3. Liana
— ? —
Liana
“Be ready by six,” he said. “Wear the blue.”
Lately I had been going to bed alone and waking to a cold pillow and the sound of the front gate already closing behind him.
I stopped waiting up. There was no point asking Rina whether he had said when he would be home, because she never had an answer, and I had grown tired of watching her pretend she did.
Since Grassi’s threat he had been even more on edge. His abrupt plan to confront Grassi had flopped when they’d realized he wasn’t in town. And now Dominic was on edge.
I came down at ten to six and found Rina on the floor of the front room, wrestling Bianca into her pajamas, one small foot already through the wrong hole and the other kicking free.
“Mama, you look pretty,” Bianca said.
“She does.” Rina got the last button through and would not look at me. She kept her eyes on her work, her mouth folded at the corners, pleased with a secret she had no intention of sharing.
“What do you know that I don’t?” I asked her.
“Nothing. He’s waiting. Go.”
I did not ask again. I had learned that in this house you took the good things when they came, and you did not stand at the door and interrogate them.
So I kissed my daughter, told her to be good, and went out into the evening in the blue, my heels in one hand.
And there it was at the bottom of the steps, the sleek one he never let anyone else drive. He was behind the wheel, window down, watching me walk toward him with an expression that made my skin prickle.
I got in. The leather was warm. The car smelled like him.
“You look good,” he said, his voice low.
“I know.”
He laughed, and put the car in drive.
We didn’t talk as he took us through Newport, past the big houses and the manicured lawns, past the club where we had dinner parties, past all the places where we pretended to be a normal couple instead of what we actually were.
His hand found my thigh somewhere along the way, and I let it stay there because I had missed his touch so much that even this small thing felt like a gift.
He took me down to the private harbor.
I knew this dock. Knew the boats moored here, the ones that belonged to the family, the ones that had carried cargo and men and sometimes things I didn’t ask about.
But the boat he led me to wasn’t the big yacht we used for parties.
It was the smaller one, the one he took out when he wanted to disappear.
“Just us?” I asked as he helped me aboard, his hand steady at my waist.
“Just us.”
He cast off the lines himself. Started the engine. And then we were moving, cutting through the black water, the lights of Newport shrinking behind us.
I stood at the rail and watched the coastline fade. The wind caught my hair and my dress and I didn’t try to tame either of them. I just breathed, for the first time in a week, and let the salt air fill my lungs.
He came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist, his chest solid against my back, his chin resting on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I should have been there. I should have come home.”
“I kept telling myself one more hour. One more call. One more problem to solve.” His arms tightened around me. “And then I’d look up and it was three in the morning and you were already asleep and I couldn’t make myself wake you up just to tell you I was sorry for not being there.”
“So you didn’t tell me at all.”
“I’m telling you now.”
I turned in his arms to face him. The wind whipped my hair across my face and he reached up to brush it back, his fingers gentle against my cheek.
“Is Grassi handled?” I asked.
“He will be.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have right now.” He cupped my face in his hands. “But tonight he doesn’t exist. None of it exists. There’s just you and me and this boat and the water.”
“You said that on our anniversary. Right before you left me on the terrace.”
“I’m not going to do that tonight.”
“How do I know that?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. Held it up so I could see the screen. And then he threw it over the rail into the water.
My mouth fell open.
“Dominic.”
“It’s gone.” He shrugged. “There’s nothing in the world that can reach me now except you.”
“That phone cost-”
“I don’t care what it cost.” He pulled me against him and kissed my forehead. “You’re worth more than a phone. You’re worth more than all of it.”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to tell him that one grand gesture didn’t erase a week of silence. But his arms were around me and his heart was beating under my ear and I had missed him so much that my anger couldn’t survive the proximity.
He steered us further out, past the last buoys, until there was nothing around us but black water and a spill of stars so thick it looked like someone had shattered diamonds across the sky.
He cut the engine.
The boat rocked gently beneath us. And suddenly we were the only two people in the world.
He turned from the wheel and crossed the deck to me, slow, deliberate, his eyes never leaving mine.
He stopped in front of me, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off his body. “Tonight there’s a bottle of wine I’ll probably never open. And my wife in a dress I already regret buying.”
“You regret it?” I pouted.
