“You’re leaving tomorrow,” I say.
“Iam leaving always,” she says. “Even when I stay.”
Truth lives in her voice like a bruise. I lift her wrist and kiss the vein.
The smallest sound leaves her.
I want a hundred more.
I want them with the lights on.
And in the dark.
We go upstairs.
Chapter Four
Luigi
The curtains breathe. The room has the kind of quiet money that lets the sea in first. Salt and sheets that never lose their cool. I shut the door with my heel, and she is already in my hands, all trembling pulse and the surrender I have been waiting on since the pool.
The zipper runs smooth. The red dress slips down her body without a fight.
No lingerie.
The choice lands in my chest and tightens everything I plan to do to her, because it’s not innocence, not carelessness. It’s intention, sharp as a blade turned flat against skin.
I turn her to the balcony, so the glass holds us both. The night watches.
I take the sash because I like simple tools that do their job. I don’t rush the knot. Two wraps. A little room for blood. I test the give and watch her shoulders settle. Calm sits better on her than diamonds.
“My pace,” I tell her. “One word stops me.”
“Amore,” she says, and her voice is steady enough to make a man believe in rules.
My hand finds her throat, the place that tells me truth. She likes it rough. I keep it warm and light so I won’t bruise her further. She leans into the hold like she knows the difference between control and harm, like she has lived under hands that didn’t care and has decided she will not again.
I kiss the edge of her jaw and feel her exhale against my mouth. The glass almost has us like a mirror, and she is devastating in any light. Her wrists lift as the sash takes her weight, her back arching slightly, offering without surrendering herself entirely, and the trust in that is a kind of violence.
Beautiful.
Keeping my eyes on her, I unfasten my belt. I open my fly. She doesn’t look at my cock straight on, just through the reflection. Her smirk is noticeable, and I'm pleased she approves. Her breasts heaving in the reflection, I find myself admiring her too.
I take my time because patience is a wire I have pulled tight all day. Because watching her watch me is its own kind of control.
I bring out a condom because I don’t gamble with consequences. Foil packet. Tear. Roll. My eyes on hers through the glass the whole time, reading her breathing, the microshifts, the tension she holds at her shoulders like she’s used to carrying worse.
Behind her, I set her hips to the glass and push in slow.
Her breath catches, and fog blooms where her lips touch the reflection. The silk holds when she tests it.
“Good girl,” I say as she gives me the kind of obedience that is choice, not habit.
I keep my palm at her throat so she can ride the pressure she wants. She asks for more. I give it, adjusting with intention, deeper, then deeper again, the rhythm becoming something that earns the sounds I’ve been collecting from her since the pool. She takes direction beautifully. She also gives it without words, shifting her hips, lifting her chin, telling me what she wants in a language most women can’t afford to speak.
I like that most.
“Say please,” I tell her, because I want the word from her mouth.
