by Bethany-Kris
Lucian had done a lot for them—he did it all without asking for thanks, or seeking recognition. Renzo had come to realize that despite all the things the man had done to them back then was not an actual reflection of the person he was inside. He’d made mistakes. They all had. No one was ever going to be a perfect human being.
But he made amends.
He made them silently.
He didn’t do it so that they would know.
He did it because it was right.
“Excuse me,” Lucia whispered, standing from the table. “I need a second.”
She was gone from the kitchen before Renzo knew what had happened. It was only the glare that his sister shot his way that made Renzo ask, “What?”
“Don’t sit there. Go after her.”
“I don’t think she wants—”
“You’re an idiot,” Rose groaned, “stop doing that.”
Well, fuck.
• • •
“Hey.”
Lucia glanced up from the sink, and her gaze drifted to Renzo in the bathroom doorway. Maybe his sister had been right that Lucia meant for him to follow her—or maybe she just didn’t care either way.
She hadn’t been surprised to see him standing there, and if she hadn’t wanted someone to see her washing the tears from her face, then she could have closed the door.
Instead, she didn’t.
“I spent a lot of time being angry,” Lucia whispered.
“I still am,” Renzo replied.
“Me, too. A lot of the time.”
Yeah, he knew that life.
“Do you want to talk about it—your dad, or whatever?”
He figured he should offer, despite the fact he wasn’t even one-hundred percent sure on his own feelings regarding Lucian Marcello. It was kind of amusing, in a sick way. He still felt anger over the things that had happened years ago, yet he found himself respecting and liking Lucian more and more as time went on.
He was sure that wasn’t supposed to happen.
It still was.
Renzo bet it was even more confusing for Lucia, in some ways. The man was her father. So, yeah, of course, she was always going to love him. She would always have that love in her heart for him no matter what. Through the bad times, and the good times. That was the thing about love—it never left. Not this kind of love, anyway.
Lucia shook her head, and let out a slow and steady stream of air as she watched herself in the mirror. “No, not right now.”
“Okay, whenever you want, then.”
She passed him a look. “Does that mean you’re going to stick around more? What, do you plan to just walk right back into everybody’s life like nothing ever happened?”
“Something happened, but yeah, I’m still walking back in, Lucia. Are you going to let me in, or keep pushing me away?”
He saw the way her throat jumped when she swallowed. He bet if he got his lips pressed against her neck where he could feel her pulse, that beat would be racing out of control right now. He loved this woman like crazy.
It didn’t have to make sense.
“I don’t want to push you away,” she admitted.
Then, don’t.
Renzo didn’t say that out loud.
Lucia was allowed her feelings.
She could have them.
He’d still be waiting at the end.
“You okay?” he asked. “Do you want to go back out to the table, or …?”
Lucia used her damp hands to wipe the remaining tears from her cheeks, and took the hand towel he pulled off the rack when he offered it to her. She used it to dry her face, and then check her reflection one more time in the mirror.
“You look perfect,” he murmured.
It wasn’t a lie.
Crying, or with makeup done all up … natural, or a beautifully painted siren, she was always going to be perfect to him.
He didn’t miss the way her lips quirked upward. “I didn’t ask.”
“You didn’t have to. Besides, if I don’t tell you, who is, baby?”
Her tongue snuck out to wet her bottom lip. “Ren …”
“I think about that all the time, you know? Drives me fucking crazy.”
“No one is telling me when you’re not,” she said softly, her eyes lifting to meet his again. “You ruined me back then, and I’m still fucking ruined now. It’s only ever been you.”
Good.
He liked that too much.
“That makes two of us, then,” he murmured, stepping closer to her.
Lucia laughed, and tipped her head down. He slid in beside her, and dropped a kiss to the corner of her mouth. He felt her smile grow all over again, and then she moved her head to the side just enough to catch his lips with her own in a slow, burning kiss. Her lips worked against his, and he felt that hunger growing.
Like a monster in a cage beating at the bars.
Fuck.
He loved this woman.
Loved her messy.
Loved her crazy.
Loved her best.
Renzo didn’t care what anyone had to say about it—they couldn’t possibly understand the way he felt for this woman.
All too soon, Lucia pulled away from the kiss, but her fingers came up, and the tips drifted across his jawline.
“What?” he asked.
“I just …”
“Yeah, baby?”
“I just want to be close to you, maybe, but I don’t like when it hurts in here,” she admitted, clenching a fist over her heart.
“I’m sorry for that.”
“Don’t be. I still want to be close.”
“Then, do that, Lucia.” Renzo reached out to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Tonight, even. No expectations—once we leave, you come with me. We’ll figure it out, and it’s on you. Whatever you want, baby.”
Lucia laughed. “I’m sure I know how it’ll end.”
Yeah, probably.
“I don’t see the issue.”
She shook her head. “Let’s get back out there. Diego wants to spend time with you.”
“You got it.”
Like he said …
Whatever she wanted.