“I regret how fast it’s coming off.” His hands found my hips. “I’ve been thinking about what’s under it. About what I’m going to do to you when I finally get you alone.”
“Romantic,” I breathed.
“I contain multitudes.”
I laughed, and the sound surprised me. And then I wasn’t laughing anymore.
His hands slid up my sides, slow, tracing the curves of my body through the silk like he was memorizing me. His fingers found the zipper at the back of my dress and he pulled it down, inch by inch, so slowly I could feel each tooth releasing.
“Anyone could see us out here,” I whispered.
“No one can see us.” He pushed the straps off my shoulders, letting them fall. “But if they could, I would kill them.”
The words shouldn’t have made me wet. They did anyway.
“I would kill anyone who laid eyes on you like this.” He peeled the dress down my body, revealing my bare breasts to the night air, and I gasped as my nipples went hard from the cold. “This is mine. No one else gets to see it.”
“Possessive.”
“Always.” He cupped my breasts in his hands, thumbs brushing over my stiff nipples. “You knew what I was when you married me.”
“I knew.” My voice came out shaky. “I just didn’t know how much I’d like it.”
He smiled, and bent his head to my breast.
His mouth was hot against my cold skin. He sucked my nipple between his lips and I cried out, my hands flying to his hair, holding him against me.
His tongue swirled around the hard peak, then his teeth caught it and tugged, and the pain was so sharp and so good that I felt it pulse between my thighs.
“More,” I gasped.
He switched to my other breast, giving it the same treatment. Sucking. Licking. Biting. His hands pushed my dress the rest of the way down and it pooled at my feet, leaving me in nothing but my underwear and heels.
“Beautiful,” he murmured against my skin. “So fucking beautiful.”
“You’re overdressed.”
“I know.” He straightened up and shrugged out of his jacket, tossing it aside. “But I’m not done with you yet.”
He walked me backward until my legs hit the cushioned bench at the stern of the boat. Sat me down. And then he knelt in front of me, spreading my thighs with his hands, and the sight of Dominic Costa on his knees between my legs made my head spin.
“I’ve been thinking about this taste,” he said, hooking his fingers in my underwear and pulling them down my legs. “All week. Every night when I should have been sleeping, I was thinking about burying my face in this pussy.”
“Then stop talking about it and do it.”
“Impatient.” He pressed a kiss to my inner thigh. “But I like you impatient. I like you desperate.”
“Dominic.”
“Say please.”
“Please.” The word came out broken, needy. “Please, I need your mouth on me.”
“Good girl.”
He lowered his head and licked me, one long slow stripe from my entrance to my clit, and I moaned so loud it echoed across the water.
“Fuck, you taste good.” He licked me again, slower this time, his tongue flat and wide. “Better than I remembered.”
“Don’t tease me.”
“I’ll tease you as long as I want.” He circled my clit with the tip of his tongue, not enough pressure, deliberately not enough. “You’re mine. That means I decide when you come.”
He licked and sucked and teased, bringing me right to the edge and then pulling back, over and over until I was shaking and crying and begging him with words that didn’t make sense anymore.
His tongue traced patterns on my clit that made stars burst behind my eyes.
His lips closed around the swollen bud and sucked, gentle at first, then harder.
“Please.” I was sobbing now, actual tears running down my face. “Please, Dominic, I can’t take anymore, I need to come, please let me come.”
“Not yet.” He pushed two fingers inside me without warning and I screamed. “I want to feel you get wetter first.”
He fucked me with his fingers while his tongue worked my clit, curling them forward to hit that spot that made me see white.
“That’s it,” he murmured against me. “Ride my face. Use me.”
I grabbed his hair and held him against my cunt and rode his tongue like my life depended on it. He let me take what I needed, his fingers pumping steadily, his mouth hot and relentless.
“Say who does this to you,” he growled.
“You.” I could barely form words. “You, God, only you, don’t stop.”
“Say who this pussy belongs to.”
“You.” I was so close I couldn’t breathe. “It’s yours, I’m yours, everything is yours.”
“Come.” He sucked my clit hard and curled his fingers and I shattered.
The orgasm ripped through me so hard I thought I might break. My whole body convulsed, my pussy clamping down on his fingers, my scream carrying out over the water where no one could hear. He worked me through it, gentler now, lapping at me softly as the waves rolled through me.
