Page 77 of Deadly Confessions
Open palm. Right cheek. Hard enough that my head turns. Hard enough that the sound cracks through the bedroom louder than the headboard. My skin stings. My ear rings.
I look at her.
Her eyes are wild. Her chest heaving. Sweat on her forehead, her collarbones, the space between her breasts where a small crucifix on a chain rests against her flushed skin. A crucifix. I've never noticed it before. Small. Silver. The kind a child would receive at confirmation.
She's waiting. Watching my reaction. Calculating whether she crossed a line.
I grab her wrist. Pin it above her head. Pin the other one. Both wrists in one hand, pressed into the pillow. I hold her there, restrained, open, her body arched beneath mine.
I start pounding her so hard, the headboard is leaving indents in the walls.
"Così?"I say. (Like this?)
Her answer is not a word. It's a sound. Guttural. From the base of her throat. She fights my grip on her wrists. Not to escape. To feel the resistance. I hold her tighter. She writhes beneath me, her hips rolling, her legs clenching around my waist with a force that locks me inside her at the deepest possible angle.
I release her wrists. My hands go to her hips. I flip her. She goes onto her stomach, face in the pillow. I pull her hips up. Enter her from behind. She grips the headboard with both hands.
I drive into her. Relentless. The grief fueling every thrust, transmuting itself into something physical.
She turns her head. Her cheek pressed against the pillow. Her eyes find mine over her shoulder. Watching me. Even now, even bent over with my hands bruising her hips, she watchesme with those steady eyes that track everything, that miss nothing, that read rooms the way I read balance sheets.
"Lasciati andare,"she says. (Let go.)
I let go.
The orgasm isn't pleasure. It's demolition. A controlled detonation of everything the vault held, released through the only channel my body will allow. I cum with my face pressed between her shoulder blades, my teeth on her skin, my hands locked on her hips hard enough to leave marks. A sound tears out of my chest. Low. Long. The sound a building makes when the foundation gives. Not a collapse. A settling. The structure finding a new equilibrium after the ground shifted beneath it.
She cums seconds later. Her body clenching around mine, her hands white-knuckled on the headboard, a shudder that starts at the base of her spine and moves upward through her body in a wave I can feel through my own skin.
"FUCK," she screams as she buries her face in the pillow to muffle the sound, trembling until her legs finally give out.
We collapse beside each other. Not touching. Both of us sweating and breathing too hard for contact. The ceiling above us. The bay through the windows, the city lightsscattered across the black water. The bedroom smells like sweat, hot sex, and the restaurant still clinging to her skin.
I roll onto my side. Look at her.
She is lying on her back. Her hair is wrecked. Her blouse is open, buttonless, the fabric splayed across the sheets. Her skirt is bunched around her waist. The crucifix lies sideways on her collarbone. Her glasses are gone. Somewhere on the bed, somewhere on the floor. Her eyes are closed. Her chest rises and falls in gradually lengthening intervals. Coming down. Returning to whatever baseline she operates from, the one where her pulse never seems to change.
Red marks on her shoulders where I bit. Red marks on her hips where I gripped. Nail marks on my back I can feel without seeing. The evidence of two people who used each other's bodies to survive a night that would have been unsurvivable alone.
I reach for her. Pull her against me. She comes without resistance. Her back against my chest. My arm around her waist. I hold her tight. Too tight. I know it's too tight because her ribcage compresses under my forearm, because her breathing adjusts to accommodate the pressure, because she is a small woman and I'm holding her like a man gripping a ledge.
"Non andartene,"I say. (Don't leave.)
My voice doesn't sound like my voice. It sounds like a man I don't recognize.
She puts her hand over mine. Her fingers lace through my fingers. She squeezes. The grip is strong. Stronger than her frame suggests. She holds my hand the way someone holds a rope.
"Sono qui,"she says. (I'm here.)
Two words. In her voice, which is steady, which is always steady, which holds firm when everything around it shakes.
I press my face into her hair. The restaurant smell is fading, given way to her natural scent.
"Stay," I say.
"I'm staying."
"Stay."
