by CD Reiss
“My violet,” he whispers into my shoulder. We’re on our sides, rolling across the bed, locked together chest to chest. “No one can take you. You’re mine. Only mine.”
“Yes.” The pent-up emotions of the last days have no name. They’ve been blended into a mass of pressure in my heart and their release sends tears streaming down my face. “Only yours.”
“Mine.” He exhales a short breath that cracks as if he’s also moved.
The power of his vulnerability pushes deep inside me, and I am engulfed in it. Overcome. The orgasm is a tsunami that’s beyond physical. It’s the inverse of every fear, every cry of despair, every ounce of rage I’ve been through, forced outward.
It’s exactly the heaven he promised, and it’s real, but when I come down from the overwhelming pleasure, Santino is still a ghost to me, and I am living in a world I don’t believe in.
7
VIOLETTA
Santino—or the ghost of him—takes me down to the kitchen and helps me into the nook as if I can’t do it myself.
The sight of Celia stirring a pot of soup is comforting. “They didn’t give me time to get much from home. Just a few pans and knives. I dumped all my spices in a bag. And what did I come into?” She waves her hand around the room. “An upstairs kitchen for a skeleton crew that came in and out. Men. Paper plates and a drawer full of soy sauce. The microwave…you should have seen it. Looked like something was murdered in there.”
She takes a bowl from the rack. Just washed. Then I notice boxes of new plates.
“And the one in the basement? Worse. Right next to a coal furnace. The smell.” She wrinkles her nose.
“Can you feed her instead of complaining?” Santino says.
“Cheese?” she offers.
“Please.”
“Anyway, I got it all figured out.” She opens the fridge for the parmesan. It’s stocked. “Armando got everything in no time.”
“Armando?!” I exclaim, looking from Santino to Celia and back. “He’s here?”
I haven’t thought about that warm, gentle, armoire of a man in days, and now his presence in the world is the exact news I need. I miss my prison of a home, where I was trapped by the man I fell in love with. I miss the ugly furniture and the big windows. I miss the pool and watching Santino swim in it. I miss my husband being my only problem.
“He’s around somewhere.” Celia sprinkles cheese on the soup.
“Who?” a voice booms from the doorway. It’s Armando himself with a paper bag from Giordano’s Pastries.
Celia grabs the bag as I rush to hug him.
“I’m so sorry,” he says when we separate.
“For what?”
“Violetta.” He takes a moment to sigh. “I was supposed to protect you. I let you get in Marco’s car. I should have known. I should have seen it, but…I was distracted. And there’s no excuse. My head wasn’t in the game.”
“They had cherry!” Celia exclaims with delight as she dumps biscotti into a container. She plucks one out and lodges it in her teeth.
“Tell her why you were distracted,” Santino commands. Whatever it was, my husband isn’t happy about it. He gestures for me to return to my seat at the table.
“When Gia came home, I was going to tell her I loved her.” He’s gone from looking at the floor to rubbing his eyes as if he can’t stand the sight of anything in the world. “And Re Santino too. I swear.”
The king does not respond.
“Maybe he can pay for his crime with more cherry biscotti,” Celia says, chewing on her cookie while ladling out soup.
“It was a betrayal of Santino,” Armando admits with downcast eyes.
“Enough,” Santino says firmly with a look to each of them. “My wife doesn’t need to hear about this today.”
Celia puts the bowl of soup in front of me. Its surface is dusted with cheese, and nothing has ever looked this good.
Santino is still cross-armed and stern.
“Gia Polito is—,” I say, but stop short. If Armando loves her, he’ll hear the word sociopath as an insult or scold. “Not right in the head. You know that now, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“She fooled all of us,” I say with a definitive jab in Santino’s direction.
“I take responsibility when I fuck up. I should be dead already for what I did.”
“No,” I say, picking up the spoon. There’s been too much death today. “Celia needs her biscotti. And none of it would have happened if we didn’t sell our daughters.”
