“I’m sorry,” Dante says. “I’m prying. I shouldn’t have—”
“No, no, it’s fine. Dad had to eat too, so he’d leave a little grocery money out for us every week. We actually—my sisters and I—would take turns cooking. If it wasn’t too cold outside, we’d eat on the back porch together. It was nice. Even on the nights we had to eat cereal and toast, I wouldn’t have wished it any other way.”
I smile at the memories, and tell Dante about the disastrous time Charlie tried to cook her first Thanksgiving turkey and the fire department had shown up because we couldn’t get the smoke alarm to go off.
“Unfortunately,” I continue, “we had put the smoking roasting pan on the back porch, and while the firemen were giving us a stern talking-to, our yellow Lab, Penny, snuck out and started eating the blackened thing.”
“Oh no. Was she okay?”
“Yeah. But we were so freaked out that she’d end up with turkey bone splinters in her stomach that we rushed her to the ER vet for x-rays. She was absolutely fine, thank God.”
I finish up the story for Dante, because it has the best ending.
Dragging ourselves home late that night, we had stopped off at the Alvarez fruit stand to see if we could get some kind of food wrapped up to go, but Delores ushered us all inside and plated up hearty servings of their leftovers so my sisters and I—and our dog—could eat together in her warm, cozy kitchen.
By the time I’m done, Dante is grinning from ear to ear. We talk carefully about our childhoods some more, swapping stories about how we grew up. Some are good, but many are not. This is a door I’ve never stepped through with him. With anyone, really, besides my sisters.
I open up about some of the things Charlie and I have done to protect Livvie from our dad, and how closely bonded the three of us are because of him. I don’t bring up the marriage he forced on me, though. My truce with Dante is still too new, and I feel like it needs protecting.
“I guess we both had pretty fucked-up fathers,” Dante muses.
He talks about his mom and his sister, who disappeared at sea when he was a teenager. About how it changed his father, made him more suspicious—and much more vicious as well. He talks about the discipline Enzo had insisted on, in every aspect of their lives.
“It made Armani a good soldier, but it had the opposite effect on Marco. He rebelled. Ran wild. He’s starting to come around, but I don’t know if he’ll ever fully settle down,” Dante says. “Lately he’s been on this car racing kick. It’s like he’s legitimately addicted to danger.”
“What about you?” I ask. “Did the discipline make you a good soldier, too?”
He goes quiet for a moment. “He made me like him. And I don’t think I want to be. Not anymore.”
“Then don’t,” I say simply.
I get up and put our empty dishes on the room service cart, then wheel it into the foyer and come back with both my hands out toward Dante.
“Come to bed,” I tell him.
His expression is all seriousness as he takes my hands, rising from the couch, but as soon as I start undressing him in the bedroom his eyes grow dark with heat.
He’s had so little comfort in his life. Hell, so have I, and I want us to find it together. As much as I want to take this slow, I’m increasingly needy and wanting as I strip him bare. I’m about to push him onto the bed, but he takes my wrist.
“Let me return the favor.”
With that, he begins undressing me, taking his time. As my clothes come off, my gaze drops to his thick, hard cock. The sight of it has my mouth watering. The second my panties hit the floor, we tumble in a naked heap on the bed, not bothering to kick back the covers.
Dante covers me with his body, his lips finding my neck. I let my hands wander, touching him everywhere. Tracing the lines of his sculpted chest, the ridges of his abdomen.
When I grip his cock, he jerks with a little moan, hot precum running over my fingers.
“I wanted to go slow, but—”
“Anything you want, Frankie. Anything.”
He leans down to kiss me, but I stop him with a finger on his lips. “You, inside me. Now.”
Our eyes meet and he clasps my hands in his, our fingers interlocking as he dives into me with one hard, perfect thrust. For a moment we’re both still, reveling in the feeling of our connection. When I’m ready, I swing my hips, urging him to plunge into me again, and he does. Faster and faster. We make love with our eyes open, finding once more that hard, driving tempo from this morning. But this time we’re climbing the mountain together, instead of fighting it.
With every thrust I arch up to meet him, my nipples tingling against his chest, my center throbbing with pleasure. He rides me urgently, stroking that place within that makes me come in a hot rush every fucking time. Dante knows exactly what he’s doing.
I hear his name rolling from my lips, drowning out the sound of our heavy breathing. The tempo is insane, the tension so tight that I could cry. The veins on the sides of his neck strain as he tenses, his cock swelling and growing even harder. Moving his hips, he changes position slightly so the base of him hits my clit, rolling over it with delicious friction. It’s the kicker that I need. The tension snaps, floods, bursts apart, and I scream his name as I come apart.
