by Sam Mariano
“There’s no better feeling than being full of your cock,” I tell him.
He captures my lips and kisses the fuck out of me before murmuring roughly, “You only think that because you’ve never been inside your pussy.”
Rafe buries his face in my neck and steals my ability to respond. When his lips travel up and down my neck, words are too difficult. He pulls his hips back, pistons them forward, and bites me. I gasp in surprise, but it’s already over, his lips already soothing the skin.
“I like marking my property,” he murmurs in my ear.
I hold onto his broad shoulders for dear life as he pumps inside me. “Mark away, baby.”
Releasing my hands, he pulls out of me and switches positions. Once he’s on his side, he reaches for me, grabbing a handful of my ass and pulling me on top of him.
“Ride your husband’s cock, Virginia.”
The word hasn’t thrilled me much lately, but in this context, from his perfect lips, looking down at him relaxed and naked in our bed, it strikes me like a lightning bolt of pleasure. My insides go gooey for a minute and I obey, dutifully lifting my hips, guiding his cock to my entrance, and taking him inside me. I’ve never been entirely confident in this position, but Rafe excels at making me feel more beautiful than I ever have before. The way my gorgeous husband looks up at me as I ride him, the heat of desire in his eyes, fills me with affection.
He doesn’t let me ride him for very long, though. When he’s ready to move on, he grabs my hips to stop me, pulls me off his dick, and nods at the bed.
“Now, tummy down. I seem to remember I owe you a spanking for lusting after Sin’s cock.”
Face flaming, I object. “I was not lusting after Sin’s cock. I was joking.”
“You were being a brat,” he states roughly. “Act like a little brat and I’ll treat you like one.”
I flatten myself against the bed, grabbing for a pillow since he told me to earlier. “With your belt?”
Smoothing a hand over my ass, he says, “No, I’ll use my hand tonight.”
Okay, I know I like that. He’s smacked my ass before.
“When I do use my belt,” he goes on, “you’ll be ready for it. All right? I’ll never do anything you’re not ready for. We’ll work up to it, make sure you like it first. If it turns out you don’t, we won’t go there. It’s not the end of the world; we can still have plenty of fun in the bedroom.”
Contentment washes over me. I nod my head. “All right.”
Then with a hint of amusement in his tone, he tells me, “And your safe word is cheesecake.”
I giggle, burying my face in the pillow, then let out a yelp of surprise as his hand suddenly comes down hard across my ass. On instinct, I try to wiggle away, but he grabs me and pulls me back in place with one hand, using the other to soothe the swatch of stinging skin.
“One,” he says firmly.
His hand rises and falls again in the same spot and I cry out.
“Two.”
Three and four land in different spots, then smack number five returns to the original spot. When number six lands and fire rips across the skin of my ass, I cry out, “Stop!”
“That’s not the word that stops me,” he reminds me, since I’m new at this.
Right. Cheesecake. I hesitate to use it, though. My ass is burning, but I don’t want to use that word unless I really can’t take more and need him to stop. “How many more?” I ask instead.
“Two more,” he says.
I nod, hugging the pillow. “Okay.”
He spanks my stinging ass two more times and I manage not to try wiggling away, but then his touch is gentle, his big hands soothing the hot skin on my ass. He sits up and pulls me into his lap, facing him.
“Are you okay?” he asks, tenderly running his hand along the side of my face, then pushing his fingers through my hair.
I nod my head. “My ass is on fire, but overall fine.”
Smirking faintly, he presses his lips to my forehead. “Yeah, I don’t think I’ll be using the cane on you. If you think my hand hurts…”
I shove his chest. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m not hardcore. I still want to try. Probably not the cane since that seems to be an advanced tool and I’m hanging out in the minor leagues, but the flogger or a paddle. I might like it. Who knows?”
“Floggers are gentle, they only look scary. Perfect beginner toy. You’ll probably like that.”
“You know what I like a lot?” I ask him.
“What’s that?”
“Your dick. Anytime you’d like to put it back inside me…”
Rafe laughs, shoves me off his lap, and positions me on all fours. His playfulness makes my heart flip over, then his sure hands grabbing my hips steady it. Finally, his long, thick cock invading me causes my heart to thump loudly in my chest. I bear down and take it, dropping to my forearms and keeping my ass up the way he likes it.
Pleasure builds inside me as my husband pounds me into oblivion. I don’t know if it’s his size or his skill level, but the way his cock slides against my walls results in the most incredible friction. God, I’ve missed this. I love being fucked by Rafe.
He knows I’m close when I start whimpering and crying out, so he holds onto my hips and fucks me even harder. He fucks me like he wants to break me until I do break apart, crying out with pleasure as he pumps into me until he finds his own.
Collapsing on the bed behind me, he locks an arm around my waist and pulls me back against him. “I love the sounds your pussy makes when I fuck you.”
I smile sleepily. “I love everything about you fucking me.”
We’re quiet for a few blissful moments, just spooning. It’s delightful. He finally breaks the silence, his tone a little heavier. “I need to know something.”
A hint of alarm pierces my pleasure cloud. That sounds potentially serious. “All right.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about your memory?”
