Chapter 17: Easy Access
The waiting was a physical thing. It coiled in Sofia’s stomach, a cold serpent of anxiety that tightened with each silent hour. She cleaned up the living room, erasing the evidence of their earlier, desperate union. The scent of sex faded, replaced by the sterile lemon of the cleaner she found under the sink. She showered until the water ran cold, scrubbing at the feel of him that lingered in her pores, not because she wanted it gone, but because the ritual gave her hands purpose.
She tried to read. She stared at the city lights. She listened to the grandfather clock in the hall tick through its ponderous rhythm. Twice, a phone rang—a landline with a shrill, old-fashioned bell—but she let it go. He’d said not to answer.
It was past three in the morning when she heard the key in the lock.
The door swung open. Enzo entered, followed by a swirl of chill, rain-scented air. He looked like a storm given human form. His hair was damp, his shirt plastered to his chest in places. It took her a second to realize the dark patches weren’t just rain. One sleeve was stained a rusty brown, the fabric torn at the cuff.
He didn’t look at her. He walked to the bar, his movements slow, deliberate, heavy with exhaustion. He poured three fingers of whiskey, swallowed it, and grimaced.
“Enzo?” Her voice was small in the vast room.
He finally turned. His face was a mask of grim satisfaction and something darker, emptier. A fresher cut, thin and precise, gleamed on the crest of his cheekbone.
“It’s handled,” he said, his voice gravelly. “The leak. A dock foreman. Greedy. Stupid.” He poured another drink. “He won’t be greedy again.”
The images came unbidden. A darkened warehouse. The sound of water slapping against piers. A final, wet gasp. Sofia pushed them away. She focused on the man before her, the hollows under his eyes, the slight tremor in his hand as he lifted the glass.
“You’re hurt,” she said, stepping closer.
“It’s nothing.” He drained the glass. “Most of it isn’t mine.”
That statement hung in the air. She stopped a few feet away, taking in the details. The torn knuckles. The set of his shoulders, like granite. The way his eyes finally met hers, and the fleeting, unguarded weariness she saw there before the shutters slammed down.
He wasn’t just the Boss returning from work. He was a predator returning to its den, still buzzing with violent energy, still smelling of blood and rain. The man who had whispered “mia cara” was buried deep.
A quiet, fierce instinct rose in her. Not pity. Not fear. Possession. She wanted to pull him back from that edge, to reclaim him, to mark him with something other than violence.
“Take off your shirt,” she said, her voice steady.
His brow furrowed. “Sofia, not now. I’m not in the mood for—”
“I didn’t ask about your mood.” She crossed her arms. “You’re standing on a ten-thousand-dollar rug, dripping blood and harbor water. Take it off.”
A spark of something flickered in his dead eyes. Annoyance, maybe. Or the faintest chill of surprise. He set the glass down. With slow, tired movements, he undid the remaining buttons of his ruined shirt and shrugged it off. It fell to the floor with a wet slap.
His torso was a map of old violence and new. A fresh, angry graze marked his ribcage. Bruises were already blooming on his arms and shoulders. She approached, her gaze clinical, her own heart hammering. She reached out, her fingertips hovering over the cut on his cheek. He didn’t flinch.
“Come here,” she whispered. She took his hand, pulling him towards the bathroom. He followed, a study in silent, watchful compliance.
In the stark light of the master bathroom, she tended to him. She cleaned the cut on his face with antiseptic, dabbed the graze on his ribs. Her touch was gentle, efficient. He stood statue-still, watching her in the mirror, his expression unreadable.
When she was done, she leaned her forehead against the center of his back, between his shoulder blades. She felt the heat of his skin, the tension coiled in every muscle. “You’re home,” she said, the words muffled against him.
He turned. He looked down at her, his eyes searching her face. He saw no revulsion, no fear. Only a stubborn, unwavering claim. Something in his chest seemed to crack.
He cupped her jaw, his thumb rough against her bottom lip. “I need to wash the dock off me.”
“Then wash,” she said.
He didn’t move. The silence stretched, filled with the hum of the penthouse and the ghosts he’d brought home. Finally, he spoke, his voice so low it was almost inaudible. “Stay.”
She nodded.
In the sprawling walk-in shower, steam rose in great clouds. He stood under the punishing spray, head bowed, letting the near-scalding water sluice over him. Sofia stood behind him, watching the water run in pink-tinged rivulets down the drain. She picked up a bar of soap, worked a thick lather in her hands, and began to wash his back.
