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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.