Attempting to keep the mood light and pleasant, I keep my tone faintly teasing. “I was afraid you might react poorly. Boy, was I wrong.”
He doesn’t bite. “I’m serious. Once it came out, it became clear you didn’t even keep it a secret. You told Laurel when you barely knew her, but you never told me.”
Sighing, I roll over so I can face him. “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t mention it soon enough for it to be nonchalant, and then it got to a point where mentioning it did feel like I was making a big deal out of it. It’s just how my mind works, you know? It’s not that weird to me. This is my normal. It’s been normal to me for a long time, but sometimes other people make too much of it.
When I was a kid, I didn’t understand that my mind worked a little differently. I thought everyone could watch their memories like movies. When my first best friend outgrew me, I mourned it the way people mourn break-ups with loved ones, replaying all the good times and missing her. Then my actual first boyfriend also dumped me for another girl, and I was so alone. It was a rough year. But my mom started to get upset about it, she would always say I was living in the past and it wasn’t healthy. She thought I was fixating on things instead of just browsing my library of memories. It really wasn’t until she made me go talk to a psychiatrist and he seemed to agree more with her than me that I realized I must be the different one.”
“What did he say?” Rafe asks.
“Well, I’ve concluded at this point in time that he was a pill-pushing hack, so I should lead with that. His prognosis was that I have a unique form of OCD. He didn’t think I had an eidetic memory because that’s not technically a proven thing and you can’t prescribe any medication for it; he suggested I rehearsed my memories and gave them strength that way. He made me do these pointless memory exercises, and he thought I would experience something, and then repeat it and reflect on it unconsciously, and basically train myself to remember it.
I tried to tell him that wasn’t what was happening, I don’t remember just certain things, not even just things pertaining to me
; I remember everything. I sat there and told him what he was wearing the first day I sat down in his office, right down to the ketchup stain on his tie from lunch. I told him the titles in order of every book on a shelf behind him that I had only glanced at, but he insisted it was an unconscious behavior, that I wouldn’t know I was doing it. He didn’t care what I had to say though, he just wanted to be right. He made me take these awful antidepressants that gave me these dark, weird-ass dreams. The medicine made me feel terrible. I told him I didn’t need any medication, nothing was wrong with me, and he said he would lower the dose, but I needed to keep taking the pills and give them time to start working. Sometimes my memory is annoying, and sure, I was sad because I had lost people who meant something to me, but frankly, even if the pills would have ever made me stop remembering, it wouldn’t have been worth feeling that way. I tried to explain that, but he wouldn’t listen. He was a know-it-all and I hated him. I finally realized it would be easier to just keep my thoughts to myself and nod in agreement until I could convince my mom I was better and she wouldn’t make me see him anymore. So, that’s what I did.”
“Jesus. That sounds traumatic. How old were you?”
“Thirteen.”
Rafe raises his eyebrows. “You’ve been hiding it from your mom since you were 13?”
“It’s not that hard. It became a habit, and now that I don’t live near her anymore, it’s effortless. She meant well,” I explain, not wanting him to think poorly of her. “She just didn’t know how to handle a pubescent kid with a weird brain.”
Pulling me close, he presses his lips to my forehead. “You don’t have a weird brain.”
“I do, but it’s okay. On the whole, I like my weird brain,” I assure him.
“You haven’t even called your mom,” he realizes. “You haven’t told her you’re married.”
“Yeah… I’ll get around to it. Nothing personal, I’m just not sure she’s going to be super psyched I didn’t invite her. I’ll try to play up the whirlwind Vegas elopement, but it’s been a long week and I didn’t feel like dealing with it. We’ll still be married next week, and the week after that. Eventually I’ll get around to mentioning it to her.”
“Like eventually you’ll get around to picking a side, and registering for classes…?”
Grinning up at him, I tell him, “Fine, I’m piss-poor at following through with things I don’t want to do. I landed myself a rich husband, so I don’t have to do shit now. I’m just going to lie by the pool and eat grapes every day.”
Smirking at me, Rafe tightens his arms around me. “I do like the idea of you nearly naked by the pool any time I want to know where you are.”
“I’m kidding,” I inform him. “I would legitimately go insane without something to stimulate my brain. I would at least need an iPad or a stack of books to keep me company. I’d go nuts stuck inside my own mind without anything new to feed it. It’s a ravenous beast, my mind.”
“We’ll have to take you to a bookstore and get it some new food.”
“You and your bookstores,” I say fondly, leaning up to kiss him.
“Hey, I have a wife now. I have a steady bookstore date for the rest of my days.”
“The rest of my days, you mean,” I say playfully.
Kissing the end of my nose, he says, “You know how I know I married the right person?”
Shaking my head faintly, I ask, “How?”
“Because we can cuddle in bed and joke about me murdering you a week after I actually held a gun to your head.”
“Well, you thought I was a rat,” I offer reasonably. “I’ve seen The Sopranos. I know what happens to rats.”
“Oh, well, as long as you’ve seen The Sopranos.”
I nod my head with mock solemnity. “Every episode. I’m essentially an expert in the field. You should really run all your mob activity by me to make sure it’s legit.”
