No, she contradicted herself.You don’t regret it. You have nothing to regret. You deserve to know this man who you married, full stop.
Antonluca took his time preparing the pasta that Hannah had eaten earlier, though he used a pan on the gas range instead of the microwave. She watched as he plated the pasta when it was ready, and if she hadn’t known who he was and what he could do, she thought that this would have given it away. There was a certain grace to the way he moved and the way he used utensils. It was obvious even in how he flipped a dish towel over one shoulder, while he moved around the kitchen as if it had been built to suit him in every regard—from the distance to the sink to the easy access to the refrigerator.
But she didn’t ask again. She waited, and when he came and took the seat next to her at the counter, she continued to sit there in the quiet that now smelled like garlic and rosemary and was broken only by the sound of his fork against his plate.
For a moment, it was tempting to confuse this for peace.
Maybe it is peace, that same voice inside her argued.How would you know? Every silence in your parents’ house had claws.
He moved the pasta around his plate, then he put his fork down without taking a single bite.
“When I first started cooking,” he said, without looking at her, as if he was addressing the pasta before him, “it was all I could think about. Flavors, textures. I liked to play with all of it, as if I was in a conversation that could never end.”
Hannah considered that. “I suppose that’s what makes it an art.”
“I suppose.” He looked at her then and she caught her breath because there was something that looked like grief in his eyes. The rest of his face was stern. Unyielding. But the storm in that gray gaze of his made her chest so tight she thought she might start sobbing for whatever it was that had hurt him like this. “And when I could no longer hear the conversation, or take part in it, I tried to fake it. But that was worse.”
“What happened?” she asked. As carefully and as quietly as she could.
Because she couldn’t help but think that it was unusual that he was answering her at all. She couldn’t help but worry that he would come to his senses at any moment, then stop.
“If I knew, I would correct it,” was all he said, with a shrug. He returned his attention to the dish before him. “But it is not so terrible. There are other games to play. Other mountains to climb. I’m lucky that I let it sing in me as long as it did. The conversation, or whatever you wish to call it, is no doubt continuing without me.”
She sat there, stricken, and watched as he tucked into his meal if he hadn’t just told her something deeply heartbreaking.
“Antonluca,” she whispered. “Why do you say that so matter-of-factly?”
When it’s so sad that you can’t do the thing you love, she wanted to say, but didn’t dare.
“I started cooking to make money and take care of my family,” he told her in that same matter-of-fact way. He glanced at her, there beside him, she could have sworn that he looked confused. “I succeeded at these things. Beyond my wildest imaginings. I have nothing to complain about now. The art was unexpected, and I did nothing to earn it. So I cannot mourn it, now, can I?”
Perhaps he didn’t mourn it, but Hannah found that she did as she sat there beside him. It was as if she couldn’t help it. It was as if the way he had talked about it had left scars all over her, and she could feel them raised and angry on her skin, puffy and tight and a little bit itchy. And when he finished eating, she watched him clean up after himself with more of that same grace and economy of movement, and that, too, made her heart hurt.
And those scars she knew she really didn’t have ached even more.
So when he turned toward her again, she stood. She held out her hands and when he took them, she smiled at him until that storm in his gaze lightened. Until it turned into something else.
She spun around, still holding one of his hands tight, and led him through this castle of his, all the dark rooms and the stern, old stone and then up the stairs of their tower. She tugged him along with her, but stopped at Dominic’s room so that she could let her heart break into even more pieces as she watched him go and smooth a hand over their child’s head. Then smile at Dominic as he slept, breathing with his whole, small body.
Then she took his hand once more as she led him those last few flights of stairs to their bedroom, and this time, she took charge.
Hannah slid his coat off his broad, muscled shoulders. She pushed him back to sit on the bed, and then she pulled off her own clothes until she was naked there before him. The way his gaze sharpened made her smile.
But when he went to move, she shook her head.
She moved instead, kneeling down before him and running her hands up his muscled thighs until she found his belt. She tilted her head back and looked up at him, holding all of that stormy gray as best she could as she undid his belt, unzipped his trousers, and then reached in to pull out that long, thick length of a cock.
Even touching him made her feel shivery and hot.
Still holding his gaze, Hannah leaned in closer, and licked him, root to tip.
Then she wrapped both of her palms around him and took him deep into her mouth, again and again. Learning him as if he was new to her. Loving him as if he’d let her, if he knew.
And he had never let her do this to completion before, but tonight was going to be different. Hannah would see to it.
His hands moved to her hair, tumbling it down from its clip so that it flowed over her shoulders. He got his hands in it, and knotted it into a kind of strawberry blonde rope that he wrapped around one palm.
She knew it was so that he could look down and see how she took him deep, as if she was trying to swallow him whole.
