Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
The world filters in slowly—the splash of bodies in the pool, distant laughter, the smell of chlorine and weed and expensive cologne. My thighs are trembling. My heart’s still racing. And I’m sitting on a mobster’s dick at a sex party while wearing nothing but his T-shirt and the world’s most inadequate thong.
What the actual fuck am I doing?
The most disturbing part isn’t even that I let it happen. It’s that I’m already cataloging the sensations, filing them away like rare books I’ll want to revisit later. The weight of him inside me. The burn of his stubble against my neck. The way his fingers tangled in my hair, not gentle but not cruel either—just... claiming.
Twice. Twice in one night I’ve let him take me. First against the door, and now in front of a crowd where anyone could have seen if they’d looked hard enough. Both times, I didn’t just let him—I wanted it. I arched into his touch, I came apart under his hands, I enjoyed it.
Sister Margaret would need smelling salts if she could see me now. Former bakery assistant, now performing live sex shows for the criminal elite. What a career pivot.
Giovanni shifts beneath me, and I have to bite my lip to keep from squeaking. We’re still joined, his cock still inside me, and every tiny movement sends aftershocks through my nervous system. His hand traces idle patterns on my bare thigh, just below where the T-shirt ends. Casual. Possessive. Like I’m already his favorite toy.
“Comfortable?” he asks, his voice low and amused.
I shouldn’t be. But I am. “Mmm,” is all I manage, which makes him chuckle.
Looking around to avoid the mobster’s gaze, I notice that Rico guy is gone now. The crowd has thinned. People drifting away to more private spaces to continue whatever debauchery they’ve started here.
Giovanni seems different too—calmer, more relaxed. The tense, angry energy that vibrated through him earlier has dissipated, leaving behind something almost... pleasant.
My eyes drift to the wisteria tunnel where he recited the rules for tonight like they were gospel. Purple-blue flowers cascade from twisted vines, creating a living cathedral of color and scent. It’s the kind of place that belongs in a fairytale, not a crime lord’s backyard.
Giovanni follows my gaze. “My grandmother planted that the year we moved to the estate,” he says, surprising me with this voluntary personal information. “I was three.”
I try to picture Giovanni as a toddler and fail completely. He probably came out of the womb in a tailored suit, glaring at the doctor for failing to maintain proper sterile protocol.
“There used to be a big swing in the middle,” he continues, his voice taking on a quality I haven’t heard before. “The kind you find on a porch. My grandfather would sit out there for hours, just looking up at the blooms. They were much smaller then.” He pauses. “That’s my only real memory of him.”
The revelation feels strangely intimate—more intimate, somehow, than the fact that he’s still inside me. I don’t know what to do with this glimpse of humanity, this crack in his perfect mobster facade.
And then, out of nowhere, words start spilling from his mouth:
“How tenderly the twilight falls
About our dear home’s flowery walls
Upon the garden bowers
The breeze sighs over beds of bloom
My darling, leave the dusky room
Come out among the flowers.”
The poetry hangs in the air between us, unexpected and beautiful. I’m transfixed, unable to reconcile this moment with everything else I know about him. His voice has a different cadence when reciting—softer, more melodic.
“What is that?” I blurt. Astounded that those beautiful words came from the same mouth that called me his “whore” not thirty minutes ago. “Did your mother write that?”
“No,” Giovanni says. “It’s something old. My grandmother, she was the gardener when I was little. She used to recite that poem. Often enough that it’s been burned into my brain, I guess. It’s long, but I don’t remember it all. It’s about the wisteria.” He beings reciting again before I can gather my thoughts:
“See, darling, in this tender gloom
The clusters of its purple bloom
Peep out amid the green;
A comely summer robe it weaves
Of sturdy twigs and tender leaves,
With splendid blooms between.”
He sighs. But it’s softer than anything I’ve ever heard come out of his mouth. “If you read all the verses, it’s about second chances.” Suddenly he’s looking at me. Those intense green eyes of his looking directly into mine as even more words spill out of him…
“How rich and full a life must beat
In its green branches! fair and sweet
It flowered in the spring;
And yet, ere summer days are done,
It spreadeth to the summer sun
A second blossoming.”
I can’t even breathe.
Giovanni begins to look uncomfortable. “Because… some species of wisteria bloom twice, right? If you prune them correctly. Once in the spring, one in the summer.”