DARIO
SIXTEEN
Something is very wrong.
It’s in the way she’s standing when I come in—at the kitchen counter, her back to the door, too still. Lena is never still like that when she’s cooking. She moves efficiently, continuously, the way people move when they’re comfortable in a space and know where everything is.
This is a different kind of still. This is a person holding themselves in place.
Opal is at the kitchen table with her pencils, drawing something elaborate and narrating it to herself at low volume. She looks up when I come in and gives me the quick, sunny smile that I’ve been receiving for nearly two months now, and I have not found a way to be indifferent to it.
“Hey,” I say to both of them.
Lena turns. There it is—the controlled surface of her face, everything managed, but her eyes are still doing the thing they do when she’s been scared and hasn’t fully come down from it yet.
The pupils are slightly wide. The look she gives me is the kind that says later, not in front of Opal, and I receive it. So I wait.
I don’t like waiting. I like it less when I know Lena’s been hurt and she can’t say anything about it because her daughter is here. That means it’s big. Not just the day-to-day bullshit everyone handles.
Did someone die?
We eat dinner. Opal carries the conversation, which she is well-equipped to do. Tonight’s topic is the lifecycle of the mayfly, which she’s been reading about and which she describes with enormous sympathy for the mayfly’s position, given that it has approximately one day of adult life.
She feels this is unfair. She has plans to write a letter about it, though she hasn’t decided to whom.
“What would you say in the letter?”
She thinks about it for a full minute. “Dear Mayfly Doctor, the mayfly deserves more time.”
“That’s the whole letter?”
She nods once.
“That is a highly efficient letter.”
She grins with spinach in her teeth.
After dinner, I read to Opal—she specifically requests the one about the rabbit who doesn’t want to go to sleep, which I know well enough by now to read without looking at the pages.
By the time I come back to the kitchen, Lena is at the table with her hands wrapped around a cup of tea she’s not drinking, and the look on her face is no longer managed at all.
I sit across from her, which is all it takes for her to unload on me.
She tells me everything, including the thing he said about identifying pieces of me to someone in an official context.
She says this last part while looking straight at me, not softening it.
Only then does her voice crack. “Pieces of you. Then he explained that it’d be a shame if I were framed for your murder, and he knows how to do that. ”
What I want to do is get up, find Esposito, and expose each and every surface nerve end in his body. Then I’ll dig into the deeper ones, the ones the body evolved to keep away from harm near the surface. I’ll make him dance for me before I end it. A puppet on strings in agony.
I can make it last for weeks, if I want to.
But getting up would frighten her right now, and that would not be useful. So I stay seated, and I listen, and I let her finish.
“He isn’t scared of you, Dario. Who is he? Really, I mean. Why isn’t he scared of you?”
When she finishes, I get up and go to my office. I hear her inhale sharply behind me—she thinks I’m leaving, and she’s already drawing breath to call me back. I come back in forty-five seconds with a bank envelope and set it on the table in front of her.
“What is this?” Not a question. She can see what it is.
“Enough to clear the debt twice over.” I sit back down. “Cash. Nothing traceable. Small bills, and the ones that aren’t small are clean.”
Her body trembles. “But he’ll know.”
“I’m going to tell you exactly how to deliver it so that when it reaches Ed, it looks like it came from you. From an old boyfriend, a side gig, a loan you took, your mother, anything except me. He’ll have no reason to connect it to my name, Lena.”
She’s looking at the envelope. Her jaw is tight. She whispers, “He’ll know.”
“He’s a blowhard. Don’t let him rattle you.”
“He’s not,” she says immediately. Her voice is quiet but certain, and she looks up at me with something in her eyes that I haven’t seen directed at me in a very long time. Real fear. Not for herself, I realize. For me.
“Trust me—”
“I’ve known Ed for two years, Dario. He’s serious.
He meant what he said. If he thinks you’re moving against him, he’ll—” She stops.
She collects herself. “He’ll hurt you. Or he’ll try.
And I—” She stops again, and this time what crosses her face before she can control it is naked and unguarded and fierce.
I understand with the sudden, complete clarity of a man who has just stepped off a ledge that he didn’t see that she’s terrified of something happening to me. Not to the arrangement. To me.
