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Chapter One Hundred Eleven

LUNA

A man enters. The door closes, followed by the snap of a lock. I can’t turn all the way. It goes dark before he comes into my sightline.

“Hey, hi. Sir? I need to not be here. Okay? Sorry but maybe another time?”

“Shh,” he says with just a breath. He unbuckles his belt.

I can barely breathe through the sobs. Snot runs down my cheek.

“I’ll make sure you get your money back.” I promise what I cannot deliver. Maybe he’ll consider it and I’ll get two more minutes to unstrap myself.

The man unzips his trousers.

“I need to bail?—”

“Hush, my love.” This time he uses his voice. It’s Carmine.

“Oh, God,” I whisper, finally able to breathe. My tears turn hot with relief. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. There’s a glamour over the halls.” Gently, he runs his hand up my thigh with a touch as soft as his voice.

I have never felt so grateful for anyone in my life, just for trying to comfort me. I’m still stupid. I should have noticed. I should have had my feelers out, but all I could think about was proving myself to him.

“It is. I’m stupid.”

He puts his fingertips to my lips and curves himself over me to whisper in my ear, “You’re not stupid.” He kisses my cheek, then releases my neck so I can face him. “You will not call yourself stupid again, ever. Do you understand?”

He’s stating facts as if he’s the law, but I’m not in thrall. I am not compelled to obey.

But when he demands I treat myself like a capable woman, the ropes that have always held me down break. A funhouse mirror shatters. There is light in the dark.

What have I been doing my whole life?

“Oh my God,” I whisper into his cheek. “I’m free. Really free.”

I’m no genius, but I’m not stupid. Believing I was stupid was both a hedge against making mistakes and an excuse for making them. I don’t have to think I’m unworthy just in case I need an excuse. That’s an abdication of my personal power.

He sighs onto my mouth. I don’t have to explain the train of thought that connected my mantra of stupidity to my failures. He doesn’t need me to explain the non-sequitur. He gets it. He gets me.

“ Bene .” He lays his hand on the buckle over my wrist and squeezes both sides to unlatch it. He can’t. Jaw tight, he pinches it and finally snaps it open.

“ Grazie .” I put my arm around him. When he’s close, I feel the hard lump of a gun holster under his arm.

“You are absolutely irresistible.” When he stands to undo my ankle, he pushes his hips between my legs, and I push back, shifting to run his erection against me.

“I’m going to have no choice but to fuck you.” He uses both hands to release the other ankle. I wrap my legs around his waist and pull him closer.

“Do we have time?”

“I’m afraid we do.” He tugs at the scarf.

“Don’t take it off,” I whisper. “It hides me.”

He draws his hand across the fabric and feels the lumps of garlic. “That’s why I couldn’t scent you, smart woman.”

“It was Sam.”

“That changes nothing.” He reaches between my legs with cold fingers, and I squeak. He pulls them away.

“It’s okay. Don’t stop.”

“This is warmer.” He bends between my legs and runs his tongue along my seam, leaving a trail of venom that shakes every nerve it touches.

I grab the back of his head, take a fist of hair, and jerk against him. When I come, I bite back a shout, tugging against the last wrist strap restraining me.

When he stands, the slick covering the bottom of his face glows in the red light. When he leans down to kiss me, I taste myself and the sweet venom of pleasure.

“I have never wanted anyone this badly.” He unstraps my last limb. “Am I invited into your body?”

We both know he doesn’t need it. Once invited is always invited. Nothing would keep him out if he wanted to circumvent my consent.

“Yes. Yes, please.”

“I don’t know whether to fuck you or suck you first.”

He doesn’t wait to decide. He just enters me, and I’m wet enough to painlessly take him to the base in one thrust.

“Can you go around the scarf?”

“I can take from you the old way.” He pulls aside the neck of the sweater and kisses between my breasts. “It’s intense.”

“Do it.”

“Say it again. Please.” His voice shakes as if he’s on the edge of breaking. “Before I start and you regret it. Say yes.”

“Yes. Make it intense.” I arch into him. “The old way.”

“Stay still. I have to do it without putting you in thrall.” He takes the chain to my cimaruta in his teeth and moves it out of the way.

“It won’t change anything. I will always be in thrall to you.”

He puts his mouth on my chest. I’m about to ask him how he’s bending like that. There’s no way he can fuck me and get his teeth into the left of my sternum, but then he breaks the skin, and my curiosity is washed away by a sudden pain, then a flash flood of… not pleasure exactly, but awareness.

I discover what he meant by old.

My heartbeat throbs in my ears. It’s out of sync, with a rhythm like a drummer in a marching band. One big beat and three smaller, pumping with a dual purpose: keep me alive and fill his mouth. He’s drawing it through the muscle and skin, pulling it away on that third beat.

This is not the same.

It is not pleasure, or satisfaction, or even physical.

My name is forgotten. My existence is not personal. I am no bigger than a dot, and I am as big as the universe.

This way is not just old. It is ancient. Primordial. It is the place where consciousness is so full that it can no longer exist in its old form. It explodes into billions of concrete particles with mass, density, color, direction, thought, opinion, emotion, desire.

And then, I’m me again, tears muddying the clarity of a dark room, with my love licking the wound he’s opened.

“Fuck.” My voice cracks on blubbering spit.

He kisses my sloppy lips. I blink. The lower half of his face is covered in blood.

“I told you it was intense.” When he smiles, his teeth are red.

Why this is funny, I don’t know. But it makes me laugh from a place deeper than humor.

I take his bloody chin in my hand to thank him for whatever that was, but he turns, hearing what I cannot.

“We have to go.”