As I try to eat, my hand shakes, splashing the soup back into the bowl. By the time it gets to my mouth, it is empty. Celia glances from me to Santino.
“I’m fine,” I lie. I’m not fine. I’m speaking strongly and clearly, but a part of me is still uncontained.
“Out,” Santino says with a short wave of his arm.
Celia and Armando leave us alone. Santino sits diagonally from me. He has to be here. Celia and Armando wouldn’t leave me alone at a time like this.
Stop it.
Just stop sabotaging your own happiness.
“I’m just a little uncoordinated.” I make excuses even though he can see right through me.
Only the real Santino can do that. He’s here. Right here. It’s just me and him. My guard drops. I am exposed and raw all over again. The terror returns, but it’s lessened. Maybe half. I wonder if it’ll be halved forever, always getting smaller but never getting to zero.
Santino holds out the spoon, cupping his other hand under it so it won’t spill. I eat it.
God bless Celia. It’s perfect.
“You’re safe,” he says softly. “I’m with you.”
He’s not lying. If anyone came for us here, they’d be seen and dealt with, and that’s exactly what brings the waxy smell of incense, the impact of the fist in my face, and the sight of blood on church marble into my mind all at the same time. When my thoughts are quiet and relaxed, I see Santino fall into the pool, over and over, overriding the fear of being forced into another marriage. It blocks out being hit by a man three times my size. The utter desolation of waking in that room knowing Santino was dead is what’s making me shake uncontrollably.
He’s got his elbows on the table, leaning close enough that I see every hair of his beard, the errant eyebrows, every fleck in eyes that can seem bottomless. I was so close to him twenty minutes ago, but I feel as if I’m seeing him for the first time. I can’t live like a newborn every day.
“Open your mouth.” He takes a spoonful with a meatball and vegetables.
Finally having a complete mouthful is a shock to my system, but chewing brings my appetite around. By the time I’ve swallowed, Santino has another ready for me. I take it and speak around my food.
“We just had a whole conversation, but inside? I still can’t process it. That you’re here.” I swallow, touching his resting hand.
He feeds me more without losing a drop.
“And all that other stuff that happened after you…died? That room. The shot they gave me. Gia being so dead inside.” I shudder then open for more soup. “The replay of our wedding, and going crazy—killing that kid—it all had this hopelessness.”
“Hush. Eat first.”
Once I obey the second command, I disregard the first. “There’s a part of me that’s convinced that if I stop touching you, you’ll turn into a ghost.”
“Tell that part my ghost is still attached to my body.” He uses both hands to hold the bowl and scrape up the last of the soup.
I resist the urge to touch him again. When I swallow, I close my eyes and try to feel his physical presence, but all my mind sees is emptiness, and all I sense is the sinking vacuum of death.
“It’s not listening.” I reach into the darkness. My hand lands on his arm. It’s real and physically present, yet I don’t believe it. I open my eyes. He’s here. Right here.
“Do you want more soup?”
I don’t want more soup.
Down to bone and blood, I want t
o know he’s alive. I want to be convinced, and there’s only one way to do it.
“I want to be normal again.” I push away the bowl. “I want you to take me. Like you do. Now. Hard.”
“You’re in no condition.” He sits back.
“I said now.”
“And I say when you’re well enough.”
He’s really going to refuse me—not because he doesn’t want to do it, but because he’s afraid he’ll hurt me or something.
He has to hurt me. That’s the point.
My right hand gets the message half a millisecond after my brain decides to send it, shooting forward and slapping him in the face as hard as I can.
I can’t tell if it hurts, or if he even has a reaction. He doesn’t budge. Maybe he looks a little curious, which isn’t what I’m after, so I swing harder, aiming for the same spot on his cheek. He grabs my wrist an inch from his face.
“What are you trying to do?” His grip is tight, but not hard enough.
“Make me believe you’re here.”
“I am here.”