• • •
They didn’t even make it to the fucking hotel.
Renzo didn’t know what it was—maybe she wanted to feel something other than the confusion that constantly followed her around, or maybe it was the fact that she wanted to feel him. He didn’t know, but he also didn’t care.
How could he when he pulled the car into the private, underground garage and Lucia was already crawling into his lap? How could he care when she was kissing him like she was going to lick the fucking color from his lips and suck the air right out of his lungs?
Renzo didn’t even care about that.
He’d give her his life.
His hands skimmed under the skirt of her dress to drag it higher. He couldn’t wait to get his hands under those black panties of hers, and feel the slick pussy he knew it was covering. There was something silky about her sex—like he was the roughness, and she was the softness. He was going to ruin her, and she would always like it.
God.
“I want you,” she murmured against his mouth.
“You got me, baby.”
More than she would ever know.
He didn’t get the chance to feel her silky sex against his fingers because she grabbed for him, first. Her shaking hands worked the buttons and zipper on his jeans until she had them both opened. He lifted just high enough for her to get his jeans down. And when her hot palms found his length to wrap around tight?
Fuck.
“Yeah, shit, just like that,” he grunted out through clenched teeth, watching her hands stroke him fast and hard. She knew exactly how he liked it—she remembered. That kind of made him hotter than ever. “Did you think about this, Lucia? Did you think about getting those hands wrapped around my dick when you touched yourself? Did you get off to me, baby?”
“Every
night.”
“Jesus Christ.”
There wasn’t any other response to that.
Lucia’s kiss found his again as her hands kept working his dick. His balls were already tight—he couldn’t fucking last with her. He just wanted to come so that he could bend her over, and fuck her again.
“Get me in your pussy,” he muttered against her lips. “I need to be in you when I come, Lucia.”
“Do you want me to get a condom—”
He had some in his pocket.
Always.
Just in case.
He just didn’t care.
“You good?” he asked.
That’s all he needed to know.
Because he was.
Just waiting on her …
“Yeah, I’m good,” she mumbled.
“Then let me fuck you, Lucia.”
He moved her panties to the side as she fitted the head of his swollen dick against her pussy. She hovered there for a brief second, dragging in heaving breath after heaving breath. Her lips were pinker than normal—her cheeks flushed.
“Now,” he uttered.
She came down on him, then. Fast, and rough. There was something about the way he stretched her open for that first pump—the way her pussy flexed around him, and her juices covered his dick.
“Love it,” he muttered. “Ride me, then.”
She did.
Wild.
Raw.
His hands curved tight around her ass as her mouth crashed down on his again. He could feel her shaking already—she was always so responsive to him. Always right there on the edge of an orgasm, and it only took the right words or the proper stroke from him to push her off into bliss.
He liked the way she looked like that.
A little desperate, and a touch needy.
“You wanna come?” he asked.
Lucia nodded fast—a jerky motion that accompanied her teeth biting down into her lip. That sight was enough to make him want to blow his fucking load as deep as he could get it inside her pussy, but he wasn’t that selfish.
Her first.
Always her first.
He made her come hard when he stuffed a finger up her ass. She came even harder when he fitted a second one in there, and bit her throat right over her pulse point at the same time. It was the sound of his name coming out of her lips that took his control away, though.
Renzo came hard enough to take his words away.
His thoughts, too.
But that was okay.
He was with her.
FOURTEEN
Lucia knew the exact moment Renzo woke up because she could feel his eyes on her. She said nothing even as he shifted in the bed, inching onto her side of the mattress where she’d vacated a couple of hours ago. She didn’t want to wake Renzo up just because she couldn’t sleep—he looked like he needed the rest.
Did he ever relax?
She didn’t know.
Tightening the Afghan blanket around her shoulders, Lucia sunk further into the chaise, and watched the clouds float by in the sky. Sitting in front of the large bay windows of her hotel room, she’d at least found some peace watching the sky instead of lost in her thoughts and emotions. She was still trying to make sense of that mess.
“What are you doing over there, huh?”
Lucia smiled and peered over her shoulder to look at Renzo on the bed. He was quite a sight resting amongst white sheets with his tanned, inked skin and sexy smile. He rolled onto his stomach and already had a hand reaching out to her.
Like he might pull her back to the bed.
She’d like that too much.
Instead of getting up to grab his hand and go back to the bed with him, Lucia reached out and grabbed hold of his hand with her own. She didn’t move from her spot, and he didn’t tug on her hand to encourage her to get up.
No, his thumb just stroked the side of her hand softly. It was enough to send shivers cascading through her body all over again. She loved his touch. She found that even after all this time, she still craved it.
He probably knew it, too.
Lucia peered back at him, and let her gaze drift over the ink on his skin. The portraits of people who he loved the most. The symbols and memories of her and them together that he’d made sure with one tattoo at a time to memorialize on his body.
That was kind of crazy to her.
And it wasn’t at the same time.
She loved it.
She loved him.
“Ren?”
