Chapter 13 Antonia
Chapter Thirteen: Antonia
The dress fits.
Signora Vitale's alterations are flawless.
The dark red fabric sits against my body the way armor sits against a soldier, close, functional, and designed to make a statement before a single word is spoken.
The back drops to the base of my spine. The neckline rests below my collarbone.
And the pockets, the ones Giada requested and Signora Vitale delivered with professional reluctance, hold Vita and Morte against my thighs without a visible line.
I'm armed in a wedding dress. Giada's finest contribution to the arrangement.
I stand in front of the mirror in my room and look at the woman looking back.
Dark hair half down, loose, because pulling it back felt too military for a wedding and leaving it down felt too vulnerable for a war, and the compromise is somewhere between both.
No jewelry because I don't own jewelry. No veil because fuck veils.
No flowers because the compound is under lockdown and nobody's going out for roses while Castillo soldiers are cutting throats on the perimeter.
My soldiers.
Two scouts dead yesterday. Carmelo found the bodies, brought them back, and the compound buried them this morning at dawn in a quiet ceremony that I watched from my window.
Two men who were alive three days ago, dead because I refused to become part of a power exchange.
More accurately, I refused to allow them to use my future children in their power struggles.
The wedding is in an hour. Leone will officiate.
The war room has been cleared and rearranged, chairs in rows, the operational maps removed from the walls.
Savannah has set up the bar in the corner because Savannah has decided that no event in this compound happens without whiskey, and the woman's commitment to her craft borders on religious.
I'm adjusting the neckline when the door opens.
No knock. The door just opens, and Matteo walks in, and he's not in his suit yet.
White shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, suit pants, no jacket, no tie, and his hair is still damp from the shower and the cut on his chest is visible through the open shirt, the thin red lines I put there yesterday morning on the gym floor.
He stops when he sees me. His eyes move from my face to the dress to my body inside the dress, and the look on his face is enough to make my pussy tingle.
"You're not supposed to see the bride before the wedding," I say.
"I'm not a traditional groom." He closes the door behind him. "You look..."
"If you say beautiful, I'll cut you again."
"I was going to say dangerous."
"Better."
He crosses the room. Three steps, four, and he's in front of me and his hands are on my waist, and the fabric of the dress is between his palms and my skin, and the heat of his hands comes through the fabric anyway.
"We have an hour," I say.
"I don't need an hour."
"What do you need?"
"To taste you." His hands slide from my waist to my hips.
Down. His fingers find the hem of the dress and gather the fabric, pulling it up, slowly, the dark red bunching in his fists as the hem rises past my knees, past my thighs.
"I've been thinking about it since the gym.
What you taste like. What you sound like when my mouth is on you instead of my fingers. "
"We have an hour and I just put this dress on."
"I'm not taking the dress off." His hands are under the fabric now, his palms on my bare thighs, and the contact of skin on skin makes my stomach drop. "I'm going under it."
He drops to his knees.
The sight of Matteo on his knees in front of me on the morning of our wedding sends a current through my body that starts in my chest and ends between my legs.
His hands push the fabric up further, bunching it around my waist, and his face is level with my stomach, and his breath is warm through my underwear.
His fingers hook into the waistband of my underwear and pull them down.
I step out of them, one foot, then the other, and he puts them in his pocket without looking, his eyes on me, on the bare skin between my thighs, and the look on his face is focused and hungry and completely devoid of the composure that has defined every interaction between us until yesterday.
"Matteo—"
"Quiet. I'm busy."
He pulls my leg over his shoulder, and I drop the dress around him. His mouth is on me before I can even think.
The first touch of his tongue parts me, a slow, flat stroke from bottom to top that finds every nerve I have and wakes them all up simultaneously. My hand steadies me on the dresser behind me as I lean back and close my eyes.
He eats me the way he fights. Not trained, not choreographed, but thorough and relentless and driven by an intensity that doesn't leave room for hesitation.
His tongue works between my lips, stroking, circling, finding my clit and pressing against it with the flat of his tongue before pulling back and dragging lower, pushing inside me, tasting me properly, and the groan he makes against my pussy vibrates through my entire body.
