“You aren’t saying it like you mean it.” He lifts me, pressing his shaft inside me, and pulling me down the hard length of his erection. “Let’s try this again.” He shifts himself, burying his cock in the deepest part of me. “Does that feel real?”
My lashes lower, my breath lodged in my throat. “Yes.”
He cups my head again and rests his cheek against mine. “Do you know what I feel? Too much.”
“And yet I want more,” I whisper.
“Now,” he says. “You want more now.”
There is an odd ring of finality to that statement, as if there won’t be more later, but he holds me to him, driving into me, and we are rocking and swaying, and everything else fades away. Wildness takes us again; we can’t kiss each other enough or touch each other enough. Harder and faster, we move, we grind, he drives, and the edge of no return is threatening to steal the here and now. I’m not ready to let go of it, but it’s too late. It’s here, and I cry out, “Kayden!” a moment before my sex clenches onto his cock, and I bury my face in his neck to ride out the sensations.
His arm wraps my waist and he pulls me against him, a low guttural groan coming from his throat, and our bodies shake. Pleasure trembles through me, the world fading, time standing still until I finally return to the present, resting against Kayden, his arm holding on to me.
For a long time we sit like that, huddled together, refusing to accept whatever comes next, until dampness spreads on our legs and reality scrapes away at our escape. Kayden turns me and lays me on my back, leaning over me, staring down at me. “Ella,” he whispers, and I know he feels what I do. We can’t just fuck away the night. Neither of us can take the unknowns between us.
“When you said that right now I want more—”
“Right now we both want more.” His lips and his voice tighten. “Until we don’t.”
“Until we don’t,” I repeat. The reference to both of our withdrawals implies a much bigger problem than I know of.
“Yes,” he confirms, drawing a deep breath to pull out of me and sit up, giving me his profile. “Until we don’t.”
I grab my shirt lying next to me, pressing it between my legs. “As in when we don’t.” Suddenly needing the shelter of being covered, I reach for the soft brown blanket on the back of the couch, and wrap it around myself. “I guess it’s time you tell me everything.”
“I’d have to know everything to tell you, and I still don’t.” He stands and grabs his black jeans, shoving his legs inside them.
“But you knew about the necklace.”
Forgoing his zipper, he sits on the stone coffee table in front of me, resting his hands on his legs. “I knew about the necklace.”
His cell phone rings, and he grimaces. “Holy fuck, I can’t even get an hour.” He stands and retrieves his phone from his pocket, answering the call in Italian. He listens a few beats and then replies, before giving me his back and ending the call, tension radiating off of him.
He finally faces me. “Matteo is making Enzo disappear, disconnecting him from The Underground. That means his mother can’t know he’s dead—and I’m not sure if I’m doing her a favor or a disservice.” He scrubs his jaw. “I need a shower to wash some of the death off of me.” He doesn’t wait for a reply or invite me to follow, he simply turns and walks toward the hallway.
I sit there a moment, not sure if I should go after him, repeating his words in my mind: wash some of the death off of me. And I think it’s more about guilt that he wants to wash away. He blames himself for every death that touches his life, including Enzo’s. My mind flashes back to my father lying in a pool of his blood and again, I wonder what I have wondered over and over in my life: could I have done something different and saved his life? Maybe if I hadn’t hidden in the pantry with my mother when intruders came into our home. Maybe if I had stood and fought by my father’s side. Maybe if I had come out of that closet just three minutes earlier. Guilt sucks. Questioning yourself sucks.
No one needs to deal with that alone. And Kayden’s been alone a long time. I think . . . I think that I have, too.
I stand up, allowing my shirt to drop to the ground, and I hold the blanket around me as I hurry toward the hallway, cutting left toward Kayden’s bedroom, our bedroom, cold stone beneath my bare feet. And I know what I had not admitted until now. Kayden had been right. I didn’t want to go back to the intimate place we share until after we had talked. Now I can’t wait to get there, where he is and probably thinks I will not follow. I reach the giant wooden door, finding it cracked open, and since Kayden does nothing by accident, I’m aware of the invitation it represents.
I enter the room, the fireplace warming the space, crackling with warming flames just beyond the bed I pray I’ll still share with Kayden when this night is over. The bathroom door is open, and I hear the sound of water running. I drop the blanket and stand in the doorway of the white glistening room, an oval tub before me, and directly beside it, the deep, stone-encased shower making it impossible for me to see Kayden inside.
Walking to it, I enter, shocked to find a dripping-wet Kayden now out of the spray and sitting on the floor in the corner, his head resting against the wall, eyes shut. I sense that he knows I’m here, but he doesn’t move, so I close the distance between us and sit down beside him, facing him, my hand on his knee. He lifts his head to look at me, immediately letting me inside the cage holding him captive. “If you could have remembered your father without knowing the brutal way he died, would you have chosen that path?”
“You’re worried about Enzo’s mother.”
“Yes. I’m worried about his mother.”
I consider his question, shutting my eyes as I remember the moment I grabbed my father’s gun and shot and killed one of his attackers. And then the next. I look at Kayden. “I want to know who sent the men who killed my father. I want to know justice was served on his behalf. I need to know justice was served. I won’t let it go.”
“What are you telling me?”
“That if you love someone, you look for them, you fight for them, you have to have answers. But the more you know, the more you want to know.”
“Meaning I need to give her closure.”
“Yes. You do. Does she know about The Underground?”