I climb into his bed and lie on my side facing him. He sets the book on the nightstand. He looks at me in the low light with the complete, unhurried attention he gives everything—this man who has never looked at me like I was taking up time he didn’t have, who has never made me feel like I needed to get to the point faster.
“What is this now?” My voice comes out quieter than I intended, but not broken. Just quiet. “The three months are done. We never talked about it. I’m still here. What is this?”
He holds my gaze for a moment. There’s something in his face that I’ve been learning to read over the past months. It’s rare and it’s brief and it matters more to me than most things he says out loud. “What do you want it to be?”
“That’s not an answer. That’s a cop-out, and you know it.”
He looks at me for a moment longer. Then he reaches out and takes my face in both hands, his palms warm and steady against my jaw, his thumbs resting along my cheekbones with a gentleness that is just him, paying attention in the full way he pays attention to things. His eyes scan me over for another second before he brings his mouth to mine slowly and without urgency, as though this is not something to get through but something to be in.
What follows is different from every other time. Not dark-edged, not urgent, not the intensity of two people reaching hard for something. This is the other thing—the thing that only has a name if you’re willing to say the name out loud, which neither of us has done yet.
He’s sweet with me. Gentle how he peels away my layers. Kissing every inch of exposed skin he can reach while he’s the one exposing it. His fingers run trails all over me, soft and yet firm. Not tickling—stroking. Stimulating.
“But we were supposed to talk,” I whisper.
He smiles in the dim light of the room. “Were we?” Then his head dips between my thighs, and I find conversation far less interesting.
Maybe we don’t need to name it or say the words everyone else does. Maybe that’s not what he wants. Or, since he never plays by anyone’s rules, maybe this is a part of that.
He could be a relationship anarchist of some kind. Nothing this man does surprises me?—
Oh. No. That surprised me.
His tongue slipped all the way down, while his fingers plied their way inside of me. My knees are near my ears to open me up to him, and I’m not sure about any of this until I realize I’m already near the edge of madness.
I don’t know how he does that to me. Surprises me with the pleasure. Takes my breath away in ways I don’t see coming until I am.
Just as I crest, he leaps up the bed, sliding into me as he does.
“Mm, fuck!”
“Yes, baby. Whatever you want,” he murmurs between kisses as he slowly, gently pumps himself into me. He cups the back of my head to angle me for his kiss, and I can’t think anymore.
Not when I’m going to come on his cock, surrounded by, penetrated by, and falling for him. Every thrust brushes against that spot deep inside, his pelvis presses my clit, and I tumble over that brink into something bottomless. Bliss.
He doesn’t slow down when he knows I’m coming. He takes his time being present, attending to each point of contact with his full attention. A kiss on my temple when my head digs into the pillow. A lick up my throat as I groan for more. It feels like being looked at. Like being known all the way through, all the way to the complicated parts, and being stayed with anyway.
Afterward I lie against his chest and listen to his heartbeat. I’m not falling asleep. I’m thinking about Opal’s project.
She’s been right about this longer than I have. She looked at what we were building and named it before I was ready to. That’s Opal—she sees the thing clearly and says it plainly and doesn’t understand why it would be complicated.
I don’t have words yet for what I want to say. I know what I want it to be. I think he’s told me the same thing tonight in the only language he’s fully comfortable speaking.
TWENTY-TWO
DARIO
Marco’s office.10.
The summons arrives as a text from one of his assistants—three words, a time and a location, nothing else. No reason given. This is not unusual.
What is unusual is the time. Important business happens in the afternoon, when Marco has had time to settle into the day and arrange his thoughts. Morning meetings are for logistics. Not social visits. And given that he has time to send this first thing in the morning, it’s not a patient either.
I have, on special occasions, seen him start his day with executions.
It’s rare. Executions are good for a few things, the most important of which is keeping the living in line. He prefers to make them public as a show of strength, so he invites his capos to witness, knowing the gruesome details will be told to those who need to hear them.
He never calls his capos in for the morning. That’s when they’re either their most productive or still unconscious from the night’swork. It would cut into his wallet to call them in so early, and that’s against his rules.
