The thought lands with a thud. The contract. The expiration date. Clause twelve: either party may terminate with thirty days' notice. This has a shelf life. Everything between us has a timer attached to it that neither of us acknowledges because acknowledging it would mean admitting that we're building a life on paper that could dissolve with a signature.
I push through the penthouse door and set my bag on the counter. Massimo won't be back for hours. Another meeting. Another closed door. Another phone call he doesn't explain.
I pour a glass of wine, curl up on the sofa, and let myself feel what I'm feeling without trying to name it or contain it or build a wall around it. The penthouse is quiet. The late afternoon light pours through the windows in gold sheets that warm the hardwood and turn the throw blanket into a pool of amber. His cologne lingers in the air from this morning. The bathroomplants catch the light on the windowsill where he moved them last week to get better sun.
I pull the blanket over my legs, breathing in his scent that clings to the fabric. My body still hums from our last encounter, warm and loose, and a quiet happiness settles into my chest.
I wish I could keep himis my last thought as my eyes drift closed.
His tongue drags through me in one long, slow stroke and my hips lift off the mattress before my eyes open. Warm hands grip my inner thighs, spreading me wider, the calluses on his palms rough against my skin. His mouth seals over my clit with a pressure that pulls a sound from my throat I don't recognize, low and broken and echoing off the dark bedroom walls.
My fingers twist the sheets, the cotton damp beneath my palms. My thighs tremble against the scrape of his beard, each pass of rough skin against soft leaving a trail of heat that lingers and builds. He circles my clit with his tongue in movements so slow they border on cruel, the wet warmth of his mouth a contrast to the cool air drifting across my bare stomach from the cracked window.
His fingers move to my folds, parting me, opening me for his mouth. His tongue dips lower, lapping at the wetness spilling from me, drawing it into his mouth with a groan that vibrates against my most sensitive skin. He grips my thighs harder, holding me open and still, and the scent of him fills my lungs, cologne and sleep-warm skin and the faint salt of sweat.
"Massimo." My hands find his hair, thick and soft between my fingers, and grip. My voice comes out wrecked and breathless. "Please."
“Do you know how beautiful you are?” he whispers, his voice low and rough. He lowers his head and nips at my tender folds, heating my blood with need for more.
His palm presses flat against my stomach, the heat of it spreading across my skin, pinning my hips to the mattress. Every rough callus drags a thin, shaking breath out of me. His touch roams over the swell of my breasts, my nipples.
He takes them between his fingers and pinches the hard tips, tugging on them. He lifts his head just enough to look at me from between my thighs, his lips swollen and wet, his jaw glistening, his dark eyes burning.
“More. Please don’t stop,” I hear myself beg.
"I'm not done with you yet,tesoro." His voice is raw and low and his breath hits my slick skin with every word. His mouth drops back to me, his tongue spearing into me while his thumb finds my clit and presses firm circles that have my hands flying to the headboard, gripping the wood until my knuckles ache.
He laps and sucks and licks until my thighs shake against his shoulders and every muscle in my body pulls taut. The orgasm builds from somewhere so deep I feel it in my spine, winding tighter with each stroke of his tongue, each press of his thumb, each hot exhale against my soaked flesh.
“I need to…oh, Massimo. I need you to make me come. I can’t take it anymore.”
“I want everything you have to give me, Sloane. Every last drop.”
Fingers thrust in deep and hard, my body shatters and I scream myself awake as my climax slams into me. I gasp, roll my hips, ride the fingers inside me, clenching tight.
Air rushes back into my lungs and my eyes fly open. With my chest heaving, I realize…not a dream.
The bedroom is dark except for the pale city light filtering through the windows, casting silver across the foot of the bed where his broad shoulders move between my thighs.
He moved me from the sofa while I slept. I'm in one of his t-shirts, nothing else, and his mouth is sealed over my clit, his tongue dragging slow and deliberate, his beard scraping against my inner thighs with each movement.
Cool air from the ventilation caresses over my heated skin and everywhere his mouth isn't. The contrast between cold air and hot tongue sends a shiver through my body that has nothing to do with temperature. Another orgasm builds, already cresting before my brain fully turns on.
My back arches off the mattress before I can form a thought. His tongue works me in slow, deliberate circles, his lips sealed over my clit, his hands gripping my inner thighs and holding me open.
I come with a gasp that shreds the quiet bedroom. My thighs clamp around his head, my hands flying to his hair, my body convulsing against his mouth in waves so intense my vision goes white and my heels dig into the mattress and lift my hips off the bed. He holds me through it, his tongue never stopping, his grip firm on my thighs, riding the orgasm with me until I collapse back against the sheets, trembling and breathless.
My body's first response is pleasure. Not panic. Not the locking muscles and cold skin and the desperate scramble to get away. My body feels his hands in the dark and opens instead of closing. Trusts instead of fighting. The realization hits me harder thanthe orgasm and I press the back of my hand against my mouth because I might cry.
His face appears above mine, his lips wet, his eyes dark with want, and he braces himself on one arm beside my head.
"Good morning." His voice is rough. Low. The corners of his mouth pull into a smile that is equal parts smug and tender.
"It's nighttime."
"Then good evening." He lowers his mouth to mine and I taste myself on his lips and I pull him down against me, my legs wrapping around his waist, my hands dragging his shirt over his head because I need his skin against mine. I need him everywhere.
I roll him onto his back. He goes willingly, his hands finding my hips as I straddle him and rise onto my knees. I pull his t-shirt over my head and toss it to the floor and his eyes track every movement, every inch of skin exposed, the way they always do, with an attention so focused it makes me feel visible in a way I spent eleven years avoiding.