Bianchi followed her brother to Italy because she didn't trust Dino Cavallone not to get him killed, and she hadn't spent six years looking for him just to lose him again. "Holy Mother of God," Hayato had said when he'd found out she'd rented an apartment near his university back in Japan, "what the fuck are you doing here?"

"Attending culinary school," she'd lied, hiding a smile when he turned green.

That wasn't going to work in Italy, though, so she switched out her cargo pants for a pair of skinny satin trousers and tied her hair up with a scarf, bought sunglasses that covered half her face and sat down at a little café with a latte and a hand-held GPS that told her where Hayato was within a hundred feet, ever since she'd put the tracking chip behind his ear.

"Bianchi?" someone asked, and she sloshed coffee all over the GPS.

"Cavallone," she answered sourly. The GPS sparked and started smoking.

"Uh," Dino said. His blond hair feathered out in a sunlit halo around his head, curling against his neck. He was gaping down her blouse. "You look nice," he finished.

"Fuck off."

He sat down. "Are you looking for Hayato?"

"No," she said. "Yes."

"He's got Takeshi with him."

"I know."

"He'll be fine."

"No thanks to you."

"Will you go out to dinner with me?" Dino flushed, bringing his hand up awkwardly. Bianchi blinked in surprise. "Please," Dino said. The coffee ate its way through the GPS and started in on the table.

"Okay," Bianchi said.

The concierge handed Bianchi a note when she got back to her hotel that afternoon, from Romario, telling her to wear black. She picked out a knee-length tubino with a square-cut collar and learned why halfway through the meal: Dino knocked over his glass with enough force to splash wine all down her front, then set the tablecloth on fire trying to mop it up with his napkins, before realizing that meant he was pretty much groping her chest and slamming backwards into a waiter carrying a roast duck. Bianchi's consternation caused her to involuntarily turn the wine into acid and it started dissolving her dress.

"Oh my God," Dino said, "I am so, so sorry." He gave her his suit jacket and she asked for the check.

"This is a disaster," she said quietly after. Dino bought two fat, square slices of pizza from a street vendor and handed one to her with a sheepish smile. They ate them on a bridge overlooking a slow-moving river and Bianchi burned the roof of her mouth on the cheese; while she was poking at the tender part with her tongue Dino shuffled in and went for a kiss that landed on her jaw. The accidental intimacy of it made her panic and turn their faces together. Dino made a pleased sound and licked into her mouth, hot and wet and tasting faintly of the sharp tang of fresh tomatoes. "Stop," she said, hand on his chest, heart thumping in her throat. "Stop it, Cavallone."

"I'm sorry," Dino said. "I thought—"

"I need to go," Bianchi said.

Around midnight she narrowed Hayato's location down to an old church in the middle of the city and settled in on an adjacent rooftop to wait. The wind picked up and she was forced to tuck Dino's jacket in tighter around her shoulders, wondering what the hell she thought she was doing. Hayato burst out of the church smeared with grime and scowling but otherwise safe; the sushi kid was hot on his heels and grabbed him by the wrist, ducking his head and saying something too softly for Bianchi to hear. "Sure," Hayato said, "whatever." Bianchi looked at Yamamoto's face and closed her her eyes, the hope there too much for her to handle.

Bianchi was pretty sure Yamamoto started fucking her brother not long after the Italy thing and considered putting the fear of God into him, but decided against it because—face it—the one most likely to get screwed in that situation wasn't Hayato. She even felt a little bit bad for Yamamoto because he was so in love it was embarrassing to watch, all that poorly-hidden mooning that had been going on for years. On Sunday she took an hour to light a candle in a church and thought, please don't let Hayato fuck that up. When she got back to her apartment building she found Dino Cavallone loitering outside and chatting up her dried-up crone of a landlady.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Hi," Dino said. He held up a floppy package wrapped in white tissue paper. "I brought you a replacement dress."

Bianchi looked at her landlady. "Let's do this inside."

"I'm sorry about the dinner," Dino said when Bianchi unlocked her door; her apartment was a mess, like always, and Dino's ears turned red when he caught sight of a leopard-print bra hanging off a lamp. Bianchi toed through a pile of t-shirts on the floor and dropped her purse on top of them.

"What are you here for?"

