Chapter 26: Kira - Marrying the Mafia Daddy

The second I wake up, I know what day it is. The knowledge lands like a stone in my stomach, heavy and cold.

Mom’s funeral.

The date has been circling in my head for the past couple of days, and now it’s here, sitting on my chest in the gray pre-dawn light, refusing to let me breathe.

Behind me, Domenico is warm. Solid. His arm is heavy across my waist, his chest pressed against my back, and his cock is hard between my ass cheeks, nestled there like it belongs. I can feel every inch of him, thick, veiny, and hot against my skin.

The contrast between his heat and the cold dread in my stomach is so sharp it makes my breath catch.

My nipples are already hard. My pussy is wet, and I didn’t decide for either of those things to happen. My body woke up wanting something my brain hasn’t caught up to yet, or maybe it has and just doesn’t want to admit it.

Because what I want, more than anything in this particular moment, is to not think. To feel something that isn’t grief. To push the stone off my chest and replace it with his hands, his mouth, his cock—anything that burns hot enough to scorch the hollow feeling out of me.

It’s better when he’s around, everything is. That’s why I called him when he was, well, busy wreaking havoc on NovaGen. But apart from letting him hold me, or an occasional kiss, I haven’t let him touch me—let alone initiated anything.

I honestly don’t know why. It’s like my mind’s been at war. A part of me wants all of him, that’s the part that called him. Then the other part is… I don’t know. Not just numb. No, it’s numbness mixed with fear.

I always expected Domenico to hurt me, and yes, feared he’d kill me. That’s not how things have turned out, though. I’m the one who has brought all this to him. It’s my dad who’s behind every messed-up thing. Not Domenico. Which should be a good thing, so I’m not sure why my mind’s been struggling so much with it.

Or maybe that’s not even what the problem is. My head’s so messy I barely know which way is up. Sometimes it feels like how movies show it when someone’s dragged underwater. When they get so spun around they think they’re working their way toward the surface, but it’s the bottom instead.

No, this is exactly what I don’t want. My brain tricked me into thinking when it’s the absolute last thing I want to do.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I push my ass back against Domenico. That’s all it takes for the friction to send a jolt through me that makes my thighs clench. I moan, and the sound hangs in the quiet bedroom like something I shouldn’t have let out.

Domenico groans against the back of my neck. His hips shift, answering on instinct, still mostly asleep. His cock drags between my ass cheeks, and my pussy pulses so hard I can feel it between my legs, slick and needy.

“Daddy,” I whisper, and I don’t know why that’s the word that comes out, except that it’s the one that makes him move.

His arm tightens around my waist. His hips roll forward, harder this time, deliberate even through sleep. “Mmm, Kira.” My name in his mouth is rough, half-asleep, and the sound of it goes straight between my legs.

By the time he properly wakes up, we’re already moving. His hand slides from my waist to my hip, fingers digging into the flesh hard enough to leave marks, and he angles himself so his cock slides between my thighs instead of against my ass. The head catches my clit on every forward thrust, and the pressure is so good my vision blurs.

“Fuck, baby.” His voice is awake now, dark and rough against my ear. “You’re soaked.”

His hand leaves my hip and finds my throat. His palm wraps around the front, fingers curling around the side of my neck, and he tilts my head back until his mouth finds mine. The kiss is filthy—all tongue and teeth and the taste of sleep, and I moan into it because I can’t not moan when he kisses me like he’s trying to climb inside me.

His other hand finds my breast, pinches my nipple between his fingers, and rolls it hard enough to make me arch against him. The pain sharpens into pleasure so fast that my head spins.

I break the kiss to gasp, “Harder. Please, Daddy, harder.”

Domenico obliges with a groan I feel vibrating against my back. His hips snap forward, his cock dragging through the wet heat between my thighs, every thrust sending another vicious jolt through my clit.

His hand tightens on my throat. Not enough to cut off my air—just enough to remind me who’s in control, and God, if that doesn’t make me wetter.

“I need it,” I pant, my voice breaking on the words. “I need you, I need… mm, right there, don’t stop, Daddy.”

“That’s it,” he growls against my ear. “Take what you fucking need.”

But there’s no stopping my husband who drives his hips against my ass with a rhythm that’s all power and no finesse, and the pressure against my clit builds until my thighs are shaking and my pussy is clenching around nothing, desperate to be filled.

