19. Liana
LIANA
I usher Sonny up to bed and he fights me on it, then starts to cry. I have to read him a bedtime story three times to calm him down, and finally he’s out like a light.
I look at my watch. It’s after two. I heard Dario slam the front door not long after I came up to bed, so I know he’s gone out.
Out to some bar to pick up some whore, no doubt.
I grit my teeth just thinking about it.
There’s no reason I should care. There’s no reason that I should be angry.
Nonetheless, I find myself padding down the stairs at three, worried out of my mind. The bars around here close at two, so where could he be? Some afterparty?
His penthouse apartment where he takes women?
My breath catches in my throat when I see headlights.
It takes a long time for the door to open.
“You got it?”
I recognize the voice—Dario and Beth’s cousin, Rocco.
I grit my teeth even harder. Rocco has a reputation that precedes him. He’s a bigger womanizer than anyone I’ve ever known, except maybe my father.
For a long time, I blamed him for Mama leaving. I know now that it wasn’t just his infidelity but the fact that she never wanted to be part of the mob life, but...
It took me a long time to forgive him for cheating on her.
And I’ll never forgive Dario.
“I got it,” Dario mumbles, words slurred around the edges. I think about slipping back up the stairs, and I even try it, but he calls out my name. “Li? Are you still up?”
I turn around and look down at him. He’s shed his suit jacket somewhere, his tie loose, dark hair falling over his face.
He gives me a sheepish, boyish smile, looking at me with glazed dark eyes, and my heart does a flip in my chest.
No. No no no. Don’t you start.
“Just about to go to bed.”
He sways on his feet and, like instinct, I reach out to steady him, holding his shoulders. Then I sigh and get under one of his arms.
My nose wrinkles. He smells like scotch and perfume, and I don’t know which scent I hate more.
Dario mutters something incoherent as I help him up the stairs, and I manage to open the door of his bedroom.
I lead his heavy ass inside, plopping him down on the bed.
“Can get to bed on my own.” He sounds sullen, like a little boy, and I can’t help but chuckle.
“Sure, sure. Could have fooled me.”
“Why?”
I blink at him. “Why what?”
“Why are you helping me?”
He stares at me, unblinking, his eyes so dark brown they look black in the moonlight.
I sigh. “I don’t know. Because you needed the help.”
“Would have been fine.”
“You would have faceplanted on the steps. Where’d you go, a strip club or something?”
He slowly smirks at me. “Why? Would you be jealous?”
I go silent, tugging off one of his shoes and setting it on the ground. I tug off the other one and he grunts, sitting up.
“Come here.”
“No, Dario, I—”
But it’s too late. He’s already tugging me into his lap, his arms around my waist, and he makes a sigh against the bare skin of the back of my shoulder.
I settle next to him, my hand lighting on his chest. He looks over at me.
“There were plenty of women, but I didn’t... I couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t what?” I ask softly, brushing his hair back from his face. He leans into the touch. God, he’s always been such a sweet drunk.
I hate this. I hate him.
But I can’t seem to move away.
“Couldn’t anything, Li. I only want you.”
I scoff, but my heart races at his words. “You’re full of shit.”
“Not like I like it,” he mutters. “Not like I don’t want to bury myself in someone else.”
“Then what’s stopping you?”
He stares at me, his jaw clenched.
It slowly dawns on me.
“You’re not serious. You’re not restraining yourself just so that I won’t see anyone else.”
He looks away but he doesn’t protest.
I bark out a laugh.
“You’re really that territorial? Why? You didn’t want me then—”
He grabs my wrist, pushing my hand down to his crotch. I gasp when I feel him half-hard beneath my palm.
“I’ve had enough scotch to put down an elephant and I still want you, Li. Don’t fucking tell me I don’t.”
I swallow hard, moving my hand away, but his arm remains tight around me.
He pulls me closer and my head hits his chest. I relax against him, exhaustion settling over me.
“Stay with me,” he murmurs, his words disappearing into the crown of my hair. “Just for tonight, yeah?”
I swallow hard. “Alright, if it’ll make you close your eyes.”
“Don’t leave before I wake up.” His eyes are drifting shut but he keeps stubbornly opening them.
“Sleep it off, Dario. I’ll see you in the morning.”