Dino tripped on his way to the sofa and caught his shin in the table in front of it, wincing as he sat down gingerly. "Reborn asked me to talk to Tsuna about his future duties as boss," he said, "and I wanted to see you again."

"Jesus," Bianchi said.

"Look, if I'm just making a dick of myself—"

"No, just an idiot." Bianchi contemplated for a moment the fact that she would probably end up fucking Dino Cavallone, and what a terrible idea that was.

"Oh," Dino said. "Is that okay?"

"That's fine."

After a pause, Dino picked up the package and held it out to her. "It's not exactly like the one I ruined, sorry." Bianchi unwrapped it, translucent paper crinkling under her hands. She refrained from pointing out that her old dress would probably have been salvageable if it weren't for her acid, and shook out the new one: it was a deep sandy gold, the color of her trousers when Dino recognized her at the café.

"Thank you," she said, folding it carefully and putting it down on the table. Now, she thought, and touched Dino's anxious face with the tips of her fingers. He kissed back cautiously, none of the sloppy, open-mouthed enthusiasm from the first time. She pushed him against the arm of the sofa and slid her hands up his chest, the skin warm and twitching under her palms. That got a better reaction, a strangled groan of surprise, and he knocked the back of his head into the lampstand and sent the lamp crashing to the floor.

"Ow, ow," he said. "Sorry, I can get you another lamp."

"It's thrifted," Bianchi said. She swung a leg over his waist and settled awkwardly; the sofa wasn't all that wide. A tug brought her t-shirt over her head and it joined the others on the floor. Dino's face got gratifyingly red and his hands came up, thumbs resting against the lower curves of Bianchi's ribs.

"Wow, you're. Wow, you're really pretty."

"Surprise," Bianchi said and Dino grinned, a flash of white teeth and crinkles in the corners of his eyes. Bianchi sucked in a breath when Dino skimmed his hands over her hips and up the knobs of her spine, curious.

"That's not how I meant it."

"Want to go back to my room?"

"What? If you're—if you're—okay." He stumbled after Bianchi when she pulled him up, leading him to the bedroom.

Dino Cavallone was a sweet fuck, very thoughtful, infuriatingly slow; he ripped the eyelet hooks from the back of Bianchi's bra when he was trying to take it off her and Bianchi figured that his excess care was probably out of concern, trying not to give her an black eye in his enthusiasm or something, but still. She didn't need him looking out for her so she pinned his wrists to the bed and slid down over his dick, wriggling a little. It took her a second to adjust, a pleasant burning stretch that acted as counterpoint to the tension in her belly, and she tightened a few times experimentally.

"Bianchi," Dino groaned, "fuck, baby." She raised an eyebrow and he smiled.

"Did you really just call me that?"

"What, Bianchi? Fuck!" he said again when she lifted up and sank back down, a tiny electric thrill going up her spine. "It's your name."

"Shut the hell up," she said. He didn't, but he didn't manage anything more than swearing after that, so it was all right. Near the end he managed to free a hand to thumb her clit; she came around his cock and over his fingers, shaking. After he came he rolled them both over and pressed his mouth to the back of her neck, apparently settling in for the night. Bianchi looked at the moon through her curtains and thought, idiot, idiot, idiot, and knew she was not referring to Dino.

She woke up when Dino's cell phone went off the next morning; the sun was barely a sliver on the horizon. "Shit," Dino mumbled, falling out of bed. He dug around in the tangle of his jeans for a while and finally unearthed the phone, flipping it open. "Yeah, sure. Okay."

"I gotta go. Bianchi?" he said, yanking his jeans on over his legs.

"Sure," Bianchi said.

"I'll see you later?"

"If you want."

"Okay," Dino said uncertainly. He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers, the hard metal of his sky ring warm with the heat of his body. Bianchi went back to sleep.

The next time she woke up it was because of the steady rasping noise coming from the vicinity of her floor; Dino's spiky turtle thing was scratching at her dresser. It looked up when she leaned over, soundlessly opening and closing its mouth. "Shit," she said.