Her hands slid over the hard planes of muscle, over old scars that felt like ridges of parchment under her fingers. She worked in silence, her touch firm, cleansing. She soaped his arms, his shoulders, the powerful column of his neck. This was an intimacy deeper than sex. It was an absolution.
He turned under the spray, water streaming down his face. He looked utterly stripped. Not just of clothes, but of pretense. The monster, the boss, the lover—all blurred into a man who was simply, terrifyingly tired.
She moved her hands to his chest, washing over the bruises, the dark dusting of hair. Her fingers trailed lower, over the defined ridges of his abdomen. He caught her wrist, his grip tight.
“Sofia.” A warning. A plea.
She looked up, meeting his gaze through the steam. “Let me.”
His hand fell away. She took the soap again, her hands trailing past his navel, through the dark hair at his groin. She took his soft cock in her hand, soaping him gently, thoroughly, her fingers sliding over the sensitive skin, cradling his heavy balls. It wasn’t a sexual touch, not yet. It was ritualistic. A re-consecration.
He shuddered, a full-body tremor that had nothing to do with the hot water. His eyes closed.
When he was clean, she turned him off, stepping out to grab a thick, black towel. She dried him with the same methodical care, patting the cuts, rubbing the towel over his hair until it was a chaotic mess of dark waves.
He let her lead him back to the living room. The fire had died to embers. The city outside was a silent tapestry of muted lights. He stood before the dying flames, naked, raw.
Sofia stepped back. Without a word, she began to undress. Not with seduction, but with purpose. She peeled off her soft t-shirt, her cotton shorts. She stood before him in only a pair of black thigh-high stockings and the delicate, lace-trimmed crotchless panties she’d put on hours ago, a silent, desperate hope she hadn't acknowledged until now.
The firelight gilded her skin, glinted off the red of her pubic hair, visible through the open triangle of lace. She saw his eyes drop, saw the blank exhaustion in them sharpen into a focus so intense it was like a physical touch.
She walked to the large leather sofa and knelt on the cushions, facing away from him. Then she leaned forward, resting her upper body on the back of the sofa, presenting herself to him. The position arched her back, lifting her ass, offering him an obscene, open view of her exposed sex, glistening faintly in the low light.
She heard his breath catch. A log in the fireplace collapsed in a shower of sparks.
“I waited,” she said, her voice clear in the quiet room. “Now I’m done waiting.”
The silence stretched, thick and electric. Then she heard his footsteps, the soft sound of his knees pressing into the plush rug behind the sofa. His hands, still slightly damp, warm, came to rest on the curves of her ass. His thumbs pressed against her inner thighs, spreading her wider. A soft groan escaped him.
“Look at this,” he whispered, his voice a dark scrape of sound. “This greedy, pretty little cunt. On display. Just for me.”
He traced the wet seam of her with a single, rough fingertip, parting her lips, and slid it slowly upward to circle her clit. She shuddered, pushing back against his hand. “You wanted to be fucked the moment I walked in?” His voice was low, dangerous, still carrying the chill of the harbor. He removed his hand.
She felt empty, aching. “Yes.”
“Then beg for it, slut.”
The command hung in the air. She turned her head, resting her cheek on the cool leather, and looked back at him over her shoulder. His eyes were black in the firelight, his cock now hard and thick against his thigh. This was the threshold. The final surrender he needed to burn the night away.
She let go of every shred of pride.
“Please,” she started, her voice already wrecked. “Please, Enzo, I need your cock. I’ve been empty all night, thinking about you, worrying about you. I need you to fill me up.” The words tumbled out, raw and unfiltered. “Fuck me, please. I’ll be such a good girl for it. Just fuck this desperate pussy. It’s yours. It’s always yours.”
“Louder.” He slapped her ass, the sharp crack making her jump. The sting bloomed into heat.
“I need it!” she cried out, her voice echoing off the high ceilings. “Shove that big fucking cock inside me and ruin me! I don’t want gentle, I want you to use me! Make me feel you for days, daddy, please!” Her cheeks burned with shame, but the wetness soaking the inside of her thighs was proof of its power. “I’m just a hungry cunt for you, aren’t I? So feed me. Fuck me until I can’t scream anymore.”
He made a sound like a snarl, a crack in his icy control. In one brutal motion, he gripped her hips, angled himself, and drove into her. There was no slow push, no accommodating stretch. He split her open on a single, deep, claiming thrust, burying himself to the root in her slick, tight heat.
