Chapter 10
Chapter Ten: Savannah
The call comes at six in the evening.
Ferrara said yes.
The compound reacts the way compounds react to good news during wartime, which is to say everyone gets louder for about twenty minutes and then cracks open a bottle of whiskey.
Leone calls a briefing and plans are drawn.
The joint operation at the marina will deploy within the week, Bonaccorso and Castillo teams coordinated for the first time.
I sit in the briefing because I have a chair now and nobody questions it.
I listen to Leone lay out the operational structure and Alexandra walk through the financial intercept strategy and Claudio explain how the Vidal extraction will work.
Carmelo doesn't speak. He sharpens a knife in the corner, which I've come to understand is his version of active listening.
Emilio sits beside me with his knee bouncing and his energy at full strength because the Castillo meeting went well and the alliance is forming.
He's alive with excitement. Talking, gesturing, interrupting Leone to suggest tactical adjustments that Leone considers and sometimes accepts, and the whole time his leg is bouncing, and his hands are moving and his body is throwing off heat.
Here I am, sitting next to all of that trying to pay attention to the briefing while my body pays attention to something else entirely.
I've been thinking about him since the gym.
Since the corridor during the Castillo attack.
Since the night he was gone and the compound was quiet and I lay in bed staring at the ceiling and admitted to myself, in the dark where nobody could hear it, that I wanted him.
Not in the abstract, not in the someday-maybe-if-things-were-different way.
I wanted him in the specific, immediate, physical way that makes your skin feel too tight and your breath come short and your mind run scenarios that have nothing to do with survival and everything to do with the sounds a man makes when he's inside you.
I've been fucking wet for three days and if he doesn’t fuck me soon, I might drown in my own pussy juice.
The briefing finally ends at nine. Soldiers file out. Leone and Alexandra disappear toward the private wing to check on Aurelio. Claudio and Charlotte leave together, his hand on the small of her back, her head tilted toward him, in that cute nauseating way couple walk together.
Emilio lingers. He's standing by the map on the wall, pretending to study it, but his eyes keep finding me across the room. I'm in the chair, legs crossed, bottle cap in my fingers, watching him pretend not to watch me.
"You going to stare at that map all night or are you going to walk me to your room?" I ask.
He turns. The grin starts and I watch it build across his face, the slow version, the one that starts in his eyes and works its way down. "You want me to walk you to your room."
"I didn’t stutter. I want you to walk me to your room."
The grin stops building. His whole body goes still, which is rare enough that I notice it the way you notice when music cuts out mid-song. The bouncing stops. The restless energy pauses. He looks at me and his eyes are dark and the question in them is real.
"Uh..."
"Don't make me say it twice, Emilio."
He crosses the room in four steps. His hand finds the back of my neck, and he pulls me up out of the chair and his mouth is on mine before I'm fully standing.
I grab the front of his shirt and pull him in.
The kiss is not gentle and not patient and not anything except two people who have been circling each other for days and are fucking done with it.
His tongue is in my mouth, and my hands are on his chest and he walks me backward toward the door, one arm around my waist, the other hand still on my neck, his fingers in my hair, gripping at the root.
He kicks the door open with his heel and we're in the corridor.
His mouth doesn't leave mine and I don't care who sees because I am past the point of caring about anything except getting this man into a room with a door that locks. Even one that doesn’t.
I don’t give a fuck.
We make it to his room. He gets the door open one-handed, which is impressive, and kicks it shut behind us, which is louder than it needs to be and neither of us gives a shit.
His room is a mess. Clothes on the chair, coffee cups on the nightstand, a punching bag in the corner that I want to ask about and won't because questions require a mouth that isn't currently occupied.
He pulls back long enough to look at me. Both hands on my face, thumbs on my cheekbones, his breathing ragged.
"How hard?" he asks.
He’s not asking about preferences. He's asking for permission, he's asking me to tell him where the line is so he can take me right up to it and hold me there.
"Until I tell you to stop," I say.
His pupils blow wide. His hands drop from my face to my hips, and he spins me around and pushes me face-down onto the bed.
My palms hit the mattress, and my knees hit the edge, and his hand is in my hair, gathering it, wrapping it around his fist, pulling my head back just far enough that my spine arches and my throat is exposed.
"If you want me to stop, you say the word," he says against my ear. His voice is rasping and nothing at all like the charming asshole who brings me coffee in the morning. "Any fruit that pops into your head and I'll stop."
"I don't want you to stop."
"Good."
He bites my neck. His teeth sink into the muscle where my shoulder meets my throat and the pain is burning a path through me, and I moan loud enough that the sound surprises me.
His hand tightens in my hair. His hips press against my ass, and I can feel him, hard and thick through his jeans, and my body pushes back against him on instinct, grinding, wanting, needing the friction so badly I could scream.
He reaches around me and pulls my shirt over my head.
Unhooks my bra with one hand and throws both somewhere on the floor.
His hands are on my ribs, my stomach, sliding up to my tits, and he cups them rough, thumbs dragging across my nipples, and I arch into his palms and the sound that comes out of me is not a word.
"Fuck, you're perfect," he says against my shoulder. "Fucking perfect."
