by Bethany-Kris
Sure, Lucia had realized those things before, but it was as she sat there with Renzo and Diego that it finally really hit her, and what it meant. She could hear about their struggles—she could even see them first hand. Yet, she would never fully understand what it meant because that wasn’t her life. She had been given the privilege and beauty of a good life, two great parents, and a whole family that also acted as a support system for her.
From her grandparents, to her uncles, aunts, and cousins.
The Marcellos were one unit.
“You went quiet,” Renzo noted.
She peered over at him, and watched as he popped a half of a meatball into his mouth before shooting her a wink. He didn’t seem bothered at all by his little brother outing the fact their mother was MIA. Like this was something he was used to—her coming, going, or not giving a fuck about them at all. Maybe that was what hurt Lucia the very most.
Renzo was amazing.
He didn’t know it, but he was.
He deserved better—and so did his siblings—than what his mother was giving him. And his father, too, likely. Because where was that man?
Who knew?
“When did she take off?” Lucia asked.
Renzo cleared his throat, and took a moment to set his fork down before wiping his mouth with a napkin. He chewed and swallowed his food before meeting her gaze once more. “Whenever she was released from the hospital, I guess.”
“You guess?”
He shrugged, so flippant and distant from it all. Maybe that was just the way he protected himself, Lucia wasn’t really sure, but it still hurt her heart for him all the same.
“Yeah, I mean … that night you tried to help, she was here and out of it. It got really bad—she started throwing up, and choked a bit. I did what I usually do in that case, and called for an ambulance. I called the hospital twice. Once the next day to make sure she was …” Renzo trailed off, and passed his little brother a look. Diego was fully engrossed in his food, but Lucia knew that didn’t mean anything. A kid could pretend like they weren’t hearing anything, but in truth, they likely heard everything. “Hey, you done, buddy?”
Despite playing with his food, Diego hadn’t put any spaghetti in his mouth in a few minutes. Most of his plate was empty, too. He’d loved it, which just made Lucia smile.
All good Italians loved their food when it was pasta, and some kind of sauce. It didn’t matter what walk of life they came from, that would never change.
“Yeah,” Diego said.
Renzo nodded. “All right, go strip down in the bathroom. Looks like you need a bath. I’ll come back in a few and run the water for you.”
“Okay!”
Diego pushed the chair out from the table, and dropped down to the floor. He gave Lucia a wide, toothy smile, saying, “Thanks, it was good.”
“Next time, I’ll make you something new.”
“Promise?”
Renzo cleared his throat, but Lucia didn’t know why or for what. She just ignored him.
“Absolutely, pinky promise,” Lucia told Diego.
“Awesome.”
Soon, the boy’s footsteps echoed down the hallway toward the front of the apartment as he headed for the bathroom. Renzo leaned back in his chair, folded his arms over his chest, and eyed Lucia in that silent, contemplative way of his that usually had her feeling all kinds of things she didn’t understand.
This time was no exception.
“What?” she asked.
Renzo shrugged one shoulder. “You’re just going to keep coming back, huh?”
She blinked.
He didn’t move a muscle.
Didn’t he know?
“There’s no place I would rather be, Ren.”
“Yeah,” he said gruffly, “I guess not.”
Then, from the bathroom, Diego shouted out, “I’m ready, Ren!”
Renzo gave her a look, leaned over the table to press a fast kiss to Lucia’s temple, and drifted out of the room without a look back. She supposed their conversation about his mother was done … for now, anyway.
She couldn’t say she was disappointed. She bet that woman already took up far too much time in Renzo’s head to fuck with his emotions. He didn’t deserve that, either. None of it.
• • •
Lucia wiped the wetness from the bathroom floor with the towel Renzo had left on the edge of the tub probably after drying off Diego. She hadn’t gone in with the boy when he took his bath—instead, she opted to stay in the kitchen and clean up the mess. She cooked, sure, and while the rules in her family were usually those who didn’t cook needed to clean … well, she figured Ren probably had enough shit to do. He didn’t need to be cleaning up her mess of pots and dishes.
Besides, she needed something to do while she waited. Lucia wasn’t going anywhere. Not yet.
Dropping the wet towel over the edge of an off-white laundry hamper, she turned to find Renzo standing in the bathroom doorway. The sight of him there struck her hard in the chest. Like for the moment, she couldn’t even breathe. She didn’t know why—maybe it was the way his dark eyes traveled over her so unashamed and curious. Like he enjoyed what he was seeing, and he wanted far more of it. Or maybe it was the fact she didn’t know how long he had been standing there watching her to begin with.
“What are you doing?” she asked him.
Renzo’s mouth quirked at the corners—a hint of a smirk, maybe. Goddamn him for looking so good even when he wasn’t doing anything at all. There was just something about his face. All those hard lines, and soul-searching eyes. Dark like sin, and looking right at her. Haunted, she thought. Sometimes, when he didn’t know she was looking at him, Lucia thought he looked oh, so haunted.
Life had made him that way.
Yet, he still tied her in knots.
Like right now.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he said, smiling slyly. “You cleaned the kitchen, too. What are you doing in here picking up shit?”
