Simple Faith (The Pagano Brothers Book 1)

by Susan Fanetti

  “Where’s your closet?”

  “Down below. There’s a little room under here, off the living room. I use it as a closet and workspace.”

  “It’s a lovely cottage. I see why your family doesn’t want to give it up.”

  “Yeah. In some ways, it’s as much a family house as the house on Caravel Road.” He pulled her close. “Have you seen enough to be comfortable?”

  “I’m comfortable.”

  “Everything sorted?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Because I want to get you naked and take you to bed.”

  For dinner with his parents, she’d worn a dark blue, wrap-style dress with long sleeves and a flowing skirt that brushed below her knees, because people didn’t give her that alarmed, judgmentally diagnostic look when they couldn’t see her arms and legs. It had the bonus feature of coming off in three quick steps. Trey accomplished them—pulling loose two ties and pushing the open dress off her shoulders—in about three seconds.

  When they’d gone out to the beach, she’d kicked her pumps off, and he’d taken his shoes off, too. Now, she stood in only her black underwear. Trey stood before her in jeans and a striped button-down shirt, just enough buttons undone at the top that she could see the deep notch between his collarbones and a hint of the strong chest beneath it. As she opened his shirt, he lifted her Fibonacci pendant in his fingers. “This looks good on you.”

  “Thank you. I love it. No one’s ever bought me jewelry before.”

  Her words kindled a fire in his eyes. “Sometimes, I don’t know. It almost feels like you were waiting for me.”

  Finishing his buttons, she pushed her hands over the sleek contours of his chest and took his shirt off his shoulders and down his arms. As she grabbed his belt buckle, she smiled up at him. “I think maybe I was.”

  “Jesus, babe.”

  A little word. Four letters. The same number as in her name, and in the word ‘love.’ A typical word. A clichéd word, even. Thousands, probably millions of people called the person they loved ‘babe.’ With so much use, its power should have dwindled to nothing. Yet every time Trey said that simple little word, Lara felt a thrill through her chest. Four letters that held the meaning, I love you, I want you, I claim you.

  I will take care of you.

  She opened his jeans and pushed them and his underwear off his hips. His cock sprang free and brushed her face as she bent to push the jeans down. Without thinking, she kissed his tip and sucked it into her mouth, and Trey inhaled a gasp and nearly jumped out of the mound of his jeans at his ankles.

  She’d not yet given him a blow job. Or anyone, for that matter, but she’d never even considered it with anyone but Trey, so she’d never known before that the idea made her anxious. It was, oddly, bound up in her food weirdness somehow, which made almost no sense, but lots of things about Trey had her thinking disordered. She’d been taking them one at a time, getting to know new feelings and experiences, finding their shapes and boundaries, finding where they fit in the puzzle of her mind. She hadn’t gotten to ‘blow jobs’ yet and worked out why her brain had decided to give her food anxiety over it. Something oral, obviously. Maybe she was afraid of his taste? But obviously that was nonsense. Or not.

  But now she’d had him in her mouth, and he did have a taste, but it wasn’t unpleasant or particularly strong. A little salty, but mainly, at least at this very early stage, when it was only his skin, he tasted the way he smelled—and that was an extremely pleasant sensory experience, his scent.

  She circled his shaft with her hand and kissed him again, swirling her tongue around the head this time.

  “Fuck, Lara, what?”

  He’d never asked her for this. He’d seemed to understand without needing words that it was something she wasn’t ready for. It had taken her a couple of weeks to want him to put his mouth on her, because she felt lonely, unencompassed, when his head was so low on her body. She liked it, she came hard with his mouth on her, but still, she preferred to have him all around her.

  It was different with him in her mouth. He would be all around her. Understanding that, she stood straight and pushed him, naked, to his bed, pushing him again so he sat down, landing on the mattress with a bounce. Then she pushed his thighs apart and knelt between them.

  “Lara, you don’t have to …”

  “I know. I want to. Don’t lie back, though. Stay close.” Wrapping a hand around him again, she leaned in and sucked him into her mouth.