I don’t plan on staying. I plan on just lying here until he falls asleep, but the next thing I know, birds are chirping.
I crack open my eye and Dario still has me in a headlock basically, his bicep flexing when I try to wiggle away.
“Dario,” I mutter, and then finally when he doesn’t wake I bite him on the bicep, hard.
He yelps awake, cursing.
“Sorry,” I say, but I can’t help giggling at his expression. “You’re a bear to wake up in the mornings.”
He groans. “Don’t talk so loud. Don’t breathe so loud.”
I chuckle, feeling better to know that he didn’t sleep with anyone else last night. I know it shouldn’t make me so giddy, but I can’t help it.
“Do you remember anything from last night?”
He blinks. “Just... a lot of scotch and then I was here and you were... taking care of me.”
“You were hammered. What was I supposed to do, let you fall down the stairs?”
“Thank you,” he says quietly, and I blink, surprised.
“You’re... welcome.”
It’s as close to a good moment as we’ve ever had.
“You should shower,” I tell him, wrinkling my nose.
He sniffs himself and makes a face.
“I smell like a French whore.”
I huff out a breath and a sly smirk spreads across his face.
“Why, belissima…. Were you jealous?”
“No,” I say, but I can’t look at him, my face flushed.
“I don’t want anyone else,” he says, his eyes as earnest as I’ve ever seen them.
“Don’t say things like that.” I start to get up but he locks his arms tight around me, sitting up against the headboard.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not true. Dario. If you wanted only me, you would have never...” I trail off.
“Never what, Li? What did I do that was so wrong?”
“You know what you did.”
He lets out a long breath through his nostrils and pulls me on top of him. I instinctively straddle his lap, not thinking about the fact that I’m wearing a nightie with no panties.
He looks down at my nightie bunching around my hips and groans softly.
“What the fuck? You’re just walking around the house like this?”
“I was in bed, just... couldn’t sleep.”
“Need a release, baby?” he murmurs against my ear, putting his hand between my thighs.
I moan and my legs open easily. I hate myself.
“You always were grumpy if you didn’t get laid every day.”
I flush, embarrassed, but I roll my hips anyway, feeling him harden beneath me.
He kisses my throat, avoiding my mouth as his fingers press against my entrance, not quite entering.
I rock my hips forward, enveloping two of his fingers, and he growls low in his throat.
“I’m too hungover to do much of the work, but you could ride me, belissima. Always love the way you look when your tits are bouncing in my face.”
His filthy words make pleasure settle in my stomach. I grow slicker and slicker around his fingers, rocking my hips slowly, enjoying the friction as my orgasm builds.
Dario presses his thumb against my clit and I gasp, rocking my hips faster.
He groans against my throat and reaches between us to unbutton his slacks. He frees his erection and I bite my lip, putting my hand around his base.
Dario gasps in a ragged breath, his hands lighting on my waist as I position myself over him. I slowly lower myself down, enveloping him inch by inch, slow, bracing myself on his shoulders.
He grits his teeth, panting against my throat before biting down there. I moan, starting to bounce on his cock.
He lets out a low groan that’s almost a growl, taking hold of my hips as he moves me along his length. My breasts bounce out of the nightie’s bodice and he catches one of my nipples between his teeth, dragging them gently across the peak.
I cry out, my orgasm approaching swiftly.
“Please please please,” I chant, and Dario chuckles, starting to thrust up as I come down.
I go nearly limp and he does it again, his grip bruising on my hips as he slams up into me.
“Please, what, belissima?” he pants.
“Please make me come,” I gasp, and then I do, falling apart on top of him, crying out his name and digging my nails deep into his shoulders.
When it’s over I collapse against him, breathing hard against his skin.
He kisses along my neck and my collarbone, sweetly, his breath hot against the goosebumps popping up along my flesh.
I tremble slightly in his arms, and he rubs up and down my arms.
“Are you cold, baby?”
Baby. Li. Belissima.
It’s like five years ago all over again, like all the nights I spent at that goddamn penthouse, a place I’d thought we’d fallen in love. To know now that it’s “just a place he takes women” makes me so angry I could spit.
I climb off him, pulling away even as he tries to grasp me back into his arms.
“Don’t go,” he pleads, but I’m not listening. Not looking at him.
The door shuts behind me and I don’t look back.
I can’t.
If I do, I’ll be lost.