I open my mouth to say something witty and instead hear myself ask, “Have you done it…this before?” The question tumbles out and I want to claw it back because in searing hindsight, I don’t want the answer, I want to live in the charged, blissful luxury of not knowing what Vasso has been up to since we parted ways after that harrowing confrontation in my driveway a decade ago.
But, to my surprise—and relief?—he doesn’t make me regret the honesty. He shakes his head once. “No.”
“Never?” I probe, because apparently I’m not done backing away from this subject.
“Some experiences lose their meaning,” he says, almost thoughtful, “if scattered about like confetti.”
I don’t move, even as his thumb glides back and forth over my skin and something unspools under my ribs. I want to ask how many women there were on the ground, then hate myself for wanting it. It’s none of my business. It shouldn’t matter. Deep down it matters anyway, and I shut the door on thatparticular room before I can walk in and flay myself on the furniture.
“I suppose,” I say lightly, “confetti is messy.”
“It gets everywhere,” he agrees, and the look he gives me makes the wordeverywherefeel like an invitation.
I sit up. He is very close now. The jet hums, steady and intimate. Close windows show only the dark and our reflection, ghosted and gorgeous. He prowls onto the bed, plants his free hand near my hip, and I’m wrapped in the heat radiating from his body like a banked fire.
“Say yes to the pleasure, Naomi,” he says. It’s not a rough plea wrapped in rugged command. An intoxicating invitation to walk through the door only he can open.
“God,” I whisper, and there’s a laugh in it, disbelief and hunger and something like defiance. “I shouldn’t but, God…yes.”
The satisfaction that crosses his face steals my breath.
He doesn’t pounce.
He uses the grip on my ankle to part my legs, to make way for himself between my thighs to sit on his knees.
Then Vasso leans and kisses me, slow and deliciously decadent, like he has decided to remember every second, and I meet him with the same vow. It starts soft and deepens, shifting almost imperceptibly into the kind of kiss that makes you forget you had a life before it. His mouth is warm and sure, his breath mint and heat, his hand finding the nape of my neck like it was made for that spot.
I make a small, helpless sound, a small betraying yes into his mouth, and feel him answer with a low rumble that goes straight through me.
He eases me down, elbowed above me, the line of his body a study I intend to ace. I slide my palms beneath his shirt and up, mapping. His skin is hot satin over stone, muscles jumping under my fingers as if they remember me too.
I find the scar on his jaw and trace it. He inhales, a sharp caught breath.
“How did you get this?” I ask, because curiosity is my oldest sin.
“A bar fight in California,” he says, eyes darkening at the memory and at my touch. “I won.”
“Obviously.”
I learn him with my hands the way he learned me in the greenhouse our first time, and yesterday—with a patience that’s secretly hunger in disguise. He shucks his shirt; the undershirt follows. I sit up, wrap around him, breathe him in, mouth to his throat, to that pulse, to the hollow that tastes like salt and something that might be expensive and might just be him.
His hands slide down my spine and sweet heaven, he has the most ruinous hands. Capable, strong, the kind that can fix and break and choose compassion in rare, private places. He uses them now to mold my breasts, to tease and torment diamond-hard nipples. To make my back arch and turn my name into a threadbare swear.
“Fuck, you always feel so good. I’m so fucking greedy for you, baby.”
“Vasso…” My breath hitches when he bites his way down my throat, sending my pulse even wilder. My pussy dampens and plumps, eager for the attention only he can provide.
“Tell me,” he murmurs, and it’s a request I have never had trouble honoring with him.
And I do now. I’m vocal, and he treats every sound like a map legend and follows with exquisite accuracy.
“Yes, more of that,” I cry when he grazes one nipple with his teeth.
“God, that’s so good,” I gasp when he palms my sex over my panties, rubs in firm circles that have me seeing constellations.
And when I greedily, frantically pull him down he comes willingly, like gravity is a decision he’ll make if I ask nicely.
Clothes become obstacles we dispatch with more grace than we have any right to. There’s shocked laughter in it, filthy and delighted but a little wary too because old ghosts still lurch.
