by Elle Wright
He was glad she was on top for their first time. He didn’t think he’d have enough control to keep himself from slamming into her. He’d wanted to sink into her body for so long, he was almost crazy from want. So many nights yearning for this moment, and she was going to give him what he needed. Again. Her letters had been a lifeline of hope and sanity, kindness and snark. And here. Now. Her body was going to nourish his soul in a different way. And he couldn’t believe how lucky he was that she was his girl.
She leaned forward, her hands on the bed at either side of his neck, his fingers splayed across her luscious thighs, her fantastic breasts hanging above his mouth, and in what seemed like slow motion, she lowered herself onto him and gave him the world.
With her eyes closed, she grinned, and then sat back. Her head tilted to the right, her rich red hair mostly down her back, but partly covering her upper body. He looked at his dark hands against her fair skin and found the contrast erotic. He didn’t have to wait long before she started grinding on him. Rolling her hips, working his dick inside her. Damn she was tight. And she knew how to stroke him. Getting him to the edge, then backing down. He’d been ready to explode the moment he saw her on the escalator. He was hanging by a thread, and she seemed to know it. She raised her lids to half-mast and looked like a vixen about to lure him into untold delights.
He sat up, drew one of her nipples into his mouth, and sucked. Hard. He dipped his middle finger into the crease of her ass and moved it up and down as he relocated his mouth to the other nipple. She was riding him now. Her body moving faster as her sweet, sweet pussy started clenching. Tugging at him. Insistent. Unrelenting. He bit down on her nipple and she wrapped her arms around his head as she cried out, “Oh Gio. Oh Gio. Oh Gio.”
That was it. He was gone. Coming so hard sweat broke out on his ankles. And she kept going until she fell limp against him, her breath sawing in and out as she stroked his back, ran her hands up his neck and threaded her fingers in his hair.
Gently, he rolled them so she was on her side, and he was still buried deep in her body.
His girl.
A miracle.
***
Eventually, and reluctantly, he had to pull out to get rid of the condom. They were going to discuss getting tested. He didn’t want to have to leave her body, and they were going to make that a reality ASAP.
When he returned from the bathroom, she was under the covers, both hands tucked under her head, her gaze traveling down his torso and resting on his sex. He liked her watching him. Wanting him. His chest puffed out and wanted to pull a Tarzan.
As if she knew what he was thinking, she chuckled.
He got into bed, pulled her flush against his body, and kissed her forehead. Then stayed there, his lips resting against her skin.
“Tell me,” she whispered into his neck.
He didn’t want the outside world in their bed, but he needed to talk to her. Tell her the things he could say only to her.
“Amy couldn’t go with her to the shrink. Something family related.”
“Amy. The bestie?”
“Yeah. So Sofia drove herself to the therapist’s office. The cops guess her ex had been tailing her for a while, but since she was always with her girls or at home, the first opportunity to get her alone presented itself that day.”
Motherfucker. Gio could kill him with his bare hands. Could. But wouldn’t. For the first time though, he understood the urge, and it scared him.
“Apparently, it took him a while to figure out which office she had gone to, which is why the session was almost over when he burst in with the gun out. The receptionist took one look at him and ducked behind her desk. Cops said she probably saved her life by avoiding a confrontation with him. But she was smart and called nine-one-one right away.”
Ace tucked her head against his shoulder and hugged him tighter against her.
“Sofia stood up when she heard the door open. That’s all she remembers, and the shrink is in no shape to fill in the blanks right now. All we know is that brave woman saved my sister’s life when she stood in front of that fuckin’ lunatic and took a bullet in the chest.”
“How is she?”
“Recovering. Which the doctors can’t believe. The bullet went through the right lobe of her lungs. She lost a lot of blood by the time the cops barged in.”
“Sofia?”
“Is in Sicily with my folks and our younger sister, Aurora. My father arranged for Sofia to live with relatives so she can finish high school over there. My mom and Aurora are staying for the summer.”
“She going to get help?”
“Yeah. My father arranged that too.”
“Good.”
He pulled back a little so he could see her beautiful face. “You gonna tell me now how you knew it was me at the airport?”
She smiled.
“I will in the tub.”
Bathroom
Their suite
Fairmont Hotel
Mirabelle
After she’d done her business, she turned on the water and dropped a bath bomb into the swimming-pool-size tub. Gio walked in when she was bending over, swirling her hand through the water.
“Sweet Jesus.”
She looked over her shoulder.
“You have a really fine ass, baby. I’m getting ideas.”
“That so?”
In the six seconds it took him to run out to the bedroom, get a condom, roll it on his dick, and get up behind her, she’d turned off the faucets. When his heavy erection pressed against her crease, she grabbed onto the edge of the wall with one hand and the rim of the tub with the other. He ran his big, strong hands over her hips then focused on the globes of her bottom, squeezing and teasing. She felt the head of his dick pushing against her core, then a moment later he slid in slowly, seating himself as far inside her as there was room for him. Then he leaned over her back, reached around, and palmed her breasts.