Lucia wiped her hands across her pants to remove the dampness from the towel she’d been using to clean up the water mess. “I mean, do you want to do all this before you go to bed? I sure as hell wouldn’t.”
“But you don’t have—”
“I know. I wanted to.”
She expected him to come back with something else to say his life and business wasn’t her responsibility to worry about. That just seemed to be Renzo’s way, didn’t it? If he felt like she was getting to close, he was quick to push her away. Yeah, she’d gotten him figured out, now.
So, maybe it surprised her a bit—although, it wasn’t a bad surprise—when he nodded, and turned in the doorway with a wave of his hand. “Come on, then.”
Lucia trailed behind him through the hallway until the two of them were standing in the living room. He yanked an opened can of soda up from the coffee table in front of a couch that did not look like the one that had been here the last time. The clean, brown microfiber was vastly different from the frayed, worn out light blue one that had sat there before.
“New couch?”
Renzo took a long swig from the can, and set it back down to the table. “Couldn’t clean the other one of Carmen’s mess, so I just said fuck it, and grabbed this one.”
She noted the pillow and blanket folded up on the end. “And you’re sleeping on it, too, apparently.”
“I usually do when she’s not around using it.”
Lucia frowned, and couldn’t help but wonder … where in the hell did he sleep when his mother was around? This apartment was only a one bedroom. She didn’t know how big Diego’s room was, but was that where Renzo slept usually?
Renzo’s quiet chuckles brought Lucia out of her thoughts. She found him smirking at her in that way. It was as sexy as it was fucking annoying. She had come to find that look of his meant he knew something she didn’t, and he found it funny.
“What?”
“Your wheels are spinning,” he murmured, reaching out to press the pad of h
is thumb against her forehead. Right on the spot above her eyes. His thumb stroked her skin like he was trying to smooth out the lines she’d made while thinking. Lucia couldn’t help but smile. “When you’re thinking too hard about something, you get a little knot right here, you know.”
“Do I?”
“Every single time, baby.”
Huh.
“I was just wondering where you slept when your mom is here.”
That question made Renzo stiffen, and his gaze drifted away from her. She could tell right then that whatever the answer was, he clearly didn’t want to give it to her. Renzo’s best defense was to simply ignore a question when he didn’t want to answer one. She expected him to deflect her question to something else, but once again, he surprised her.
“Wherever the hell I can,” he said quietly, “but Diego’s room is too small for a second bed, and I’m not getting in his little twin, either.”
“So …”
“The floor, a chair … the tub. I just need to close my eyes once in a while, Lucia. I don’t really care where in the fuck I do it.”
The tub.
Renzo gestured at the couch, adding, “I haven’t seen Carmen since they took her in the ambulance. I called the hospital about seventy-two hours after she was taken in to see when they were going to release her. I guess she signed herself out after the forty-eight-hour mark. They couldn’t stop her, then. She’s not been back.”
That heaviness was back in Lucia’s heart again.
So was the bitterness and anger.
“She hasn’t called?”
“If she’s even got a phone,” Renzo said, “she’s using it to pick up men, or to call in someone to supply her habit. She doesn’t use it to call us, but that’s fine, too.”
“But—”
“She only upsets him,” Renzo interjected firmly, giving her a look that told Lucia he wasn’t willing to fight the point. It was what it was. “Diego, I mean. Whenever she calls fucked up, it upsets him. When she shows up, and then takes off again, it upsets him. When she’s here and she’s causing chaos, it upsets him.”
“And you.”
Renzo let out a heavy sigh. “I’m used to it now.”
But wasn’t that kind of fucking terrible, too? He shouldn’t have to be used to it. He shouldn’t be numb to any of this because it shouldn’t be happening at all.
Yet, it was.
Lucia kept her thoughts to herself.
“It does upset me when Diego gets upset,” Renzo muttered, “but at the same time, he loves Carmen. He’s still at an age where ignorant innocence takes importance over the self-preservation of his own emotions. So, even though she keeps hurting him, he still misses her when she’s gone. He still asks me where she is. He loves her; like I did when I was just a kid who had to depend on her even though she proved over and over again that she was never going to look out for me.”
Lucia fidgeted with the sleeve of her shirt, whispering, “And that’s why you let her keep coming back, isn’t it? That’s why you don’t shut her out from him. Because—”
“He still thinks he needs her, yeah.” Renzo cleared his throat, and picked up the can of soda to finish it off in one long gulp. Nodding his head toward the kitchen, he asked, “Was there any of that left?”
Lucia grinned. “A bit. Why?”
“I might want more.”
“There’s more.”
“Good.”
Lucia followed Renzo into the kitchen, and waited as he dropped the can into a small green pail.
She set herself up on the edge of the counter, content to watch Renzo make himself another plate of food. Her mother had always told her that the way to a man’s heart was absolutely through his stomach. Men were easier to deal with when they weren’t hungry, and that was definitely true with Renzo.
Trying to get her mind off the fact that she really liked the sight of him enjoying her food, Lucia toyed with the small bottle of honey that had been left out on the counter. It was shaped like a small bear, but it gave her something to do with her hands. Not that it helped all that much. She still ended up staring at him like an idiot.
