by Bethany-Kris
God.
This wasn’t fair at all.
He didn’t play fair.
The bigger problem was that she didn’t think Corrado was trying to play games at all.
“I told you once before,” Corrado said, his head drifting lower until his lips nearly touched hers with his next words, “I ruin beautiful things. I won’t be the one who pushes you away, Ginevra, so if you want to save what is left of your heart, you need to be the one to do it for me.”
If heartbreak was a picture, it would be his face.
Handsome.
Devastatingly so, really.
And tortured.
It killed her.
“You have to do it,” he said again, “do you hear me?”
She did.
But ...
“I can’t,” Ginevra breathed.
She couldn’t say the words loudly.
Not yet.
They meant she was going to hurt worse. This would have to be enough.
Corrado didn’t move an inch.
That was okay.
Ginevra didn’t need him to move when he was this close—not when all she wanted to do was kiss him, have him ... take him for herself. Even if that meant, all too soon, she was going to have to give him to someone else.
So, she did just that.
31.
Corrado
Corrado was a selfish fuck.
How many times had he said that about himself already?
Too many.
Thing was, it didn’t make it any less true. Because that’s exactly what he was.
Selfish. Greedy. Immoral.
He wasn’t all those things at once, sure. Or, he tried not to be. And yet, when Ginevra’s lips found his in that office doorway, the same way Alessio’s had done a week earlier, he realized he could, in fact, be all those things.
Selfish. And greedy.
So fucking immoral.
Because all he could think in those seconds was how goddamn sinful Ginevra’s kiss felt, and how Alessio’s had bruised beautifully, too. He felt her softness and felt Alessio’s roughness. The memory warred in his mind, dragging him closer to a place he had tried so hard to stay away from. A place that, once there, he wouldn’t be coming back.
He couldn’t stop.
Ginevra seemed all too willing to let him do what he wanted, too, and so he did just that. Each kiss he landed to her lips, her jaw, and throat pushed them back a step. His hands were harsh, and demanding, yanking at her clothes and pulling them from her body as they moved down the hallway.
Those tainted emotions of his ...
Those ruining hands of his ...
She only asked for more.
He couldn’t get enough.
Corrado didn’t remember when they hit the bedroom, but he’d stripped her of her clothes except for the cotton panties hiding the last bit of her from him. His gaze dragged down her olive-toned skin, taking in collarbones he wanted to bite, and tits that heaved with every breath she took.
Her trembling fingers reached for him, undoing the buttons on his shirt, and working at his slacks as he reached for her. He let her feel the weight of his fingertips driving down her chest before he tweaked her nipples into hard peaks.
“Won’t you fuck me?”
Corrado’s stare snapped up, slamming into hers. “After.”
“After what?”
God.
Who had this woman before him?
Did she not know that the best of sex happened when one knew a body they were touching? Didn’t she know how good it would be when he learned all those spots and the things she needed to make her gasp, or moan, or scream?
“I have to learn,” he murmured.
Ginevra smiled shyly. “What do you have to learn?”
“All of it, Ginny. All of you.”
And he did, after she’d helped him from his clothes, and as her fingers closed around his hard cock to stroke him softly as he learned her body. He used his mouth on her shoulders, at the delicate column of her neck, and along her jaw line. And then his teeth and tongue followed the same path, drinking in every noise that slipped from her lips and the way her fingers would tighten or slow on his length when he found something she liked.
His hands worked, too.
Slipping under the waistband of her panties as his mouth sought hers to taste when he found the wetness between her thighs. Fuck. She was slick at the slit of her pussy, and hot to the touch. Silky, and needy, too.
“Mmm,” Ginevra breathed against his cheek.
Corrado grinned.
She liked that.
Slow touches, his fingers sliding against her slit, but not entering her pussy. He let the side of his fingers come high enough to drag against her clit, too, taking in how her hips jerked, and a higher sound fell from her lips.
“What do you want, huh?”
“To come.”
“Yeah?”
“So bad,” she mumbled, turning her face against his so her mouth shuddered along the seam of his own. “So fucking bad.”
He’d have done it with his hands.
Fingers working her pussy.
Sure.
But he wanted a taste.
Hadn’t he earned that?
Corrado thought so.
He dragged Ginevra’s panties down with one yank of his hand against the gusset. Her soft gasp came high above him, because he was already down on his knees, and burying his face at the crevice of her thighs as he pushed her legs wider. He got that taste of her—heady and tart. Hot, too, as her arousal coated his tongue when he dragged it through her slit.
“What are you doing—God.”
All that noise.
He loved that noise.