“Prove it.” We’re locked in a gaze crackling with questions and demands. “I can’t live with this doubt. I won’t be able to sleep, or think, or trust my own eyes ever again. I need you to rip me apart. Pretend I was at that altar because I wanted to be.”
His grip tightens, and his eyes burn with new intensity. That’s it. I’ve found the big green button to push repeatedly.
“Stop it,” he growls. “This is a dangerous game.”
“Play it for me. Tell yourself I couldn’t wait for my new husband to—”
“I’ll destroy you.” He yanks my wrist and pulls me off the chair, flings me to the floor, and puts his foot between my shoulder blades. I can barely breathe from the pressure. “Is that what you want?”
“Yes.”
My head jerks back when he pulls my hair, then he removes his foot so he can pull the rest of me off the floor. I never get my feet under me as I’m thrown over the table, with the corner digging against my lower back. The soup spoon clatters to the floor. The hand that had pulled my hair is under my chin, ear to ear, forcing my throat to stretch.
“You’re going to know I’m here by how I break you.”
Is he past the point of no return?
He needs to be.
“You were almost too late. I almost sucked his dick.”
“No more talking.” With his palm on my throat, he puts two fingers in my mouth. “This opens when I want, and you take what I put in it.”
He probes deep, blocking my airway. There’s no more verbal agreement necessary. I’m pulsing with arousal, and he knows his every word swells the flood of my desire.
“I’ll let you breathe when I see your tits.”
Wiggling, I yank up my shirt and bra, exposing myself to him.
When he pulls out his hand, I breathe. He puts his spit-covered middle finger in his mouth and sucks my saliva off, eyes coursing down to my hard nipples. He takes one in his wet fingers and twists, turning me into his arch-backed puta.
“Look at you, waiting for my cock.” I’m locked in place by his eyes, and it’s not until he steps back and says, “On your knees, that I’m able to move…but not quickly enough. He pushes me down violently and undoes his fly, digging his erection out of his pants.
“Open your mouth, and suck a dead man’s cock.” I open up, and he guides himself in, pushing deep and holding me against him by the back of my head. “I am not dead. I never want to hear it again. How many holes do I have to fuck to make you believe it?” He pulls out and I gulp air. “How many?”
“Three.”
“Va bene, allora.” He spins a chair to face me and sits in it, propping his cock up at the base. “It’s not going to suck itself.”
Holding back a smile, I crawl the short distance to him and take him in my mouth, but Santino does not ever give up control. He pushes me down and holds me for a moment, then lets me breathe before pushing my face onto him so deep my nose is against his skin.
“What man could die when a woman like you spreads her legs for him?”
I shrug—lungs tightening, throat clenching.
“Not me.” He pulls me off.
I gasp, chest heaving, spit dripping from my chin. “Prove it.”
“Take your pants down.”
I tug on the elastic waistband. I don’t get to finish before he takes me by the back of the neck, pulls me up, and pushes my face to the table. He has complete control over me, and every drop of fluid in my body rushes below my waist.
“Who owns your cunt?” He unceremoniously sticks three fingers in me, and that alone is enough to push me close to orgasm.
“You do.”
“It doesn’t matter if I’m dead, Violetta.” He bends his inserted fingers and twists his hand at the wrist like he’s trying to screw it inside me, finding sources of pleasure I didn’t know were there. “You’re mine.”
“Yes.”
I grunt when he takes out his fingers and kicks my legs wide open before commanding, “Show me.”
I look over my shoulder, watching him spread my lips and ass apart. He fingers both like a man who can’t decide which new car he wants, biting his lip as he edges my asshole with his thumb, then pulls my clit. The pleasure is agony.
“All yours,” I say to urge him on.
“This is so wet,” he says with a flick, “and so tight.” He runs the head of his cock along my seam. “And all mine.”
With that, he fucks me where I’m wet, thrusting so hard I’m lifted to my toes. He pushes again, twisting to wedge himself deep as he pushes me down by the back of the head.