  “Oh shit, oh shit,” he muttered and gathered all her hair, twisting it around his hand. She loved when he did that while they made love, loved the tautness on her scalp, loved the sharp zing when he got close to orgasm and began to pull.

  Her other hand sat beside his thigh on the mattress; after a moment, she felt his other hand on it, linking fingers with her.

  Yes. This was good. He was all around her and inside her, and she was in control.

  She’d never done this before, but it wasn’t so hard. He seemed to like everything she did. Figuring out how to keep her teeth off him while still taking him as deep as she could was the hardest part, but she took it slowly so as not to hurt him, and she found her limit. Experimenting, she sucked and bobbed. She licked up his shaft and all around it. She flicked her tongue around the ridge of his glans. She bent low and licked his balls—that had a slightly stronger taste but not too much, and his reaction sent a bolt of erotic power through her so intense that she soaked her panties, so she did it again, and sucked them, and they went hard under her tongue. She sucked his cock into her mouth again, squeezing her hand around the part she couldn’t take in, and he nearly lifted off the bed.

  His hand pulled, trying to draw her head back. “Lara! Fucking hell, God! Use your hand, babe. I’m gonna come, and I don’t want you to have it in your mouth. Use your hand now!”

  She didn’t want that, either. That was too much. So she pulled back and used her hand, sliding over his hard, wet flesh until he grunted and came. Most of it landed on his chest and thigh, but part of it hit her face. That surprised her, but as Trey collapsed back on the bed, Lara sat on her heels and wiped her cheek. She put a finger in her mouth and took a tiny taste.

  Not exactly delicious, but not awful. Not much taste at all, really. She could probably learn to swallow.

  She climbed onto the bed, straddling him, and grinned down at his handsome, dazed face. “Happy Birthday, Trey Pagano.”

  He laughed and grabbed her, rolling her to her back, so he could grin down at her. “You know I love my David Ortiz-autographed bat, but this is the best birthday present ever.”

  Lara wanted time to stop right here, right now. She’d never felt this happy, this quiet, in her life, and she couldn’t believe she could ever feel it so strongly again. So she didn’t want to go any farther than this moment.

  But then Trey bent down and kissed her, and she wanted what came next.

  ~oOo~

  Lara couldn’t sleep.

  Beside her, Trey slept the heavy sleep of physical exhaustion. They’d made love three times after she’d given him her first blow job ever, and he’d dropped off after the third time almost before they were fully settled into a cozy spoon.

  Normally she slept deeply and well, half or more of every day, but when her anxiety was activated, sleep abandoned her. Too much had happened in this single day. Her mind skittered and spun, trying to find order in so many different emotions—in all the different anxieties she’d felt through the day, all the different kinds of pleasure, the incredibly potent happiness that Trey had unlocked, and the fear that followed it like a poisonous shadow, whispering that if she lost it, she’d never be whole again. All the new things she’d seen, the experiences she’d had. And this house. She was in an unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar sounds and scents. The mini-lights around the room were too bright. The sound of the surf was too loud.

  She couldn’t sleep.

  In her bag was her bottle of sleeping pills. She’d brought it because
she’d known this might happen, that at the very least sleeping in a new place would be difficult or impossible without help. But she didn’t like taking them, especially here, in a loft with a metal spiral staircase. She would sleepwalk; she always did. What if she couldn’t manage those stairs asleep?

  Trey wanted to know when she took the pills, so he could be awake when she walked. But she’d tried to wake him twice, and he was deeply asleep. She could try harder, and succeed eventually, but guilt kept her from that. He was so peaceful, so content.

  For two hours, she tried to sleep without help and failed. When her demons started to rumble and stir, she tried again to gently wake him, but only got a sigh.

  It would be okay. He’d be awake with the sun anyway, and that was only three hours or so off. She wouldn’t walk before then, probably. She’d be okay.

  She slid out of bed and got the pills from her bag. After washing a dose down with water from the little carafe he’d brought up between rounds, Lara eased back into Trey’s sleeping embrace, nestling her naked body into the curve of his.

