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Authors: Nikki Winter

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BOOK: Until the End of Time
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Sansone
shrugged and
kept walking, stopping in the kitchen to unload the food from his now red palm
and place down his satchel. He briefly thought about moving it to the hall
closet where his wife had asked him to put the bag time and time again. But his
wife also didn’t seem to understand the convenience of leaving it in the kitchen
so he could enjoy the comfort of having it on hand during breakfast. Resigned to
ignoring her annoyance later, he stuffed it into one of the informal dining
chairs and went about washing his hands.

He couldn’t
hear the shower going from upstairs and since he was expecting to be called
names later for the loss of her keys, he knew Nyssa hadn’t gone for a run or a walk
around the neighborhood.

“Look for the
tiny woman who yells at me about things or take a bite of the
cubano
?” Cracking open the lid to the container in his
hands, he took a peek at the griddled bread, slow roasted pork shoulder, Swiss
cheese, and pickles. “Oh sweetheart,” he whispered. “Don’t you look absolutely
beautiful?”
Sansone
stared for a moment longer before
growling, “I want you in my mouth. I want to feel you on my face.”

“Firstly,”
Nyssa said from just over his shoulder, causing him to jump at least two feet
in the air. “As twisted as this ideology may seem, I think I would’ve preferred
to have walked in on you saying that to someone with actual tits or, at the
very least, something
adjacent
to
tits. And secondly, how many times have I asked you to put your man-purse in
the hall closet?”

The container
buckled slightly in his hands as he turned around. His voice was higher pitched
than he would have liked when he responded due to the fact that she had almost
sent his young, virile body into early cardiac arrest. “It is not a
purse.
It’s an extremely beautiful piece of Italian
craftsmanship formed from the finest of bull’s hide to be stylishly worn by me
on any and every occasion because of its versatile design.”

Curling lashes
fanned twice. “So…a purse.”

The container
rumpled for a second time. “Why can’t you leave me in peace?”
Sansone
demanded. “Why can’t you let me have my moment?”

“Mainly because
I have the feeling that if I leave you in peace, it’ll lead to you touching
yourself while you eat that sandwich and I really don’t think our marriage
would survive that.”

He leered. “It
would if you watched…”

Nyssa’s lips
twitched a bit. “You’re getting to be such a strange man.”

Moving towards
the cabinets, he took out plates and glasses. “Save your concern for when I
begin to call hats
chapeaus
while
keeping a calorie index for daily meals.”
Sansone
turned back and leaned down slightly, meeting his wife’s upturned face. His
mouth brushed across hers in what should have been an easy “Hello” but her lips
parted and he found himself curling his palm around her nape and pulling her
in.

After a day of
absent-minded meetings and whining phone calls from clients, this was such a
simple pleasure; one that he’d come to greatly enjoy. The lazy movement of
tongues made the muscles in his forearms twitch. He walked forward, backing her
up into the island.

Nyssa placed
her hands against his chest and nudged until he released her. “Hey, hey, hey Andr
é
Leon Talley, calm yourself.”

He waggled his
brows and dipped his head, murmuring against her ear, “I want you in my mouth.
I want to feel you on my face.”

She gave an
open palm slap to his middle of his back and smirked at his yelp.
“Really?”

“What?” he
questioned, frowning. “You said to deliver the line to someone with tits
and,”—he glanced purposefully down at her braless state—“you’re
just swinging them around.”

Another slap.


Ow
!”

Nyssa shoved
him aside and went for the food. “The choice was taken out of my hands. My bra
became a device of hellish torment today.”

“Oh?”
Sansone
stepped behind her and put his chin atop of her
shoulder. He crooked one finger into the neckline of her V-neck and stared down
at her bare chest.

“I’d be more
than willing to help with this sudden discomfort. Allow me to offer my therapy
services. Twenty bucks gets you fifteen minutes of undivided nipple attention,
but only on the right one. To do the left one would be another twenty.”

She barked out
a laugh and swatted him away. “You perverted bastard. Like I’m really going to
pay you to do what I could get for free?”

He grunted,
splaying a hand against her belly. “I’m very much so capable of efficiently getting
rid of a body,
cara
,”
Sansone
nipped the shell of her ear. “Don’t play with someone’s fate that
way.”

“And risk
having my living Ken doll placed behind bars?” Nyssa mocked. “Never.”

He popped her
on the ass for that smart remark and moved away. “I’m anatomically correct, as
you well know.”

She came to
join him at the table, took up an opposite chair and scooted so that she could
rest her feet in his lap. “Oh, I know. I know very much.” Getting through half
of her sandwich, she suddenly informed him, “I also know I’m starting to hate
that new aftershave you’ve been using lately—the same one I complained
about—and yet, what did I find under the double sinks pushed behind your
astronomical amount of hair products?”


