I pull the shirt over his shoulders, and he shrugs out of it. He gets up long enough to leave his crisp trousers in a pile on the floor, then lies on me, creating a safe cocoon inside a protected room inside a peaceful world, where his kisses don’t have ulterior motives and his cock is hard for the only woman in the universe.
I want this so badly.
I lay my hands on his smooth cheeks and look into his eyes. There’s enough love in them to fill a church, but there’s something else I can’t read.
“What did you do, Dario?”
“I loved you as well as I could.” His tone implies that it wasn’t enough, or it wasn’t the right way. His tone carries guilt, and regret, and a plea for forgiveness.
“How can I help you?” I don’t sound as genuine as Rosemarie. I want to help, but I’m afraid of what I’ll be supporting.
“Open your legs. Let me inside. Show me how to love you.”
Wrapping my legs around his waist, I give myself to him.
“Did you do it?” I ask as he moves inside me. “Did you give them up?”
He straightens his arms to look me in the eye. “I did it.”
“Why?”
“I’ll spend the rest of my life finding those women, but without you, there’s no life.”
My right hand shoots forward and slaps his face. He seems more surprised than hurt.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Showing you how to love me.”
“I had to. Don’t you see that?”
“Why are you stopping? Harder, Dario. Show me how much you hate yourself for this. Let it go. You love me? What’s under that love? Let your cock find out.”
With a single deep thrust, he stabs me with his dick. I gasp in pain, then he moves against my swollen nub and the warmth overtakes the hurt.
“It’s this. My cock splitting you open.” He jabs hard. “This is love to a selfish, ruthless, empty man.” With every descriptor, he slams into me. There’s no more pain, only a rush to the moment of fulfillment. “Love is when you take it so deep you feel like you’re being fucked by the devil. But you take it, and take it, and…” He stops, closes his eyes.
“No…” I push him deeper, but my thrusts are so weak compared to his.
“Why are you letting me do this?”
“Because you should have let me die.”
“No.” He circles with his hips. “Never.”
“Then you are the devil.”
“Now you know.” All pretense falls off of him. In the evil he admits to, he becomes vulnerable and coarse. He’s a predator with his belly exposed, but no less deadly. “Do you feel safe with me now?” He pushes side to side as if trying to find a way to my heart.
“Yes, but—”
He kisses me.
“No buts. We’re going to fix this together. I can’t do it without you. I never could.” He rolls me onto my side and looks down between my legs, pulling me open with flat hands. “You and me. We can make it right.”
He pulls out and licks me from clit to anus. I cry out. It’s so good, so soft, and yet so violently needy.
“I’m going to fuck every hole you have.” He licks my ass again, wetting it, circling with his insistent tongue, prying it open with two impatient fingers. “You taste so good. Hold your ass open, beautiful, so I can get in.”
I’m too desperate for him to disobey.
“Good girl. Beautiful woman.” He pushes his fingers in all the way to the scars, groaning as if entering me this way gives him as much pleasure as it gives me. He uses his other hand to put my leg over his shoulder. “I can take all of you at once.”
Keeping his fingers lodged in my ass, he slides his cock into me. I am full. Pushed past my limits. When I open my mouth to groan, he puts his fingers inside, grabbing my jaw with the heel of his hand.
Now I’m full with him. He’s present everyplace he can be. I feel his body inside mine so profoundly that the orgasm is shared between us.
“Sergio had a car waiting. I took it,” Dario says, running the sponge from my foot to the top of my thigh and back. The bath is soapy and warm.
“You didn’t kill Timothy, did you?”
“No. He knows taking a Colonia car on your wedding day is my right.”
“More of a habit.”
He smiles. “Oria dressed your arm in the back seat. I was glad I didn’t kill her for risking you like that.”
“Where is she?”
“She got out at a red light. Said without Nico, there’s no point.”
“Will she be okay?”
“Yes.” He shrugs, running the sponge over my belly and breasts. “She took your ring. She says thank you for it.”
“You should have let Palmeri kill me.”
“I take care of what’s mine.”
“And you use it like the devil.”
He’s not amused, concentrating too hard on the way his fingers run over my belly. “You don’t know what you mean to me.”
“But what about those women? Rosemarie and Wanda and… all of them. What do they mean to you?”
My stomach grumbles under his hand. He gets up.
“You need to eat.”
CHAPTER 30
DARIO
The fresh stuff is mostly bad, but I find a box of pasta and a can of tomato sauce. I boil the water while she’s upstairs drying her hair.
Joanne. Wanda.
I name them all.
I have Sarah, which is all I want, but we’re alone.
Rosemarie. Nella.
With Nico gone, I have no eyes inside the Colonia. All I have is the sense that Massimo won’t wait to go down to St. Eustatius. He’ll have to be back for the boat into Red Hook though. And the Agostis won’t sit in Queens and shrug off Sergio’s murder. They’ll come for the Colonia and war until they’re wiped out before coming for the hands that actually did it.
Giselle. And Mary.
It’s just me, Sarah, and everything I promised her.
She knows how my life has been, fighting the Colonia. She knows what she’s in for with me. Why would she want to go through it? Who’d want to start it all from the beginning, with nothing but a fire in the gut?
Oria gone. Dafne gone.
How many more will be lost now? I gave them hope, then took it away when they didn’t need it anymore. I can’t betray them and leave them to fend for themselves against an enemy they couldn’t defeat by themselves. I have to give them back what I took.
I can’t force Sarah into the violence and hardship to come. I can’t even manipulate her into sticking around to love me. She has to come to it without any help from me, and even then, I can’t continue to live with her if she doesn’t have a way out.
The pasta’s almost done when she comes downstairs wearing a green dress that stops right below the knee. Finally out of the grotesquely modest Colonia costume, she’s more beautiful than any woman I’ve ever seen.
I have a path of roundabout excuses and setups to explain the situation. I’ve engineered a soft landing, but now, with her right in front of me, I launch into the bad news before she even asks.