“Goddamn magnificent,” he breathed into her hair. “Work of fuckin’ art.”
Well, who was she to disagree?
He began rocking, the motion and the pressure sublime. As he picked up the pace, he lifted off her, moving his hands down her sides to grab her hips. She glanced back as he started pistoning, and yeah, he was watching himself move in and out of her. A mental snapshot of his expression seared itself into her brain. Complete concentration coupled with wonder and exhilaration.
The sex was amazing. He was a god. But what got to her the most was the connection. How knowing each other as they did had set the stage for this joining. And that she was the one giving him pleasure after so much pain…her heart almost couldn’t take how intense her feelings were.
Blissing out, she got lost in the sensations and began to thrust back, the slapping of their bodies a celestial symphony that ended with him grunting and rutting as she kept calling out his name.
Sitting in the hot water, facing each other, her legs draped over his, she enjoyed watching his gaze fix on how the tops of her breasts appeared and disappeared in the gentle waves. “You know,” she said quietly, “I have a varied skill set.”
His smirk of ownership was breathtaking. “Oh baby, I know. You’ve definitely got skills.”
She laughed. “Thank you, but I didn’t mean sexual prowess.”
“Well, I sure as hell did.”
So easy to love. “I was giving the opener to how I knew you at the airport.”
“Ah.” He leaned back against the towel she had folded and placed on the tub’s rim.
“I love to write. It’s an outlet. But my true strengths are more technical.”
He quirked a brow.
“Self-taught hacker.”
He sat up. “No shit?”
“Absolutely, no shit.”
He made a rolling motion with his hand.
“Without going into the backstory right now – ”
“Why not?”
“It’ll take too long.”
He gestured between the
m. “You going somewhere?”
She dipped her head and grinned. “Ah, no.”
“Well then?”
From the moment she’d decided to sneak into that hotel manager’s office and break into TLC’s database, she’d known she would tell Gio the whole of it. She couldn’t imagine creating a deeper intimacy without telling him the truth. He, of all the people in the world, could understand what living with a few secrets meant.
“My mother fled the Ukraine when she was pregnant with me. From the little she’d told me, and from what I was able to learn, my father was a sex trafficker, and my mother – her name was Inna, Inna Surkis – was one of his victims.”
Gio slid back against the wall of the tub so fast, water sloshed over the side.
She tilted her chin down. “An inauspicious beginning.”
He nodded for her to continue.
“She made it to Canada and stayed in Montreal for a few months. She was determined to come to the US. She wanted me to be born here. To be a citizen. She thought she was somewhere near Albany, New York, when she went into labor. Since she was here illegally, she didn’t go to a hospital. She told me I was born under a pretty bridge near a field with lots of yellow flowers. I have no idea where that is.”
He’d drawn up his knees and wrapped his arms around them.
“She named me Natalia. It means Christmas Day.”
“Fits,” he whispered with a small smile. “You’re certainly my present.”
“You hungry? ’Cause I’m starved and this water’s getting cold.”
He got out of the tub, held out his hand and helped her out, then he took a towel and wrapped it around her, making a production of tucking the end in between her breasts.
“You have a fixation.”
“Oh yeah. It’s migrating to an obsession as we speak.”
She looked down to see his considerable erection waving hello. “You’re going to be like that for a while, huh?”
“Forty or fifty years, I figure.”
Her heart stopped and her stomach dropped to her knees. Fantasizing about a future with him while lying in bed in Oregon was a dream she’d barely dared to have. Hearing him codify it as fact shattered her and put her back together at the same time.
“Well, before we get to work on curbing your enthusiasm,” he barked out a laugh, “let’s get some fuel to make that happen.”
He walked over to the tub and flipped the little silver switch to let out the water. She was unabashed about watching every move he made. Talk about bouncing a nickel off someone’s ass. And those thighs, holy hell, they were Michelangelo sculptures. She loved every inch of his body, but those thighs made her sex quiver.
Officially, she had become a lacrosse fan.
“Like what you see, baby?”
She shrugged. “I can work with it.”
He grabbed her around the waist, yanked her against him, and gave her a wet sloppy kiss with lots of tongue.
A half hour later they were sitting at the round table in the living room of the suite, being served by a waiter. After the all the domes had been removed from the plates and platters, Gio slipped the guy enough cash to make him light up and say, “Thanks, man,” before he slipped out the door.
Gio passed her the breadbasket, and while she took a piece of focaccia from the selection, he poured olive oil onto her bread plate, then he added a couple of dots of balsamic vinegar. He did the same for himself, then he pulled out a small roll, tore it in half, and dunked it in the oil/vinegar mix. As he stuffed the bread in his mouth, he looked across the table at her.
“I thought you were starved.”
“Mmmm. Hmmm. I am.”
He jumped up, threw his napkin on the chair, came around the table, and scooped her up. He walked the few feet to the couch, laid her down, dropped his robe, and opened hers.
“Don’t move.”
Back in moments with a condom covering his impossibly impressive cock, he knelt between her legs, grabbed a cushion from the back of the sofa, shoved it under her ass, then yanked her forward. As he sank deep inside her, he let out a sigh as if it’d been months since they’d been joined.