Er
…a bridge to
Terebithia
?”
Sansone
tried.

His wife
brought her heel down on his thigh. “It makes me nauseous, Sunny!”

“Everything
makes you nauseous lately! And moody! You’ve been really goddamn moody!”

Her pretty
mouth formed a moue. “I think shark week is approaching.”

Wincing, he sat
back. “Am I allowed to run away from home and not return until it’s over?”

“Absolutely not,”
she instantly replied. “If I must suffer,
all
must suffer.”

He sighed.
“Tyranny at it’s greatest.”

Nyssa suddenly
looked off. “Although, it is a bit late if I’m counting the days correctly.”
Her eyes narrowed. “About ten days late to be exact. It could just be my lack
of tolerance for that rat-faced kid we recently signed on. He and all his Aryan
privilege.”

Sansone
immediately
skimmed over her annoyance for the soccer player as his mind began to unravel
what she’d said. “Your nipples have turned mutinous—”

“I could
argue…but that sounds about right.”

“—
my
insanely expensive aftershave set is causing all this
uncharacteristic tummy sadness,” he placed his sandwich down. “And shark week,
that frightening stretch of days when I’m not particularly sure if I’ll leave
this home
outside
of a body bag, is
late.”

“I feel like
you’re doing math right now,” his wife told him, swiping mustard from the
corner of his mouth with her thumb. “Is that why you have that pained look on
your face? Are you trying to think again?”

“Yes. Yes I
am.”
Sansone
stood abruptly. “And what I
think
is that you need to pee on a stick and
soon.”

Nyssa had followed him numbly after that, quiet and
fidgety. A run to the drugstore had produced what they needed and soon they
were hovering over the test in much the same way that they’d done just a half
an hour ago. Except then, the minus sign hadn’t brought on this overwhelming
sense of failure. There had been an odd air of relief. Children, they loved
them. However, at the time they weren’t particularly sure they were ready
for them. They had only been going on
their second year of marriage then, determined to enjoy just each other for a
little while longer after eight years of fighting an attraction, three years of
cohabitation and two of
marginally
unholy
matrimony. Now here they were, running against time and losing.

Sansone
found Nyssa’s
cookies and finished topping off the tea in her favorite mug with honey,
cinnamon and cream. Once done, he grabbed a few napkins and took up everything.
He stopped at the double doors and pasted on an easy smile.

Be the rock,
Sultana. Be the fucking rock.

 

 

Nyssa’s
determination had turned hellish. No stone went unturned, no clothing lasted
long in
their
home and God forbid she find another natural
remedy to infertility.
Sansone
was a man on the edge.
It had been weeks since the last failed test and he was beginning to question
why heaven had abandoned him. His wife was relentless now more than ever. Any
other man in his position may have felt as though he’d been smiled on but he
knew better. He knew
far
better. All
she wanted was his sperm. No more and no less. Normally he’d be happy to give
it, however, things were getting disturbingly out of hand. So much so that he’d
begun to find excuses to be out of the house as much as possible. He felt like
a goddamn breeding stud.

Today’s excuse had been a visit to Trenton Home for
Boys; the establishment that Luciano had bought, relocated and remodeled years
ago. The mindless action of kicking a ball about and play boxing with hordes of
kids had managed to set his mind firmly away from the cloud looming over his
head. At least for a little while.

“Ah, the brooding stare has emerged,”
Luciano
intoned as he dropped onto the porch steps beside
Sansone
.

Sansone
snorted. His
adoptive brother had
invented
“the
brooding stare.” For several years that seemed to be the only expression the
big bastard had. At least until he met Samara. Then came this disturbing
gooey-eyed thing that he did when he thought no one was watching.
Sansone
had mocked him relentlessly for it whenever the
opportunity presented itself. Of course this always ended in violent fistfights,
but…meh.

Luciano nudged him, bumping one of his shoulders into
Sansone’s
. “Express to me why you look uglier than
usual at the moment.”

“Bite your tongue,”
Sansone
retorted, smoothing a hand down his own jaw. “This face is angelic.”

“The first demons to claw their way out of the pit
were angels once, so that completely invalidates your argument.”

Sansone
squinted off and
nodded. “Kind of does, doesn’t it?”

A comfortable silence fell.

“I know societal standards dictate that having a dick
means that we shouldn’t discuss our feelings,” his brother started. “But
societal standards also have a lot of strange rules in place. Like those signs
that say ‘No shirt. No shoes. No service.’ What about pants? Why did no one
read over the first draft and think, ‘
I
wonder if someone will come in with both of these and wearing an adult
diaper?’”

