Page 31 of Forsaking All Others

Minutes later, how many I had no idea, Dario was still slumped against my back, one hand cupping between our thighs, fingers split around the softening length of him inside me as if he wanted to plug me full of him—of his cum—for as long as possible.

It was a possessive, almost tender move that made something in my chest ache.

“Well,” I said, voice raw from crying out, “I think we’ve proven I can please you with or without a road map.”

To my surprise, Dario burst out laughing, muffling the rusty sound in the crook of my sweat-damp neck.

And for a moment, just one, I wondered if this was the start of us.

The real beginning of our marriage. Set one year after our wedding.

Maybe, after this we would be wedded in truth and not just on paper.

But a half-hour tryst against the wall of our foyer was hardly a promise of intimacy, and by the end of the night, I knew better than to ever dream of a real marriage with Dario again.

I woke up alone.

Which was normal, usually, but Dario had surprised me by carrying me to my bedroom and slipping under the flame-colored sheets beside me. He didn’t pull me close, but I would have bet my last dollar he wasn’t a snuggly man. The heat of him beside me and the weight of his big body in the bed were comfort enough. I let myself trace the bulging swells of his back muscles with my eyes before I fell asleep, memorizing the tattoo of the Gemini symbol on one shoulder, even though he wasn’t born in that zodiac, and the scroll of text that looked like it was written in the Cyrillic alphabet.

And my foolish, treacherous little heart lightened with hope.

This is the beginning, I thought as I smiled into my pillow and drifted off into a two-climax-induced sleep.

It wasn’t my idyllic marriage dreams of Niccolo, but it could be . . . something. Something more than this sham between two strangers.

I smiled again then, seeing the indent Dario had left in the pillow beside me in the dim light spilling in through the open curtains and from under the door that adjoined my bedroom to his. The clock on the bedside table glowed dimly and displayed the time, 4:47 a.m.

I pursed my lips, battling with the desire to go to Dario for some kind of validation, to test if our new connection was still there, or to stay in bed because I had had about two hours of sleep.

The ache between my thighs urged me out of bed before I could talk myself out of it. My bare feet were silent against the plush carpet and then the cool wood, and I pressed my ear to the door before I tried to open it.

I hadn’t expected to hear voices.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” someone asked angrily, and though it was muffled, I thought it could be Dario.

“Someone had to do it.” No, that was Dario, clearer than the other voice.

“Someone had to do it?” the other man repeated incredulously. “You have gone fucking mad. It was only a matter of time living the life you do.”

“As if it’s my choice,” Dario scoffed.

“Well, this damn decision was!”

“Shut your fucking mouth,” Dario demanded, almost too low to hear. “You’ll wake her up.”

“You sure you didn’t fuck her into unconsciousness?” the retort came. “God, I didn’t even know you were capable of feeling something as pedestrian as lust. And for Fiammetta, of all people? Cazzo, what were you thinking?”

“She’s been miserable,” Dario admitted, and it surprised me that he noticed just as much as it embarrassed me.

I thought I had hidden it so well, burying myself in new friendships and activities.

“She’s a twenty-one-year-old married virgin,” he continued, and there was a thread of something like . . . pity in his cool voice.

I flinched back from the door.

“So you bedded her because you felt badly?” A rough bark of laughter. “You are something else. Aria wasn’t enough, you had to dip your wick in Fiammetta?”

“You’re the one who likes Aria,” Dario muttered, and if I didn’t know better, I would have said he thought Aria was disgusting. “Stop throwing a tantrum about it. I slept with my wife. What’s done is done.” A brief loaded pause and then, “It won’t happen again.”