It tried to follow her into the bath, and then into the kitchen, but it only made it a total of about five feet before Bianchi came out with a plate of croissants and jam. She took pity on it and picked it up, setting it down on the sofa next to her. A couple of seconds of flipping through channels came up with a badly dubbed version of Batman & Robin. She paused to watch Uma Thurman kiss poison onto some poor schmuck's lips; he went down choking on his own bloated, green-tinted tongue and Bianchi poked at the turtle. "You like that?" she asked, but it seemed more interested in her croissants so she fed it a few pieces before settling in to watch the movie.

Dino buzzed Bianchi's apartment in the late evening while she was experimenting with imbuing cocoa butter with enough toxicity to make a viable lip balm. "Hey," he said when she let him in, "oh, hey, there he is, thanks." He tucked the sleeping turtle in his satchel and rolled his shoulders; his lip had been split and there was a large smudge of soot across his forehead. "You wanna maybe try the dinner thing again?" he asked. "Unless uh, you've already eaten."

"Okay," Bianchi said.

"So how's Hayato?" Dino asked after they ordered their food.

"Fucking Yamamoto," Bianchi said. Dino choked and coughed, then cleared his throat.

"You're not going to poison him, are you?"

"What kind of person do you think I am?"

"I think you're the kind of person who followed her brother to Italy and stuck a tracking chip behind his ear. One of my doctors had to remove it. Was that what I made you spill your coffee on?"

"Hayato doesn't know how to take care of himself."

Dino smiled, then said, "I thought he might have had a thing for Tsunayoshi."

"If he did it's never going to get him anywhere."

Bianchi bit the inside of her cheek, stirring her drink. Dino was silent, contemplating the glass in his hands for a long moment.

"I think Tsuna will be a good boss," Dino said. "He's a good kid."

"He's soft," Bianchi said. Dino snorted. "Quit laughing, Cavallone, you are too. I'm surprised no one has offed you yet."

"Like you tried to?" Dino said, still snickering. "Maybe I'm just lucky."

"Children and idiots," Bianchi muttered.

"Could be." Dino shrugged. "I'm not going to stop letting people in just because they might fuck me over."

"It's not that simple," Bianchi said, poking viciously at the ice in her drink. She spent a moment thinking about what her life might have been like without the Mafia, if her father hadn't killed Hayato's mother, if her own mother hadn't taught her how to unwittingly poison her brother, bastard son. Maybe she could have opened a bakery. Met a nice boy like Dino Cavallone.

"I think you're softer than you look," Dino said. Bianchi snapped her head up, glaring, but Dino just grinned and ducked in for a kiss. He licked at her lips and straightened up, then wheezed when she deadlegged him. Bianchi sighed.

"Look," she said. "I don't want you to get the wrong idea about—"

Dino thunked against the table, scrabbling at his throat. Bianchi blinked at him, nonplussed, then pressed her lips together, feeling the waxy slide of lip gloss.

"Shit," she said.

"You are a disaster, Cavallone," she told him in her living room when the swelling in his lips and tongue had gone down.

"Maybe dinner dates aren't the thing," Dino said. Bianchi brought her hands to her face and over her eyes. He grabbed her wrists and pulled them away again. "It wasn't so bad."

"I think your brain is deoxygenated."

"We could do takeout." He looked so stupidly hopeful—or maybe just hungry—that Bianchi dug a takeout menu out from one of her cabinets and dialed the number.

When the order was in she asked, "Do you want something to drink?" and got up to root around for the wine in her pantry without waiting for an answer. Dino accepted his glass without a change in expression and clinked it against hers; she took a big gulp and said, "Sorry about poisoning you."

"It's okay. It's not a date until someone sticks a hypodermic needle in your tongue."

"I meant what I said about not getting the wrong idea."

Dino ran a hand through his hair and swirled his wine around. "What's that?"

"About me." Bianchi's stomach tightened unpleasantly and she finished off her wine, already reaching for the bottle again. "I'm in love with Reborn, you know."

"I remember you said that," Dino said finally. Bianchi was already making inroads on the third glass when he slid down from the sofa onto the floor next to her.

"So if you don't think you can handle—"

"I can," Dino said. Bianchi looked at him and felt her stomach drop even as heat pulsed between her legs; there was nothing soft about his face now, eyes glinting with the brightness of the overhead lights. His free hand brushed up her neck and cupped her jaw, thumbing over the curve of her lips. They were dry—she'd scrubbed off the lip gloss—and the corners of his mouth twitched up. His breath gusted out over her face and when he kissed her it was hot and lewd, rolling his tongue through her mouth until she was lightheaded with a combination of drink and want.