He felt himself grinning. “Your mind is a dark place,
Antonelli
.”

“As my wife has reminded me time and time again,”
Luciano retorted. “Doesn’t take the substance out of my concerns though.”

Yes.
The wife who could get
pregnant from just holding Luciano’s hand.
Considering the fact that his
sibling had run from commitment the way wanted criminals ran from warrants,
Sansone
had to say that he was on the list of those shell
shocked to find Luciano comfortably taking on the domestic role. Not that there
was something mentally or emotionally wrong with the retired heavyweight
champion, but he hadn’t always worn the hat of a family man. And Jesus Christ
was it a big family. One adopted son, a little boy conceived through chance, a
daughter conceived through matrimony and a kid in utero. No one knew the sex of
the latest child yet, but
Sansone
had the feeling
that once the time came for them to enter the world, it wouldn’t take much more
than a sneeze for Samara. She’d become somewhat of an expert at this.

“I’m
gonna
ask you a
question here,”
Sansone
announced. “And I want you to
refrain
from
tempting me into hitting you in the balls, all right?”

Luciano snorted. “Ears are on.”

“Why is it so fucking easy for you to knock up your
wife?”

There was a momentary pause of silence and then… “Did
Pop
not have this conversation with you?” Luciano
rotated his hands around one another. “You know, about how everything works?”

Sansone
stared.
And stared.
And stared.

His brother’s smile slipped a notch. “Wait, are you
and Nyssa having trouble,”—he made the motion of a hammer hitting a nail
with his hands—“making
it
happen?”

How much detail did he want to go into without the
aid of alcohol?
Heh
. Not much. Pride normally wouldn’t
allow it. Poked and prodded by doctors? Sure. Poked and prodded by his loud
mouth of a sibling?
Absolutely not.
However this time…

“We’re making a conscious effort and there have been
no results as of yet,” he responded.

Luciano grunted, sitting back as he eyed
Sansone
. “When you say ‘conscious effort’ are we discussing
the assistance of fertility physicians or the assistance of
maca
root?”

He winced, remembering the nightmare of
that
particular incident. “Both, but I’d
rather not talk about the latter. According to our doctors, we’re literally in
the ideal state health wise. It’s just not taking. No one has a theory as to
why.”

Smirking now, Luciano opened his mouth to undoubtedly
say something that would bring a great deal of violence upon himself when
Sansone’s
phone began to ring. The tone alone told him who
was calling. He didn’t even look at the screen when he smoothed his thumb
across it to quiet the sound.

“Not
gonna
to answer?”

Sansone
squeezed his eyes
shut and shook his head a bit. “No.”

“Any particular reason why?”

“Because it’s more than likely a call for me to
return home and…” He abruptly stopped and tucked in his lips. Blinking a few
times, he continued with, “Do you remember that trip upstate to the countryside
that we took some of the older boys on? The one where we visited a farm in
between off-roading and hitting a few of the country fairs?”

“Ale, turkey legs, and well made machinery to do
donuts on? Of course.”

“And can you recall our lesson on what takes place
between a bull and his harem of heifers?”

Luciano waggled his brows slightly. “How could I
not?” He placed a hand to his chest. “I spent time admiring his lifestyle.”

“Did you also spend time admiring the cold, dead look
in his eyes?”
Sansone
queried, staring off. “The
cold, dead look of a man that had been drained of his energy and youth? A man
used in an unnatural repetition at the whims of nature and her cruelty?”

“Are we still discussing the stud?” Luciano whispered
from beside him in a tone that said he was uncomfortable. “I suddenly feel as
though we’re no longer discussing the stud.”

Sansone
gave him a sidelong
glance. “We’re still discussing a stud, brother of mine, that stud just happens
to be
me.”

At that point, Luciano attempted to stand and walk
away.
Sansone’s
punch behind the other man’s knee, which
caused his legs to buckle and slammed him back onto where he’d been seated,
hampered that.

“You see,” he calmly went on over Luciano’s mutters
of him being a bevy of horrible, godforsaken things. “Your sister-in-law is on
a warpath for a baby.
A baby that she’s willing to damage us
both for.
And by damage, I mean she’s trying to snap my dick in
half.”

Once again, Luciano tried his hand at moving. Once
again,
Sansone
brought him back down. A shot to the
gut did the work for him.