His thumb worked at her clit as his tongue lapped at every drop her pussy gave him. There was nothing quite like the taste of a woman when she was ready to crash into an orgasm ... just like there was nothing that compared to the taste of man when he found his.
All it took was his tongue replacing his thumb at her clit for a beat or two before he sucked hard on the throbbing nub ... and she flew.
Wetness slicked her further.
Heat pulsed against his tongue.
But it was the sound of her crying his name into the dark bedroom that had his control snapping. He couldn’t stand fast enough ... couldn’t get her to that bed quickly enough to satisfy the need coursing through him.
And then she was.
On her back, thighs spread.
He found the condom he needed in the drawer beside the bed, tore it open, and slid latex down his cock as he climbed between her thighs. She was already reaching for him, one arm snaking around his back, and the other along his neck. Her fingers threaded into his hair as their lips crashed together again.
She didn’t submit to his kiss, now.
She demanded more from it.
Corrado needed that, too.
If he had a vice, that was it.
His hand worked between their bodies until the head of his cock found her slit. He only flexed his hips forward enough that she’d get the tip of him, but not much else. He had to let her know he was there—feel her tense and clench around him before he took the rest of her, too.
Or rather, she took him.
All nine inches.
“Please,” she gasped against his lips. “Please, now.”
That did it.
His hips snapped forward, and he was buried deep in the next breath. His hand splayed wide to her side, holding tight and pulling her back into every pull and thrust of his body. She couldn’t get enough, and he loved it.
All her yeses.
All those pleases.
Every single oh.
He drank them up.
Swallowed them whole.
Devoured them like he was starved.
“Fucking take me, baby,” he said throatily in her ear, as their bodies moved faster. “God, you fucking love that, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Give me it, then. Fucking give me it, Ginevra. Give it to me again, baby.”
Her heart tipped back as his mouth climbed her throat, his tongue striking out to taste every fucking inch of her that he could. He felt like he waited too long for this, and at the same time, he was so fucking weak for giving in.
Still, he wasn’t stopping.
He was taking all he could.
Every bit she gave.
He was keeping it.
“Almost,” she whined, eyes flying wide to nail into him as he pounded into her. “Almost, Corrado.”
Oh, fuck.
There was something in her voice, and her stare. Something in the way she moved against him seeking to get herself off like she knew what she fucking wanted, and she didn’t care if she used him to get it, really lit him on fire. It made him want to get off as she moaned and panted against him for more.
The salt on her skin skimmed his lips with every word, each fucking breath. Her thighs held him tight, her back moving against the soft sheets with his own rhythm as her fingernails dug into his sides to find purchase. She was wild, then, hair fanning through his fingers and spilling to the bed. Her lips found the stubble on his throat, and then her teeth found his jaw. All those noises of hers muffled against the trembling of his overheated skin.
And yet, he could still hear what she said.
Felt it in his bones.
“Please, please, please.”
His hand on her trim waist glided over smooth, damp skin that shivered from his touch until his thumb grazed her clit between their tightly grinding bodies. He swiped at her clit once, then twice, pressing harder the third to really make her scream.
And that’s when she came.
It was a beautiful sight.
He leaned back a bit just to watch it all unravel for her, too. The way her pussy was stretched full of him, her arousal soaking his cock as it slid out of her before slamming back in to feel those inner muscles of hers clenching around him. How her body trembled against the bed, her hands falling from his sides to fist into the sheets.
The muscles in her throat flexed and tensed with the shout of his name that fell from pinked, quivering lips.
And what a sound that was.
All throaty.
Broken.
High.
As fast as he’d come up to watch that sight, and sear it into his memories so it wasn’t one he would soon forget, he fell back into her. His arm locked around her back, and his other found steadiness against her vibrating thigh. He worked his body harder against hers, soaking in every second of her orgasm as he came closer and closer to his own.
“Come,” he heard her mumbled. “Fucking come.”
It sounded so needy.
So desperate.
He just wanted to give it to her.
Soon, the thrusts of his came to a still with one final flex of his hips as he spilled into latex while he panted against Ginevra’s heartbeat thrumming fast like a hummingbird’s wings at her throat. He couldn’t make sense of anything—couldn’t speak beyond the dark cusses that fought their way past his lips.
“Fuck, fuck ... fuck.”
It was blinding.
That release?
Everything he needed.
And it changed everything.
Of that, he was most sure.
Ginevra dragged in lungful after lungful of air as she stared at the ceiling, and he stared at her profile. “Oh, my God.”
“Stay in my bed tonight,” was all he could think to say. “Sleep here with me. Be here with me.”
Because if he couldn’t have one, then he needed the other.
She blinked. “Okay.”