She was already regretting the wine when he started dragging his tongue over the line of her throat because she couldn't seem to stop herself clutching at him, fingers in his hair and squeezing his shoulders. He pushed her shirt up and off and then tugged off his own, hands splaying over her ribs as he scraped his teeth over the lace covering her nipples.

"Cavallone," she said.

"'m gonna go down on you," Dino said. He worked his way down slowly, teeth and tongue against her skin, not teasing but taking his time, maddening all the same. She clenched her jaw to keep from saying something stupid and he fumbled at the fastening of her jeans. Then the apartment buzzer went off—it shocked Bianchi back to something resembling a rational frame of mind and she jerked, staring up at her ceiling. "Come back later!" Dino bellowed; a squeak and some clattering drifted in through the open window.

"Fuck," Bianchi said. Dino caught her gaze for just a second, intense and dark, then lifted a shoulder and smiled before tugging her jeans down and spreading her knees apart. "Fuck," Bianchi said again when he lowered his head; she threw hers back and bit her tongue because he had gotten the wrong idea about her, fuck, of course he had gotten the wrong fucking idea and she shouldn't have expected any different.

"Good?" Dino asked and slid a finger inside her, curling it forward.

"Just do it," Bianchi said, meaning to make it an order; it came out more of a plea, low and hoarse. Dino proceeded to gently and methodically take her apart, nothing complicated, just fingers and tongue and the barest hint of teeth until she was desperately trying to grind her hips against his mouth. "Please," she heard herself say, thrashing a little, "please, oh, just—" He twisted his fingers and sucked hard on her clit and she muffled a moan, orgasm pulsing through her body all the way from her heels to her head.

"Bianchi," Dino said, tension audible in his voice. He hovered over her until she pulled him into a kiss, other hand snaking down to cup his cock through his jeans. He bucked into it, exhaling hard into her mouth.

"You better fuck me now, Cavallone," Bianchi said. Dino groaned acquiescence and yanked his bag over, producing a condom so quickly that Bianchi couldn't help but quirk her lips.

He slid into her and Bianchi arched off the floor, oversensitive, digging her fingers into his back. "That's good," he said, "that's good, Bianchi, fuck, you feel so good." She wrapped her legs around his waist and let him fuck her to a second orgasm, catching him against her when his arms buckled with his own. He would be set straight soon enough.

After, Bianchi stuck her head out the window and the takeout they'd ordered was still there, sitting abandoned in front of the building—"Three months carefully cultivating the right combination of terror and respect in local food suppliers," she said when Dino leaned over her to take a look for himself. She made Dino do up his pants and go fetch it, then popped it in the microwave for a minute and they ate it together.

"You ever cooked anything that wasn't poisonous?" Dino asked, stabbing futilely with his chopsticks. She opened a drawer and handed him a fork.

"Maybe you should check on your turtle," Bianchi said. "I gave him some of my croissants." Dino paused and opened his satchel; the turtle had completely retreated into its shell, but stuck its head out and yawned when Dino tapped it. Catching sight of Bianchi's food, it waddled over and she gave it a noodle.

"You are completely incomprehensible to me sometimes," Dino said. He narrowed his eyes and Bianchi braced herself, but he just shoveled a forkful of gyudon in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully.

"Give me your number?" he asked when they were finished, shrugging on his jacket. She did, and he kissed her and left; when the door closed she looked around her empty apartment and swallowed a feeling that should have been relief but wasn't.

He came back the next day, though, and whenever he had a free minute. Sometimes he called and sometimes he didn't, but he never tried anything awkward or said anything that might have caused a problem. They fucked, and then he nosed good-naturedly around her apartment, ruining her newest recipes by standing near them. Banished to the bedroom, he unearthed a box of books she had forgotten about and flopped back on her bed to read one of them. He was still reading when she finished, a ridiculously lurid dog-eared romance novel, and Bianchi looked at the steady rise and fall of his chest, the sunlight slanting in through the windows and over his skin, and lined up all the reasons she couldn't let herself have this in her mind.

