21. Cielo #2
“Cielo - fuck - you don’t have to-”
“I want to.” I lick a stripe up the underside of his cock, tasting salt and want. “I want to feel you alive in every way I can. Shut up and let me.”
He shuts up. I work him with my mouth - slow, thorough, the wet glide of lips and tongue, the hollow of my cheeks - until his thigh is trembling under my palm and he’s panting my name like a mantra. Then I pull off, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, and crawl back up his body.
“Pants,” I say, voice rough, though his are already shoved down. “The rest of it. Off. I want you inside me before I remember all the reasons this is complicated.”
“It’s always been complicated.” He helps me shove his trousers and briefs down with his good hand; I kick my leggings and underwear the rest of the way off.
His cock springs free, hard and thick against my stomach, and I wrap my fist around him and stroke once, watching his jaw go tight. “Fuck. Your hand-”
“My cunt is better.” I guide him to my entrance, the head of him nudging through my wetness. “Slow. Your arm. I mean it.”
“I’ll go slow.” His forehead drops to mine. “I’d go as slow as you needed for the rest of my life if it meant I got to feel this.”
He pushes in.
Inch by careful inch. The stretch of him after five years and then the recent reunion and then this - this tender, terrified claiming - makes my breath catch.
He fills me completely, and when he’s seated deep we both go still, just breathing, his good arm wrapped around my back, my hand cradling the side of his neck where his pulse hammers against my palm.
“Okay?” I whisper.
“More than okay.” His voice is wrecked. “You feel like every prayer I never learned how to say.”
We move together. Side by side, my thigh over his hip, the angle intimate and deep without putting pressure on his wounded arm.
It’s not frantic. It’s not the starving fury of the first time after five years.
It’s something quieter and somehow more devastating - the rock of his hips, the slide of him inside me, the way he watches my face like he’s still not sure I’m real.
“Talk to me,” I say. “I want to hear you.”
“What do you want to hear? That your cunt is perfect? That I’ve been hard since you started wrapping that bandage? That watching you take care of me made me want to put you on your back and thank you with my mouth until you cried?”
“Yes. All of that. Keep going.”
He laughs against my mouth, then groans as I clench around him. “Filthy girl. My filthy, soft-hearted girl. Do you have any idea what it does to me, you like this? Taking my cock so carefully. Soaking my sheets. Looking at me like I matter more than the blood on my shirt.”
“You do matter.” My nails dig into his good shoulder. “That’s the problem. You matter so much it terrifies me.”
“Then be terrified with me.” He shifts the angle slightly - his good hand sliding down to grip my ass, pulling me tighter onto him - and the next thrust hits deeper.
“Fall apart for me - I need to feel you fall apart while I’m inside you.
I want to know you’re here. That I’m here.
That the bullet missed everything that counts. ”
“Giovanni-”
“Say my name when you come. Say it so I can keep it.”
His thumb finds my clit again, rubbing in time with the slow roll of his hips, and I climb toward the edge with a kind of helpless inevitability.
The orgasm builds from somewhere deep - not sharp like the first, but rolling, full, the kind that starts in the spine and spreads.
I come with his name on my lips, clenching around him, and he follows me over with a broken groan, pulsing deep, his good arm locking me against him as he spills inside me.
We stay joined afterward, breathing hard, his face buried in my hair.
I can feel his heartbeat against my chest - strong, stubborn, alive.
The bandage on his arm is still clean. The stitches held.
Somewhere in the hush of the room I realize I’m crying again - quiet tears, the leftover of fear and relief and the particular overwhelm of loving someone who keeps nearly getting himself killed.
“Hey.” He feels the wetness against his collarbone and tips my chin up with his good hand. “I’ve got you. I’m here. The bullet missed. You didn’t lose me.”
“I almost did.”
“Almost doesn’t count.” He kisses the tears off my cheek, soft, unhurried. “I’m too stubborn to die before I’ve finished apologizing. And I’ve got about five years of apologizing left.”
“You’re impossible.”
“You married impossible.” His thumb brushes my lower lip. “And then you came back to it. That makes you worse.”
I laugh, wet and shaky, and settle against him again. The house is quiet except for the distant sound of Delphine shifting in her chair down the hall.