  A few minutes later, she felt the rolling pull of the drug, and finally relaxed.

  ~ 17 ~

  Her soft, small, supple hands were all over him, touching every span of his skin—his arms, his chest, his belly, his thighs. His face, over his eyes, over his lips, along his cheeks and his jaw, down his throat. Her lips, too; he felt her tasting him, every part of him at once, as if she’d sucked him whole from his head to his feet. Her subtle, perfect breasts, her puffy pink nipples—Jesus, he could feel every part of her on every part of him, but he couldn’t get hold, couldn’t reach her, couldn’t find her in the fog.

  Her legs coiled around his legs, her fingers tangled in his hair, her chest melded with his chest. He could feel her breath, feel the silken caress of her golden hair. He could taste her kiss, taste her skin, taste her need, and he wanted more. Fuck, he needed more.

  And then he was inside her, clenched tight in her taut, tight, slick, soft, hot, wet body. Ah, God, she gripped him, swallowed him, rolled over him, and her mouth, her perfect, beautiful, soft, plump mouth, shaped like a bow, like a hunter’s bow, Cupid’s bow, the bow on the top of the perfect gift.

  Fuck yeah, he was going to come. It gathered like a storm in his belly, and he was so close, God, yes, oh God

  Trey slipped out of the most erotic dream he had ever had in his life, and it was still going, his body still throbbed with it, and shit, he was going to come.

  He tried to roll over, away from Lara so she wouldn’t be in the line of fire when he came in bed like he hadn’t since he was fourteen, but he couldn’t, he was too heavy, weighed down, and oh fuck, Jesus fuck, he was going to come right now.

  Slamming his hands down, meaning to cover himself and control the burst, he hit skin that wasn’t his and finally, fully woke up and opened his eyes. Lara was on top of him, riding him like a show pony, her eyes closed and her head back, holding her tiny breasts in her hands.

  And that was it. Trey came so hard he literally saw stars, and the force of it sliced a sword of pain from the base of his skull through the top of his head. He came and came, and she kept riding him, rocking and surging, going like she was trying to outrun somebody, and he was finished, overcome with sensation, way too much, so much it hurt, and she was still going, like she didn’t know he was finished, like she didn’t know he was there—

  Holy shit.

  “Lara. Lara.” Trey groaned, and grabbed her hips. “Lara!”

  For a few seconds, she kept moving, resisting his grip, and then simply stopped. Her eyes opened, and she looked down at him but didn’t see him. She was asleep. She must have taken her goddamn pills after he’d fallen asleep.

  He should have known she would. She’d brought the pills, and with all the new things he’d asked of her yesterday, meeting his parents, eating at their house, sleeping in this new place—of course she’d taken them to sleep. He was a fucking idiot not to remember and be ready.

  But this was different from finding her watching television, or wandering around the kitchen, or even from that kiss. This was … this felt bad. This felt fucking awful.

  “Lara,” he said, feeling something go loose in his head. “Babe, please wake up. Please.”

  Without any sign that she’d heard him, she got off him—the word dismounted came to his mind—and lay at his side, curling against him with a sigh. Snug as a bug.

  The sky outside the loft window was just starting to glow with the coming sunrise. He picked up his watch from the stool beside the bed. 5:45am.

  Still buzzing with the incendiary power of his climax, his head batting his feelings around, Trey sat up and wiped his hands over his face. Shit, he was shaking.

  Damn, he felt bad. Sick to his stomach, and freaked entirely out.

  In fact, yeah. He felt actually ill. Tossing the covers back, he made his way down to the bathroom. He turned the cold tap on full blast and filled the sink, then shoved his face into the water. The shock of it cleared the last fingers of sleep-fogged confusion from his head, and his stomach settled. But he was still shaky. His heart seemed to wobble with every fast beat. Without thinking much of it, he let himself slither to the floor.

  He’d forgotten to turn the tap off, and water coursed over the lip of the sink. Reaching up, he twisted it off and then sagged against the wall, sitting naked in a puddle of cold water.

