The Return of the Di Sione Wife

by Caitlin Crews

  Dario thought he might explode right there.

  Instead, he shrugged out of his shirt and kicked off his trousers, then moved behind her, reveling in the harsh sounds of her uneven breaths in the quiet room.

  “What about my shoes?” she whispered when he smoothed his hands over her hips, as if he was trying to memorize them anew, imprint them into his palms.

  “Leave them on,” he muttered.

  And he lost himself in her. He threw the past out of his head and he simply drowned in her the way he wanted to do. The feel of her warm, soft skin beneath his hands. The noises she made, tiny gasps and sweet moans, all leading to that critical point where her breathing became panting instead.

  He flipped her over, then tossed her farther up the wide mattress and followed her down. He kissed her again. Deeper, wilder. And this time it didn’t matter where they were. This time, he didn’t have to stop.

  Dario couldn’t imagine there would ever be another night with her, not after what he planned to do tomorrow. And this wasn’t like the last night he’d spent with her six years ago when he’d had no idea that she was betraying him or that it would be the last time he’d get to touch her. This time he was ready.

  This time, he knew exactly what he’d be missing and how much it would hurt, loath as he was to admit it to himself.

  So he kissed her like a drowning man, and when he couldn’t take any more of it, he moved to lavish attention on her breasts again. And when she was writhing beneath him, her arms thrown over her head in abandon and her back arched high, he moved even lower.

  He trailed fire over her belly, then moved over that bright red thong at last. He pulled her long legs over his shoulders, then used his own width to keep her thighs apart. He liked the way she trembled, the way her breath sawed in and out of her and how she came up on her elbows to watch him.

  Dario caught her gaze for a moment. If he didn’t know better, he’d have believed that sheen of vulnerability in her dark eyes, that faint hint of emotion in her full lower lip. If he was still the fool he’d been, that might have ripped him apart. He could feel something hollow inside of him, as if it had.

  But that was nothing more than another ghost, and there was no place here for that.

  There was only tonight. There was only this.

  Sex, he told himself harshly. Nothing more.

  And then he pressed his mouth to the V between her legs, covered in that red lace, and made her call out his name.

  She shook beneath him, the sharp heels of the high shoes digging at his back, and only when she made that high-pitched sound he liked too much did he tug the bright red thong aside, and lick his way into her heat at last.

  * * *

  He was like a storm.

  Anais couldn’t catch her breath, couldn’t recover. Couldn’t do a single thing in all the world but lose herself in the tumult and fire of Dario’s wicked, masterful mouth against the part of her that ached so hot and needy she worried it might actually kill her. Or he would, and she doubted she’d mind.

  He built up that fire, using his lips and tongue and the scrape of the jaw he still hadn’t shaved. It was as if he’d plugged her into an electrical outlet. She hummed. She burned. She burst into flame again and again.

  She dug her hands into his hair and held on while he licked her straight over the edge and into oblivion.

  She’d almost forgotten the shattering. The sweet splintering. The monstrous ache that only Dario could ease, and the terrible need that only he brought out in her and only he ever assuaged.

  And when she came back to herself he was already moving, tugging her thong from her legs and pulling her shoes from her feet, throwing one and then the next aside. She thought she heard them thunk against the hardwood floor, but then again, perhaps it was only her poor heart as it beat hard against the cage of her ribs and left her feeling a delicious sort of helpless as she tried to slow her breathing.

  She couldn’t seem to move. Or think. Or care too much about her inability to do either. One tremor chased another, leaving her boneless in the center of his bed. She heard the crinkle of foil that told her he was sheathing himself and then Dario was crawling over her, hauling her with him into the center of the bed before he propped himself above her on his elbows.

  And for a searing moment, all he did was gaze down at her.

  His face was drawn and his blue eyes glittered dark with the same passion she could feel sweeping through her, as bright as if she’d never broken apart beneath his talented mouth. As if he’d never thrown her over that cliff once already.

  She moved then, lifting the hand that had once worn his ring so proudly and placing it against his beautiful face. She didn’t speak. She wasn’t sure she could. She didn’t know what on earth she’d say even if she could find the words.

  Dario reached between them and positioned himself at her entrance, never shifting that intense blue gaze from hers. And then slowly, so slowly, he pushed himself inside her. Inch by glorious, impossible inch.

  At last, she thought, at last...

  Still he continued to slide himself into her as if he had all the time in the world to let her body accommodate him, for her channel to stretch to fit him. She couldn’t help but remember their first time, when she’d been so scared and overwhelmed and in love with him. And he’d taken his time then, too. He’d built that wildfire between them higher and higher, thrown her into bliss twice, before he’d moved to claim her completely.

  Just like now, he’d gone slow. So slow. So that his possession had felt inevitable. So that she’d shook beneath him, craving him, desperate to feel him sheathed inside her as far as he could go.

  She didn’t think she was the only one remembering that faraway night, the two of them wrapped up in each other in his Manhattan bedroom with the whole great city a glittering flame outside his window. Anais had clung to him and welcomed him and found herself in him, and nothing had ever been the same after that.