• • •
Corrado stared out the window of the office as he fixed the phone in his hands simply by touch alone. He didn’t look down to check what pieces he was snapping back together. The battery, and the back. Holding the phone, he pressed the button on the side until he felt it vibrate against his palm.
Turned on.
He swore it was muscle memory that allowed him to swipe his thumb across the screen, pulling up the messenger app, and hitting the most frequent contact at the top. Alessio.
He was too busy watching his reflection in the window of the office because he thought part of him didn’t recognize the man staring back in the glare of the city below. The shape of his body, and the way his undone pants rested low on his hips were all the same.
The face?
Identical.
But in his eyes, something was different.
He didn’t know what to do with that.
Corrado glanced away from the reflection, not wanting to indulge those thoughts more than he already had, he peeked over his shoulder at the dark doorway of the office. Just down the hallway, sleeping in his bed, was a woman who, a month and a day ago, had meant less than nothing to him and his life.
He’d never known she existed.
But now that he did?
Corrado knew nothing would be the same.
He’d done this once.
Except it couldn’t be as simple as it once was where there was now a before, and an after. A time when Alessio and Corrado were them before Ginevra, and this ... what they had become after her. What came next would be now, but he didn’t know what that was, or what it would look like for them.
The phone still in his hand waiting for him to just do what he had to do, his thumb danced across the screen, keying in a message he knew would be received, but that he couldn’t predict the impact when it was delivered. He poured over the four words, taking them in until the black letters began to bleed together. And yet, even had he hesitated to send the text, he never once considered not sending it.
It was just a matter of doing it.
He sent the message.
As the phone beeped, and the tiny delivered popped up under the message, Corrado let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. He waited longer, still staring at the screen for maybe fifteen seconds before the delivered message turned into a seen one.
I slept with her, he’d written.
Alessio needed to know, whether that was what he wanted or was waiting for ... whether he was planned on staying away another week or coming back right this minute. It didn’t matter, this wasn’t about that, it was about the truth.
The loyalty.
The thing Corrado had already broken and failed to give Les. He didn’t think the message would fix what he’d done—not by a long shot, really. Still, it was a step forward. A reminder that, he knew what he had done.
He was so fucking sorry.
It was all he could offer Alessio because he no longer knew what to do; he didn’t think there was any right or wrong way to move forward here, and he couldn’t decide alone. There were now two other people he’d dragged into this mess that had to make their choices, too.
The text was one.
The rest was in God’s hands.
Or rather, Alessio’s.
Corrado lifted his stare, and watched the lights of the city below dance as he thought, well, what happens now?
ALESSIO
The Guzzi Legacy, 2
PART THREE: NOW
1.
Alessio
Pain taught Alessio Sorrento a lot of things.
A motivator, punishment, or a reward. In true pain, someone would find their boundaries, and the ability to go beyond their limits, too. Nothing reminded someone they were weak more than pain, and it was one of the few things that proved humans had the capability to be godlike at the same time.
Alessio hated pain.
Loathed it.
He much preferred numbness because it was a far more dangerous thing. Sure, pain made people do inexplicable, unexplainable things, but numbness? That was the flip side of the same damn coin.
/> In numbness, one found nothing. And one didn’t have limits or boundaries, one didn’t need a motivator or a reward when nothing was the goal. It was a vicious place to be, so numb that even happiness couldn’t find its way through to one’s heart.
And still ...
Alessio would take numbness over pain any day. One allowed him not to care, and the other forced him to care too fucking much. He also felt like his entire life had been one huge mountain of pain, time and time again.
People said pain was growth.
Survival.
Well, fuck that trash. He’d taken enough pain to last him several lifetimes over, and now, he didn’t want to feel at all.
The unfortunate thing about loving someone else was that love didn’t afford the gift of numbness. Which was every reason, instead of sleeping like he should be at two in the morning, he sat on a wicker chair in the warm August air with darkness all around. A humid dampness clung to the air, reminding him where he was instead of where he might have been if this situation had been different.
The back property of the Guzzi mansion expanded a far ways into a line of forest under the moonlight. Manicured pathways veered off to a large fountain with dancing stone doves at the top, and then into the flower garden that would make anyone with a green thumb jealous. Mostly, the silence called to him late at night. He stared at the stars—had to be alone.
Things hurt less here.
There was a time when coming to this place—Corrado’s childhood home—seemed awkward for a variety of reasons, and none he cared to list. Not that any one person here gave him that impression, but he wasn’t used to ... this.
They all loved.
They supported.
If someone needed something, then a few hands would be able help. The Guzzi family—just Corrado’s immediate relatives—were enough to seem like a small army, and that was something else Alessio got used to. A part of him had been so used to taking care of himself for so long a family unit seemed like a foreign thing to him.