“Sex in my household has become a chore, Luc. I cannot
step across the threshold without finding myself in a multitude of
uncomfortable and unreasonably awkward positions.” He turned to partially face
his gasping and cursing sibling. “How does a woman, a
human
woman, rip boxers?
Sturdy, athletic, expensive
boxers?
When did that become a
thing?”
Sansone
bit the inside of his cheek. “When
did I lose the right to say ‘no’? Where did I go so wrong in the midst of my
marriage that I would now rather set my beautiful, full, wondrously sculpted
eyebrows on
fire
as opposed to going
home to my wife? As opposed to watching her plant her feet on the bed after
sex, thrust her hips up into my face before asking me,

Did
all of it go in this time? Are you sure
all
of it went in this time?”

“If I have to fucking crawl back to my truck, I
will,” Lucian gritted out, shoving
Sansone’s
hand off
of his shoulder so that he could move away. “But I refuse to sit through more
of this.”

Taking his brother’s forearm, he bent it up behind
Luciano’s back and wrapped his free arm around the man’s neck, holding him in
place. “Listen to me,”
Sansone
murmured against his
sibling’s ear. “I’ve spent the last several months doing yoga with parts of my
body that I’m sure I’m not supposed to have complete control of because my
lovely spouse suggested that perhaps I’m not limber enough. There is a
frightening strength in me that I’d rather not reveal, so if I were you, I’d
remain where you currently are and take in every word of my complaints.
Otherwise I’ll wrap my entire being around your oversized muscle mass and
squeeze you to death like a giant anaconda that has had the luck of stumbling
upon an unsuspecting wildebeest.
Capiche
?

Luciano nodded, tapping
Sansone’s
arm until he released him.

Easing back,
Sansone
said,
“I shower in fear. I sleep in fear. I dress in fear. I
eat
in fear. I’ve hidden in closets, beneath beds and even inside
of the patio crawl space out on the deck just to avoid small, incredibly strong
hands. Hands that I’ve become tempted into shocking with a cattle prod
because they just won’t stop touching me!”
He
stopped and sucked in a breath. “I don’t know what to do, what to say. All I
receive in communications now are monosyllabic words that mostly consist of,
‘Pants. Off.’
I’m terrified that it will
only advance to her grunting harshly and pointing to her crotch. I am in need
of help, possibly counseling.”
Sansone
nodded,
speaking more to himself than Luciano now. “Yeah, counseling.”

 
The other man was quiet for a minute
before he decided to imbue all of the wisdom his simple, Philly bred soul had
to give when he said, “Pack her up, put her on a plane, and take her out to an
island where there are possibly boars still running free. Be accommodating only
to a certain extent and remind her that what you do—
everything
that you do—doesn’t have to simply revolve around
the creation of some large haired cretin that I will most likely knock over on
occasion just for the hell of it. Remind her that there is a man behind the
genitalia, and while he will never match me in looks, charm, or general worth,
he still exists. He exists and he matters. Don’t give her what she wants until
you’re good and goddamn ready to. When you finally
do,
don’t dress your dick in a top hat and monocle before
presenting it. Don’t be polite. Rain down every drop of filth your putrid
little cloud of a heart has carried from the start of puberty. You take charge.
And the moment she falls in line again, you fuck her unconscious. That is
my
counseling.”

Sansone
pondered those sage
words for a moment, finding them to be surprisingly sound. So much so that he
even considered
not
backhanding
Luciano for his commentary on his worth and possible acts of random hostility towards
his future offspring. He bypassed the backhand and instead went for another jab
to Luciano’s midsection. When he bent over at the waist,
Sansone
stood and stepped on and then over him. “Thank you oh so much for being a rock
for me to stand on, Luc. Words can’t express how much I appreciate your
advice.”


Gonna
…kill…you,”
his brother ground out.

“The love is mutual, my friend, the love is mutual.”

 

***

 


Yo
, baby!
Yo
, baby!
Yo
!”
Sansone
called out, making
his way through the front door with a bundle of bags in hand. A quick trample
down the stairs into the family room had him releasing everything onto the
couch. “Love of my life, oh buxom one, I have returned with gifts!”

The slow drag of footsteps to his left alerted him to
Nyssa’s appearance and he began to quickly empty the bags. Clothing in varying
styles and colors soon took over the cushions and he opened his palms to
present it. “I give you the latest in swimsuits, sarongs, cover ups, maxi
dresses, sandals and headwear. All of which you shall need for,”—he
reached into his back pocket and pulled out two plane tickets—“our week
long vacation in
Moorea
.” Quite pleased with himself,
he added, “There shall be a private bungalow, sweetly nestled in the French
Polynesian and just a stone’s skip from Tahiti. We will enjoy sun, sand, surf,
and foods that will make you never doubt the presence of God again.” He clapped
his hands together and spun to finally face her. “We leave in…” Her expression
brought an immediate halt to his words. “
Cara?
Qual
è
il
problema
?”
She looked vacant. Like something had
literally sucked the joy out of her.

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