My nipple tightens under my fingertips, peaking against the silk as my lips part. I can remember all of it. Every moment. And now, after spending a week with him so close, it’s impossible to keep the dam from breaking and all the memories rushing in.
Sunwarmed grass against my back. The smell of summer in the air and masculine sweat on smooth skin. The faintest hint of stubble on his chin. His lips touching mine for the first time, gently, and then harder. My gasp and his groan. The touch of his tongue. Desire, hot and sharp and fierce.
How hard he felt against me. How much I wanted everything with him, from the very beginning.
My hand slides down my stomach, fingers slipping under the edge of my silk lounge pants. I trace the edge of the lace panties I have on underneath. What was I thinking, wearing panties like this out on a business dinner? As if he was going to see them? I knew he wouldn’t. Did I want to feel as if I had a secret he’d want? Did I want to lie here like this later, imagining the look onhis face if he’d slid his hand up my thigh and discovered what was beneath my dress?
His fingers under my skirt. Tracing the edge of my panties. His breath coming hard. His voice, panting that we shouldn’t be doing this. My hips canting forward, my mouth searching out his, his fingers parting me for the first time, teaching me how much pleasure could be found at the very beginning of discovery. Tracing upwards until he found the spot that made me come apart, night after night, dreaming of him.
My breath in his mouth. Panting my orgasm against his lips. His orgasm a moment later, without ever touching himself. The embarrassment in his face, the heat in mine. The sound of my voice, whispering that I liked it. That I loved how much he wanted me.
Everything except what I knew I couldn’t say—how much I lovedhim.
My teeth sink into my lower lip as my finger finds my clit. I’m already wet, swollen just from thinking about him. No, not wet…soaked. My finger slips in the wetness, searching for friction that I’m too wet to find. But it still feels good. I’m so sensitive, my skin hot and tight all over, the memories coming fast and thick as I work my finger over my swollen clit, chasing my orgasm.
His smooth length in my hand. Sliding up and down, his ragged groans in my ear. My mouth covering his to keep him quiet. The whicker and stamp of the horses in the barn where we’re hiding. His body shuddering, his climax coming in seconds. The look in his eyes when I raised my hand to my lips to taste it. The way he looked as if he would die on the spot when I said I wanted him in my mouth.
We never did that. God I regretted it, almost as much as I regretted him not taking my virginity. Never finding out what he felt like in my mouth, hearing his sounds of pleasure as I explored him, licking and tasting. Never finding out what histongue felt like between my thighs, how hard I could come on his mouth. I still want to know what that feels like.
I want to find out with him—and I can’t. It’ll never be him.
My eyes well with tears even as my climax surges, pleasure and pain wrapping together in my body the way it always did with him. The two are inseparable when it comes to Elio—desire and hurt, pleasure and pain, need and denial. I can’t have one without the other, and I never will.
I loved you,I think, as the pleasure ripples through me.I loved you, and you left me.
7
ELIO
The weight of my father’s signet ring on my hand feels foreign as I adjust my collar, looking in the mirror in my new bedroom.
The penthouse that I chose is every bit as luxurious as the pictures that I showed Annie. Standing here, looking out over the view of Boston, the sky clear this morning and the sun bright despite the cold, I start to feel for the first time as if I’ve made it.
As if all of the work, all of the long years of struggle, fitting into a family that wasn’t mine and living in the liminal space between friend and brother, leaving home and coming back again—it was all worth it.
This is mine now. And regardless of the fact that Ronan is the one who handed it over to me, I’ve earned it. Through loyalty, through blood, through hard work.
I’m the don of Boston’s most powerful Italian family now. Decades of De Luca empire-building, under my control. I’m no longer just the ward who grew up in the O’Malley house.
I have my own power. And it’s up to me to decide how I want to use it.
Tightening my tie—despite how I feel about them—I reach for my leather messenger bag, slide on a pair of Italian leather shoes that cost far more than I once could have imagined spending on a single piece of clothing, and head down to collect my car from the valet.
Ronan is poring over a stack of paperwork when I enter his office thirty or so minutes later. My shoulders are tense as I walk in, and I’m looking for Annie from the moment I open the door, but she’s not here today. I don’t know whether the wave of emotion I feel at that is disappointment or relief… or maybe a mixture of both.
I can’t stop seeing the face of the asshole who interrupted us at the bar Friday night. The smug way he looked at Annie, like he had some right to her. I’ve spent the whole weekend wishing I’d smashed his handsome face in, even though that wouldn’t have helped endear me to Annie in the slightest. Especially if, as it seemed, there is something between them.
And why wouldn’t there be?I certainly have no claim to her. I never could have, not really, and whatever there was between us once was relinquished when I left. When I chose the honorable path rather than what we both wanted.
I don’t have any right to begrudge Annie romance, or love, or desire. But the thought of that man—ofanyman—touching her makes me want to commit violence.
“Are you alright, Cattaneo?” Ronan glances up from his paperwork as I walk in and sit down. “You look tense.”
“I’m fine.” I set my bag down. “Just a long weekend with realtors and moving. You know how it is.”
Ronan chuckles. “Actually, I don’t.” He motions to the mansion around us. “I grew up here, and now I live here. My second home is in Ireland, also ancestral. But who knows? Maybe I’ll decide I want a penthouse in the city one of these days. If I do, I’ll be sure to ask you for advice.”
My jaw tightens slightly. I know he didn’t mean anything by it—his tone is affable, the entire thing meant to be a light joke, but it reminds me all the same that while I grew up in this mansion too, it was never mine. None of this has ever been mine. And what is now was given to me.