"Fuck," I breathe. My back is arched back against the mirror, and things are falling off the dresser as he works me.
His hands grip my thighs, spreading me wider.
His tongue returns to my clit, circling in a rhythm that he builds and maintains with the patience of a man who has decided that the only thing that matters in this moment is the sound I'm making.
He alternates between broad strokes that cover everything and focused, pointed pressure on my clit that makes my hips buck against his face.
"Right there," I say, because he found it and the specific combination of pressure and speed is pulling the orgasm up from deep in my core. "Don't stop."
He doesn't stop. His tongue works my clit while one hand leaves my thigh and two fingers slide inside me, curling forward, finding the front wall and pressing in a rhythm that matches his mouth, and the dual sensation builds in layers, each one hotter and more intense than the last.
I'm gripping the dresser so hard my knuckles ache.
My head is back against the mirror, and my mouth is open and the sounds coming out of me are loud, too loud for a room with thin walls in a compound full of soldiers who might damn-well hear every decibel and know exactly what's happening behind this locked door.
I don't care. I don't fucking care. If their hearing is that fucking good, then let them listen. Let every soldier in this building know that the bride got eaten out in her wedding dress an hour before the ceremony. Let them talk about it in the barracks for years.
His fingers fuck me harder. His tongue flattens against my clit, the pressure increases and the rhythm is relentless, and I'm close, I'm right there, when the doorknob rattles.
Then the knock.
"Toni?" Giada's voice. "You in there? The door's locked, which either means you're having a crisis or you're having an orgasm, and honestly either way I should probably be present."
Matteo doesn't stop. His mouth stays on me, his fingers stay inside me, and the only change is that he chuckles against my pussy.
If Gia opens the door, all she will see is me leaning against the dresser.
"One second," I call. My voice comes out strangled and wrong and I clear my throat and try again. "One second, Gia."
"Are you okay? You sound weird."
"I'm fine. I'm just— the dress is—" Matteo's tongue does something devastating and I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste copper. "The dress is tight. I'm adjusting."
"Can I come in, I need to see you before the ceremony. I have emotional needs."
“Let her,” Matteo whispers and I’m powerless to argue. “Let her or I stop.”
“Ahem… come in.” My voice ends on a squeak. The door opens and Giada walks in and I'm leaning on the dresser with my hands clenched at my sides and my face flushed and my breathing irregular.
"Oh my GOD, Toni, you look incredible." Giada stares at me, looking at the dress, the neckline, the big floof in front where Matteo is hiding. "Signora Vitale is a genius. The color is perfect. The whole thing is fucking perfect. You look like you're about to murder someone at a wine tasting."
"Thanks." The word comes out thin because Matteo's fingers have curled harder and his tongue has picked up speed and the orgasm that was building before Giada knocked is rebuilding now with the added intensity of the fact that my best friend is standing three feet away examining my hemline while my man eats my pussy underneath it.
"The karambits are invisible. I can't see a line at all." She runs her hand along the outside of my thigh, checking the pocket, and her hand passes within inches of Matteo's head under the fabric. I bite down on the inside of my cheek again. "Did you do your hair yourself?"
"Mm-hmm." It's all I can manage because Matteo's free hand is on my inner thigh, holding me open, and his mouth is doing something new, sucking my clit between his lips and flicking with his tongue, and the combination is going to make me come in front of Giada in about thirty seconds if he doesn't stop and he is absolutely not going to stop.
"You should eat something before the ceremony. You always get shaky when you don't eat. Remember the Castillo gala when you hadn't eaten all day and you almost passed out during Marco's speech?"
"Mm-hmm." My legs are trembling. I can feel the orgasm building at the base of my spine, a pressure that's about to break, and Matteo's fingers are relentless and his tongue is relentless and the dress is hiding all of it and Giada is talking about food.
"Toni, are you okay? Your face is really red."
"Fine. Warm. Yes. Warm. The dress is warm."
"It's not that warm, it's—" She stops. Looks at my face. Looks at the dress. Looks at the floor where Matteo's shoes are now barely visible underneath the hem, two polished oxford toes poking out from the dark red fabric.
Her eyes go wide. Then the grin starts, slow and enormous.
"Oh you dirty BITCH."