He pulls it over his head. His chest is broad and covered in ink, saints and family crests and the Madonna on his left forearm and the words on his inner wrist that I can read now because I know the language. Sitting on my bed shirtless with his hands on his knees and his eyes on me, the size of him is staggering, and the fact that he's waiting for my instruction makes my blood run hot in a way I've never felt before.
I pull my shirt off. No bra. His eyes drop to my chest, and his hands grip his knees so hard the tendons in his forearms stand out against the ink.
"No," I say. "You look. That's all. Until I say otherwise."
I step between his knees and put my hands on his shoulders, dig my fingers into the muscle and feel the density under my palms, the heat of his skin, the tension coiled in every fiber. My hands run down his chest, over the ink, over the hard ridges of his stomach, and his breathing is getting rougher with every inch.
Then, I lean down and bite his ear. My teeth close on the lobe and pull, his body jolts, and a sound comes out of his throat that's low and involuntary and mine. I press my mouth to his ear.
"You've been watching me for weeks. From your window. From your table. Counting my taps, learning my schedule, memorizing my freckle. Now I'm going to watch you, and you're going to sit there and let me."
I drop to my knees between his legs and unbuckle his belt. The knife clatters to the floor when I pull it free, and I don't care. I unbutton his jeans, pull them down his hips while he lifts to let me, his boxers coming down with them. He's hard, thick, and I wrap my hand around him and his head drops back, his hands come off his knees, reaching.
"Hands down."
They go back. His jaw is clenched so tight I think he’s going to pop a tooth, his stomach muscles rigid. His entire body is a wall of tension and restraint, the Bonaccorso Butcher who holds a knife with terrifying control being told to hold still while a woman half his size grips him in her fist.
I take him in my mouth, and his groan fills the apartment, deep and raw and torn out of his chest. His thighs tense under me, his hands leave his knees again reaching for my head, and I pull off and look up at him.
"What did I say?"
He puts his hands back. His chest is heaving, his eyes wrecked, the dead gray gone and replaced by something alive and desperate and completely at my mercy.
"Good, that’s a very good boy." I take him in my mouth again and I don't rush. I find the rhythm, slow and thorough, the same patience he used on me the first time when he learned my body with his mouth. I'm learning his now. I learn what makeshis breath catch, what makes his thighs shake, what makes that sound come out of his chest that I can feel in my ribs.
His hips start to move, involuntary, trying to hold still while his body refuses. I put my hands on his thighs and push them apart and take him deeper, and the sound he makes is my name. Broken in the middle, half-groaned, the syllables collapsing into each other.
I pull off and stand, unbuttoning my jeans and pushing them down with my underwear before I step out of them. I'm naked in front of him and his hands are still on his knees; his cock is wet from my mouth and his face is the face of a man about to come apart, holding on by the thinnest thread he has.
I climb onto him. Straddle his lap with my knees on either side of his hips and reach between us, take him in my hand, position him, and sink down slow. All the way. Until my hips are flush against his and he's so deep inside me I can feel him in my stomach. My hands on his shoulders, my forehead against his, breathing the same air.
"Now. Touch me."
His hands come off his knees and land on my hips, both of them, wide palms spanning my hip bones with his fingers wrapping around to the small of my back. The grip is hard, everything he's been holding back for the last ten minutes concentrated into his hands, and my skin takes it and I want more.
"Harder."
He grips harder. His fingers dig into my flesh, bruises forming in real time, and I roll my hips. His head drops back, throat exposed, and I lean forward and bite it hard. The same spot where my teeth broke his skin in the restaurant. He groans and his hips thrust up, the force of it lifting me off the mattress. I grab his head with both hands and pull his face to mine and kiss him with my teeth and my tongue and the full force of everything I am.
My hips roll and snap and grind, his hands on my ass now, pulling me down onto him with every upstroke. The bed is slamming against the wall, the headboard cracking against the plaster, and my neighbors are going to hear every second of this and I do not give a single fuck.
I'm loud and I'm profane and I say things I've never said during sex because I've never had sex where I was the one in control, where my body was the instrument and the player and the music all at once. I tell him how he feels inside me. I tell him what I want.
Harder. Faster. Right there. Don't stop. Don't you dare fucking stop.
He doesn't stop. His hands are everywhere, my hips, my thighs, my breasts, the back of my neck. He palms the back of my head and pulls my mouth to his and swallows the sounds I'm making and gives them back in groans that vibrate through my teeth.
My finger taps his shoulder. I feel it happen and I don't stop it. The rhythm matches the roll of my hips, one tap per thrust, andit isn't anxiety, it isn't survival, it isn't grounding. It's the feel of us. My body keeping time with itself while it takes what it wants from the man underneath me.
I'm close, so fucking close. The pressure building low in my stomach, between my legs, everywhere his body is touching mine. I put both hands on his face, hold his jaw, and make him look at me.
He’s so Goddamn perfect I want to scream.
"Say my name," I tell him.
"Graziella."
The orgasm starts where he's deepest inside me and radiates outward through my hips and stomach and chest. The sound I make is loud and long and I don't muffle it. I let it fill the apartment and the hallway and the street if it wants to. My body clenches around him wave after wave, my hands gripping his face hard enough to leave marks, my hips still moving, riding the wave all the way to the end and past it.