Eventually he eases out of me, careful of the stitches, and pulls me close with his good arm. I fit myself against his side in the dark, still shaking a little, still listening for his breath the way I listened for danger for five years - except now the thing I’m checking for is life, not threat.
Afterward, I lie with my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow.
“I should check on Gio,” I murmur.
“Delphine has him. She texted ten minutes ago - he’s still asleep.”
“I know. I just-”
“I know.”
He holds me tighter, and I let him.
Later, when Giovanni is finally dozing, I slip out of bed and call Delphine. She went home after Gio settled, and I need to hear her voice.
She picks up on the second ring.
“It’s two in the morning.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“You’re not sorry.” I can hear the smile in her voice. “What happened?”
“I told him I love him.”
The pause on the other end is loaded. “And?”
“And I think I mean it. I think I’ve meant it for five years, and I’ve been too afraid to admit it.”
“Well.” Delphine’s voice softens. “It’s about time.”
“You’re not going to tell me I’m making a mistake? That I should protect myself, keep my distance, not trust him?”
“Would you listen if I did?”
“Probably not.”
“Then what’s the point?” She sighs, but it’s a fond sound.
“Cielo, I’ve watched you run from that man for five years.
I’ve watched you build walls and convince yourself they were protecting you, when really they were just keeping you miserable.
If you’re finally ready to stop running, I’m not going to tell you it’s wrong. ”
“What if he hurts me again?”
“Then I’ll help you hide the body.” Her voice sharpens. “But darling, you’ve already been hurt. Staying away from him didn’t prevent that. It just made you lonely while you healed.”
I’m quiet, turning her words over in my mind.
“He still wasn’t there,” I say finally. “Five years ago. Ludovica orchestrated everything, but he still wasn’t there when I needed him.”
“No, he wasn’t. And you have every right to be angry about that.”
“I am angry about it.”
“Good. You should be.” Delphine pauses. “But Cielo, being angry and being in love aren’t mutually exclusive. You can hold both at once. You can love him and still make him earn your trust. You can want him and still demand that he do better.”
“Can I?”
“Yes. Running again won’t unlive the five years. It won’t undo what happened or protect you from what might happen next. All it will do is make you lonely again, and I’ve seen what lonely looks like on you. I don’t want to see it anymore.”
I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. “When did you get so wise?”
“I’ve always been wise. You’ve just been too stubborn to listen.”
I laugh, and it comes out sounding almost normal. “I love you, you know.”
“I know. I love you too.” She yawns. “Now go to sleep. And for God’s sake, don’t do anything stupid in the morning.”
“Define stupid.”
“Anything that results in me getting another phone call at two in the morning.”
“I’ll try.”
I hang up and set the phone on the nightstand, then turn back to Giovanni. He’s watching me, his eyes half-open, and I realize he was awake for at least part of that conversation.
“Delphine thinks I’m being stupid,” I say.
“Delphine’s smart.”
“She is.” I settle back down beside him, careful of his wounded arm. “She told me I’m allowed to love you and still be angry.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“She also said running again won’t unlive the five years.”
“Also reasonable.” He shifts, pulling me closer with his good arm. “Cielo?”
“Mm?”
“Did you mean it? What you said earlier?”
I don’t pretend not to know what he’s talking about. “Yes.”
“Say it again.”
I turn in his arms so I can see his face, so I can watch the way his expression changes when I give him the words.
“I love you,” I say. “I never stopped. Not for one day of five years.”
He closes his eyes, and I watch something shift in his face - relief, maybe, or joy, or the particular peace of a man who’s been waiting five years to hear those words.
“I love you too,” he says. “I’ve loved you since the first moment I saw you arguing with that security guard about a painting. I’ve loved you every day since, even when you weren’t there. Even when I thought I’d lost you forever.”
I should say something - something about trust, about patience, about all the work we still have to do.
Instead, I just press closer to him, careful of his wound, and let myself feel what I feel.
Love. Terror. Hope.
All of it, tangled together, impossible to separate.
“I’m scared,” I admit. “This is terrifying.”
“I know.” His arm tightens around me. “But we’re going to figure it out. Together, this time.”
Together.
It’s not a promise of forever. It’s not a guarantee that everything will work out.
But it’s more than I’ve had in five years.
And right now, wrapped around him in the dark, it’s enough.