“Hmm, baby?”
“You know I love you, right?”
She felt his fingers tighten around her hand, but he didn’t say anything in response to her question. Not that she blamed him. She hadn’t said that. Not like she just did, anyway. She said it like a throwaway—like it didn’t matter.
And that was the thing.
Her love for him was the most important thing. It was the one thing that continually held her back from moving forward all these years, and then at the same time, kept her going. That fucking love—as crazy as it was—kept her alive. She didn’t want to put that knowledge on his shoulders. She didn’t want him to know the struggle that had been so entirely dark for her all these years, but it was there.
She knew it.
“Hey,” he murmured.
Finally, he tugged on her hand.
Lucia looked back at him again.
He was still grinning.
“You know, regardless of the rest, we’re still just Lucia and Ren, babe.”
She blinked.
“Are we?”
Renzo laughed. “A little messy, maybe. But yeah, why not?”
“Is it really that easy, though?”
“It can be, if you want it to be.”
She did.
God, she did.
Lucia just didn’t think it was that simple.
Nothing was ever simple or easy for her.
“I just …” Lucia sighed, and shook her head. “How do you stop being angry, Ren? You know what I mean? I feel like it’s been with me for so long—always constant—and I’m scared that I don’t know how to live without it, now.”
Renzo wet his lips, and chuckled. “You know, that used to be me, too. Grew up angry, babe. So fucking angry. And it feeds you, and you feed off it, if you get what I’m saying. It fuels you, and keeps you going when nothing else does.”
He wasn’t wrong.
That’s what terrified Lucia.
Renzo shrugged one bare shoulder, saying, “I’m not saying it’s gone now—I’m saying that it’s not as constant for me, anymore. It’s something I dig out and use when I need it, and when I need to be a different version of me. That’s what anger taught me; it forced me to do better and be better. I was angry with the people in my life that didn’t do anything for me, so I got mad enough that I did it for myself. I was so angry with life for fucking me over, and giving me the responsibility of shit that wasn’t mine to begin with that I got mad and used it to keep pushing me through it. That’s what you use it for.”
“Never thought of it like that.”
“It’s not something we actively think about—we just do it.”
Lucia nodded. “Yeah, maybe.”
“No maybe about it, baby.” Renzo tipped his head to the side, and winked. “But for us … what do you want?”
Didn’t he know?
“You.”
Renzo smiled lazily. “Good because that’s what I want, too. I don’t know how to love anyone else but you. Not the way that I love you, anyway.”
Yeah, she knew how that felt.
“What about when you have to go back to … The League, and I go back to Cali?”
“We’ll figure it out.”
He said it like it was obvious.
Simple.
True.
She didn’t have a choice but to believe him. God knew she wanted to believe him more than anything. They deserved to have the time to figure this out. Whatever this thing was bet
ween them, distance and time hadn’t killed it—it wasn’t dead yet. They needed to fix it.
Renzo tugged on her hand again, and Lucia did get up from the chaise that time. She fell into the bed with him, instantly locked into the bars of his arms as his mouth crashed down on hers. His kiss was hard—demanding. She didn’t mind at all.
It was just her luck that neither of them had pulled on any clothes after getting up to the hotel, and shedding them the night before. It took him no time at all to pull Lucia up by wrapping his hands around her hips, and tugging her higher.
“Sit on my face, and let me play,” he uttered thickly.
“God.”
“Yeah, baby. You can call me God for a while.”
Her thighs rested on either side of his head as he pulled her down on his face. His nose nuzzled in close to her clit as his tongue worked her pussy. He rotated between fucking her with his mouth, and his fingers. Getting her wet, and ready.
She was shaking before long.
Ready to come before she knew it.
“Right there,” she mumbled, rocking her hips against his motions. “Fuck, right there …”
One of his hands drifted behind her sex, and two wet fingers pushed into her ass as his tongue came up to lash against her clit while his other hand worked at her sex. She was getting him from all angles—driving her crazy three different ways.
She came harder than ever.
“Fuck, Ren …”
“Yeah,” he groaned, his approval thick as he pulled away from her pussy just enough to watch her down below. She shook her way through that orgasm, and his fingers only slowed in her pussy and ass when her trembling stopped. “Damn, that was something, huh?”
Lucia laughed.
“Yeah, something.”
He grabbed her hips hard, and pulled. In a breath, she was flipped over on the bed. Her knees pushed into the bed, and he yanked her ass high. Two smacks of his palms against her backside had her moaning into the bed.
He didn’t say a thing until the thick length of his cock was pressing into her behind. Slow, at first, and then when he’d worked her pussy just enough to drive her crazy, he started pound into her harder. A steady, deep beat that she swore she could feel in her bones.
“Yeah, baby, let me fuck that pussy. Show me how you love it, Lucia.”
She was this close to coming again when the ringing started. She wasn’t the type to be able to ignore a sound like that, even during sex. If anything, it immediately dragged her out of the moment and into the present.
