His mouth is soft and warm. I give him room to breathe, but he pulls me down hard over him, groaning when I put my weight on his face. He’s forcing me to take control.
Free, free, you will be free.
My hips slide over his face, using his mouth for the pleasure running through my veins. I run my hard nub over his tongue, jerking to my rhythm, until I’m overtaken with the darkness of heaven, tightening over him, mouth locked open in a mute cry that calls out in my mind.
Dario, Dario, Dario.
When it’s too much, I pull away with a hah. The sound of it makes me freeze.
I look down at him, face slicked, eyes on fire. He takes me by the back of my neck and draws me into a kiss. I taste myself on his tongue. It’s the flavor of happiness and hope.
I feel his cock where I’m still throbbing, and the need for him floods back. I don’t want to rush any of this, but my body has a mind of its own and pushes against him.
He slides into me, stretching and filling, so deep he jams against my depths. It hurts enough to move him out, but I want it again enough to sit on him with my whole weight. I shift and lift, fucking him while he caresses my breasts, eyes locked together as if the power of our connection can hold me up.
We quicken. He puts his thumb between us and circles my clit, which is ready all over again. I don’t think I can stay quiet. I’m going to scream his name, and when I do, everything will spill out after. For the sake of his freedom, I have to hold it until he comes inside me. His eyes crunch closed. He sucks in a breath, then forces his eyes open to look at me. He’s ready.
I am in control. I feel like a bomb ready to wake the neighborhood, but I can do this.
I can’t. I’m on the edge of a disappearing cliff. It crumbles under my feet. I fall, coming so hard I lose my sense of place and time. I float in dark ecstasy, but I don’t make a sound.
He jerks and pumps, chest muscles tightening as he finishes coming inside me. I drop onto him, and he wraps his arms around me, kissing my shoulder and neck.
“Are you all right?” he whispers.
I am in control. I don’t have to say anything that will hurt him.
“I am,” I say, then pause. Nothing else comes out. No secrets or revelations. Nothing dangerous or destructive. “I’m very, very all right.”
It’s the most honest thing I’ve ever said.
CHAPTER 22
DARIO
Sarah’s been gone for hours. There was a knock on the other side of the door. She kissed me, pressed a finger to her lips, lingering until another, more demanding knock, then she left.
I can’t get that look on her face out of my head. Right then, I knew I’d wasted time fucking her, when I could have taken control and made her talk to me.
She assured me she was all right. She may have believed it, but as the walls close in and an undecipherable amount of time passes, I become less sure that her belief isn’t more like faith.
I can’t see what’s happening on the other side of these walls, but it brought her here in a nightgown. She had an agenda. From a ten-foot-wide cell, I could see that a mile away. But was it her agenda? Or was she carrying water for someone else?
All I know is, I’m carrying water for her. I have to trust her. She needed us to stop pretending we hate each other, for those outside or for the two of us. She needed a physical expression of the truth. So did I.
Covering my eyes with my arm, I lie on the bed. I’ve gotten used to using my elbow to block out the light. It doesn’t even make my shoulder stiff anymore.
My side aches, but it’s healing. I am used to hunger. My body is ever alert, but my heart has fallen into a troubled sleep, dark and still, closed into a cell of its own. It cannot expand, or see light, or beat any harder than a dying man’s.
To survive, I need my heart to stay locked up. But to live, it needs to be free to love her. She brought me a few minutes of light, and now I’m trying to force my feelings back to sleep. They’re too big now, too awake and alive, and the box I’m trying to stuff them into is so small.
Hope is a curse, and Sarah is a sorceress.
Hope is a light I snuffed to keep from giving away my position in a dark place. Sarah breathed life back into it, and now I’m in the dark tunnel and holding a light that won’t protect me from the oncoming train.
Hope is the desire to change what cannot be changed.
Hope is a distraction.
Hope is going to get us killed.
That’s when I let myself accept that she might not come back. What do I do with the hope then? Does light even exist without her?
Someone’s coming down the outside hall. A man. Two feet. No cane. Not Massimo. Too bad. I can talk to him. Maybe negotiate. I don’t know what I’d offer, but if he’d take a limb for Sarah’s freedom, I have two arms. I only need one to cover my eyes.
The footsteps stop on the other side of the glass, but I don’t look at him. Let him knock, whatever that means in here.
“Why do you still look like shit?”
I recognize Sergio Agosti’s sticky smarminess. Great. I prepare myself to talk to this asshole. It takes a few breaths and a heartbeat.
“I want something.” I don’t get off the bed.
“Get in line.”
“I want to talk to Massimo.”
“Sure, anything I should put on the list of demands? Better food? A brush for the shitter?”
“You’re still mad I fucked the girl who left you at the altar.”
“That’s not exactly what happened.”
Taking my time, I breathe, filling my blood with oxygen, then move my arm and open my eyes. I’m going to have to talk to him whether I’m prepared or not. I pull myself into a sitting position.
“So, you are mad.”
“Honestly? Little bit.”
His truth is disarming. Or his lie is unexpected. Either way, disarmed is where he wants me.
“You gonna tell me what you want? Or are you just here to chat because you miss your family, and these fuckers are crazy?”
He sighs like a man explaining the meaning of idiocy to an idiot. “Depends on the context.”
“I don’t know what that means.” Do I want to hear another long explanation? Sure. It’ll give me time to think.
“The Colonia don’t do nothing that some other bunch of fuckers, somewhere else in the world, is also doing.” He counts off on his fingers. “Trafficking. Forced marriage. Dowries. But the other fuckers aren’t in the middle of Manhattan. That’s the context.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“Don’t it? Let me tell you, there’s some version of this shit going on all the time in all five boroughs and everything to the left of it. You just don’t see it. Or you think meh, just the world. And why? Because you benefit by shit not really changing, am I right? You don’t even see how you benefit ‘cos it’s just some, like, foggy notion you can’t claw your way through and why bother? You’re just living in a context like everyone else. It’s cool. Hey, I’m not judging. I’m just saying, my eyes are open. I see it and yeah, sure, I can use it to my benefit just like everyone else, but also, to my advantage, which is a bigger deal. All I gotta do is move my headspace, like, three degrees that way.”