Before I could catch my breath, he was on his feet, unbuckling his belt.
“Turn around,” he ordered. “Hands on the rail.”
I stood on shaking legs and turned, gripping the cold metal rail at the edge of the deck. The harbor stretched out before me.
I heard his zipper. Felt him step up behind me, the heat of his body pressing against my back. His hand fisted in my hair and pulled my head back, exposing my throat.
“I’m going to fuck you now,” he said against my ear. “And you’re going to take everything I give you.”
“Yes.”
“You’re going to be so full of me you can’t think straight.”
“Please Dom.”
“And when I’m done, you’re going to stay full of me. Every drop. Understand?”
“Yes.” I was shaking with want. “Please, Dominic, please just fuck me.”
He kicked my legs wider apart. I felt the thick head of his cock press against my entrance, slick with how wet he had made me. And then one of his fingers, wet from my cunt, traced down to my ass.
“Dominic.” My voice came out strangled.
“You can take it.” He pushed the finger inside me slowly, up to the first knuckle, and I keened at the stretch. “You can take everything I give you. You always do.”
He pushed his cock into my pussy in one hard thrust.
I screamed.
The fullness was overwhelming. His finger in my ass, his cock in my cunt, both of them filling me until I couldn’t breathe. The cold bite of his piercing dragged against my walls as he sank deep, that metal ridge hitting nerves I forgot I had.
“Fuck.” His voice was wrecked. “You’re so tight like this. So fucking tight.”
He started to move.
Long, slow strokes at first, pulling almost all the way out and then sinking back in, letting me feel every inch of him. His finger matched the rhythm, working in and out of my ass, the dual sensation making my head spin.
“More,” I gasped, pushing back against him. “I need more.”
“Greedy little wife.” He pulled his finger out and grabbed my hips with both hands, bruising tight. “You want more?”
“Yes.”
He slammed into me.
I screamed again, my grip on the rail the only thing keeping me upright.
He set a pace that was brutal, punishing, fucking into me so hard the boat rocked with each thrust. The sound of skin slapping skin echoed across the water.
His grunts. My moans. The obscene wet sounds of him splitting me open.
“This is mine,” he growled, one hand leaving my hip to reach around and pinch my clit, hard. “This cunt is mine. This body is mine. You are mine.”
“Yours.” I was crying again, tears streaming down my face. “All yours, always yours.”
“Damn right.” He fucked me harder, impossibly harder, his cock hitting depths that made me see stars. “And I’m going to fill you up and you’re going to keep every drop.”
“Yes.” I was so close to coming again I could taste it. “Please, Dominic, I need to come.”
“Then come.” He pinched my clit again, twisted it, and slammed into me at the same time. “Come on my cock.”
I shattered for the second time, harder than the first, my whole body locking up, my pussy clenching around him so tight he couldn’t move. He groaned against my neck, his rhythm stuttering, and then he was coming too, spilling inside me with a broken sound.
We stayed like that for a long moment, both of us shaking, both of us trying to remember how to breathe. His forehead pressed against my shoulder. His cock still twitching inside me.
Slowly, he pulled out. I whimpered at the loss, at the emptiness, and then I felt his fingers.
He pushed them inside me, two thick fingers, scooping up the mess he had left and pushing it back in.
“Stay full,” he murmured against my ear. “Stay full of me.”
“Dominic.”
“Shh.” He worked his fingers in and out, slow and lazy, not trying to make me come again, just keeping me close. “I want you dripping with me all night.”
I shuddered as he fingered me, his come slick around his knuckles, the obscene squelching sound making my face burn even as my pussy clenched around him.
“That’s it,” he breathed. “Keep it all inside. Good girl.”
He turned me around and lifted me into his arms and carried me to the cushions at the stern. Laid me down. Curled around me with his hand still between my thighs, fingers resting just inside me, keeping me full.
The sky was going gray at the edges. Dawn coming up over the water. The boat drifted slowly, rocking us like a cradle, and for a little while I let myself believe that this was everything. That he would stay. That the war couldn’t reach us out here.
“I never forgot,” he said quietly. “Even when I act like it. You know that.”
I pressed my cheek against his chest. His heart beat steady under my ear, slowing down now, settling.
“I know it right now.” I closed my eyes. “It’s the rest of the time I have trouble with.”