37. Tony #2
Warm air moved through the open window. It carried the smell of thyme and jasmine from the garden below. Stars filled the sky outside. Thick and bright.
Her skin felt soft under my hands. I pressed my mouth to the curve where her neck met her shoulder. She arched into me. Her fingers tightened in my hair.
This time felt different. No barrier. No protection. We had chosen it together on the terrace two days earlier while Avery chased lizards. She had told me she wanted everything with me. I understood exactly what she meant.
She wrapped her legs around me and pulled me against her. Her forehead pressed to mine. We breathed the same air.
"Tony." My name left her mouth like it belonged there.
"I know," I said. "I know."
The sounds of the Italian night came through the window. Olive branches creaked. Wind moved through the cypress trees. Her breath mixed with mine. The bed frame protested again. We did not care.
She said my name again. Quieter. Her hands held my face. She made sure I saw her.
I saw her.
I pressed the thick head of my cock against her entrance and pushed inside her slow and deep until I filled her completely. Nothing between us. Her walls clenched tight around my bare cock.
"Fuck, Mia," I said against her ear. "You feel so good bare like this."
She rocked up to meet every thrust. Her hands stayed on my face. "Give me everything," she whispered. "I want all of you tonight. Fill me."
I moved inside her. Deep and steady. Each thrust dragged along the spot that made her breath catch. Charcoal dust left faint gray streaks across her ribs where my hand gripped, along her hip, and over the curve of her breast when I cupped it.
"You're so wet for me," I murmured. "Taking my cock so perfectly."
Her legs tightened around my waist. She pulled me deeper. "Harder, Tony. I need to feel you come inside me."
We stayed locked together. Foreheads pressed. Breaths shared. The slick glide of my cock in and out of her filled the quiet room. Her body trembled under me. She clenched around me again and again until her climax hit in long waves. She gasped my name against my mouth.
I followed right after. My hips jerked as I spilled deep inside her. Warm pulses of cum filled her. A low groan left my chest.
I stayed buried inside her as we both trembled. The line between us disappeared.
Neither of us moved. The sheet lay tangled at the foot of the bed. Warm air from the window cooled the sweat on our skin. I pressed my mouth to her temple and tasted salt.
"You okay?" I asked.
She nodded against my chest. Her hand found mine. She laced our fingers together and squeezed once. Twice.
"Better than okay," she said.
Her head rested on my chest. Her breathing slowed and deepened. The stars still shone outside the open window.
The open window let in the sounds of the Italian night. Crickets and wind and the faint creak of an olive branch. Mia's fingers traced lazy circles on my ribs. Her touch was light. Absent. The way you touch something when you've stopped being afraid it will disappear.
"Tell me something," she said.
"What?"
"Anything. Something I don't know."
I thought about it. "Dad proposed to my mother in this room."
She lifted her head. "This room?"
"This bed. She said no the first time. He asked again at breakfast. She said no again. He asked a third time while they were picking olives."
"What did she say?"
"She threw an olive at his head and said yes."
Mia laughed. A quiet, warm sound against my skin. She put her head back down.
"I like her," she said.
"You would have loved her."
The silence after that was the good kind. Full and warm and not needing to be filled.
I woke before dawn.
Mia was asleep against my chest. Through the open window I could see the grove, silver in the early light. The hills beyond were gray shapes against a lighter gray sky.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand.
I reached for it without moving Mia. The screen lit up. Lucas.
Oliver's trust wired $2 million to a Rockford account two weeks after you arrived. Still digging.
I read it twice.
Put the phone down.
Pulled Mia closer. She made a sound in her sleep. Something soft and trusting that I didn't deserve.
Two million dollars. Two weeks after she arrived. Not a vacation. Not a ski trip. That was infrastructure. Someone setting up shop in a town with one traffic light and a coffeehouse.
I thought about his face in Emma's coffeehouse. The way he'd crossed the room and touched Mia's arm like he already knew her. And now two million dollars wired to a town he'd supposedly stumbled into because he liked snowboarding.
A chill moved through me that had nothing to do with the open window.
Mia smelled like olive oil and sunscreen and something that was only her. I pressed my lips to her hair. She shifted. Settled.
Whatever was waiting for us in Rockford, I'd be ready. I held on tighter. Because the world outside this villa was circling closer. I could feel it the way you feel a storm before the sky changes.
But right now, in this room where Dad proposed three times, with my family asleep around me, I held on.
And I didn't let go.