18. Cielo
— ? —
Cielo
“This is a bad idea,” I say, but my voice comes out breathless, unconvincing.
“Probably.”
“We should talk about this. There’s so much we haven’t-”
“I know.”
“And Gio is-”
“With Delphine, in the playroom. I saw them go in twenty minutes ago.” His hand moves from the ring to my face, cupping my cheek with a tenderness that makes my knees weak.
“Cielo. Tell me to stop and I’ll stop. But you’re going to have to say the words, because I’ve been starving for five years and you’re standing here wearing my ring and I don’t have the strength to walk away on my own. ”
I should tell him to stop. I should step back, put distance between us, remind both of us that wanting something doesn’t make it right.
But I’ve been starving too.
Five years of building walls. Five years of pretending I didn’t miss his hands on my skin, his voice in my ear, the particular way he looks at me when he thinks I’m not paying attention.
Five years of lying to myself about what I feel, what I want, what I’ve never stopped wanting even when I hated him.
“Don’t stop,” I whisper, and I barely recognize my own voice. “Don’t stop.”
He kisses me, and it’s not careful or tentative. It’s relief - pure, desperate relief that we’re both still here, still breathing, still somehow finding our way back to each other after everything.
Gio is with Delphine in the playroom on the other side of the house - I checked, made sure, because I’m still a mother even in moments like this. He’s safe. He’s occupied.
And I need this. Not the hunger or the fury, but the closeness. The proof that we’re real.
“This doesn’t fix anything,” I manage between kisses.
“I know.”
“I mean it. One night doesn’t erase five years.”
“I know.” His forehead presses against mine. “But I’ve spent five years wishing I could hold you one more time. If you’re offering me that - even just this - I’m taking it.”
It’s honest. And somehow, that’s enough.
We make it to the bedroom somehow - half stumbling, half clinging, mouths never fully separating for more than a breath.
The door shuts. The lock clicks. Somewhere on the other side of the house Gio is counting stars with Delphine in the playroom, safe and occupied and blissfully unaware, and I hold onto that knowledge like a rope because everything else is spinning.
Giovanni backs me against the closed door. His hands are on my face, my waist, the chain at my throat where his mother’s ring sits warm against my skin. He kisses me like he’s drowning. I kiss him back like I’ve been underwater for five years.
“Clothes,” I manage against his mouth. “Off. Now.”
“Bossy.” There’s a ghost of a laugh in it - raw, disbelieving. “I forgot how fucking bossy you get when you want something.”
“I want you naked. I want your hands on me. I want-” I shove at his shirt, impatient. “I’ve wanted this for five years and I’m done waiting. Take it off.”
He pulls the shirt over his head. The body underneath is broader than I remember in some places, leaner in others - five years of searching carved into muscle and scar tissue I don’t recognize.
There’s a new mark along his ribs. Another near his collarbone.
I put my palm on the unfamiliar scar and he shudders.
“Don’t,” he says roughly. “Don’t look at those like they’re proof of something. They’re just-”
“They’re proof you were looking for me.” I lean in and put my mouth on the scar at his ribs. He makes a sound like he’s been punched. “Every one of these is a year I wasn’t here.”
“Cielo-”
“Shut up and undress me.”
He does. His hands are not careful this time - they’re urgent, almost clumsy with want, dragging my blouse up and off, fumbling the clasp of my bra until I reach back and undo it myself.
The cool air of the bedroom hits my bare breasts and his eyes go black.
He cups them in both hands like a man reclaiming something stolen, thumbs stroking over my nipples until they’re tight and aching, and then he bends and takes one into his mouth.
I gasp. My head hits the door. His tongue works me while his hands shove my skirt down my hips, taking my underwear with it, and then I’m naked against the wood and he’s still half-dressed and the imbalance of it feels exactly right - me stripped bare, him still armored, both of us past the edge of anything sensible.
“Bed,” he growls against my breast. “Before I fuck you against this door.”
“Maybe I want the door.”
His head snaps up. Something wild moves through his face - hunger, fury, the particular madness of a man who’s been denied for half a decade. “Don’t tempt me. I’ve been hard for you since the second I saw that ring on your chain. I’ve been fucking aching. If you give me permission to be rough-”
“I’m not made of glass, Giovanni.” I shove his trousers down, wrap my fist around his cock through his briefs, feel the thick heat of him jump against my palm. “I’ve survived worse than you. Fuck me like you mean the five years.”
