As I unpacked, I surveyed the very...plain room. Off-white and light gray was the extent of the color scheme. It had twin nightstands, a dresser, a desk and chair, and a decent-sized walk-in closet. The attached bathroom wasn’t quite as opulent as the one downstairs, but it still wasn’t anything to sneeze at. Not to mention, it was an Empire State Building’s worth of a step up from my old apartment. I took advantage of the seemingly endless hot water before I went to find out what was happening for dinner.
My long hair hung in damp, loose waves, and I was once again in leggings, topped with a slouchy sweater over a tank top, and bare feet as I went in search of food. An off-key humming caught my attention as I got closer to the kitchen, the sound growing louder when I pushed open the doors, startling Vanni. He looked hot and very domestic in his dark jeans and apron-covered t-shirt as he spun to face me, tension pinching the corners of his eyes and lips. He relaxed when he saw it was just me, but it was too late for the pieces of asparagus he’d been snapping at the sink. In his haste to turn around, they’d gone flying to parts unknown.
“Did you see where they went?” It took me a second to realize that he meant the ends and not that he was looking for someone. I made a cursory sweep of the floor, but I was more interested in Vanni, wondering if he was going to run off again. He must have mistaken my attention and silence as something else than the wait-and-see that it was. Tone filled with disdain, he let me know exactly how he felt about it too. “Guess you were filled in on everything?” Before I could try to figure out what to say, which shouldn’t have been hard considering I’d been in his shoes more than once, he curled his lips into a disgusted sneer. “I don’t need your fucking pity too, Edie! I get enough of that shit from my brother and Santos.”
Apparently done with me, he threw the handful of stalks he still held back into the colander in the sink and started hunting for the pieces he’d lost. I wasn’t sure that they were all that important; I thought it was more about it being something he could control. Not that I was about to bring that up given his already precarious mood. So I started helping, taking one side of the kitchen, as far away as I could get to give him some space, and worked my way in.
“I don’t pity you, Vanni. Feel bad, sure, but I’m positive you felt bad about me, too. Unless you pitied me? I understand if you did. I was kind of pathetic and an easy target. Hell, I probably still am, considering the way the others demanded to know why I was back.” He made a few noncommittal hums, and I refused to look up.
The damn asparagus must have grown legs and walked off from all the luck we had finding it until we both spied one under the edge of the refrigerator. We didn’t bump heads, but the bob and weave could have doubled for slap-stick comedy, well, a bad one maybe. But at least it got a reaction out of Vanni.
“Motherfucker,” he barked out on a laugh. “You get it before we end up knocking each other on the floor, looking like a pair of idiots.” He stood there, hands on his hips as I knelt down to fish the green stem from its hidey-hole, but neither of us were laughing after I glanced back up and realized we were in a very déjà vu sort of situation. Eyes wide, not quite with panic but more a mix of heat and embarrassed dismay. “I-I, uh, shit. I didn’t think...fuck my life. Can you just get up?” he finally spit out with his eyes closed and fists clenched.
The old me would have taken advantage to get the upper hand, and maybe he was having the same thoughts because that’s exactly what I had done the last time I’d been on my knees before him in this kitchen. Yet I couldn’t let it go. I didn’t know if that made me a shitty person, or insensitive, or whatever, but this felt like one of those points in life where if you made the wrong decision, it would haunt you for a very, very long time.
"No." The simple refusal was delivered with a level of calm I definitely wasn't feeling, but it had the desired effect of snapping him out of his flustered state.
"What do you mean, no, Eden? You know I wasn't propositioning you, right?" A muscle in his cheek ticced as he clenched his jaw as tightly as his fists.
"Never said you were. You're the one that got all weird about it instead of cracking a joke and laughing it off. Kinda makes me think that's exactly what you wanted to do." My shrug just seemed to piss him off more, and I worried I'd pushed him too far, but he'd said he didn't want my pity. I wasn't about to start treating him any differently unless he told me to back off.
"We treated you like shit, fucked with you despite knowing what you'd been through. Hell, we pretty much gangbanged your ass and acted like it was just fine. Why would you be interested in any of us at all? You know you don't have to do that for us to take care of you, right?" The genuine concern and guilt in voice and eyes threw me a bit. I knew they all regretted being assholes to me, and the parts they’d played in my life going to shit, however inadvertently it had been, but it was pretty clear they wanted to make up for it all. Vanni had even offered to go behind all of their backs to help me disappear for good if that was what I wanted, so he was the last person I’d have expected to say any of that. Besides, Marco had been a fucking saint compared to the rest of them, yet Vanni still lumped him in with all of them. What the fuck else happened while I was gone? I tried to feel my way around whatever was happening right then without making this twitchy, pissed off version of Vanni spook and run again like he had earlier.
"So you didn't pity me before, or at least not for long, but now you do? And you think I'm whoring myself out for...what, exactly?" I wasn't mad since he wasn't completely wrong, but he wasn’t quite right either.
