He purrs in my ear and brushes his teeth along my neck. “I love the way you feel. I love the way you moan. I love your back and your ass and the way you laugh and the way you fucking come. I need you, Grace, I need all of you.” He takes me harder, faster, but before I can reach another height and break into a million little orgasm-ridden pieces, he pulls back and drags me into the back of the apartment.
I’m dripping wet when he shoves me onto the queen bed in an otherwise empty bedroom. He drops to his knees and his tongue licks and sucks my pussy, lapping me up, driving me up to the edge of absolute madness before he climbs onto the bed and takes me again. He spreads my legs wide and fucks me, plunging deeper and deeper, and we’re moving together, writhing, grinding, moaning, my flesh, his flesh, my pussy his to do with as he pleases, and he fucks me until I’m grabbing the headboard, my fingers digging into the wood.
“I want to feel you come for me, Grace,” he says. “I want to see your face.” He kisses me and bites a nipple. “I want to taste it when you’re done, my little thief. God, you grip me and won’t let me go and it’s heaven.”
“Then keep fucking me,” I pant, moaning, staring into his eyes. “Keep fucking me, Calvino, and don’t you ever stop, don’t you ever stop again.”
He does as I ask, fucks me deep and rough and I come in a blinding flash, my entire body going taut, and as I finish, he pulls out and licks me just like he promised, lapping me up, rolling his tongue around my folds.
Instead of fucking me again, I push him back and take his cock into my mouth. I lick myself from his thick shaft and suck his tip, suck him faster and faster, wanting him so badly it almost hurts, like this is the only thing that can keep the fear and pain at bay. If I can please him, if I can make him come, if I can do something right for once in my life then maybe I can solve all the mistakes that led me to this point.
He grips my hair and fills my mouth and I swallow him, every inch of him as he comes on my tongue.
We collapse onto the bed, sticky wet with sweat. He holds me tight and I say nothing. I try not to think about Rella, and Susi, and Charlie, and those two dead guards, and everyone else, but it’s impossible. Too many ugly things flit through my mind, and it was only Calvino’s body that kept it all at bay for so long.
He doesn’t say anything when I start to cry. He only holds me tighter and strokes my hair for a while, and as I slowly calm down, he whispers comforting things into my ear.
“Do you really think we can get through this?” I ask and I’m not sure I want him to answer.
He nods and stares into my eyes. “I know we can.”
“But Vince. He’s going to find you. He knows you killed those men.”
“I’ll handle him.”
“What about Rella?”
He hesitates and shakes his head. “She’ll be okay. He wouldn’t hurt her.”
“Are you sure?”
He doesn’t look sure. Instead, he touches my cheek and kisses me gently. “I won’t let him.”
I nod and curl up tighter against him. “Vince said something when I was in that basement. Something confusing.”
“What was it?”
“He said Louie didn’t kill Riley. He talked about Riley like he knew her, and said something about hiring her for a job, and how Louie was just a cover?” I shake my head and everything’s a confused jumble in my mind. “I don’t really get it.”
“Hired her for a job,” he says quietly, and I can tell he’s skeptical.
“I swear, Calvino, he was acting like he knew Riley and like the whole Louie thing wasn’t real. What the hell could that mean?”
“A lot of things. Vincent uses people for the family all the time, and maybe Riley got wrapped up in one of his schemes. Maybe the Louie thing really was misdirection, but I have to wonder why the hell he’d do that, like what’s the point of giving her a fake boyfriend?”
He sounds troubled and it does nothing to ease the worry in my guts, but at least I have him now. At least I have his arms around my body and the smell of his musk in my nose and the sight of his tattooed skin in front of my eyes.
I can hold on to that for a while.
My phone rings in the other room. I decide to ignore it and hold on to Calvino, because I feel like if I let go right now then I’ll drown in all this misery and uncertainty. But whoever’s calling keeps ringing over and over until Calvino finally gets up, fetches the phone, and tosses it to me.