  He needed to do a Lara and sort through the mess in his head, taking things one at a time. Why was he so freaked? What was he feeling?

  One: guilt. That one sprang up at once. As he had at the cabin, after that kiss, he felt guilty, like he’d taken advantage of her in her sleep. But he’d been asleep, too. He’d had no control over what had happened, no knowledge of it at all except a dream, until he woken to that incredible orgasm. Which she didn’t remember. And that fucking sucked. So …

  Two: he didn’t know what to call it, but he felt … disappointed? No, too banal a word for how deep this hurt. Hurt. He was hurt. Like, lacerated. She’d fucked him, he’d come hard enough to crack his skull apart, like nothing he’d ever felt before in his life, and she’d never know it. It had meant absolutely nothing to her. Like that kiss at the cabin, which had rocked his socks and basically changed his life, and which she had no memory of whatsoever.

  But that kiss, he’d been awake for. What had just happened, he’d never have allowed if he’d been awake and could have stopped her. He didn’t want anything like that with her if he wasn’t really with her.

  And that was the other thing he was feeling, the slimy floor of it all: violated.

  It wasn’t her fault. And it wasn’t his fault. But he fucking hated that it had happened. He wanted to scrub it off his dick and soak his brain in bleach. He wanted the chance to erase it from his memory, too.

  And then something new occurred to him, and it shook him hard. Sweet hell, what must it be like for Lara, to live with the memories she had and couldn’t escape? He’d just had surprise sleepfucking with the woman he loved, and it felt twisted and wrong and had him sitting on the bathroom floor having an existential crisis. It barely registered on the scale of the things she’d been through.

  She called herself broken. He thought of her as his fairy with a broken wing. But she wasn’t broken. She had deep scars, physical and psychic, but she was whole. She’d survived horrors from the time she was born. Her body might be frail, but her self was warrior-strong.

  Trey gathered himself and stood. He cleaned up the mess he’d made in the bathroom and went back upstairs.

  Lara was peacefully, deeply asleep, in the same curl he’d left her in. He slid under the covers and formed his body around hers, wrapping her up, holding her close.

  ~oOo~

  “How do you want me to be?” Tony Cioccolanti, one of Nick’s enforcers, sat in the passenger seat of Trey’s Audi, his hand on the door handle. They were parked in the nearly empty lot for Cyclone. “Is this menace or damage?”

  “Let�
��s play it by ear,” Trey answered, his eyes on the car beside his, a new Corvette, owned by Kenny Swinton, Kevin’s older brother. “Menace first, property damage if he pushes back at all. Let’s see if he needs more than that.”

  Tony nodded. Though he was only two years older than Trey, and they’d grown up together in the Cove, Tony didn’t like Trey, and the feeling was mutual. When they’d been kids, Tony had been envious of Trey’s last name. Now that they were both in the Pagano Brothers, and Tony had come in a year or so before Trey, he was envious of Trey’s higher, faster climb—which was really the same envy. Trey was a Pagano, and Tony resented him for it.

  Trey thought Tony was an asshole, pure and simple. He’d been a bully when they were kids, and now he was a professional bully.

  Tony understood that he was there to do what Trey wanted, and his hostility had turned the Audi into a rage sauna. They were both there on Nick’s orders, however, so Tony would do what he was told.

  “Let’s get it done, then,” Tony grumbled and got out. He slammed the door hard enough to make the whole Audi rock on its tires, but Trey let it go. He and Tony had gone at it a few times in their lives; they were well matched in size and strength, but Tony fought dirty. Still, the record between them was more or less even; they disputed the results of a couple of their scuffles. Today was not a day to add to the record, so Trey let Tony’s temper roll. Maybe he’d make use of it with Swinton.

  As he got out of his car, he looked up at the nearest security camera on the rear corner of the building. He took off his sunglasses and stared at the lens for a few seconds, then went to the staff entrance, at the side of the building.

  The door was locked, and after two rings of the bell with no response, Trey stepped back, and Tony kicked it in. Starting off right away with property damage, it looked like.