24. Cielo #2
“Inside,” I gasp. “Please. I need you inside me. I need to feel you while I can still think.”
He crawls up my body, mouth slick, eyes soft.
Kisses me so I taste myself on his tongue - salt and want and the particular intimacy of a marriage being rebuilt from the inside out.
I reach between us and guide him to my entrance, and he pushes in slow, watching my face the whole way, the stretch and the fill and the homecoming of it making both of us exhale like we’ve been holding our breath for years.
When he’s seated deep he drops his forehead to mine. “I love you. I’ve loved you since the gallery. I’ve loved you through every stupid choice and every silenced phone and every empty morning. I love the woman who set that table. I love the woman who ran. I love the woman who came back.”
“I love you too.” I’m crying again - happy tears, grief tears, all of it tangled. “I’ve always loved you. Even when I hated you. Even when I was setting that table alone.”
“Never again.” He starts to move - slow, deep strokes that rock us together in the dark. “You never set a table alone again. You never wait for me alone again. I’m done being the man who doesn’t come home.”
“Then come home now.” I wrap my legs around him. “Fuck me like you’re staying. Talk to me like you mean it.”
He does both. The pace stays unhurried - sweet, explicit, filthy-affectionate in the way only long marriage can be.
He murmurs into my ear while he thrusts: how perfect my cunt feels, how he’s going to spend the rest of his life making me come, how he’s going to tell Gio a hundred stories that start with *your mother was the bravest person in any room*.
His hand finds my breast, thumb stroking my nipple in time with his hips.
His mouth finds the spot under my ear that makes me shiver.
He reaches between us and circles my clit with two fingers while he fucks me, and the dual sensation makes my toes curl against the sheets.
I can feel every inch of him - the thick drag on every withdrawal, the deep press on every thrust, the way his cock twitches when I clench around him on purpose just to watch his face go tight.
“Minx,” he mutters, almost smiling. “Do that again.”
I do it again. He swears and kisses me hard, swallowing my laugh, and for a moment it feels like the early days - playful, filthy, two people who know each other’s bodies well enough to tease. Then the play deepens into something heavier, and his eyes go soft in a way that makes my throat tight.
“Harder,” I whisper. “Still sweet. Just - harder.”
He hitches my thigh higher and gives me harder - deeper strokes that punch soft sounds out of me, the wet slap of skin on skin, the creak of the mattress.
I dig my nails into his back and meet him, and the grief and the love and the five years of missing this tangle into something that feels like forgiveness made physical.
“I want to see you on top,” he says suddenly, rolling us without pulling out, settling me astride his hips. “I want to watch you take what you need. I want to put my hands on your waist and remember you’re mine.”
I brace my palms on his chest and start to ride him - slow rolls of my hips that make his head tip back, his throat exposed, his hands spanning my waist exactly as promised.
From this angle I can control the depth, the pace, the grind of my clit against him on every downstroke.
He watches me like I’m holy. Like I’m filthy. Like both can be true at once.
“Look at you,” he breathes. “My wife. Taking my cock like she was born for it. So fucking beautiful I can’t stand it. Dripping down my balls. Clenching every time I say something filthy. You love this. You love being told what you do to me.”
“I love you,” I correct, but I’m smiling, and I’m bouncing harder now, chasing the edge. “The filthy is a bonus.”
“Then take the bonus.” His thumb finds my clit, rubbing as I ride him. “Come on my cock. Come for the man who should have been at that table. Come for the father of your child. Come for me, Cielo - fuck - just like that-”
I come apart above him, shaking, crying out, and he sits up to catch me against his chest and fuck up into me through it - short, deep thrusts that prolong the orgasm until I’m sobbing into his shoulder.
Then he flips us again, careful, and drives into me three, four, five more times before he comes with my name in his mouth and his face buried in my neck, pulsing deep, holding me like he’ll never let go.
We stay tangled afterward, sweat-damp and breathing hard, his hand stroking down my spine in long slow passes. The fairy lights in the garden are still glowing faintly through the window. Somewhere in the house, a clock ticks toward whatever comes next.
His fingers trace idle patterns on my bare shoulder.
The fairy lights in the garden throw faint gold across the ceiling.
I think about the table five years ago - the cold food, the burned-down candles, the necklace against my throat while the windows shattered - and then I think about this table tonight, the one he rebuilt, the one where I finally said the words.
The grief is still there. It will always be there.
But tonight it has somewhere soft to sit beside the love, and that is more than I knew how to hope for.
I lie in his arms in the bedroom we’ve been sharing for weeks.
Delphine has Gio for the night - she insisted, wanting to give us time alone, and I was grateful for her understanding. My son is safe, watched over by someone I trust completely.
“I should check on him,” I murmur, not really wanting to move. “Just to make sure he’s settled.”
“He’s fine. Delphine texted an hour ago. He’s asleep.”
“I know. I just-”
“You’re a mother. You worry.” Giovanni presses a kiss to my forehead. “Go. Check on him. I’ll be here when you get back.”
I slip out of bed, pulling on a robe, and pad down the hallway toward Gio’s room. The house is quiet, the guards at their posts, everything exactly as it should be.
Except.
Except Gio’s door is open. And the room beyond is empty.
“Gio?”
No answer.
I step inside, my heart beginning to pound, and that’s when I see it - a note on the pillow where my son’s head should be.
My hands are shaking as I pick it up.
He’s mine now. Come get him if you dare. -L
The scream that tears out of me brings Giovanni running within seconds.
“What-” He sees the note, sees the empty bed, and his face goes white. “No. No, this isn’t - Delphine was supposed to be-”
“She was.” My mind is racing, trying to understand. “She was with him. She texted. She said-”
Giovanni’s phone rings. He answers, and I watch his expression shift from fear to something far worse.
“Delphine’s been drugged,” he says, his voice flat. “Someone slipped something into her tea. She’s unconscious but alive. Gio was-”
He doesn’t finish.
He doesn’t need to.
Ludovica has our son.