  So, too, would nothing be the same after this. But at least she knew that now. She wasn’t that overawed virgin anymore. She knew exactly what she was doing.

  If she kept telling herself that, maybe it would eventually be true.

  Dario settled himself completely against her, stretching her. Anais could see the tension that corded his neck and made his arms like granite. She could see the mad glitter in his eyes that reminded her of the whole of Manhattan outside that window in his old apartment, and she could feel him, bold and male and uncompromising, so deep inside her it was hard to tell which one of them was which.

  As if it was her first time all over again, she felt moisture gather in the corners of her eyes. And the way she had then, she moved her hips experimentally, to see if it made him blow out a breath the way it had before.

  When it did, that mouth of his crooked up in the corner.

  “This is no time for games, Anais,” he told her in that gorgeously dark voice of his that swept through her like a new caress, setting her alight.

  And only then did he begin to move.

  He set a hard pace, and she met him. He dropped down to take her mouth again, slipping his hands beneath her bottom to lift her and hold her precisely where he wanted her as he thrust into her.

  She clung to his shoulders and she wrapped her legs around his hips and she knew this dance. She knew precisely how they fit together, exactly how they moved. As if they’d been made for this. As if no time had passed.

  And it took no time at all, or it took a lifetime, before Anais was strung out on that same high cliff all over again. She heard her own voice calling out wordless prayers into the dark, and she heard his low laugh, and then she was shattering all around him all over again.

  And this time, he followed her over the edge—and she was sure she heard him shout her name as he fell.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ANAIS WOKE TO find the sun streaming across her face and the sound of the surf in her ears. She blinked in all the brightness and then sat up too quickl
y, taking in the vast room, the sleek furnishings, the astonishing softness of the dizzyingly high-thread-count sheets against her skin.

  She wasn’t particularly surprised to find herself alone. She wasn’t necessarily happy about it, of course, but she couldn’t claim she was surprised. No matter the places they could take each other in bed, out of it she and Dario seemed destined to do nothing but hurt each other.

  Over and over again.

  Anais moved very slowly, very carefully, to the edge of the bed and was faintly disappointed that nothing sang out in pain as she did. No twinges or tugs to remind her in that raw, physical way of how she’d spent most of the previous night, or with whom. Nothing that would last.

  She told herself that was better. Memories were bad enough. They could lurk about for years, as she knew all too well. They snuck into the corners of things and blended into the shadows. They could ruin a woman without her even realizing it, popping up in dreams whenever she closed her eyes and making her unwilling to even consider moving on the way she should. No matter that he had, and years before.

  But this was neither the place nor the time to worry about the ways Dario would likely haunt her now. Besides, she’d had six years to find a way to handle it before and she’d managed it. This would be no different. She’d be fine.

  Eventually, she assured herself, you’ll be perfectly fine.

  Her clothes were draped over the chaise in the corner near the open glass doors, the screen letting in the ocean’s song and the summer sunlight but none of Hawaii’s less pleasant realities.

  Reality is better, no matter how unpleasant, she told herself firmly as she dressed. This place—Dario—it’s all a fantasy that has nothing to do with you or your actual life. It never did. It all might as well be another dream.

  That made her feel better—or at least ready to face him. She raked her fingers through her hair, letting it fall where it would and happy that it conformed to its usual sleek, straight, depressingly unchangeable style without her having to do anything more than that. She’d never before realized how lucky she was to have such hair that allowed her to look a lot more pulled together than a woman wearing last night’s outfit should.

  She slipped her shoes back on as if they were armor and she then squared her shoulders before she pushed through the door and marched out into the vast living area prepared to do battle—but it was empty.

  That confused her. It seemed so unlike him. She stood there for a moment, listening for the usual sounds that indicated Dario was near—the brusque clicking of the keys on his laptop, the sound of his voice issuing orders on the phone. But there was nothing. The villa was hushed. Still.

  Empty, she thought. But she couldn’t quite believe that.

  There was what looked like a stack of papers on the kitchen counter, but she ignored it as she walked to each of the bedrooms and looked inside. Each was as beautifully decorated and as empty as the next. He wasn’t in the little den with its massive flat-screen television, or in the separate office space equipped with a massive steel desk. He wasn’t on the lanai or out on his secluded beach. He wasn’t in the private pool on the far side of the villa, either.

  He was gone.

  Almost as if he’d never been here on Maui at all.

  And Anais could admit it. It surprised her. And, more than that, felt a lot like a slap. The hurt feelings were silly, she recognized, but the other feeling bubbling up inside of her was a complicated sort of disappointment—as if she’d wanted what would likely have been another tense, unpleasant scene with Dario.

  “Surely not,” she murmured to herself, her voice the only sound in the villa.

  She shook her head as she crossed the living area again, amazed at herself. At her own capacity for self-delusion and what amounted to self-harm. And she knew—she knew—there was a storm waiting there in the distance, bunched up on the horizon, dark and menacing. Thunder rolled deep inside her and the skies were threatening and low, but she was ignoring all of it. She was refusing to play through the images in her head of last night’s abandon.