I sit with that for a moment. The full weight of it.
Nobody has looked at me like that in—I run the calculation, and I can’t find a number that doesn’t feel inadequate. Nobody has been afraid for me in a way that wasn’t tactical, wasn’t about losing an asset or a contact or a useful piece of infrastructure. Not since my parents died.
She’s afraid for me because I matter to her, and that’s it, that’s the whole reason, and the simplicity of it hits me somewhere I didn’t know was unguarded.
“Hey.” My voice comes out differently than I intended—quieter, stripped of some layer I usually keep on.
She looks at me.
“I’ve been doing this a long time. Ed Esposito is not the most serious person I’ve handled. He’s not in the top ten, and he’s definitely not the man who gets me. I need you to trust me on that.”
“It’s not about whether you can handle him.
It’s—” She stops. She looks at the table.
“I didn’t expect to care this much,” she says, and it comes out slightly wrecked, like she’s confessing something she’s been arguing with herself about.
“I want you to know that I know that’s not what we agreed to. But I do. I care what happens to you.”
My stomach does a thing that mimics nausea, but it’s not that. Whatever the fuck it is, it’s visceral as hell, and it won’t go away until I say what’s on my mind.
“I care what happens to you too.”
She holds my gaze for a moment. Then she reaches across the table, and I take her hand.
We stay like that for a little while. The apartment around us is quiet, Opal asleep, the city outside doing its indifferent thing.
The envelope is on the table between us—this slightly absurd object, full of cash, next to a cold cup of tea and two people who have arrived somewhere neither of them planned to be.
This is the lever. She is the lever. Opal and her crayon drawing that says my family. Ed Esposito found it without even trying, just by paying attention, and that information sits somewhere in Marco’s world now, noted and filed, waiting.
I know all of this. I have known it for weeks. I’m holding her hand anyway.
The debt will be cleared. Ed will be handled.
But right now I’m not thinking about Ed.
I bring her hand to my mouth and press my lips to her knuckles, and I feel her exhale like someone who has been holding something for hours and is finally setting it down.
She needs to get out of her head. The truth is, so do I.
Because if I think about the fact that little shit isn’t afraid of me, I will go nuclear the next time I see his ugly face. Might to need to remind a few assholes who I am, just to keep them on their toes.
But tonight, Lena.
I take her hand and lead her to my room. She’s been sleeping here more lately anyway, but it’s not sleep that I want.
As soon as the door closes, I lunge against her, pressing my forearm to her throat. “Do you want to play tonight, pet? Spend some time outside that pretty head of yours?”
Her breath comes in hot pants against my face. Pupils blown. Lips rosy from the flush of heat in her body. “Yes.”
“Then take off your clothes and get on your knees.”
She swallows and strips, her eyes locked on mine. Then she carefully drops to kneel at my feet. Fuck, she looks pretty like this. Bare and kneeling.
One detail, though. “Arms behind your back.”
Without hesitation, they’re behind her in a flash.
Such a damn good pet.
I stroll toward the bed and take a seat on the edge. “Crawl to me.”
“I—can I use my hands?”
“Can I use my hands, sir? And yes.”
She nods once, and I watch the show of her naked ass swaying to and fro as she makes her way to me. She kneels at my feet once again.
I stroke her cheek, then grab a fist of her hair and pull it straight toward the floor to expose her throat.
With my other hand, I draw lazy circles up and down that column of skin.
“Tonight, I’m going to fuck this throat.
You’re going to take everything I have to give you.
Every inch. And then you’ll swallow it all down.
Do you understand me?” My way of asking if she’s ready to play like this.
Her eyes, now glassy, flicker for a moment. I’m not sure she’ll agree.
But then she nods.
“Open those perfect lips, pet.”
She does, and I stand to shuck my pants off. Boxers too. She doesn’t try to escape the smack of my cock on her cheek when it springs forth.
I think she likes it. She aims her open mouth for the head.
“You’ll get him soon enough. But first, tell me something.”
“Anything. Sir.”
I run my thumb along her bottom lip for a moment, enjoying the softness there. “What do you want tonight?”
“You.”
It’s a good answer. It’s not the one I want.
“Anything specific?”
She shakes her head, her eyes downcast. “I don’t want to think anymore.”
