Someone pulls Willa away, and her voice is lost behind a slamming door.
His own wife was trying to protect me, but I’m tired of being protected.
Dario throws me over his shoulder before I can tell him how sick to death of it I am.
“Stop!”
I just want this to stop. The taking. The forcing. The surprises and upheavals. But after Dario throws me over his shoulder, he doesn’t even pause before taking me down the stairs. I’m whipped around corners, blurring the windows at each landing.
Twisting my body, I jab my elbow into the back of his head until he stops on a concrete landing and roughly puts me on my feet.
“You want to stay here?” His shout echoes off the walls. “They’re coming for you.”
“Who?”
“I have no time to explain it to you.”
“Make time.”
“Your family. They’ll be here in under an hour, and you can either come with me or you can sit in that apartment and wait for them to come and take you back.”
“They don’t want me back.”
He shakes his head, palms up, perplexed. Starts to say something. Finds it inadequate or maybe untrue, stopping himself.
“You staying with me… it makes them look weak.”
“And if they get me back, you’ll look weak.”
“I’ll be dead.” He grabs my arms as if I’m about to run away. “I don’t care how I look. I just want you to be safe.”
“I’ll be safe with them. As long as you have me, you’re in danger.”
He bows his head in a kind of overwhelmed resignation.
“I can’t do this anymore. What if I just go back?” I ask.
“What if you do?” He stands straight, looks up the stairs as if considering that old life on the top floor, then back at me. His anger seems to melt into exhaustion.
“Right. What if I do?”
“Then I’ll stay with you until your family comes.”
“How long?” I ask.
“Half an hour.”
“They’ll kill you.”
“I’m not leaving you here alone.”
He’s not talking about owning me or using me as leverage. There’s only one other motivation for him to want to stay here when someone’s coming to kill him.
“To protect me?”
“No.” He presses his eyes and mouth shut for a moment, as if looking inside himself to make sure he’s speaking the truth. “To be with you. Before they find us. Before they take you back. I want that time. It’s mine. I want every second of it, and if that means I stay here with you and wait for…” The sentence falls off the end of a cliff. He takes my hand. “Fine. It’s fine. We’ve done it my way from the beginning. Now we can do it your way.”
He starts to pull me up the stairs, but I resist.
“You’ll stay here just to be with me, even though you think I’m staying to be rescued so I can get away from you?” I ask.
“I don’t think you want to be rescued. I don’t even think you want to get away from me.”
“What do you think I want?”
He shrugs as if it’s obvious. “You want to make your own decision.”
He’d stay here and wait for his death just to be with me.
I squeeze his hand and lead him up the stairs. When we reach the top floor, the hallway is unnervingly quiet.
“I need to get back into my suite,” I say.
He takes me through his apartment and the cut-out wall. The suite was only abandoned a few minutes ago, but there’s a forlorn feeling in the air. The newly exposed interior of the fallen wall has released a stale, musty smell.
Dario closes the blinds.
“Give me a minute,” I say, crouching in front of what’s left of my mural to scoop up dropped pencils. “Let me get this together.” I drop the pencils in the box. “I think some got stuck in the couch cushions if you want to check.”
He doesn’t move. At first, I think he’s staring at the hole in the wall, but he’s looking at the intact half of my mural. Hands in his pockets, as if he’s not interested in checking the crevices of the couch. Men are all the same. I rip off the cushions and throw them to the side.
“What does it mean?” he asks.
“I have no idea.” I grab what pencils I can see and hunt around the seams for stragglers. “Just whatever I was thinking about.” With the last rescued pencil in my grip, I toss them all into the box and shut it. “I’m going to have to carry this, I guess.”
He takes the box and puts it aside.
“Let me move the couch away from the plaster.” He brushes his lips along the length of my neck, and I’m rendered nonverbal. “Then I’ll fuck you on it.”
“We have time? I thought—?”
He silences me with a kiss I can’t refuse, and I’m immediately made of softened butter, wrapping my legs around him so I can rub myself against his erection like an animal in heat.
“Fuck moving the furniture.” He pulls my pants down and props me against the arm of the couch, grinding against my bare, wet pussy.
We must have time, if this is what he wants.
“First.” He unbuckles, and I hold on to his neck. “I’m going to fuck this cunt like I own it. Then I’m going to fuck it slow, over and over.” He releases his cock, fisting the thick shaft. “I’m going to die fucking you.”
“Do we have time?”
He thrusts into me. “No.” He pushes again, burying himself deep. “You’re going to take my cock until you forget how it feels when I’m not inside you.”
“But—”
“God, you feel so good.”
He keeps his promise to fuck me like he owns me, grinding fast and deep while he pulls me against him like a doll. My legs are gelatin, and the rest of me is a simmering pot on the stove with the flame turned up to high.
He fucks me harder and groans with satisfaction, grabbing a breast and squeezing until I whimper because the pain delays the oncoming orgasm.
“I’m going to mark your soul,” he says against my neck with the seriousness of a wedding vow. “You’ll belong to me in darkness.”
“Yes.” I don’t know what I’m agreeing to, but yes, yes, yes. “Make me yours.”
“You won’t know how to come without thinking of me.”
“God, yes.”
“You want to come.”
“I do. Please.”
Still inside me, he brings me to the center of the couch, his arms wrapped tightly around me, and fucks me until all the stars fall from the sky and fill my body.
As we come down, he kisses my face and neck, whispering sweetness I never thought I’d hear from any man.
“I don’t want to get out from under you, but I have personal needs to attend to.”
He laughs and gets off me. We’re both still half-dressed, wrinkled and twisted. I hop to my bathroom, strip down to nothing, clean up, and dress in something clean and comfortable.
When I get to the living room, he’s fully dressed with his back to me, facing my silly mural. The couch is even farther from the wall.
From behind, I slip my arms around his waist.
“I’m all over this thing,” he says.
“I was just drawing whatever came into my mind.” I stand next to him. He puts his arm around me. “You came into it a lot.”
He kisses me and looks back at the wall as if he’s on a rooftop looking over the East River.
“I’m ready,” I say, sliding away. “I’ll just take the suitcase Oria packed, then we can go.”
“Agreed. I have better supplies at my place.”
“You’ll have to carry the art box downstairs. It won’t fit.” I snap up the suitcase handle.
He looks at me with his hands on his hips and his brow in a knot.
“What?” I ask.
“We’re staying.”
“I thought we were going.”
“You said you wanted to make your own decisions,” he says.
“And you said that if I decided to stay, you’d stay with me.”
“Right.”
“And we both know you have no one else here, so it’s you against however many. So you have no chance. We talked about this. They’ll kill you.”
“I thought…” He stops himself, letting out a quick laugh.
“That I wanted you to die?”
“Not that you wanted it.”
“That I didn’t care? That I’d let you get yourself killed?” I put my palm against his chest. The pound of his heart is the same. Not weaker or slower for the sacrifice he thought he had to make for me. “Dario. Really?”
He runs his fingers through his hair, looking away. He’s as tall and powerful as he ever was, but his vulnerability is unbearable.
“We should go.” He kisses the top of my head. “We’re already behind.”