The air left her lungs in a shocked scream. He was enormous like this, from behind, carving a space that burned. He didn’t let her adjust. He pulled back and slammed home again, setting a punishing, rhythmic pace that rocked her whole body forward with each impact.
“That’s it,” he grunted, his hands like vices on her flesh. “Take it. You begged for this. Take every fucking inch.”
She could only gasp, her cries fracturing with each drive of his hips. The fullness was overwhelming, a brutal, exquisite possession. She met him thrust for thrust, pushing back, taking him deeper, her earlier words fueling her. She was his. This was the proof, written in the slap of skin, the filthy, wet sounds of their joining.
“Harder,” she choked out, the plea torn from her. “God, yes, right there. You feel so deep. More.”
He obliged, his pace turning frantic, animalistic. One hand fisted in her hair, pulling her head back. The other slid around her hip, his thumb finding her clit, rubbing hard, rough circles. The dual assault shattered her.
“I’m gonna come,” she wailed, her vision spotting. “Oh fuck, Enzo, I’m coming on your cock!”
Her climax ripped through her, a convulsive, milking seizure that clamped around his pounding length. She screamed, the sound ragged and endless, her body bowing taut as the waves tore her apart.
Feeling her internal muscles spasm around him broke the last of his control. With a guttural roar, he pistoned into her two more times and slammed home, holding deep as he came. His release was a scalding flood, pulse after helpless pulse emptying into her depths, marking her from the inside out as his hips jerked against her ass.
They collapsed together onto the sofa, a tangled, sweating heap. His weight pressed her into the leather, his face buried in her neck, his breath hot and ragged against her skin. The only sounds were the crackle of embers and their slowing heartbeats.
Slowly, he softened and slipped from her. A hot trickle of their combined release followed, a visceral reminder on her inner thigh. He shifted, rolling onto his back beside her, one arm thrown over his eyes.
She lay still, feeling wrecked and profoundly claimed. The hollow anxiety from his absence was gone, replaced by this heavy, sated fullness. She traced the fresh bruise on his bicep.
After a long while, he spoke, his voice hollow. “The foreman. He had a daughter. About your age.”
Sofia went very still. She didn’t speak.
“She came to the dock. Saw the end of it.” He swallowed hard. “The sounds she made… they weren’t begging. They were… annihilation.”
He moved his arm, looking at the ceiling. His free hand came up, and he stared at his own knuckles, at the dried blood still etched in the cracks. “I washed the dock off me. But I can still hear her.”
Sofia turned onto her side, facing him. She saw it then, the true cost in the lines of his face. Not the violence he’d dealt, but the echo it left behind. She took his stained hand, brought it to her lips, and kissed each bruised knuckle, tasting salt and copper.
She didn’t offer empty comfort. She simply held his hand against her cheek, her own silent tears mixing with the blood on his skin. The fire finally died, leaving them in the dark, clinging to the only truth left—that in this world of screams, they had somehow found each other’s.
The fire finally died, leaving them in the dark, clinging to the only truth left—that in this world of screams, they had somehow found each other’s.
His breathing evened out beside her, but the silence felt charged, incomplete. The confession about the foreman’s daughter hung between them like smoke. Sofia stared at the darkened ceiling, her mind tracing the paths of his scars under her fingertips. The heat of their fucking still coated her thighs. The raw, claiming violence of it had been a language, a desperate translation of something she hadn’t yet named.
She turned her head on the leather cushion. His profile was a stark cutout against the city’s grey glow. “You don’t get to carry that alone,” she said, her voice scratchy from screaming. “Not here.”
He didn’t look at her. “It’s mine to carry.”
“Bullshit.” She pushed herself up on one elbow. The movement made his spend leak from her, a warm, shameful trickle she ignored. “You dumped it in my lap the second you told me. So it’s ours now. That’s how this works, doesn’t it? Your shit becomes my shit. Your enemies, your blood, your guilt. It’s all in my bed now.”
He finally turned his head. His eyes were black pools in the dimness. “You can still walk away from the bed. You can’t walk away from a ghost.”
“I’m not walking.” The words were absolute. She swung a leg over his hips, straddling him again, but there was no sexual intent in the movement now. It was about pinning him, forcing his attention. Her stockings rasped against his bare thighs. “You think that girl’s screams are worse than mine? You think the sound you made when you came inside me just now was any less animal? We’re all animals, Enzo. You just have sharper teeth.”
