I bit my lip. “How long until you…?”
“Not long, if I go a bit faster.” He scanned my face and I nodded. He propped himself up on his elbows and thrust faster and a bit harder, and I pressed my lips together and buried my face against his shoulder, clutching his back. The pain was back, but I wanted Luca to come. “Aria?” Luca rasped.
“Keep going. Please. I want you to come.”
He growled and kept thrusting. His pants came faster. He thrust deeper than before and I bit down on his shoulder to keep from whimpering in pain. Luca tensed with a groan, then he shuddered and I could feel him expand even further in me, filling me up until I was sure I’d come apart. He stopped moving, his lips against my throat. I could feel him softening in me and I almost breathed a sigh in relief. I held onto Luca, relishing in the feel of his quick heartbeat and the sound of his harsh breathing.
Luca pulled out and lay down beside me, pulling me into his arms. He brushed back my hair from my sweaty face. I felt something trickling out of me and shifted uncomfortably.
“I’ll get a washcloth.” Luca got out of bed to head for the bathroom. I felt cold without him. I stretched my legs but winced. I sat up and my eyes widened. There was blood smeared on my thighs and the bed, mingled with Luca’s semen. Luca knelt on the bed beside me. He must have cleaned himself because there wasn’t any blood on him. “There’s much more blood than the fake scene you created during our wedding night.” My voice was shaky.
Luca nudged my legs apart and pressed the warm wet washcloth against me. I sucked in a breath. Luca kissed my knee. “You were a lot tighter than I thought,” he said quietly. He pulled the washcloth away and I flushed, but he discarded it on the floor without another glance before he pressed his hand against my abdomen. “How bad is it?”
I put my head back on the pillow. “Not that bad. How can I complain when you’re covered in scars from knife and bullet wounds?”
“We’re not talking about me. I want to know how you feel, Aria. On a scale of one to ten, how much does it hurt?”
“Now? Five?”
Luca tensed. He lowered himself beside me, curled an arm around me and scanned my face. “And during?”
I avoided his eyes. “If ten is for the worst pain I’ve ever felt, then eight.”
“The truth.”
“Ten,” I whispered.
Luca clenched his jaw. “Next time will be better.”
“I don’t think I can again so soon.”
“I didn’t mean now,” he said firmly, kissing my temple. “You’ll be sore for a while.”
“On a scale of one to ten, how fast and hard did you go? The truth,” I mimicked his words.
“Two.”
“Two?” I must have looked pretty horrified because Luca rubbed my stomach lightly. “We have time. I will go as gentle as you need me to.”
“I can’t believe Luca – The Vice - Vitiello said ‘gentle’,” I said teasingly to light the mood.
Luca smirked. He cupped my face and leaned close. “It’ll be our secret.”
Emotions crowded in my chest. “Thanks for being gentle. I never thought you would be.”
Luca laughed, a raw sound. “Believe me, nobody’s more surprised about this than me.”
I rolled onto my side, wincing, and snuggled against Luca’s shoulder. “You never were gentle to someone?”
“No,” he said bitterly. “Our father taught Matteo and me that any kind of gentleness was a weakness. And there was never any room in my life for it.”
Even if the words wanted to get stuck in my throat, I said. “What about the girls you were with?”
“They were a means to an end. I wanted to fuck, so I looked for a girl and fucked her. It was hard and fast, definitely not gentle. I mostly fucked them from behind so I didn’t have to look them in the eyes and pretend I gave a shit about them.”
He sounded cold and cruel.
I kissed his tattoo, wanting to banish that part of him again. His arms around me tightened. “The only person who could have taught me how to be gentle was my mother.” I held my breath. Would he tell me about her now? “But she killed herself when I was nine.”
“I’m sorry.” I wanted to ask what happened but I didn’t want to push him and make him retreat behind his cold mask. Instead I cupped his cheek. He looked startled by the gesture but didn’t pull away. I licked my lip, trying to suppress my curiosity.
“Does it still hurt?” he asked suddenly. For a moment, I didn’t know what he was talking about. He brushed a hand across my abdomen. “Yeah, but talking helps.”
“How does it help?”
“It distracts me.” I gathered my courage. “Can you tell me more about your mother?”
“My father hit her. He raped her. I was young but I understood what was going on. She couldn’t bear my father anymore, so she decided to slice her wrists and overdose on dope.”
“She shouldn’t have let you and Matteo alone.”
“I found her.”
I jerked up and stared. “You found your mother after she’d cut her wrists?”
“That was actually the first body I saw. Of course it wasn’t the last.” He shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “The floor was covered with her blood and I slipped on it and fell. My clothes were soaked with her blood.” His voice was calm, detached. “I ran out of the bathroom screaming and crying. My father found me and slapped me. Told me to be a man and clean myself up. I did. I never cried again.”
“This is horrible. You must have been terrified. You were only a boy.”
He was silent. “It made me tough. At one point every boy has to lose his innocence. The mafia isn’t a place for the weak.”
I knew that. I’d seen how Father had tried to shape Fabiano in the last few years and it always broke my heart when my little brother had to act like a man instead of the young boy that he was. “Emotions aren’t a weakness.”