Chapter 20 #2
The night goes on. The bar stays full. Charlotte and Claudio leave around nine, his arm around her shoulders, her head against his chest. Alexandra follows, phone still in her hand, headed upstairs to Leone.
The soldiers thin out in waves, twos and threes, until the bar is half empty and the noise has settled to a low murmur.
Carmelo is still at the counter. He finishes his whiskey, sets the glass down, picks up his knife, and stands.
He looks at me, then at Emilio standing beside me behind the bar, and he smirks.
It’s the acknowledgment that the two people standing behind this counter are part of the thing he's been told to guard, and the guarding is not a burden.
He nods once, at both of us, then he walks out.
"Did Carmelo just nod at us?" Emilio says. "Like, a real nod? A nod with feeling and a smile?"
"Don't make it weird."
"It's already weird. Carmelo showed an emotion. I need to document this, its basically unheard of."
"Oh leave the man alone.”
The last soldiers leave around ten. The bar empties. I start closing up, wiping down the counter, washing glasses, the routine that my hands know by memory now.
Emilio is still behind the bar with me. Leaning against the back shelf, watching me work, nursing the last inch of his whiskey.
"You know," he says, "the first time I saw you behind this bar, I knew."
"Knew what?"
"That you'd found your place. That the woman who threw a lamp at my head and fought me in every corridor wasn't going to leave, because this bar is yours the way I'm yours. Not because someone gave it to you. Because you claimed it."
"Are you getting sentimental on me, DiAngelo?"
"Nah, it’s either say this or shove my woman-sized fingers so far up your pussy you won’t be able to control your moans."
I stop wiping as my mouth falls open. He's leaning against the shelf with the whiskey in his hand and the bandage peeking out from under his sleeve and his hair falling in his face, and he looks so fucking perfect.
"Come here," I say.
He sets down the glass and crosses the narrow space behind the bar. Two steps. His hands find my waist, and he turns me around so my back is against the counter and he's standing in front of me and the bar is between us and the empty room.
"The bar is closed," I say.
"The bar is closed."
"And we're alone."
"Very, very fucking alone."
He kisses me, his hands on my waist, my back against the counter.
I grab the front of his shirt and pull him in so his chest is flush against mine.
The kiss gets deeper and his tongue finds mine and his hips press forward and I can feel him getting hard against my stomach, and my body responds the way it always responds to this man, instantly and completely and without any input from my brain.
He pulls back and I stifle a groan. "You know what I've been thinking about all night?"
"If you say my ass, I'm closing the bar permanently."
"Your ass is a secondary consideration." His hands slide from my waist to my hips.
His fingers hook into the waistband of my jeans.
"I've been thinking about what it would be like to have my hand between your legs while you're pouring drinks.
Standing right here, behind this counter, with a room full of people on the other side and my fingers inside you and nobody knowing. "
"The bar is closed, Emilio. There's nobody here."
"Then we'll practice for next time."
His hand slides down the front of my jeans. Past the waistband, past my underwear, his fingers finding me already wet because the conversation alone did the job, and the sound I make when he touches me is loud enough to echo off the bottles on the shelves.
"Shh," he says against my ear. "Bar's closed, but the walls are thin."
"Don't shh me when you're the one who started this."
"I started it. You're going to finish it… right… on… my… hand." His fingers slide through me, finding my clit, pressing in a slow circle that makes my knees buckle. I grab the counter behind me with both hands and hold on.
He works me from the front, his fingers move with the confidence of a man who has mapped this territory thoroughly and knows exactly which roads lead where.
Two fingers push inside me, and his thumb stays on my clit and the dual pressure builds fast because my body has been primed for this since he walked in tonight with that grin and that energy and those fucking dark eyes.
"You're so wet," he says against my neck. "All this from pouring drinks?"
"All this from watching you pour drinks badly. Your incompetence turns me on."
"I'll remember that." He curls his fingers inside me and hits the spot that makes my eyes roll to the back of my head. I bite my lip to keep the sound in, but it comes out anyway, a broken moan that I muffle against his shoulder.
"Right there?" he asks. He knows the answer. He's asking because he likes hearing me say it.
"Right fucking there, don't stop."
He doesn't stop. His fingers work me steady and thorough, his thumb working while his fingers fuck me in a rhythm that matches my ever increasing heartbeat.
"Come for me, vixen," he says against my ear. "Come on my hand in your bar."
The orgasm hits in a wave that starts between my legs and rolls outward. I bury my face in his neck and come with a hiss, my body clenching around his fingers, my legs shaking, my hands locked on the counter because if I let go I'm going to end up on the floor.
He works me through it. Slow, gentle, easing the pressure as the aftershocks roll through me, his lips on my neck, his free hand holding my waist to keep me upright. When I finally open my eyes, he chuckles.
“Lady fingers, huh.”
He pulls his hand out of my jeans and looks at his fingers with a grin. Puts them in his mouth, and the sound that follows is the most obnoxious, beautiful, insufferable thing I've ever heard.
"On the house," he says.
I laugh. The sound fills the empty bar and bounces off the shelves, and I lean my forehead against his chest and laugh until my stomach hurts, because this man just fingered me behind my own bar and quoted my line back at me and the audacity of that is so perfectly, completely us that laughing is the only possible response.
"You're the worst," I say.
"You love me."
"I really do."
He kisses my forehead. "Come on. Let's finish up. I want to ravage you in our bed."
We finish the routine. Bottles capped, glasses washed, stools pushed in, rag folded. I turn off the light and lock the door with my keys. My keys. The ones that live in my pocket next to the bottle cap.
We walk down the corridor to his room. His hand in mine.
This is my life now. A bar I own, a man I love, and a family of killers and analysts and bakers and butchers who let me in because I poured their drinks and told them everything and didn't leave when it would have been easier to go.
The war isn't over. Matteo is out there, carrying Aurelio's blood and someone else's agenda.
Antonia is being positioned for a marriage she didn't choose.
The Harrisons are dismantling an empire above us that we can't see and can't touch.
And somewhere in the world, a woman named Graziella Ferrara is living a life that's connected to a pipeline we destroyed, and a man named Carmelo is sitting alone in his room turning that fact over in his head with the patience of a man who doesn't let go.
All worries for another day. Tonight, I'm walking down a dark corridor holding hands with a man who makes me feel like the empty space where my family used to be isn't empty anymore.
I don't worry about exit plans.
I worry about the people I'd kill for.
The list is getting longer.
And I'm okay with that.