Epilogue #3
“Filthy,” she gasps, smiling.
“Soft,” I correct, and thrust deeper. “Filthy soft. That’s the genre. That’s our genre.”
“Then compose it in me. Slow. No shortcuts.”
I hook her knee over my elbow, get the angle that makes her eyes go unfocused, and slip my hand between us to find her clit.
I circle in time with my thrusts - unhurried, relentless, paying attention - and feel her start to tighten around me, feel the orgasm building in the flush of her chest and the hitch of her breath.
“Again,” I murmur against her mouth. “I’ve got you.
I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. Come on my cock and then I’m going to follow you over and hold you until you fall asleep, and in the morning Matteo will show up at six-thirty and you’ll make espresso and I’ll pretend to be grumpy, and this - this right here - will still be true. ”
“Rocco-”
“I know. Come on, amore. Let go.”
She comes with my name soft in her throat and her ring-hand fisted in the sheets and her cunt clenching around me so tight I follow her almost immediately - groaning into her neck, pulsing deep, the orgasm rolling through me like a held note finally resolving.
I stay buried in her. Shake. Breathe. Kiss the damp hair at her temple.
We move together the way we move in music now, listening to each other, responding, building something neither of us could make alone.
She tips me onto my back somewhere in the middle of the afterglow and climbs over me, hair falling around her face, the messy bun from this morning long gone, and looks down at me with the particular soft filthy expression that means she’s not done with me yet.
“My turn to pay attention,” she says.
“Senna-”
“Shh. You’ve been attentive. Now let me be greedy.”
She sinks down onto my half-hard cock and works me back to full with the slow roll of her hips, and I watch her - my wife, my partner, the artistic heart of the label that bears both our names - take what she wants from my body with the same confidence she brings to a mixing board.
Her hands brace on my chest. The ring catches the lamplight.
I put my hands on her waist and let her set the pace, let her use me, let myself be the instrument for once instead of the player.
“Fuck,” I breathe. “Look at you. Riding me like you own me.”
“I do own you.” She’s smiling. Flushed. Beautiful.
“That’s the point of the ring. That’s the point of the year.
You’re mine. I’m yours. And right now I want to come on your cock one more time while you watch me and don’t think about distribution meetings or Elena’s friend’s demo or anything except this. ”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good husband.”
I laugh and then the laugh breaks into a groan as she picks up the pace, grinding down, taking me deep, and I slip my thumb to her clit and circle while she rides, paying attention even from below, watching every flicker of pleasure cross her face.
When she comes the third time it’s quieter - a hitch of breath, a full-body shudder, her cunt fluttering around me - and I follow her over with a low sound, spilling into her again, holding her hips flush to mine like I can keep this moment from ending if I just hold on tight enough.
She collapses onto my chest. I wrap my arms around her. The Florence skyline glows beyond the window. Somewhere in the house a pipe ticks as it cools. Ordinary. Sacred. Ours.
“That,” she murmurs against my collarbone, “is what I’ve learned about paying attention too.”
“We’re getting good at this.”
“We always were. We just forgot. And then we remembered.”
I kiss the crown of her head and breathe her in - shampoo and skin and the faint trace of the espresso she made this morning - and I think about the man I was a year ago, fading and ashamed and writing about nothing, and the man I am now, home at last with the woman who was always my real music, paying attention one breath at a time.
Afterward, tangled in sheets that smell like both of us, she traces patterns on my chest the way she always does.
“Hey, Rocco?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad we made it.”
“Me too.”
“Even the hard parts.”
“Especially the hard parts. They’re what got us here.”
She’s quiet for a moment.
“Do you ever think about what would have happened if I hadn’t come back?”
“Sometimes.”
“What do you think?”
“I think I would have spent the rest of my life writing songs about losing you. And none of them would have been as good as the ones I get to write about having you.”
She rises up on one elbow to look at me, her face soft in the lamplight.
“That’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever said.”
“I thought the ‘more than music’ thing was the most romantic.”
“This one’s better.”
“I’ll try to top it next time.”
“Don’t. I like this one.”
She settles back against my chest, and I hold her close, listening to her breathing slow toward sleep.
The house is quiet now. Just us, and the music we make together, and the life we’ve built.
Home at last.
THE END