“Look at yourself.” Low. Stripped. “Look at what’s happening to you.”
The woman in the mirror is shaking. Skin flushed from chest to cheeks. Strapless bra askew. Underwear pulled to one side by a calloused grip. Her thighs spreading wider, desperate for more, and she is so close that the next stroke will break her.
Sandalwood and gun oil and underneath, just him. The scent soaked into the skin behind my ear where his breath lands but his mouth doesn’t.
His pace shifts. His grip on my neck tightens.
“Lorenzo.” Broken. Not a name. A plea.
“Come for me.”
My body obeys before my brain catches up. The orgasm hits my core first, a clench so hard my vision whites. Then it floods outward, thighs shaking, stomach clenching, heat rolling up my spine. One breath rips out of me like a sob. My legs give. He catches me. One arm banded across my waist, holding me upright while my pussy pulses around his fingers and my whole body locks and releases and locks again.
In the mirror, his face buried in my neck. Eyes shut. Every muscle in his face locked tight. He’s hard against the small of my back. Straining.
And he doesn’t take a single thing for himself.
He holds me through the aftershocks. Each one smaller than the last. Ragged but controlled. His hold loosening by degrees until it’s less restraint and more support.
Then he picks me up. Lifts me off my feet like I weigh nothing. Carries me to the bed. Sets me down on the mattress with a softness that contradicts every scar on his body.
He disappears into the bathroom. Water runs. He comes back with a warm cloth and crouches beside the bed. He wipes down my thighs. Gentle. Thorough. Not meeting myeyes. Focused on the task like it’s field maintenance, except his breathing has gone uneven and the cloth isn’t steady in his grip.
A throw blanket from the foot of the bed. He wraps it around my shoulders.
Then he crosses the room. Picks up the blue dress from the floor. Folds it once. Places it on the chair.
He straightens. Back to me.
“Lorenzo.”
He stops at the door.
“You made me watch. But you still won’t look at me.”
His head drops. One breath. Two.
The door opens. Closes. Gone.
I sit there. Wrapped in his blanket. The cloth cooling against my skin. My reflection stares back from the vanity across the room. Hair ruined. Glassy. Dark.
I came apart in his mirror while he held me up. Didn’t kiss me. Didn’t take anything for himself. Just gave and gave and then cleaned me up like I was worth caring for.
“I’m fine.” I say it to the empty room. “Very normal night.”
My voice cracks on the last word.
The bruises on my hips are already forming. His fingerprints. I press my thumb against one. Even rough, even gripping hard enough to mark, the pressure had shifted. For one second. Checking for damage. Calibrating.
The enforcer who calibrates his pressure.
Sofia. Tomorrow night. The warehouse.
I pull the blanket tighter. Curl up with sandalwood on my skin and his fingerprints on my hips and the memory of one word in his voice, the only word that mattered.
Tomorrow they find Sofia.
Tonight I lie awake pressing my thumb against his bruises and stop pretending this was just physical.