Rafe shakes his head, tucks me into his chest, and kisses my forehead. “I love you, Virginia.”
My heart swells and I wrap my arms even more snugly around him. “I love you, too, Rafe.”
41
Virginia
Cuddle therapy worked wonders for our marriage.
After that night, Rafe stays home—or takes me with him when he leaves—and he has Trent put me back on the schedule at the restaurant. I guess I didn’t think about it, but it makes sense that he struggled to trust me, feeling like I had struggled to trust him. Once he learned I had bad experiences with it in the past, I guess he understood and realized it wasn’t really about him.
It’s easy to take things personally by mistake.
Trent doesn’t put me on the schedule for as many shifts as I worked before, but Rafe said he wants to slowly transition my co-workers out of depending on me so much. Given I’ve formally picked a side, I’ll be going back to school in the fall. Now that $35,000 isn’t a financial strain, I’m going to spend the extra year brushing up on gambling law. Then when I’m finished, instead of a position at Rafe’s restaurant, I can do much more stimulating work at Rafe’s casino.
Even if it’s only 3 to 4 shifts a week, I’m happy to be back to work in the meantime. Working six nights each week, I didn’t have much spare time, but my schedule now is perfect. Now I can help Laurel with her wedding, play with the babies, and still serve Rafe like usual after making his dinner in the home we share together. Much better than spending all day looking forward to the hour I might see him in his booth with some other girl.
I thought it might be weird at the restaurant when I came back. Given the way people gossiped about the possibility that Rafe was sleeping with me, I assumed showing up with his ring on my finger would result in a lot of knowing smirks. Yeah, we knew it, they would say without words. Instead, it earned back any measure of respect I might have lost by sleeping with him in the first place. I’m not saying they were right to feel that way, but I do understand why they thought I gave in to a streak of stupidity by banging a Vegas playboy, legendarily unwilling to commit. Now instead of a weak-kneed dumbass who foolishly fucked the uncatchable Rafe Morelli, I’m the enigmatic goddess who managed to capture his attention and hold it. How the hell did I do that?
Well, they never need to know how I did that. Let them think I must be a sexual tornado the likes of which even Rafe Morelli couldn’t resist.
The awe wears off after a few weeks and things get more or less back to normal. The difference is that no one makes fun of me for my blatant crush on Rafe, and the lack of mocking makes me realize how much people poked at me about it before. I glossed right over it when it was happening because I didn’t care. No amount of mocking would ever make me stop looking at Rafe with hearts in my eye, but now that the mocking is suddenly absent from the environment, it’s like looking at two “find the difference” pictures once you’ve found the differences; you can’t not see it.
It doesn’t matter. I don’t hold a grudge.
I do kinda miss Felix. I did file through my memories against my better judgment, searching for anything helpful. I realize now he did drop the occasional clue that he might be more than a bartender, but nothing blatant, and nothing that could help Rafe.
As I’m rushing from the bar to my table tonight, I feel a buzz in my pocket. I draw it out and see a message from Laurel. “Are you free for a DIY project tomorrow? I’M GETTING MARRIED IN THREE DAYS.”
This is her current thing. I can’t help smiling. Every day when she texts me for the first time, she tells me how many days until the wedding, like it’s even feasible I might forget.
“Sure,” I send back. “Your house or mine?”
“Mine. Carly gets in tonight, so we’ll all be here.”
“Sounds good,” I text back, before sliding my phone into my apron.
Or, I mean to drop my phone into my apron, but I miss and it drops to the floor.
“Oh, shit,” I say, mildly alarmed because I know it isn’t protected. When Adrian fucked with my phone, he damaged the cover, and it ha
sn’t fit right since, so I’ve been leaving it off. Ordinarily I don’t drop my phone like a fucking idiot, so it hasn’t been a problem. “Shit.” I bend down and grab the phone. Sure enough, the screen is cracked from the top left where it hit all the way down the center.
The screen lights up and I tap the home button, but nothing happens. The screen glitches like the phone is malfunctioning, so I try to power it down. I should really do that more often, anyway. I never power the damn thing down unless something goes wrong.
The power down screen pops up and I slide my finger across it, but nothing happens. The screen lights back up on my lock screen.
Great, I broke my fucking phone.
It’s still an old habit to stress about the expense—I haven’t even paid this one off, and I didn’t pay for the insurance, so now I’ll have to come up with money for a replacement—but then I remember I’m married to Rafe, and he won’t bat an eye at having to buy me a new cell phone.
The screen becomes distorted again and I frown, trying again to power the damn thing off, but it won’t shut off. It goes right back to my lock screen, like it’s been programmed to respond to a shutdown command by redirecting me—
I freeze, staring at the brightly lit screen.
Adrian.
Fucking Adrian.
Instead of trying to shut my phone off, I slide it open and scroll through it like I ordinarily would. It works just fine. Only now that I think about it, I’ve only been at work for two hours, so why is my battery already so low?
I got a call from a wrong number earlier. Not unusual—I’m constantly winning free cruises—but now I tap it and call back, just to see what happens. An automated message answers, but that’s not what I’m focused on.