My mind is running fast, unable to slow down, turning over Fuscone, Clemenza, Vicario, Connie, Frank and Celia, the Family…Finch. Finch, who has been unnaturally quiet since the baby was born.
Since Connie died.
The baby was taken away to be checked over. But Connie’s brother wouldn’t move from Connie’s side. Didn’t even react after Celia came out from the checks on the baby and told him if he wanted to see his brand-new niece, he could.
Hudson just shook his head and took Connie’s hand. Celia stayed there with him while the rest of us filed out. Two hours later, it was over.
Celia waited with him the whole time, and they came out of that room weeping and clutching each other, a bond forged in that space between life and death. But by then Cee’s mind had turned to the kid, so Frank took Hudson back to their place.
It was Finch who had to deal with everything else. He called the funeral home, called Connie’s parents to break the news, got the full story from the doctors… I told him someone else could do it all, but he just gave me a raised eyebrow.
“Who better than me?” he’d said. “None of you know how to deal with people like I do, and besides, I’m so deep in death right now, I might as well keep wading through. Gotta find the shore sometime.”
It was a telling and dramatic exit line, worthy of his oldest sister. Maybe they both got the drama gene from their mother. Finch whisked away to talk to a nurse, but what he said stuck with me. How could it not?
“You understand that, right?” I say to him as he lies in my arms.
“What?”
“That none of this is your fault. Not your dad, not Connie, not what happened in Chicago.”
He says nothing in reply. Not even his heart changes speed. It’s like he hasn’t even heard me—or if he did, it’s so meaningless it doesn’t even register.
“Angel—”
“You call me that, but I’m no angel.” He shifts, his thigh pressing between mine, and stretches up to brush his lips against mine. “Come on. There’s one thing that’ll make this day better.”
In the back of my mind, I worry about his recent attitude to sex. He’s not good with feelinguncomfortable, this angel of mine, and for a long time he did whatever he could to avoid it: drugs, drink, anonymous sex. It’s different between us, or I like to think it is, and I don’t mind indulging his hedonism daily. Two or three times, come to that.
But is it a normal and healthy reaction to all the dying, this insistent drive to prove his vitality? Or is it something darker, more dangerous, more addictive for him?
It’s something to think about later. Not now, not when he’s moving against me, his cock filling out where it rubs against mine. He pins my shoulders down, a palm on each, and slides on top, legs around my hips and hands pressing me into the bed. “I want you,” he says, green-gold eyes darker than usual.
It’s the light, maybe.
“I want you, too,” I tell him, sliding my hands over his thighs and cupping his ass. God, his ass. I’ve talked about having a bronze cast made, and Finch laughed. I wasn’t joking, though.
“I love you.”
There’s something about the way he says it that makes me pull my gaze away from his body, to look him in the eye. “I love you, too.”
“Show me.” He moves forward, onto his knees, his pink-tipped dick already hard and eager, heading towards my mouth. I don’t mind him taking charge. Maybe it helps him feel more in control of life in general. Besides, I love to taste him. The first shock of his pre-cum hitting my tongue only makes me hungrier for him, and I grab that ass of his and pull him in deep.
My nose hits his bush and I breathe in, scenting him. If I had to, I would give up everything—the house, the money, the power—just for this. He pulls back out slowly, and I suck hard on every inch of him, lashing him with my tongue, squeezing at his asscheeks.
“That’s it, baby,” he murmurs from above. “Fuck, I love the things you do with your mouth.”
I tease him like that, sucking him back in and out, gripping his hips to keep him still when he wants to move—until he begs, and I let him back into my warm mouth. His cock keeps up a constant drizzle, and all I can smell and taste is him, Finch, my lover, my husband, his flesh hot and satiny against my tongue—
He comes with a gasp and a groan, not so loud as usual, as subdued an orgasm as I’ve ever heard from him, but the way he shudders through it and rests his head against his arm on the wall tells me it’s taken a lot out of him.
He reaches around behind him, feeling blindly for my dick as his own slips out of my lips, but I take his hand in my own instead and help him off me.
“Don’t you wanna…” he mutters.
“Ialwayswant to,” I say truthfully. “I would spend whole days and nights in bed with you, if I didn’t have a job to do. But when I retire, that’s what we’ll do.”
“When we’re old and paunchy and can’t get it up?” he asks morosely, but he snuggles back into my arms sleepily.
