He holds me and makes promises in my ear. “Not forever.”
In this little room behind locked doors, it seems impossible that anything bad could happen to us. I feel safe here with him. Even knowing this feeling is a reckless luxury, I can’t help but own it.
The images from the greenhouse smash into the barriers I erect to protect this coin of peace. They crack. I cringe, holding back those thoughts. I can’t let them through.
“Dario,” I say breathlessly, picking up my head from his shoulder, “you were right. I feel scrambled. Everything is wrong. I need to feel something is right.”
“How can I make it all right for you?”
“Do what you do.” I pull up my skirt and lower my underpants. “Remind me it isn’t like that with you.” I sit on the counter and spread my knees. “Please. Make me feel it.”
Lifting my knees, I beg for it by showing him the source of my need. The intensity of his gaze is as physical as a touch. With a hand on each knee, he spreads me wider, drawing his hands down, inside my thighs, then he spreads my lips apart.
“You’re wet.”
“Thinking about you. Please take me. Help me block it out.”
I’m convinced he’ll do what I ask, but he pulls over the chair. Is he serious? Does he want to have a conversation? I close my legs and start to get up, but he pulls them apart and pushes me back, then sits.
“Relax.” He runs his lips inside my thigh. “Try to relax. Think about how good it feels when I fuck you.” He spreads my lips again and kisses where I’m wet. “Relax and let me take care of you.”
There are no threats of punishment. No rough penetration. No pain at the margins of pleasure. Just the soft strokes of his tongue and the caress of his lips. His mouth savors the taste of my pleasure.
Without pain, it’s almost overwhelming—and yet, I can’t come.
“Faster, please,” I gasp.
“You’re too beautiful like this.” He sucks me quickly. I buck. “You’re too hot to finish. With your legs open for me, begging for it, my dirty little girl.” He sucks my clit tenderly, and when I’m sure he’s going to let me come, he stops to kiss the perimeters of my pleasure. “My dirty, beautiful wife wants to come.”
“Please.”
“But you’re so pretty when you beg.” Another suck, then a series of tongue flicks that forever halve the distance between me and my orgasm.
“Please, Dario. I’ll give you everything.”
“You already have. You just don’t know it.”
“I do! I do know it!” Is he listening? Or just licking me into madness? “My body is yours. My mind.”
My heart?
“Only think about me. You think about nothing I don’t allow in your head. Do you understand?”
Without waiting for an answer, he takes such a hard suck on my clit that I gasp from the bottom of my lungs.
“Yes!” I cry.
I expect him to revert to form. Hurt me with his teeth. Use his fingers to bruise and grab. I expect roughness and pain, but his portions of pleasure are so indulgent, so controlled, so sadistic that tears fall from my eyes. I can’t beg. I can’t speak. All I can do is weep from the whispers of attention from his mouth as he draws me along, going more slowly as I get closer.
“You want me to make you come?” He’s watching me over the length of my body.
“With you.” I pull his head away. “With you, please.”
In moments, he’s inside me, meeting the last of my needs by filling me with him and connecting our bodies.
“Look at me.” He holds my face to his. “Keep your eyes open and look at me.”
He’s the only thing in my vision. He’s everything. Dario is up, down, every point on the compass. Sobbing with every breath, I lose sense of space.
I am grief, and joy, and desire.
I’ve wept for all of it before and I will again.
“Dario,” I say the only word in my vocabulary, and it’s the only one that matters.
That acceptance is the last thought I have before Dario leads me home, and I’m lost in rapture with him.
When I find myself, the world is a clearer place.
There will be no peace. There will be war, and blood, and uncertainty.
But there will be love.
CHAPTER 16
SARAH
With the morning sun on his white shirt, Dario stands at the foot of the bed, fully dressed while I’m still wrapped in sheets.
“I know you want peace.” He straps on his holster.
“And I know that’s impossible now.”
“Not while they have Dafne.” From below, his face is even more angular when it’s clean-shaven. My eyes see him, but all my mind sees is Dafne in the greenhouse.
“You won’t attack while Dafne’s in there because you care about her.” I get up on my knees. The sheet falls away, exposing my naked body. “After seeing that video—I’m angry. I want to set fire to something too. But there are so many people I care about who’ll be in the way. They didn’t do anything.”
“How do you think I can spare them?” There’s no sarcasm in the question. He’s really asking, so I really answer.
“I don’t know.”
Gently, he leans down, pausing before our lips touch.
“Neither do I.”
He kisses me with careful tenderness and then leaves the house to make war with my past.
Making a ragu means standing over a pot for hours, stirring and thinking with the television on. I watch. Stir. Think. I find myself staring at the center of the red whirlpool, listening to the news. Faraway countries go to war. Someone lies. Everyone hears it. The truth is drowned out by grief.
I decide what I want, then change the channel from reality into fantasy.
“What smells so good?” Dario asks as he enters.
“Dinner.”
“Sunday gravy in the middle of the week.” He grabs the lid on the pot and snaps his hand away.
“It’s hot.” I snap his shoulder with a towel, then use it to lift the lid, releasing a cloud of steam and the smell of Grandma’s sauce. He leans over it. I rip a piece of bread off the loaf, dunk it, and hold it up for him. “It’s for tomorrow. Tonight is Junior’s pesto pie.”
“You sound like an American ordering cheese pizza with pineapple.” He bends over the bread, looking at me, and blows. The way his lips narrow and tighten makes me want to fall into a puddle, but then I’d drop the bread before he bites into it.
“That sounds delicious.”
He scoffs and takes a bite. When he kisses me, his lips are still warm. He looks over my shoulder at the little TV. “The Avengers?”
“This woman?” I point out the copper-haired warrior in the oily black outfit. “She beats up men—big guys with scars and armor—coming right at her. She knocks them out all the time.”
He shuts off the show. “It’s a comic book movie. It’s not real.”
“I know that. I’m not an idiot. But no one around her thinks it’s a big deal. It’s not shocking, so it must be possible.”