“Put your ass up, sexy girl.” The pressure of him is so great, I feel as though I barely move, but he groans and closes his fist on a handful of my hair. “You think I’d leave you a widow.” I’m yanked back by the hair. “When I can fuck you like this?”
“Yes. Like this.”
He pulls so hard my chest comes off the table.
“You’re a toy for my cock.” Reaching around, he puts one hand on my clit, and with the other, he handles my breasts as though he owns them, finding the hard nipples and pinching them. “You still want me to use you like this?”
“Please. Yes.”
I’m half standing, partly crouching, getting pounded against the table while his dick holds me up. From my tits, his hand moves up to my jaw, then tightens around my throat, choking me.
“You’ll crawl for my cock.” He rubs my clit harder and tightens his grip on my throat, pressing my arteries while he drives into me. I put my hand over his, but don’t pull him away. “Now show me how much you like it when I use you.”
A gentle blackness crawls at the edges of my consciousness, pushing out thought and reason, and suddenly, in a rush, I awaken in the throes of an explosion of pleasure, shuddering endlessly in his arms.
But he’s not done. I’m barely through the orgasm when he pulls my pants all the way down, lifts my ankles, and flips me onto my back. He rips off the pants and spreads my legs, pushing my knees until they’re almost touching the table. I’m exposed and helpless, and in realizing that he can hurt me, that he will hurt me, and that I want him to hurt me, the resistant part of my brain clicks into submission.
“Beg me to fuck your tight little ass.” He slaps the sensitive folds between my legs where I’m still swollen, and I yelp with the sting.
“Please fuck my ass.”
“Open it. Show me.”
Every command lands inside a desire to please him, this living man, who rose from the dead to come for me. He’s alive. I reach down and open my cheeks to expose myself to the danger of him. The risk is real because he is.
He snaps a flask of olive oil from the counter and drips it on my stomach, my pussy, my stretched-open asshole. Then sends the flow to his thick, hard cock.
“I’m going to come in your ass,” he says, putting down the bottle. “But first, you come again.” He kisses the drops of green oil on my
belly, running his tongue down to my clit. He sucks off the oil.
“I just came… It’s too much.”
In answer, he slides a finger into my ass, and with a careful flick of his tongue, I’m ready again, writhing on the table as he sucks my clit and adds another finger, stretching me so I can take his cock.
“Good girl,” he mutters between flicks and sucks. “Open for me. Show me what your ass does when you come.”
He sucks again, pulling an orgasm out of me while digging his fingers deep. My muscles pulse around them, squeezing in a rhythm I don’t consciously intend.
Standing, he wipes his mouth with his wrist, then drops more olive oil on my ass.
“You ready?” he asks, putting down the bottle.
“Yes.”
“Do you believe?” He circles my anus with his cock.
“Maybe.”
He pushes in. I stretch for the head.
“Maybe?” He lets it slip out. “Does a ghost fuck you like this?”
Pushing harder, he gets the head in, and he groans, and I know he doesn’t care about my answer. He’s past the point of no return. When he thrusts deeper, it hurts, and it’s awe-inspiring, exquisite, irrationally gratifying.
He shoves forward and buries himself, taking me all the way back to reality.
8
VIOLETTA
Santino rolls up a towel and puts it on the bath ledge behind me so that I can lean my head back comfortably. The waterline of scalding heat cuts across my chest. Bubbles pop like rice cereal. I am sore and satisfied, but most importantly, I’m alive, and so is Santino. When I close my eyes, I still feel that fist hitting me, I still smell the incense and see the growing pool of blood in the church…but none of it is accompanied by the same grief.
He is here with me, and I’m never losing him again.
Downstairs, men stomp their feet, bark in conversation, and even laugh as if their boss wasn’t just saved from a bullet by a cigarette lighter. I haven’t counted the guys in the halls, but it seems like a couple of dozen. Enough to run a business in a small town, but not enough to win a war for it.