I come with a choked cry, my back arching, my inner walls spasming so hard I see stars. The orgasm rolls through me in waves, dragging moan after moan. For seventeen blessed seconds, I don’t think about anything at all.

No funeral. No coffin. No Dad selling Mom’s body.

All that exists is Domenico’s heavy breathing against my neck, his dick between my thighs, and white-hot pleasure that makes my toes curl.

The moment the orgasm fades, the hollow feeling rushes back in, and I need it gone.

Now.

I reach between my legs with one trembling hand and find his cock, slick with my wetness, and I wrap my fingers around the head just as his next thrust brings it forward.

“Again,” I demand, my voice raw. “I need to come again, please.”

“Do it,” he rasps, tightening his hand around my throat while the other clamps around my hip, dragging me back against every thrust. “Make yourself come again for me, wife.”

My fingers circle my clit, rolling it in tight, fast circles while his cock slides against my palm on every thrust. The dual sensation—his thickness against my hand, my finger on my clit—builds something fierce and blinding behind my sternum.

As I come for the second time, I’m panting, begging, words tumbling out of my mouth that I don’t even recognize. But this orgasm fades quicker, and I have to swallow back a sob of disappointment. I’m not ready to think. I need more.

“Fuck, baby, I’m gonna…” Domenico’s voice cracks.

His hips stutter, then drive forward one final time, and I feel him come—hot pulses of cum coating the inside of my thighs, his cock jerking against my palm while he groans my name into my hair.

“Mmm, fuck! Kira!”

He collapses against my back, his chest heaving, his arm locked around my waist as if he’s afraid I might float away. For a second, neither of us moves. The room is quiet except for our breathing, and the gray light through the curtains is getting brighter by the minute.

I’m still vibrating. Still empty in a way that has nothing to do with my pussy and everything to do with the stone sitting on my chest. My clit is throbbing, oversensitive and still hungry, and the need to shut my head off is so desperate it feels like panic.

“Domenico,” I whisper, and my voice cracks. “Please. I need more. I can’t… I can’t think yet. I just need… you. Please.”

Letting go of me, Domenico rolls onto his back before I finish the sentence. His eyes are dark, his jaw set. But he doesn’t ask if I’m sure, or if I’m okay. No, instead, he growls, “Sit on my face, baby.”

I scramble up his body, my knees on either side of his head. Facing away from his body, I grip the headboard as I lower myself onto his mouth without hesitation.

A moan is torn from me as soon as I feel his tongue on my clit. “Oh God! Mm, Daddy!”

Rotating my hips, I eagerly grind against him, seeking more, because gentle isn’t what I need right now. I need to be consumed. I need his mouth on me until I can’t remember my own name, let alone what today is.

His hands clamp around my thighs, and when I instinctively lift away from the intensity, he yanks me straight back down onto his mouth. Apparently, I’m not going anywhere until he’s finished with me.

I grip the headboard tighter and rock against his tongue with everything I have. The pleasure builds fast and viciously, my hips moving on their own, and I’m moaning, gasping, damn near sobbing.

“Mm, yes, right there. Don’t stop, don’t you dare stop… mmgoddomenicoineedmore…” By the end, my words are rushed, sounding more like one long word than several individual ones.

I don’t know if Domenico can actually hear me, or if he instinctively knows what I want. Either way, he doesn’t stop. His tongue fucks me in long, firm strokes, and when I come for the third time, it punches the air from my lungs.

The cry leaving me is a broken, ragged sound that might be his name or might just be noise. I clamp my thighs tightly around his head. So tight I’m probably suffocating him, but he doesn’t push me away. He keeps licking through it, gentler now, until the tremors subside and my body goes limp.

I slide off his face and collapse beside him, boneless and shaking. His arm finds me immediately, pulling me against his chest, and I press my face into his neck and breathe. His skin smells like salt and sex and something darker underneath that’s just him.

My husband.

For a few minutes, my head’s all quiet. There are no thoughts, just Domenico’s heartbeat under my ear and the warm, heavy weight of his arm across my back.

Then Domenico’s alarm goes off.

The sound is tinny and insistent, cutting through the quiet like a knife, and the stone lands back on my chest with all the force of gravity.

Mom’s funeral.

Domenico reaches for his phone and silences the alarm with one tap. His hand comes back to my hair, fingers threading through the dark strands. He still doesn’t ask if I’m okay, because we both know the answer.

He just holds me while the gray light turns gold through the gap in the curtains.

