Dripping Sin

Room 4210

The place on the next block was not a restaurant.

I realized that the moment we walked through a lobby dressed in gold accents and hushed marble and a concierge who straightened the second he saw Luca and said good afternoon Mr. Carver with the kind of deference that comes from knowing exactly who pays your salary.

I stopped walking.

"This is a hotel," I said.

"It is." He kept moving toward the elevator without breaking stride.

"You said lunch."

"I ordered lunch." He pressed the button and the doors opened immediately like the elevator had been waiting specifically for him. He looked back at me over his shoulder. "Are you coming?"

I should have turned around. Walked back out through those gold doors, returned to my desk, opened that inbox and been a professional woman making sensible choices.

I stepped into the elevator.

He said nothing on the way up. He stood beside me with his jacket over one arm, eyes forward, and the silence between us had texture, the kind you feel against your skin. I stared at the climbing floor numbers and breathed carefully and told myself this was just lunch.

The doors opened at forty two.

His suite was at the end of a carpeted corridor. Heavy door, wide room, floor to ceiling windows overlooking the entire city, afternoon light pouring in warm and gold across furniture that cost more than my car. A dining table sat near the window, already set for two, covered dishes waiting.

He had planned this before we even left the office.

"You ordered this morning," I said.

"Sit down Mia."

I sat.

The food was extraordinary. I barely tasted it. I was too aware of him across that table, the way he ate without rushing, the way his eyes returned to me between every few bites like I was something he was keeping track of.

We talked. He asked about my life before the marriage and I found myself answering honestly, telling him about the woman I had been before I became somebody's wife and somebody's disappointment. He listened the way he always did, completely, like nothing else existed.

I was halfway through a sentence when he reached across the table and brushed his thumb slowly across my lower lip.

I stopped talking.

"You had a little sauce," he said quietly.

He didn't move his hand. His thumb stayed at the corner of my mouth and his eyes stayed on mine and the air in that room became very heavy very quickly.

His hand slid to my jaw.

And just like that, lunch was over.

---

He kissed me first. Slow and deep, one hand cradling my face like I was something he had decided to handle carefully before he decided not to be careful at all. I gripped the front of his shirt and kissed him back and the small sensible voice that had been talking in my head for four days went completely silent.

He walked me backward until the backs of my thighs met the bed and looked at me in the afternoon light with dark eyes that made my stomach pull low and tight.

"Four days," he said, his voice dropping. "I've been thinking about you for four days straight."

I wanted to say something sharp but his hands were already moving and my thoughts were dissolving one by one.

He laid me back slowly and looked at me like he was deciding where to start and had plenty of time to enjoy the decision.

His mouth found my neck and I exhaled hard.

"Luca." His name slipped out before I meant it to.

He pulled back and looked at me. "Say it again."

"Don't flatter yourself."

He tilted my chin up with one finger and the look in his eyes made my breath catch. "Say it again Mia."

"Luca." Softer this time. Almost embarrassing.

He smiled. Slow and quiet and completely devastating and I understood right then why that smile was something a woman could get herself into serious trouble over.

His hands moved and I stopped smiling.

He took his time working down my body, his mouth tracing my collarbone, the curve of my shoulder, and I pressed my lips together because I refused to give him the satisfaction too quickly and he seemed to know that and find it amusing because he slowed down deliberately until I stopped being able to hold anything back.

A sound left my throat that I didn't plan.

"There she is," he murmured against my skin.

"Don't," I breathed.

"Don't what." His mouth moved lower and my back arched off the bed on its own.

I gripped the sheets.

He looked up at me from where he was and the eye contact alone was almost too much to hold.

"Relax," he said.

"I am relaxed."

"You're not." He pressed a kiss just below my ribs. "But you will be."

He was right. Whatever composure I had arrived with disappeared entirely over the next few minutes and I stopped being embarrassed about the sounds I was making because I genuinely could not do anything about them.

When he finally moved over me I pulled him down by the collar and he looked at me for one second, reading my face, then he moved and I gasped so sharply I covered my mouth with my hand.

He pulled my hand away.

"Don't do that," he said quietly.

He moved again and my eyes closed.

"Look at me," he said.

I opened my eyes and looked at him and that was somehow the most intimate and the most undoing part of all of it, looking at him while everything else was happening, while my body was beyond my own management.

"Who does this to you Mia," he said against my temple.

I shook my head.

He moved deeper and my breath broke.

"Who."

"You," I cried out. Just the one word and it came out wrecked and honest and he responded to it by giving me exactly what my body had been asking for since I walked into that elevator.

He was nothing like Daniel. Daniel was routine and predictable and always finished quickly and rolled away. Luca moved like a man who considered your pleasure a personal challenge and had no intention of being rushed by anything.

He found a rhythm that made my toes curl and my fingers dig into his back and at some point I stopped thinking about being quiet or being dignified or being anything other than completely undone.

"Say my name," he said low in my ear.

"Luca." Already breathless.

He moved harder and my voice broke on the next syllable.

"Again."

"Luca." Just air now. Barely sound.

The city sat forty-two floors below us and I stopped existing as anyone's wife or mother. I was just sensation and breath and his name leaving my mouth over and over like something I had no control over whatsoever.

When it finally crashed over me I turned my face into his shoulder and held on and he stayed with me all the way through it until I went still and the room was quiet except for both of us breathing.

---

I sat on the edge of the bed afterward and stared at the floor and waited for my brain to come back online.

He was quiet behind me.

I picked my dress up from the floor. Looked at my wedding ring. Felt the full weight of what I had done for the second time press down on my chest like a hand.

"This has to stop," I said.

Silence.

"Luca I mean it." I turned to look at him over my shoulder. "We are two adults who made a mistake. Twice. But it ends here. I am a married woman and whatever this is it cannot keep happening."

Luca looked at me.

He said absolutely nothing for a long moment. Then the corner of his mouth lifted slowly and he tilted his head to one side and the expression on his face was so thoroughly unbothered, so laced with quiet private amusement, that heat crawled up my entire neck.

He was not taking me seriously.

Not one bit.

"I'm serious," I said.

"I know you think you are," he said.

"Luca."

He leaned over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear with one finger like I had said something sweet rather than something I meant with every part of myself.

"Your food is getting cold," he said.

He stood, buttoned his shirt, and walked back to the table like I hadn't said a single word.

I sat on the edge of that bed and stared at his back and felt the laugh that lived in that man's silence more than I had ever felt anything Daniel had said out loud.