat slices straight through me. “I’m aware. I can show you if you like?”
She inhales sharply. “Show me?” She laughs like a blade leaving a sheath. “What are you, a sex tour guide?”
“No,” I say, and I mean it like a promise, “I’m your husband.”
The word slows her for half a heartbeat. I take it and keep going.
“And you’re pissed off. Fair,” I say, closing the last inch between us. “So I’ll make amends the only way that matters to me and, I suspect, to you.”
Her breath stutters, then she glances around, a lady always poised for decorum even then every cell in her body wants to be very bad. “Vasso, if you think you can distract me with—”
“Not a distraction.” I slide a hand to the small of her back and feel her shiver despite herself. “A correction. Brownie points very much wanted and eager to be earned.”
Her mouth opens to argue but when she pauses to lick her bottom lip in greedy hunger, I don’t give her the chance. I back her against the fig’s rough trunk and sink to my knees on warm grass like devotion isn’t a language I’m fluent in.
Her eyes flare, pupils spilling wide; her fingers fly to my shoulders as if to steady herself against something she tells herself she shouldn’t want.
“I’m going to wreck you, baby. Up to you whether you want to leave your mark on me or not,” I say, looking up at her. “But I hope you do.”
Something feral flickers in her gaze—satisfaction, possession, a recognition that she doesn’t have to be civilized for me. As I slide my hands up her warm, supple thighs, she glides her hands down my jaw and neck to rest them on my shoulders.
Watching. Waiting. Breath bated and her magnificent body rousing and ripening for me.
Her breath catches when my fingers whisper over the heat at her satin-covered apex. I watch her eyes darken, her breaths pant as I caress her pussy through her panties.
She nails dig into the skin on my neck and I let a growl loose. I stroke her, back and forth, back and forth and watch, fucking ravenous, her nipples push against her dress.
Her pussy’s wetness increases the friction and she whimpers in her throat.
She tangles her fingers in my hair, not gentle, and tugs my shirt open with unrepentant hands until the linen rumples like we wrestled the tree and won.
Good. I want to be wrecked by her. Out here, in someone else’s kingdom, I want the evidence of her possession on my body, in my clothes, under my nails.
“Vasso—” Her voice is already different. Lower. Less defended.
“Shh,” I murmur against her thigh, tasting sun and salt and the faint ghost of her perfume. “It feels like forever since I tasted you. Let me make amends. Let me please you.”
Still watching her every shiver and devouring her every gasp, I reach beneath her dress and drag down her panties. The second she steps out of them, I lift the scrap to my nose, inhaling deeply.
“Fuck, you smell incredible. Need a taste, baby.”
At her shaky nod, I dive in, rough and uncouth as the insult once leveled on me, but I don’t even care.
This is supposed to be for her, but I’m not entirely selfless. Hell, I’m downright elated to be pleasuring her for my own purposes.
Because right this second, I need Naomi like I need air.
Yesterday and last night on the plane have only revealed that I’m addicted to my temporary wife. That avoiding that truth is as useless as shouting at the sun not to shine.
And so as I lift one thigh and drape it over my shoulder to open her wide to my hungry mouth, my goal is specific, that of a man reacquainting himself with the only altar he ever prayed at without lying to himself about why.
She braces one hand on the tree, the fingers of the other still knotted in my hair as if the roots can somehow anchor both of us, and I take my time learning the new map the years have written on her body.
I lick and suck on her clit and she cries out, blissfully owning her pleasure, uncaring that she’s vocal—God, she always was and I pray always will—and I take every sound and pocket it like cash. Like the way I’m hoarding her soaked panties.
When she tries to hold back I remind her who she is with my mouth, then my fingers, fucking one, then two into her and stroking, searching until I find her sweet spot.
Then with intent that makes my cock scream for deliverance…a petition I ignore because this is for Naomi, I thrust in and out of her pussy while I polish her clit with my tongue. And I’m rewarded with the most beautiful sound in the world when she tips over.
I coax out every last drop of her climax, ruthless, merciful, all of it at once.
She falls apart beautifully, her hips rocking, fingers yanking my hair to keep me where she needs me, a bitten-off curse that makes me grin into her skin and work harder.
The fig leaves murmur; the vineyard holds its breath. When she shatters, it’s with her eyes open, looking down at me like I just put the world back in the correct order.
After, she melts down the tree into my lap and I catch her easily, kissing every ounce of my own need into her until we breathe apart, gasping and shuddering.
She rests her cheek against my shoulder, our breaths mangling into one rhythm.
Then her fingers begin to move.
I realize the destination with a strangled breath a moment later.
“No, baby.”
“Yes,” she insists, eyes fierce. “Don’t deny me.”
She rearranges herself onto the grass and reaches for my belt. Draws it down over my steel-hard cock. She doesn’t miss a chance to dance her clever fingers over my length and oh fuck, stars sprinkle across my vision.
She pulls me out, lips parted as she strokes me from root to tip. “God, yes. Naomi…”
“Do you like that?”
A harsh laugh rips from my throat. “You know I do, you beautiful witch.”
The siren smile that curves her lips snags something deep in my chest. I push it down hard, breathe through it as she licks her lips with slow, saucy intent.
Then lowers her head.
The first touch of her mouth on my cock smashes a full-body shudder through me.
She licks and sucks on my head, humming at the back of her throat like I’m her favourite dessert.
And maybe I am. Because I’m melting beneath her touch, groaning and pleading and pumping into her mouth as my wife pleasures me.
A scathing thought impinged on where she learned to suck cock like this but I demolish it. Or hell, it demolishes itself before it kills me. Settles on the hard truth that I haven’t been a monk in the last ten years.
Then my brain shifts the more pleasant image of watching her ass wriggle in the air as she sucks me deeper into her mouth, stretching her mouth to draw me down her throat.
I hiss my pleasure, bury my hands in her hair, my head thrown back. “Baby! Feels so good.”
She moans her approval, sucks me harder and I’m gone.
I pump once, twice, three times, and I clench my fingers. “I’m coming, baby. If you—”
She shakes her head, shutting up my warning.
I suck in a long, ragged breath. Then with a muted roar I erupt into her mouth. She swallows my seed, then licks me clean.
And when she rises to sit on her knees, her panting matching mine, her eyes sparkle with wicked and pleased accomplishment.
Rough chuckles rumble through me as I gather her close.
My shirt is definitely ruined; her dress is definitely rumpled, her mouth swollen and beautifully bruised from her ministrations.
We look like we’ve both been loved hard and well, and I hope Enzo’s cameras catch nothing at all because some things belong to us alone.
She kisses me then, slow, full, tasting herself, tasting me, making a satisfied sound that punches a hole straight through my chest. I could live inside that sound and never miss Manhattan.
“Appeased?” I ask against her mouth, because I aim for wry and land somewhere stupidly soft.
She hums, a little smile threatening the corner of her lips. “Hmm… maybe. I reserve the right to request a repeat performance later.”
“Consider me on call,” I say, and she laughs, head tipping back, throat bared like a dare.