When I can no longer ignore the day ahead of me, I free myself from his arms and go into the bathroom to shower. Though I don’t lock the door, I close it. I know there’s at least one other bathroom in the massive penthouse, so I kind of hope Domenico will shower there.

As I get into the shower, I turn the water as hot as possible. The scalding water hurts, which makes me sigh with contentment as I turn my head back and let it cascade down my body. This is something else I can feel besides the hollow ache behind my ribs that the orgasms temporarily filled but didn’t erase.

I’m so focused on the water I barely notice Domenico joining me. I feel it more than hear him behind me, his chest against my back.

“Let me help you,” he murmurs.

Nodding, I wordlessly let him. But I almost push him back out when his fingers move through the dark strands with a gentleness that makes my throat tight. Biting the inside of my cheek, I squeeze my eyes shut and let the water run over my face.

As he continues to wash me, I bite my lip until I taste blood. I need that constant sting to ground me because if I allow myself to focus on how tender he’s being, I might start crying, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop.

“Arms up,” he says, and I lift them so he can soap my sides, my stomach, the undersides of my breasts.

His hands are efficient. Practical. Not sexual, though they were not too long ago. Now they’re just taking care of me, and somehow that’s harder to bear than if he’d tried to fuck me against the tile.

Neither of us speaks as the bathroom fills with steam, and the mirror fogs over, and for a little while, the world is just white vapor and hot water and his hands on my skin.

I get out when he starts washing himself. Grabbing one of the towels from the heated towel rack, I dry off and finish up as fast as possible. Once I’ve applied lotion to my body, brushed my teeth, and wrapped a towel around my wet hair, I leave the bathroom.

Putting on underwear, I do my best to empty my mind. But it isn’t quite working, and when I struggle to put my bra on, tears burn in my eyes.

“No!” I hiss. “Not yet.”

While I blow-dry my hair in the bedroom, I force myself to think about sitcoms and TV shows I loved when I was younger. I go through timelines, twists, and… nope, I’m not thinking about who died.

I keep my makeup minimal, just some foundation, mascara, and, well, that’s it. I’ve never been big on makeup, and there’s no point today, not when the hat from Carly will hide most of my face.

Unable to delay any longer, I pull on a pair of thin, skin-colored tights. Then I finally put on the black dress I had hung in the closet a few days ago. It fits the way it always has. Falls to just above my knees, sleeves to my elbows, the neckline high enough to be respectful.

The hat from Carly sits on the dresser in a black box. All she said when she delivered it was, “The veil helps. Trust me.” And I do—trust her, I mean.

It’s wide-brimmed and completely black, with a veil attached with a small comb, falling to just below my chin. When I put it on, the world goes slightly gauzy, and I’m grateful for the filter between my face and everything else.

Domenico dresses beside me. Black suit, black tie, dark gray shirt. The uniform of grief, except on him it looks like armor. He doesn’t fidget with his cuffs or adjust his collar the way I’ve seen other men do when they’re uncomfortable.

He just stands in front of the mirror and becomes the man everyone expects to see, and the transformation is so seamless it’s almost frightening. Catching me watching him, he holds out his hand to me.

I take it. His palm is warm, his fingers closing around mine with a pressure that says, I’m here, without him having to say it at all.

“Ready?” he asks.

No. “Yes.”

I pick up my rosary from the dresser and wind the beads around my fingers before following Domenico out of the bedroom.

Donna meets us at the elevator with a travel mug of coffee and eyes that won’t quite meet mine. “For the car,” she says, pressing it into my hands. “There’s whiskey in it. Not enough to notice, but enough to help.”

I almost hug her, but settle for squeezing her forearm instead. “Thank you.”

She pats my hand with fingers that tremble slightly. “I’ll see you there.”

Vinny meets us at the car, and even though I can see he wants to say something, he doesn’t. Which I’m beyond grateful for.

Domenico gets into the back seat with me, keeping me flush against him throughout the drive. The city looks wrong through the car windows—too bright, too ordinary, people walking dogs and carrying coffee cups as if it’s any other day.

The temperature has dropped overnight; frost clings to the edges of windshields and the iron railings outside brownstones, and the sky is the particular pale, hard blue that only happens when the air is cold enough to hurt your lungs.

I sip the coffee. Donna wasn’t lying about the whiskey. It burns all the way down and settles in my stomach like a small, warm stone, and for half a block, I can pretend it’s enough.

Then Saint Benedict’s comes into view.