He looked up at her, his hands coming to rest on her hips. A touch more habit than desire. “This is a fucking romantic speech, Sofia. Did you practice it?”
“No.” She leaned down, her hair curtaining their faces. “I’m making it up as I go. Because I’m in love with you, you miserable son of a bitch, and I don’t know what else to do with it.”
The words fell into the quiet like stones into a still pond.
They just hung there. He didn’t move. His fingers didn’t tighten on her hips. His breath seemed to stop. The entire penthouse, the whole sleeping city beyond the glass, felt like it was holding its breath with him.
She didn’t retract it. She didn’t soften it with a joke. She let the brutal, unadorned truth sit between them, watching his face for any sign of the explosion she expected—the derision, the cold dismissal, the practiced retreat into the safety of being the monster.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. His eyes searched hers with a terrifying intensity, scanning for a lie, a manipulation, a trace of the transactional hope he saw in Kate. He found only a weary, defiant honesty that mirrored his own.
“You’re a fool,” he finally said, his voice a cracked whisper.
“Probably.”
“This isn’t a world for love.”
“I’m not asking for the world.” She shifted over him, feeling him stir, beginning to harden again against her damp sex. It was a physical affirmation, an unconscious truth his body told while his mind wrestled. “I’m just telling you what’s true. I love you. I love the monster and the man who worries about the monster’s damage. I love the taste of your whiskey and the smell of your anger. It’s inconvenient. It’s dangerous. It’s already done.”
He surged up, flipping her onto her back with a violence that knocked the air from her lungs. He loomed over her, his weight pressing her into the sofa, his arms caging her head. His expression was ferocious, unreadable. “Say it again.”
She didn’t hesitate. “I love you, Lorenzo.”
He kissed her. It wasn’t like any kiss before. It was devouring and desperate, a kiss of starvation and surrender. It tasted like blood and salt and a terrible, burgeoning hope. He kissed her until her lips were bruised, until they were both breathless.
When he broke away, his forehead rested against hers. “Fuck,” he breathed, the word a prayer and a curse.
Then his mouth was on her neck, biting, sucking a fresh mark into her skin as his hand slid between her legs. She was already wet, swollen, achingly open from their earlier fucking. His fingers pushed back into her slippery heat, a rough, claiming probe. “This cunt,” he muttered against her throat, his voice thick. “This greedy, loving cunt. It’s mine.”
“Yes,” she gasped, spreading her legs wider.
“Say it.”
“It’s yours. Everything is.”
He notched the head of his cock at her entrance, which was still stretched and tender. He pushed in, a slow, relentless invasion that burned in the most perfect way. He filled her completely, a thick, hard presence that shoved the confession deeper, made it physical. He didn’t move immediately, just let her feel the full, stretching weight of him buried inside her.
“You love me,” he said, watching her face as he began to move, a slow, deep roll of his hips.
“Yes.” The word became a moan.
He withdrew and thrust back in, harder. “Say it while I’m fucking you.”
“I love you.” It tumbled out with his next thrust.
“Again.” His pace quickened, his balls slapping against her ass.
“I love you!” she cried out, her nails digging into his shoulders as he drove into her, over and over, the leather sofa squeaking in protest beneath them. Each slam of his hips punctuated the words, hammering them into her body, into the room. “I love you, I love you, I love—“
He crushed his mouth to hers, swallowing the words, feeding on them. His rhythm broke, becoming frantic, erratic. He was chasing something, overtaken by a feeling too vast for his body to contain. She wrapped her legs around his waist, taking him deeper, meeting his frenzy with her own.
“Come inside me,” she begged against his lips, the ultimate act of possession. “I love you, please, fill me up.”
With a broken shout that was her name, he obeyed. His orgasm was a deep, pulsing flood, a surrender that wracked his entire frame. She clenched around him, milking every hot spurt, her own climax a sharp, bright secondary shock that left her trembling.
He collapsed, his body heavy and spent, his face buried in the curve of her neck. His breath was hot and ragged. Her own heart hammered against his.
A long time passed. The first pale hint of dawn began to bleed at the edges of the windows.
He shifted, sliding from her body, but immediately pulled her against him, her back to his chest. His arm locked around her waist, holding her as if against a tide.
His lips brushed the shell of her ear. The words were so quiet, so freighted with disbelief and a terror that mirrored her own, that she felt them more than heard them.
“Don’t you dare take it back.”