"Less talking."
"I’ll talk all I want, vixen, I’m the boss here."
I push back against him hard enough that he grunts. His hands drop to my jeans, undoing the button and the zipper and pulling them down my hips along with my underwear in one motion that leaves me naked and bent over his bed and I have never in my fucking pathetic life been this turned on.
His hand slides between my thighs from behind. His fingers find me wet, soaked, embarrassingly ready, and the groan that comes out of him vibrates against my back.
"Jesus Christ, Savannah."
"I said less talking."
He pushes two fingers inside me, and I stop being able to form sentences.
His hand in my hair holds my head back, his other hand works between my legs, and his fingers curl inside me and find the spot that makes my vision go white.
I grip the sheets and my knees buckle and he holds me up by my hair and fucks me with his hand while I make sounds I don't recognize as my own voice.
"Oh, baby," he says. "Such a needy, greedy little pussy."
"Harder."
He gives me harder. His fingers drive in deep, his thumb presses against my clit, and the dual pressure builds so fast I can't keep up with it.
My body is shaking and the sheets are twisted in my fists, and his mouth is on my neck, teeth and tongue, biting and soothing and biting again.
I come with his name ending on a moan, his fingers buried inside me and his hand in my hair pulling tight enough that everything crashes together.
He doesn't let me come down. He pulls his fingers out and I hear his belt, the buckle, the zipper, the rustle of fabric, and then the head of his cock presses against me from behind and he pauses.
"Say yes," he demands.
"Yes. Fuck, yes."
He pushes in.
The stretch is slow and full and relentless, and I bury my face in the mattress and grab the sheets and the sound I make is guttural.
Animalistic and needy. He's big. I knew he would be, I felt him through his jeans enough times, but knowing and feeling are different things and feeling him fill me inch by inch is an experience that rewires my fucking brain.
I’ll never want another dick after this.
He bottoms out and holds still. His hand releases my hair, and both palms flatten on the mattress beside my head, caging me, his chest pressed against my back, his mouth at my ear.
"You okay?" he asks, and I can hear the grin
"If you don't move in the next two seconds I swear to God, I’ll bite the head off that perfect cock."
He moves. “Good luck fitting your mouth around it well enough to bite down.”
Pompous prick.
I barely have time to think. He pulls back and drives in hard enough that the bed frame hits the wall and I cry out and he does it again.
And again. His hips slam into me and the sound of slapping fills the room and I'm gripping the sheets so hard my knuckles ache and every thrust hits the spot his fingers found, and the pressure builds again, faster this time, layered on top of the orgasm that's still echoing through me.
"Harder," I tell him again, because I want it and because the word exists in my vocabulary for moments exactly like this one.
He grabs my hair again. Pulls my head back so I’m forced to arch, my ass pushing up.
The angle changes as he drives in deeper and I scream.
Not a moan, not a gasp, a scream, and if anyone in this compound didn't know what was happening in this room they do now and I don't give a single solitary fuck.
His free hand slides around my hip and finds my clit and rubs in tight circles while he fucks me from behind and the combination of his cock and his fingers and his hand in my hair and his teeth on my shoulder is too much and not enough at the same time and I'm saying his name over and over, Emilio, fuck, Emilio, right there, don't stop, fuck, please, don't stop.
"Come for me," he says against my neck. "Come on my cock, Savannah."
I come so hard my vision goes black. My pussy clenches around him and the scream that comes out of me is silent for the first second because my lungs forget how to push air, and then it hits, loud and broken and his name tangled up in it.
He follows me over. I feel him thrust deep one last time and hold there, buried, his body pressed against mine, a groan tearing out of him that I feel in his chest and in my spine and between my legs where he pulses inside me.
We collapse. His weight on top of me, my face in the mattress, both of us breathing hard enough that the room sounds like we just ran a marathon.
His hand lets go of my hair and his fingers stroke through it instead, gentle now, smoothing the tangles he made.
His mouth presses against my shoulder where his teeth left a mark, and the kiss is soft and careful and so different from everything that just happened that my eyes sting.
He rolls to the side and pulls me with him so we're lying face to face, legs tangled, his arm heavy over my waist. His forehead rests against mine. I can feel his breath on my lips.
"You good?" he asks.
"I'm fucking incredible."
He laughs. The sound is tired, and it fills the small space between our faces. "Yeah, you are."
"That wasn't a compliment to you."
"Everything you say to me is a compliment. I keep telling you."
I put my hand on his chest. His heart is hammering. Fast and hard, and the fact that I did that to him, that this man who fights and kills and walks into enemy restaurants to negotiate alliances has a heart that races because of me, is a fact I'm going to carry with me for a long time.
"Hey, asshole."
"Yes, vixen."
"We're doing that again."
"Right now?"
"Give me ten minutes. My pussy needs a moment."
"Done." He grins against my forehead. "For the record, that was worth every lamp you've ever thrown at me."
"I threw one lamp."
"One lamp was enough."
I close my eyes. His arm tightens around my waist, and his breathing slowly starts to even out. Taking a peek, I watch his lashes flutter as his eyes close and I can’t hold back my grin.
Ten minutes.
Maybe fifteen.