Chapter Twenty-Two #3
I growled into her mouth and kissed her filthier, grinding my cock against the soft apex of her thighs so she could feel exactly how hard she made me.
The wet heat of her through the thin pants she wore made my vision flicker at the edges.
I rolled my hips again, slower this time, deliberate, and she whimpered into the kiss, fingers clawing at the front of my shirt like she couldn’t decide whether to push me away or pull me closer.
“Open,” I ordered against her lips, voice rough. “Let me the fuck in, baby.”
She did. I licked the roof of her mouth, sucked on her tongue, bit the soft inside of her lower lip until I tasted the faint metallic edge of blood and her desperate little moan.
My hand left her jaw and slid down, rough and open, over her throat, over the bare place where the collar used to sit, then lower, cupping one full breast through the soft fabric and squeezing hard enough to make her arch.
She gasped into my mouth. I swallowed that too.
“You taste like you missed this,” I rasped, kissing her deeper, wetter, dirtier. “You taste like you’ve been thinking about my tongue in your mouth and my cock splitting you open. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re not…” she whispered. “Please.”
I kissed her through the begging attempt, one hand still buried in her hair, the other shoving under the hem of her shirt so I could get my palm on bare skin.
Her stomach was soft and warm. I dragged my fingers higher, found the tight peak of her nipple, and pinched.
She cried out against my lips and the sound went straight to my cock. I pinched harder.
“Matteo!”
“That’s it,” I growled, kissing the corner of her mouth, her cheek, the hinge of her jaw, then back to her lips like I couldn’t stand the distance of even an inch. “Say my name while I ruin this mouth. Say it while you’re soaking through those little panties for the man you claim you hate.”
She moaned my name again, broken and hungry, and I rewarded her by sucking her tongue into my mouth and rolling it against mine in a filthy imitation of what I was going to do to her pussy the second I got her on this counter.
My hand left her breast, slid lower, shoved beneath the waistband of her pants and underwear in one rough motion, and found her dripping.
Soaked. Swollen. Ready.
I dragged two fingers through the mess between her legs and brought them up between us, breaking the kiss just long enough to smear her own wetness across her bottom lip.
“Lick yourself,” I ordered.
She did. Eyes locked on mine the entire time while she cleaned my fingers with her tongue like she was daring me to lose the last scrap of control I had left.
I snapped.
I kissed her again, harder than before, tasting herself on her tongue, grinding the thick line of my cock against her soaked cunt while my fingers shoved back inside her tight pussy and curled deep. She was so wet the sound was obscene in the quiet kitchen.
I fucked her with two fingers in time with the thrust of my tongue, swallowing every sound she made, until her thighs started to shake and her nails scored down my chest hard enough to sting.
I pulled back just enough to speak against her open mouth, both of us breathing like we had been drowning. “Want me to stop?”
Her answer was a desperate, furious little sound as she yanked my mouth back to hers and kissed me like she was trying to crawl inside my lungs right back.
I smiled against her lips, dark and victorious, and gave her exactly what she was asking for.
Later, I took sea bass from the fridge, scored the skin, and seared it hard in olive oil until the edges crisped.
I roasted cherry tomatoes with garlic and thyme until they collapsed into something sweet and sharp.
A simple arugula salad with lemon and shaved parmesan.
Crusty bread I toasted in the same pan so it picked up the fish fat.
Morena sat at the island and watched me like she did not trust the peace. I set the plate in front of her without ceremony.
“Buon appetito.”
She picked up the fork. For a moment she only stared at the food. Then she took a bite. Her eyes closed for half a second. She was hungrier than she wanted to admit.
When her plate was mostly empty she set the fork down and looked at me. “Why are you being like this?”
“Like what?”
“Careful.”
I met her eyes. “Because if I’m not careful, I won’t be able to hold back, and there’s a kid here now. And you’re bleeding.”
She touched the cut on her cheek self-consciously. I set my own plate aside. “Stay still.”
I went to the drawer by the sink and took out the small kit I kept there for nights that ended in blood.
Antiseptic. Gauze. Steri-strips. She stayed on the stool.
The cut sat high on her cheekbone, shallow but ugly, already starting to dry at the edges.
Someone else’s night had written itself across her face.
I soaked a square of gauze and stepped in until my knees almost touched hers.
“This will sting.”
I pressed the gauze to the cut. She hissed once through her teeth and didn’t pull away. Up close she smelled like cold air and blood and the jacket I had put on her in the trees. Her pulse jumped under the skin of her throat where the collar used to sit.
I cleaned until the gauze came away pink instead of red. Then I tore open a steri-strip with my teeth and smoothed it down with my thumb, careful not to drag.
“You’be been through worse, baby” I said quietly. “You don’t get to flinch at this.”
“I’m not flinching.”
“You’re holding your breath.” She let it out. It warmed the side of my wrist.
I taped a second strip across the first and sat back just far enough to look at the work. Clean. Straight. It would scar thin if she left it alone.
“There.”
Her fingers came up and touched the edge of the tape, then dropped again. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yes I did.” I tossed the used gauze into the sink. “Your sister is asleep twenty feet away. You’re bleeding on my kitchen stool. And if I put my hands anywhere else right now I won’t stop, and I already told you I’m not touching you like that while you are still shaking standing up.”
She stared at me like she was waiting for the other version of me to come back. The one from the stage. The one from the hallway. I washed the blood off my hands in the sink and didn’t look at her throat. If I did, the careful part of me would be finished.