Page 53 of Deadly Confessions
"Adesso. Tutto. Non farmi aspettare."(Now. Everything. Don't make me wait.)
He reaches for the nightstand. A drawer. A condom. He rolls it on with one hand, fast, practiced. I don't think about the practice. I don't think about who came before me. Nobody came before me. Not tonight. Tonight I am the first woman who has ever been in this bed, because that is what it feels like, and what it feels like is all that matters.
He pushes inside me.
My back arches. My mouth opens. No sound. The sensation is too complete for sound. He fills me in a way that erases the boundaries between my body and his, that collapses the distance I've maintained for twenty-four years between myself and every other human being on the planet. He is inside me. He is close. He is closer than anyone has ever been.
He holds still. Buried. His forehead against mine. Both of us breathing. The adjustment. The registration of what just changed, what just crossed, the line that cannot be uncrossed.
"Stai bene?"he asks. (Are you okay?)
"Sì. Muoviti."(Yes. Move.)
He moves.
Slow at first. Deep strokes that pull almost all the way out before pushing back in. Each one deliberate. Each one a sentence in a conversation happening below language, below thought, in the animal register where bodies speak to each other without translation. I feel him everywhere. Inside me. Above me. His mouth on my neck. His hands pinning my wrists above my head, holding me open, holding me still while he sets a rhythm that builds in speed and depth and pressure.
I fight his grip. Not to escape. To feel the resistance. To feel the strength in his hands and know that the same hands sign death orders, hold whiskey glasses, trace scars when he's thinking. Those hands are holding me down while he moves inside me with increasing urgency.
"Più forte,"I say. (Harder.)
He obeys. His hips slam forward. The bed frame protests. My wrists twist under his grip. He releases one hand. It goes to my hip, lifts me, changes the angle. Deeper. A sound leaves my throat that I have never heard before. Raw. Uncontrolled. The sound of a woman whose body has overridden every defense, every protocol, every carefully constructed system of silence and control.
"Ancora,"I say. (Again.)
"Guardami,"he says. (Look at me.)
I open my eyes. He's above me. Dark eyes open, watching my face, watching every reaction, reading me the way he reads rooms. His jaw is clenched. A vein in his neck pulses. He is holding back. Controlling the pace when his body wants to let go.
"Non trattenerti,"I say. (Don't hold back.)
He doesn't.
He lets go. The pace becomes urgent, uneven, raw. He drives into me with the desperation of a man who has been alone too long in a life that demands he never show weakness. Every thrust is a confession. Every sound he makes, the grunts, the half-words in Italian, the way he says my name like it's the only prayer he knows, is something he is giving me that he has never given anyone else.
I believe this. I believe it because of the way his hands shake when they grip my hips. The Don's hands. Shaking.
I wrap my legs around him. Lock my ankles behind his back. Pull him deeper. He drops his forehead to mine. Our breath mingles. Hot, fast. I can taste his exhale.
The orgasm builds from a low frequency. A vibration in my pelvis that spreads outward, upward, through my stomach, my chest, my throat. It doesn't crest the way the fantasy did, sudden and solitary. It builds like pressure behind a dam. Slow, relentless, gathering force from every point of contact between his body and mine.
"Niccolo."
His name. The detonator.
I come with his name on my lips, my back bowing off the mattress, my legs locked around him so tight he can't move, can only hold, pinned inside me while my body clenches around him in waves I cannot control. The sound I make fills the bedroom. I don't muffle it. I don't press my face into the pillow. I let it out. All of it. The sound of a woman who has been silent for too long.
He follows. Three strokes after me. His entire body tenses, locks, a rigid line from his shoulders to his hips. He comes with his mouth open against my neck, a low groan that vibrates through his chest into mine, that I feel in my sternum, my ribs, the bones of my spine.
He collapses.
Not onto me. Beside me. Rolling at the last second so his weight doesn't crush me. His arm across my stomach. His face in the pillow beside my head. His breathing is wrecked. I can hear his heart from six inches away, hammering against his ribs.
We lie still.
The city light moves across the ceiling as a boat crosses the bay, its running lights casting shadows through the windows. The sheets are tangled. My hair is spread across his pillow. His hand is on my stomach, the fingers splayed, rising and falling with my breath.
I turn my head. Look at him.