She couldn’t help it.
Who would?
Of course, her staring didn’t go unnoticed by him. Passing her a glance, he quirked an eyebrow. “What?”
Lucia grinned. “I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re over there staring and smiling. Why?”
“I can’t stare at you, or smile?”
“Well—”
“I can’t like what I’m looking at?”
His tongue peeked out to wet his bottom lip as he shot her a smirk. Setting the plate of food aside, he made his way over with a gleam in his eye that promised fun.
It’d been a while, she thought. Maybe too long since the last time she’d had him between her thighs. Now seemed like a good time to remember exactly what it felt like for him to be losing control while he was fucking her.
Yeah, why not?
“And do you?” Renzo asked, setting himself between her widened legs.
“What?”
“Like what you see, Lucia. Do you?”
“Oh, are you fishing for compliments now?”
Renzo chuckled, and leaned in to press a quick kiss to her lips. That kiss wasn’t nearly enough, though. She pushed back against him to get more, edging closer to the end of the counter all the while. She wanted to feel him pressed all over there—to get him hard between her thighs where she had no doubt she was already wet.
Hell, all she had to do was look at him, and she was wet.
His tongue tangled with hers, reminding her that no, for the moment, she didn’t need to worry about life or anything else when the two of them were like this. All she needed to focus on was the way his hips flexed forward, and just how good the ridge of his erection felt rubbing against the thin cotton of her panties when her dress slid up around her hips. Those warm hands of his found her throat, keeping her in place as a thick groan fell from his lips.
It was almost funny how she felt like a fucking teenage girl getting her first taste of pleasure in those moments. Like the first time she realized that if she rubbed something between her thighs in just the right way, it felt really fucking good. She couldn’t remember the last time she had gotten caught up in feeling that sensation, but she missed it.
Renzo seemed all too happy to keep kissing her like he was and indulging the way she wrapped her thighs around his waist to get him closer. God, yeah. She wanted more of that.
“Could you come like this?” she heard him ask. “Just rubbing that sweet pussy on me, Lucia? Could you?”
She let out a ragged breath. “Yeah, I think I could.”
Already, her thighs were shaking.
That coiling tension was thick in her belly.
Oh, yeah.
She could definitely come like this.
And then she felt it.
Sticky.
Wet.
Her concentration was broke just like that, and the teasing promise of an orgasm was gone as she realized what had happened.
“Shit,” Lucia laughed, pulling away.
The top on the bottle of honey had come off, and she spilled a good tablespoon on her hand and wrist. She didn’t even get the chance to reach for the dishrag hanging off the side of the sink before Renzo caught her wrist in his hand, and pulled it to his mouth. His tongue snaked out first, tasting and teasing. And then his lips wrapped around the sticky sweet mess to lap the rest of it up, too.
Something hot shot through her body.
It made her needy, and so fucking weak.
His gaze stayed locked on hers as he cleaned the honey with his mouth, and all she could think about was how sinful he looked like that, and why couldn’t she breathe right again?
The very second all that honey was gone, he came for her again. Strong hands skimming up her thighs, and yanking her dress higher. Those panties of hers were pulled down her legs so fast, she barely even
felt them brushing against her skin. She couldn’t get into his pants fast enough, couldn’t get them down around his hips quickly enough to satisfy her want for him.
But she did.
Somehow.
“Yeah, shit, like that,” Renzo grunted. “Love your hands on me, you know.”
He watched the way Lucia stroked his cock once she had him free of his boxer-briefs. There was something inherently wicked about the way his features shadowed as he stared down between them. Or maybe it was beautiful, and not wicked at all. His thumb stroked the wetness smeared on her thighs, coming closer to her pussy with each swipe, while she continued jerking him off. He was heavy in her palms, but soft, too. All those veins in his cock pulsing against her fingertips.
“Want me to fuck you?”
Lucia nodded, wetting her lips, and watching him through lowered lashes.
“I like words, Lucia.”
Of course, he did.
Even when she struggled to find them.
“I want you to fuck me,” she whispered.
The words were barely out of her mouth before he kissed her again. Harder, and deeper than before. Stroking those flames that had already been blazing out of control inside her body as his lips worked roughly against hers. Vicious and harsh, his kiss left her gasping. She heard the foil wrapper crackle, and watched his hands work that latex down his length before he was fitting himself between her thighs, and pushing in deep.
Lucia got it, then.
She understood exactly why Renzo had looked the way he did when he was staring at her pussy while she jerked him off. The sight of him sliding through the lips of her sex until he was seated fully inside her, their bodies were tight together, and she couldn’t draw in a proper breath was … intoxicating.
His fingertips stroked her jaw, and then her lips.
It felt like electricity snapping her nerves alive.
“Oh, my God,” she mumbled.
“Mmm.”
That was all she got from him, that quiet agreement as his hips shifted, he pulled back out to show just how wet his cock was with her, and then slammed back in hard enough to push her back a bit on the counter.
“Fucking hold on,” Renzo muttered.
She did.
To him.