Chapter 18
Eighteen
Sloane
Ihave read forty-seven pages of Syndicate contract law in the past hour and I understand exactly none of it.
Massimo sits at the kitchen counter with a red pen in his hand, marking up a brief.
The glasses are new to me. He only wears them at night when his eyes are tired, dark tortoiseshell frames that make him look like a professor who moonlights as a hitman, and the sight of them does unreasonable things to my concentration.
I'm perched on the stool beside him with my bare feet hooked around the rungs, my chin resting on his shoulder, reading along because he doesn't tell me to stop and because the warm weight of his body against mine is better than anything on television.
"You're breathing on my neck," he says without looking up.
"I'm reading."
"You're breathing on my neck and pretending to read."
"I understood at least three words on that page.
Heretofore. Notwithstanding. And the." I press my lips against the spot below his ear just to feel his pen hand falter.
The muscles in his jaw flex and a smile fights its way onto his mouth before he catches it.
"I'm practically a lawyer now, wouldn’t you say? "
"You're practically a menace." He turns his head and catches my mouth with his. Quick, distracted, his brain still half-buried in the brief, but his free hand finds my thigh and squeezes and the warmth of his palm against my bare skin tells me the other half of his brain is right here.
This is what we've become. Barefoot mornings and contract briefs and pasta dinners where he eats whatever I put in front of him without complaint in less than two weeks. Moving fast? Err… yes and no.
I am the happiest I have ever been and it terrifies me.
Lorenzo doesn't scare me. My father doesn't scare me. What scares me is that happiness has always been the deep breath before the punch lands. The moment you stop bracing is the moment the floor gives way, and I've been standing on this floor with Massimo without checking for cracks.
But I also don’t find myself looking for them. Not like I used to, anyway.
His phone buzzes on the counter. He glances at the screen and his left hand twitches, fingers curling toward his palm before he flips the phone face down and returns to his brief.
Smooth. Practiced. But I saw the jaw tighten before his hand moved.
I saw the crease form between his brows and disappear just as fast.
"Everything okay?"
"Fine. Julian checking in." He doesn't look up. His pen moves across the page but the strokes are harder now, pressing deeper into the paper, leaving grooves I can see from my angle on his shoulder.
Julian checking in. That's the third time today he's used a brother's name to explain a phone call he didn't take.
Yesterday it was Luca. The day before, Kon.
His sleep has thinned over the past two nights, his body restless beside mine, rolling from his back to his side and back again, his arm reaching for me in the dark with a grip that feels less like affection and more like a man holding onto something he's afraid will be taken.
I could push. I could ask what's really on that phone and in those closed-door meetings and behind the deepening shadows under his eyes.
But I look at this man sitting beside me in his reading glasses with his red pen and the faint trace of tomato sauce on his collar from dinner, and I choose trust. He told me he would protect me.
He told me he would never lie. I believe him because believing him is the only foundation I have left, and pulling at it right now feels like testing a bridge while you're standing in the middle.
So I don't push. I hook my chin over his shoulder and breathe him in and read another page of contract law I don't understand and let the quiet evening settle around us.
After he finishes the brief, he pours us both wine and we move to the sofa.
The penthouse is warm and dim, the only light coming from the kitchen and the amber glow of the table lamp beside the bookshelf.
Rain from earlier has left streaks on the windows that fracture the city lights into long, blurred lines.
I curl into his side and his arm drapes around my shoulders. His fingers trace absent patterns on my upper arm, slow circles that raise goosebumps along my skin despite the warmth.
"Massimo."
"Hmm." The vibration of his voice runs through his chest into my shoulder.
"I want to try something tonight."
His fingers pause. He looks down at me, his whiskey eyes shifting from relaxed to alert in the space between one breath and the next. The reading glasses are gone now, tucked into his shirt collar, and without them his gaze is sharper. Unshielded.
"I trust you." I sit up and turn to face him, pulling my legs underneath me. My heart hammers against my ribs but my voice is steady and I hold his gaze because I need him to see that I mean this. "More than I've ever trusted anyone. More than I thought I could. And I want to show you."