He makes a sound I’ve never heard from him - something between a groan and a snarl - and then he’s lifting me, my legs around his waist, carrying me to the bed like I weigh nothing. He drops me onto the mattress. Follows me down. Kicks his trousers and briefs the rest of the way off.
He’s naked now. Hard. Thick. Familiar and strange all at once - the cock I used to know by heart, the body that spent five years without me. I reach between us and stroke him, watching his jaw clench, watching his stomach flex.
“Still so fucking hard for a wife who ran,” I whisper, and there’s venom in it, and tenderness, and five years of unanswered questions.
“Always.” His forehead drops to mine. “Every day. Every night. You have no idea how many times I woke up reaching for you. How many times I put my hand on this cock thinking about your cunt and hated myself for it.”
“Show me.” I guide him to where I’m wet - soaking, shameless, furious about how ready I am. “Show me what you thought about.”
He pushes in.
Not slow. Not careful. One hard thrust that seats him deep and punches the air out of both of us. I cry out. He freezes, buried to the hilt, shaking.
“Okay?” he rasps. “Tell me you’re okay-”
“Move.” My nails dig into his back. “Don’t you dare stop. Don’t you dare be gentle. I said don’t stop and I meant it.”
He moves.
It’s not the tender reunion I might have imagined in my weaker moments.
It’s raw. Half-furious. The slap of his hips against mine fills the quiet bedroom, and every thrust feels like an argument we’re finally having with our bodies instead of our mouths - you left, I searched, you hid my son, I painted the walls your color, you wore my ring, I never took mine off.
He fucks me like he’s trying to fuck the five years out of both of us, and I meet him thrust for thrust, legs locked around his waist, mouth open against his shoulder.
“This cunt,” he growls into my ear. “This perfect fucking cunt. Do you know what it did to me, imagining someone else touching it? Imagining you’d moved on? I would have burned the world down, Cielo. I nearly did.”
“There was no one else-” The admission rips out of me. “Not once. Not in five years. I tried - god, I tried to want someone else - and every time I closed my eyes it was you. Always you. Even when I hated you.”
“Fuck-” His rhythm stutters. He pulls out, and before I can protest he’s flipping me onto my stomach, dragging my hips up, pushing back into me from behind with a groan that sounds like prayer. “Even when you hated me. Say it again.”
“Even when I hated you-”
“Louder.”
“Even when I fucking hated you I still wanted this-” My voice breaks on a moan as he hits that angle that makes my vision white out. “Still wanted you inside me. Still touched myself thinking about your mouth, your hands, your cock-”
“Show me.” One of his hands comes around to rub my clit - rough, perfect circles. “Show me how you touched yourself when you were alone. Was it like this? Did you come with my name in your mouth?”
“Yes - god, yes-”
“Do it now. Come on my cock. Let me feel what I’ve been missing.”
I come hard - violent, almost painful, five years of denial crashing through me at once. My whole body clamps down around him and I sob into the pillow, shaking, and he fucks me through it without mercy, without stopping, chasing his own edge while I shatter.
But he doesn’t come. He pulls out and I make a broken sound of protest, empty and aching, and then his mouth is on me again - unexpected, devastating, licking through the mess he’s made of me with a groan like he’s tasting something sacred. I jolt, oversensitive, thighs clamping around his head.
“Too much-”
“Not enough.” He sucks on my clit and I nearly scream. “Five years, Cielo. Five fucking years. I’m going to put my mouth on this cunt until you forgive me or pass out. Whichever comes first.”
“I haven’t forgiven you-”
“I know.” He looks up from between my thighs, mouth slick, eyes dark. “I’m not asking for forgiveness. I’m asking you to come on my tongue one more time so I can die happy.”
“You’re insane.”
“For you. Always for you.”
He works me with a patience that shouldn’t be possible after the roughness of a minute ago - long strokes of his tongue, two fingers sliding back into me and curling, the wet sounds filthy and loud in the quiet room.
I come again almost against my will, shaking, sobbing his name, and only then does he crawl up my body and kiss me so I can taste myself on his tongue.
He rolls me onto my back properly, and when I look up at him his face is wrecked - eyes wet, mouth soft, the fury burned down to something almost tender.
“I need to see you,” he says. “When I finish. I need to look at your face and know you’re real.”
