“That one’s for buying this behind my back.” His voice had gone to silk, the scold polished smooth, every word delivered like a man reading me a gentle invoice. “Standing in some shop on my time, with my lace warm on you, picking out the thing you knew would undo me.”
And down again, and I was grinding the moan out of it now, my hips rolling against nothing, the whole undignified offered length of me lit up like a thing plugged into the wall.
“And that one.” His hand smoothed the heat it had made, slow, a circle. “That one’s for the look on your face when you showed me.Maybe I did.” He leaned down close, his mouth at my ear, and the laugh was in it now, the whole thing the joke we were both helplessly, ridiculously turned on by. “You little menace. You did all this just to get put over this counter, didn’t you. You could’ve just asked.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Daddy,” I said.
“Mm,” he said. And then he stopped, and I felt him notice.
I felt him notice slow, the way he noticed everything, and I felt his free hand drift down and find what I’d built, the convenientnothing of the black lace, the bare of me already open to him with not one stitch needing to move.
“Now would you look at this,” he murmured, and there was wonder in it, dark and warm. His fingers traced the edge of the lace where it left me bare, where I’d left me bare, on purpose, for him. “You bought a thing that means I don’t have to take anything off. You walked around all day in this. You schemed this.” His fingers dragged through the slick of me, slow, and I keened into the marble. “So this is what you planned, you clever, filthy girl. You wanted me to find out exactly what you’d done and then have you right here, no waiting, nothing in the way.”
“Tonio—”
“You made it so easy.” Two fingers slid into me and I cried out and pushed back onto them, shameless. “You made it so I could just—” He pressed the heel of his palm against me, exactly where I needed it, and held it there, not moving, and I ground against it, helpless, the want gone past sense. “Look at you. Grinding on my hand over your own counter. Where’s the boss now. Where’sI’ve got it, I do it alone.”
“Gone,” I gasped, because it was true, because he’d spanked it and stroked it clean out of me again, the way only he could. “Please—Tonio—please—”
“There it is.” His fingers slid out and I made a broken sound at the empty of it, and then I heard the zip, heard him free himself, felt the broad heat of him drag through the wet of me, slow, claiming. “There’s my girl. You don’t have to ask twice.”
He took me over the marble.
He pushed in deep and fast and I cried out and he gripped my hips and pulled me back onto him and there was nothing slow about it now, nothing held — it was fast and filthy and bright, the lace I’d bought myself the only thing on either of us, his hips driving against the bare he’d found and claimed, the cold marble under my palms and the gold light on us and the radio off so theonly sound was the two of us and my own voice gone wild in a way it never goes.
“You wanted this,” he said, rough, against my shoulder, driving into me. “You schemed for this. So have it. Take it. It’s yours, I’m yours, take all of it—”
His hand came around and found my clit, firm, and held it, and let me ride it on every stroke, let me chase it, the same as he had over his lap, and I climbed fast, too fast, the day and the prosecco and the safety and the want all rolling up into one unbearable thing.
“That’s it,” he rasped. “Come for me. No waiting tonight. Have it.Good girl—”
I came apart over my own counter with his name in my mouth, the whole length of me convulsing, locking around him, and I felt him lose it right after, felt him drive in deep and shudder and pour into me with a groan torn up out of his chest, his forehead dropping between my shoulder blades, both of us wrecked, both of us undone, the lace soaked and forgotten and the marble cold under my cheek where I’d dropped against it.
After, I was boneless. Giggling, even—actually giggling, a thing I’d have sworn a month ago I had no capacity for, the sound coming up out of me bright and helpless while he peeled us off the counter and gathered me up and folded down to the floor with his back against the bench and me in his lap, the black lace askew, the both of us a disgrace in a closed bakery.
Across the doorway Olimpo lifted his great head, regarded the entire spectacle of us with profound judgment, and dropped it again with a grumble that was a whole essay.
“He’s appalled,” I said, into Tonio’s chest.
“He’s seen worse,” Tonio said, and his hand came up into my hair, slow, no hurry, through the newly soft of it, the salon shine of it, stroking. “You got your hair done.”
“Donatella made me.”
“It’s beautiful.” He kissed the top of it. “You’re beautiful. You’re trouble and you’re beautiful and you’re mine, and tomorrow I’m picking again, and this time you’ll wear it, and we’ll see how long that lasts.”
I laughed against him and let him hold me and I felt, lying there boneless on the floor of my father’s bakery with a man whose hands had done things that didn’t wash off, stupidly, enormously, dangerously safe. The door was locked. He had the curb. He had the counter. He had me. Nothing could get to me through the wall of him.
Chapter 15
Tonio
Fiveinthemorning,and the bakery was like a war zone.
I’d seen Filoxenia at every hour there was. The dead three-o’clock dark, just her and the ovens and the ghost. The lunch crush. The slow afternoon when she worked herself gray to spite me. I’d never seen it like this. Every surface had a job.
The marble ran ranks of cannoli shells like soldiers on parade. The proofing rack held tsoureki braids glossy under egg wash, gold catching the under-counter light. The syrup things wept slow into their pans, and the whole place smelled of orange-blossom and toasted sesame and butter going dark, the smell that hits you at the door like a wall after the cold of the street.
But this time she wasn’t alone in it.