"It's not pity; it's regret. We should have treated you better, protected you better." He ran a hand through his dark hair, making it stand on end before it fell into a wayward mess that suited him as much as when he styled it. "Fuck, Edie, we should have been better all around. And here I am, standing around, acting like I can think of anything but my guilt, when all I can see in my mind is your lips wrapped around my dick. It's seriously fucking with my head." Of course, I had to break eye contact to check if said dick had the same ideas. I hadn't planned on giving him a blowie, but I wasn't exactly opposed to it.
"You know, I think we've all made enough mistakes and have enough regrets to haunt us. There's no point in dwelling on what we can't change. Personally, I plan to take whatever bit of happiness and pleasure I can get because you never know when life's septic tank is gonna overflow and fuck everything up. It's happened to me more often than I care to admit. I seem doomed to be forever wading through a cesspool with only a bit of dry land here and there to convince me to keep going." Not sure that was the best analogy, but details and getting bogged down in my past wasn't what I was after.
"Is that how you move on? How you can act like none of it fazes you? I thought you were too jaded or something, the way you'd crack a joke or be a smartass, but it's the way you deal with it. Make fun of it, detach yourself, then no one can use it against you." Vanni grew thoughtful at the end of his little revelation/epiphany, enough to not notice he was treading dangerously close to thin ice. I only had so much patience and didn't care to be put on the spot like that. Nor did I want to encourage him to use my questionable coping skills; they weren't exactly healthy.
"Yes, I'm crass and flippant, and people don't fuck with other people when they're abrasive enough to take a chunk out of your hide just by getting too close. This isn't about me though; it's about you. If you want your dick sucked, then say so, or don't if you're too polite to bring it up, but whatever weird shit that was..." I waved a hand at him, at a loss for what to say that wasn't epically nasty. "Isn't necessary. Not with me anyway."
His jaw worked open and closed as he started and stopped a few times before looking me up and down, trying to gauge if I was serious, I imagined, although I suspected it was a search for more than just simple sincerity.
"Fine." He blew out a breath and worked up a fuck-boy-eqsue expression that reminded me more of Marco than himself, but most importantly, a challenging light lit his gaze as he delivered a seriously juvenile pick-up line. "So, while you're down there…"
An involuntarily snicker escaped me as I remembered him and Marco teasing each other that way for months when we were younger. Anytime one managed to catch the other with their head hip-high or lower, it popped out of the other's mouth. Santos had threatened to beat their asses if they tried it on me, and I wondered if Vanni had done it on purpose to remind us both of better times, that we weren't always piles of fucked up rubble.
As if he couldn't hold a straight face, Vanni's lips curled into a smile, and he hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his pants, prepared to pop the button open at a moment's notice.
“I’m serious, Eden. If you’re playing games, now’s the time to back off. We’ll just forget this happened, and you can help me cook dinner.” His tone held a hard edge, punctuating the warning, but I tended to ignore those as a general rule, and this time wasn’t any different.
I let my actions speak for me. Instead of my words, I settled more comfortably on my knees. Shaking my hair back out of my face, I reached out a hand to cup the hardening evidence of his desire straining behind the zipper of his jeans.
Vanni just groaned and held my gaze, then his dipped to my lips as I licked them in anticipation of him releasing his thick length, more than ready for him to slip between them.
And then the button slipped out of its hole and the rasp of his zipper vied for supremacy against the sound of my pulse in my ears. Vanni was going to whip his dick out in the kitchen, knowing anyone could walk in at any time, and prove he could still take exactly what he wanted. Pity didn’t exist here, not between us.
“Can I choke you on my dick, Eden? Will you enjoy it if I do?" he asked, voice husky with the desire he'd given in to, then did a complete about-face as if he needed to double and triple check everything. "Or will it put you back there, when you really had no choice?”
He hesitated with his hand in his boxer briefs, just the tip of his ruddy erection peeking out. I had to consciously lift my attention from it to look up at him and make him understand that right then, I didn’t give a fuck about what had happened in the past.
“You have to know I want you as much as I hope that you want me, and I rather like sucking dick when it's not forced on me, Vanni. I kinda get off on it.” I shrugged, completely unapologetic for voicing my enjoyment on the subject. I’d leave out not quite caring for the humiliation aspect he’d served up in this very kitchen, but I’d kinda asked for it, so I wouldn’t fault him for it. “We never know how long we have. I have every intention of taking whatever pleasure life has to offer with both hands and refusing to let go until I have no other choice.” His brows dipped in confusion at my cryptic words, but I headed him off before he could ask more questions. “Give me the D, Vanni. You’re leaving me hanging here.” I pouted, further drawing his attention from the vague warning that shit might not work out, but also...not a lie. He was sort of leaving me hanging there, and my knees couldn’t take the position all night.
It was the kick he needed to get things moving. His prick sprung out, loud and proud to be free, perfectly wet at the tip as if it remembered me. I nearly giggled at the thought, but that probably would have been about the worst thing I could have done at that moment, so I swallowed my remark, and then Vanni’s dick when he pushed his jeans and underwear halfway down his thighs a few seconds later. From the first few teasing licks around the head of his head, through my eyes watering when I let him slide down my throat, I kept my eyes on his, refusing to let him shy away from me.
"Fuck, Edie, I'm not going to last long with you doing that," he murmured as he held himself rigidly in check. But I didn't want him holding back; he'd said it before, and proved it—he wasn't a gentleman.