“I’m real.” I reach up and touch his cheek, find wetness there. “I’m here. I’m-”
He pushes back into me slow this time. Deep.
Watching my face the whole way. The change in pace is devastating after the roughness - every inch deliberate, every withdrawal a loss, every thrust a reclaiming.
He laces our fingers together against the pillow.
Kisses me soft and filthy at once, tongue sliding against mine in time with his hips.
“I love you,” he says against my mouth. Not a question. Not a plea. A fact. “I loved you every day of five years. I loved you when I thought you were dead. I loved you when I thought you’d chosen to erase me. I never fucking stopped.”
“Giovanni-”
“You don’t have to say it back. Not yet. Just - let me have this. Let me be inside you. Let me come home.”
I wrap my legs around him and pull him deeper. “Then get back to me.”
He does. His rhythm builds again - not the furious pace of before, but something steadier, deeper, the kind of fucking that feels like a vow.
His hand slides between us again, finding my clit, and I realize with a shock that I’m climbing toward another orgasm, slower this time, building from somewhere deeper than the first.
“With me,” he pants. “Come for me - let me feel you when I-”
“I’m close - I’m-”
“I know. I’ve got you. I’ve fucking got you.”
We break together. His cock pulses deep as he comes with a sound like my name and a prayer tangled together, and I follow him over the edge - softer than the first climax, longer, rolling through me in waves while he holds me and shakes and spills inside me like he’s been saving it for half a decade.
He collapses onto me carefully, catching most of his weight on his elbows, and for a long time neither of us moves. His face is buried in my neck. My fingers are in his hair. Between us, his mother’s ring on its chain is pressed between our chests, warm from both our skin.
Eventually he eases out of me and rolls us so I’m tucked against his side, my head on his chest, his arm around me. The sheets are a wreck. The room smells like sex and the cologne he’s worn since before I knew his name.
Outside, the Milan house is quiet - no alarms yet, no footsteps, just the distant murmur of Delphine’s voice from the playroom wing and the ordinary sounds of a fortress pretending to be a home.
I let myself sink into the heat of him, into the proof of his pulse under my cheek, and for a handful of heartbeats I pretend the last five years were a long, bad dream we’ve finally woken from.
* * *
Afterward, we lie tangled together in the sheets, my head on his chest and his arm around me, and neither of us speaks for a long time.
I can hear his heartbeat under my ear, strong and steady, the same heartbeat I fell asleep to for three years of marriage before everything fell apart.
His fingers trace idle patterns on my back, and I let myself sink into the sensation, let myself pretend for just a moment that the last five years didn’t happen.
“I missed you.” His voice is quiet, rough with something that might be emotion. “Every single day. Every morning I woke up alone, every night I went to bed in this room without you. I missed you so much it felt like dying.”
“Giovanni-”
“I know it doesn’t change anything. I know I wasn’t there when you needed me, and I know that my absence almost cost you everything.” His arm tightens around me. “But I want you to know that you weren’t the only one suffering. These five years - they weren’t easy for me either.”
“I never said they were.”
“You didn’t have to say it. I can see it in the way you look at me.” He shifts, turning his head to meet my eyes. “Like you think I moved on. Like you think I replaced you.”
“You know what’s strange?” I say, tracing a pattern on his chest. “I thought I knew you. Before. But lying here now, I’m realizing how much I missed.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact that you apparently learned to cook while I was gone. And that you keep a notebook full of space facts for a four-year-old.”
“Five years changes people.”
“It does.” I shift to look at him. “I suppose we’re both going to have to learn who the other one became.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“I don’t know yet.” I settle back against him. “Ask me again in a year.”
“Deal.”
The quiet stretches between us, comfortable for the first time in longer than I can remember.
Then an alarm trips somewhere deep in the house.
We both freeze.
“What is that?” I’m already sitting up, reaching for clothes, mother-instinct overriding everything else.
Giovanni is faster, on his feet in seconds, his expression transforming from soft to deadly in the space of a heartbeat.
“Stay here,” he says, and his voice is command now, not request. “Lock the door. Don’t open it for anyone except me or Beppe.”
“Gio-”
“Delphine has him. They know the protocols.” He’s already at the door, already halfway gone. “Stay here, Cielo. I mean it.”
The alarm continues to wail, and somewhere in the house, I hear shouting.
We are not alone.