Natalia knew an addiction when she saw one.
The couch
Their suite
Fairmont Hotel
Gio
The linguine carbonara had gone cold, but Gio didn’t give a shit. After fucking Natalia two times – he loved that he finally knew her name, but what was with the M? – he’d gotten up and put together plates of food for them. They ate sitting side by side on the couch. She’d put her robe on but left it open so he could see her breasts and sex. God, pasta had never tasted this good before.
Watching her eat was a revelation. His girl didn’t do anything in half measure. She hummed every time she took a bite of something new, and she drank her wine like she meant business. What a fucking pleasure not to be with someone who pushed food around her plate like it was poison. He laughed to himself. His girl ate like she fucked. All in, noisy and wild, enjoying every minute like it was her last.
“Taste good, baby?”
“Hell yeah. Someone in that kitchen is Italian.”
Gio smiled. Wait ’til she tasted his nonna’s food.
“So, did you grow up in Albany?”
She shook her head, then wiped her mouth with her napkin. “No. Someone from my mother’s village, and don’t ask me the name of the place, she never told me, and I have a feeling she lied to everyone about where she was from, had moved to Providence, and my mom had gotten it in her head that’s where we had to live. She liked the meaning of the name of the city, and she thought she’d find her countrymen there. Turned out she was right. There’s a Ukrainian Orthodox church in Woonsocket. There was a Ukranian family that lived near us in Providence, and they used to drive us to church.”
“You speak Ukranian?”
“Tak. Vy krasyvyy dyyavol.”
“You going to tell me what you said?”
She grinned and shook her head.
“Was that last word devil?”
She laughed. “You do have an ear for languages.”
He shrugged. “Maybe. But I know my girl, and she’s wicked.”
She smiled at her plate.
“Sounds like you had a good childhood.”
“For a while. We were poor and lived in a tiny flat, but we were happy. My mother cleaned houses, and slowly learned English. I learned when I went to kindergarten.”
“Same for my father. He said he learned fast so the other kids didn’t make fun of him.”
“Yep. It’s sink or swim. Even in kindergarten.”
They returned to their food, and when she put her plate on the side table, she drew in a deep breath. “Everything changed, and not for the better, when my mother married my stepfather.” Gio’s hands curled into fists. “She’d met him at church, and I never liked him. He creeped me out. I was nine when they met, and I didn’t like the way he looked at me. She never noticed. I think she was so happy to have found a man who was willing to take on someone else’s kid, she couldn’t see him for who he was until it was too late. She’d told everyone that my father died before I was born, and until I was in high school, that’s what I believed too.”
Gio had put his plate on the coffee table, and as she continued talking, he felt his blood begin to boil. He had a feeling he knew where this was going, and he felt murderous already.
“We moved into his apartment, which was three times the size of ours. He drove a truck for a delivery company, so he made decent money. The minute after they got married, he told my mother she wasn’t allowed to work anymore. Initially, I think she was relieved. She’d worked so hard, and for such long hours, the idea she didn’t have to must’ve been wonderful.”
He couldn’t take it anymore. He had to know. “What happened, baby?”
“It took two months, maybe three before he started beating the shit out of her. Dinner wasn’t on the table on time. His clothes weren’t clean
enough. The house was a mess. All of it bullshit, but any excuse to go after her. He must’ve raped her as often as he beat her.” She drained her wineglass, and he handed her his.
“She didn’t know she had rights. She didn’t know that because she was married to a US citizen, she didn’t have to worry about being ‘illegal’ anymore. He told her constantly if she reported him to the police they were going to take me away from her and send her back to the Ukraine.” She took a couple more sips of wine. “He never touched me. He yelled at me sometimes, but I think he knew that if he hurt me in any way that she’d never tolerate it.”
Fuck. Gio had to keep his shit together. Natalia was always so cool with him. He had to give her that back. But, man, he wanted this guy dead. By sunup.
“As I got older, I started pleading with her to leave him. But by then, she was too afraid. She thought if she left, he’d come after her and kill her. Which he probably would have. When I got to high school, I started looking things up during computer lab. That’s how I learned about her rights. But she didn’t listen to me. She was fading away. The woman she used to be was gone, and she was a robot, doing everything she could to not get hit or raped. I knew I had to save her, but I didn’t know what to do. One day after school, I was in the lab and a computer nerd tried to hit on me. We got to talking, and that’s how I found out about hacking and the dark web.” She shrugged. “I was a fast learner and good at it.”
She stopped and looked at him like she had something to say, but she didn’t know if she should say it.
“You can tell me anything, baby. Anything.”
“If I tell you this, you’re going to be an accessory after the fact.”
He couldn’t help it, he bust out laughing. When she looked insulted, he put up his hands and said, “No. No. This isn’t about you. It’s about me. My family. I’m a walking accessory before, during, and after the fact.”
She tilted her head.
“Lemme tell you who my father is.”
“I know already.”
“Huh?”