  The way he’d touched her, the ways she’d tasted him—no.

  She was pretending everything was fine—that she was fine. She was pretending that she could handle what she’d done last night and the fact he’d disappeared this morning, even though she’d half expected he would. She was desperately pretending she couldn’t feel that cold harbinger wind on her skin, making every hair on her body stand on end, letting her know in no uncertain terms that there was no outrunning the storm—the terrible reckoning for all her recklessness—that was headed straight for her.

  But maybe she could delay it awhile. Just a little while.

  At the kitchen counter, she picked up the bag she’d forgotten she’d even brought with her last night and pulled out her car keys. And she couldn’t help but glance over at the stack of papers, which it took her a beat or two longer than it should have to realize was actually a legal document.

  With her name on it.

  Her stomach flipped over, then plummeted straight down to her feet.

  She reached over and pulled the papers toward her, and felt something like frozen solid as she scanned the first page. Once. Twice. It was only the third attempt that she was able to really, truly comprehend that she was looking at divorce papers.

  Divorce papers for her and Dario, to be precise.

  All drawn up and ready for her signature, demanding the divorce on the grounds of Anais’s infidelity and naming his brother Dante as her lover. Just as he’d promised before in what she’d truly believed was simply a hateful, throwaway comment.

  It took her another long moment to realize she was shaking. That the words were blurring there before her on the page.

  There was a single sticky note attached to the last page, where the line for her signature sat, blank and cruel, next to the bold dash of Dario’s name in an offensively bright blue shade of ink. The shiny yellow note contained nothing but a phone number with a New York City area code.

  Dario’s, she was certain. Not that she could understand why he’d left her divorce papers and his phone number. It didn’t make any sense.

  That terrible storm drew closer, the thunder growling ferociously at her as it came. She could feel the leading edge of the rain, battering at her where she stood...

  Her phone began to ring in her bag, forcing her to breathe. To look away from the papers and that damned phone number. To shove back that storm as best she could. She tried to gather herself as she rummaged in her bag, and she’d at least taken a few calming breaths by the time she pulled out her smartphone to see her aunt’s number on the screen.

  “Bonjour, Tante,” she murmured as she answered it, trying to sound calm. Normal. In one piece.

  “Is Damian with you?” her aunt demanded in panicked French, without bothering to greet Anais at all, which could not have been more unlike her.

  And Anais forgot about storms and papers and everything else.

  “What? Damian? No—”

  “The school just called,” her aunt told her, her voice a streak of high-pitched upset, hardly intelligible. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but he’s gone. He went out with the other children for their midmorning recess and he never came back in. They’re going to call the police, but I said I’d check with you—”

  And that was when she understood. The harsh truth fell through her like a guillotine, swift and gleaming and lethal.

  Dario’s change in behavior last night. The abrupt switch from antagonist to lover. His absence this morning, the divorce papers, the damned phone number.

  He’d planned the whole thing.

  Including and especially her sensual surrender to him in bed, not once or even twice, but three times before she’d dropped off into an exhausted, dreamless sleep in the blue light before dawn.

  “No, Tante,” she managed to say. She would never know how she managed to keep herself from breaking down, right there on the phone. “Tell them not to ca
ll the police. Tell them it’s fine. I know where he is.”

  “But, Anais—”

  “I’ll explain everything when I get home,” she managed to grit out, and that wasn’t a lie. Not exactly. Though she had no idea where she’d start.

  She ended the call with her aunt and yanked the divorce papers toward her, flipping through the pages with numb fingers until she reached the signatures and that scrawled taunt of a phone number. It took her two tries to enter it correctly because her hands shook so badly and her thumbs seemed suddenly twice their previous size.

  It rang. Endlessly. Anais thought she aged a thousand years before she heard the line connect and then Dario’s smooth, calm voice, as effective as a gut punch. She doubled over, right there at the counter.

  “Anais.”

  “Where is he?” Her voice was rough. Terrible. “What did you do?”

  “He’s perfectly fine,” Dario said coolly. “He’s happily watching a movie on his tablet.”

  “I told you I’d let you see him, you bastard. You didn’t have to take him during recess! The school were going to call the police until they realized you were his father!”

  “Go ahead,” Dario invited her, and he didn’t sound particularly cool any longer. “My son and I will be in New York in approximately ten hours. My entire legal team looks forward to handling the issue, however you choose to address it.”

  She couldn’t make her trained legal brain work the way it should. She couldn’t think.

  “Dario, you can’t—”

  “I can and I did.” His voice was the harshest she’d ever heard it. Worse than a stranger’s, judgmental and cruel. “You never should have hidden my child from me, Anais. You reap what you sow.”

  And then, impossibly, he disconnected the call.

  The smartphone fell from her hand and clattered against the hard marble, but she was already racing around the counter to pitch herself against the sunken sink and lose the contents of her stomach right there. Once. Again.