His hand rises to my jaw. His thumb finds my cheekbone and traces it with a pressure so gentle my eyes sting. "What are you asking, tesoro?"
"Everything." I turn my face into his palm, my lips pressing against the rough center where his calluses are, tasting salt and the faint trace of red ink on his fingers.
"I'm asking for everything. I want you to be my first and only in everything. You’ve teased me and caressed parts of me that want to know your full touch. "
Understanding moves through his face. His pupils dilate, the golden brown swallowed by black. His breath catches and holds. His hand tightens on my jaw, not hard, just present, and I watch the muscles in his throat work as he swallows.
"Are you sure?"
"I've never been more sure of anything."
He stands. Takes my hand. Our fingers lace together, his palm warm and dry against mine, and he leads me to the bedroom without a word. Our bare feet are quiet on the hardwood, the only sound the rain dripping from the eaves outside the windows.
The room is dark except for the city light filtering through the glass, casting long silver shapes across the bed and the floor.
He turns me to face him. His fingers find the hem of my shirt and he lifts it over my head with a slowness that makes me feel the fabric slide across every inch of skin.
He slides my shorts down my hips, over my thighs, his fingertips trailing my legs on the way down.
Then he stands back and looks at me, his eyes moving over my body the way they did the first night, with an attention so thorough it feels like being held.
He lays me face down on the bed. The cool sheets press against my breasts, my stomach, my thighs. My cheek presses into the pillow and I breathe in cotton and his cologne and close my eyes.
"I'm going to take care of you." His voice is low, close to my ear, his breath warm against my hairline. "If anything doesn't feel right, you tell me. We stop. No questions."
"I know."
"Say it back to me."
"If anything doesn't feel right, I tell you. We stop."
"Good girl."
The praise sinks into my bloodstream. I feel it spread through my chest, my stomach, the backs of my thighs. I press my face deeper into the pillow and feel my body soften, my muscles releasing one by one.
His hands start at my shoulders. Firm, slow strokes down my spine, his thumbs pressing into the muscles along my vertebrae, working out knots I didn't know I was holding.
The heels of his hands press into my lower back and I exhale a sound that is half groan, half surrender.
By the time his fingers reach the curve of my waist I'm liquid against the sheets, my breathing slow and deep, my mind quieting to a hum.
His mouth follows his hands. Lips against my spine, the scrape of his beard following the path his fingers carved, rough and warm against my skin. Down to the small of my back. Lower.
He parts me with both hands and his mouth moves between my legs from behind, his tongue slow and thorough, and my hips push back against his face without permission from my brain.
"Massimo." My voice comes out muffled by the pillow, thick with need. My heart thumps out of control. A sliver of fear skates beneath the need for what I know comes next. What I asked for…
As if sensing my need for reassurances, Massimo murmurs against my skin, "I'm right here." His thumb traces a slow circle against my other entrance, gentle, no pressure, just the warmth of his touch introducing itself. "Relax for me. I've got you, tesoro."
A cap clicks open on the nightstand. Cool lubricant against my skin, a contrast that makes me gasp.
His thumb returns, slicker now, circling with patience that borders on maddening while his mouth continues working me from behind.
The dual sensation builds heat in two directions at once.
A sound I've never heard myself make escapes my throat, raw and involuntary. It makes his fingers tighten on my hip.
He takes his time. God, does he take his time.
One finger replaces his thumb, pressing slowly, giving me room to breathe around the unfamiliar stretch.
His voice never stops. Low, steady, a current of praise that seeps into my skin and loosens something I've been holding for years.
I press my body into his touch, lifting my hips.
"So good for me, tesoro. So brave. You have no idea how beautiful you look right now."
I push back against his hand. The stretch burns, tight and foreign.
I breathe through it. In through my nose, out through my mouth, and the burn softens to pressure and the pressure opens into a bloom of warmth that pulses deep in my core.
His other hand grips me, kneading, possessive, and I moan when he tightens his hold.
I lift my ass deeper into his touch, loving his strong grip as he teases my back entrance.
"More." I grip the sheets until my knuckles ache. "I can take more."