Message received. This is my show.
“Then let’s get started.” I circle her mouth with my cock as she sticks out her soft pink tongue, and there, I let it brush the underside, before I grab the back of her head and shove all the way in. She gags on my head, and if there’s a better feeling, I don’t know what it is.
Wait—yes, I do. It’s every hole I’ve taken that belongs to Lena Swan.
Each time I enter part of her body, it’s the best thing I’ve had. Her pussy, her ass, her mouth, her hands, whatever I’m in at the moment is better than the rest. And then when I fuck her somewhere else, that’s the best spot.
Makes her body into a carnival where I want to ride all the rides.
I develop a rhythm for fucking her face, and she does everything I ask. She weathers it all—fast, slow, hard, soft. Choking on my cock only seems to turn her on. The lack of oxygen is helping her relax.
It’s all helping me too.
My balls lift and tighten, the warning before the storm. She must feel it too, because she’s more enthusiastic, more eager for the next thrust. Tears stream down her puffed cheeks, but she doesn’t fight it. She takes everything I have to give her, just like always.
“Such a good fucking pet.”
She practically purrs at the words.
I lace my fingers into her hair tighter. Ride her face harder. “You’re going to drink every drop. I want to feel it. Take it all, baby.” I shove deep and shoot in her throat, still fucking her face until I have nothing left to give.
That sneaky minx sucks harder when I pull out, making a popping sound on the head of my cock. Nearly takes my knees out from under me.
“Naughty girl. Get on the bed. Hands and knees.”
“But I thought—”
“You’re not thinking tonight, pet. Not allowed. Bed. Now.”
She scrambles onto the bed, and when she assumes the position, her wetness glistens in the lamplight.
“My turn.” I crouch behind her, angle her hips, and tongue-fuck her from behind. She shouts in shock, but I don’t stop. I drink her every drop, wiggling my tongue against her flesh as she dances on my face. She can’t escape the grip on her hips. She can only take what I give her.
Then I add fingers. Two at first, curved downward to get her G-spot while I flick my tongue everywhere else. Her pussy. The space between. Her ass. All over, again and again. I add a third finger, and a fourth, stretching her, filling her up.
Her moans vibrate my bones, and when she comes, she can’t sit still.
Especially not when I work my thumb into her quivering pussy. I get up to my knuckles before she cries out, “No more!”
I freeze. “Stop, or no deeper but keep going?”
“The second,” she pants.
So I start again, going no deeper, fucking her with half my hand while I devour the exposed bits. This time, I feel her come on my knuckles. That tight pulse, the wetness. I prolong it, adding my other palm on her clit.
Unholy sounds pour through the room as she comes again. She has the filthiest mouth when she’s properly stimulated, and it turns me on almost as much as her body does.
“Please,” she hisses.
I back off, easing my hands from her and helping her lie on her side, where I spoon her. Trouble is, I’m hard again, and I know she can’t take me after that. “I want to fuck your thighs.”
“Huh?”
I grab a bottle of lube and slick myself. “Keep those soft things as close together as you can.”
“Oh. Okay.”
I glide into the valley between them as she tries to tighten the muscles there for me. So accommodating. But not enough.
“Let’s try it this way.” I ease her onto her stomach and plank over her, fucking the soft and tight space between her legs. But somehow, my cock finds a way to her pussy.
Her whole body goes stiff. “I—”
I’m already inside of her—just the tip. “I’ll be careful, baby.” I kiss her shoulder, and she’s soft again. Open. For me.
“Okay.”
All I give her is the tip. Just enough to feel it. Not enough to hurt her sensitive parts I tried to fist.
But then she works her hips against me, trying to take more length.
“Don’t make me hurt you.”
“I want you, sir.”
“Oh, fuck,” I snarl. I hoist her hips up and slam home.
Can’t stop myself. Not after she said that.
I whip my body into hers, wet smacks echoing in the air until I lose control again, shooting hot cum into her body.
Something hard in me crumbles as I lie on her back, flattening her against the bed as I kiss all over.
“You don’t know what you do to me, Lena. ”
Her whisper is barely words. “I have an idea.”
I roll her onto her back and kiss her mouth, and I don’t ever want to stop.
I’m not sure if I can.