A week passed, more or less, and eventually Dino had to go back to Italy: "I'll keep in touch," he said, kissing Bianchi once on each cheek and then on the mouth. "See you."

In the lull she took a job doing personal security for some pop star, because Tsuna didn't like it when she killed people and at the end of the day money was money and the word of the Vongola was the word of the Vongola. Hayato and Yamamoto were still sort of warily dancing around each other and Bianchi would have been tempted to sit Hayato down and say something if she didn't know that the only thing that would accomplish would be freaking him right the fuck out—

"Is that your phone?" Joben—Jomei?—asked. Bianchi flipped her phone open to see a picture of two ties, one a sedate blue and the other pink with what looked like—she squinted—fat gold ponies printed on it, and below that a text message from Dino: dinner w benito de luca l/r?

"One second please," Bianchi said. She stepped outside and hit the redial button; Dino picked up on the second ring. "You're not intimidating enough to wear a tie with ponies on it to meet No Nose de Luca."

"Romario just said it was tacky," Dino said. "Well, actually he said 'whichever you like, boss,' and now I can hear him crying in the other room." Bianchi smiled.

"You've got no sense of self-preservation. And shitty taste."

"That's not fair," Dino said, sounding wounded. "You liked the dress, right?" Bianchi cleared her throat, smile dropping away even as her pulse sped up.

"I have to go back to work."

"Sure. Call you later?"

"Was that your boyfriend?" Joben asked when Bianchi closed the door behind her.

"No."

"Do you have a boyfriend?"

"No."

"Do you—" Joben swallowed. "Want a boyfriend?" Bianchi narrowed her eyes and there was a moment of silence before he paled and squeaked, "Um, forget I said anything!"

Dino called a lot over the next couple of weeks, mostly about trivial things, asking after her job and Hayato, sometimes after Tsuna and Kyouya. It quickly became clear to Bianchi that Dino didn't have the sense to come in out of the rain, let alone head Italy's second-largest Famiglia: "Give the phone to Romario!" Bianchi found herself shouting over Dino's snickering. "Give—just give it to him!"

"Miss Bianchi," Romario said mournfully in the next moment.

"Will you please explain to your boss," Bianchi said, taking a breath, "that Gennaro Pucciani is a power-hungry pigfucker and if he goes to that wedding he will probably end up getting shot in the back."

"I know, Miss Bianchi—"

"Want to come to Italy?" Dino said. Bianchi blinked and squeezed her phone. "You could be my escort."

"I don't—"

"Just," Dino said. "Think about it? As a favor?"

"Please, Miss Bianchi," Romario said.

"I'll—I'll think about it," Bianchi said.

She decided to ask Reborn and went to see him in Tsuna's apartment. She bumped into her brother coming out of the room; he wasn't pulling out his cigarettes, she noted in a corner of her mind, right before Hayato caught sight of her and his knees gave out. Greeting her cheerfully, Yamamoto caught him by the armpits and held him up while he retched. Inside, Reborn shrugged and said, "It's not like you have any pressing obligations here. It would be good to remind Pucciani that the Cavallone and the Vongola are closely allied."

"I'm fucking Dino," Bianchi said. Tsuna sputtered and turned puce; Reborn nodded and began taking his gun apart, not looking at her.

"Even better," he said.

She didn't start crying until she was in the air over Romania, and then only for a few minutes before she pulled herself together. Pathetic, she thought, squinting into the mirror on her compact then snapping it shut. On the ground in Rome, Dino pressed his cheek against hers and said, "I'm glad you came."

She swallowed hard twice and said, "Is there somewhere I can lie down?"

Dino frowned. "Are you feeling all right?"

"Just jet lag."

Dino put her up in a room that smelled like him, freshly laundered cotton and cheap cologne, blessedly dark and cool when she slipped between slick sheets and pressed her face into the pillow. She slept all the way through the next morning when Romario woke her up with a breakfast tray piled high with croissants and four different kinds of jam; "We'll be leaving for the wedding in two hours, Miss Bianchi," he said, "Do you—require anything?"

"No," Bianchi said.

"You look really great," Dino said when Bianchi stepped into the foyer in the dress he bought her. "Wow, you, wow." She let him help her into her coat and turned around, eyes dropping to the level of his collar then closing.

"You're wearing the pony tie," she said.

"It matches your dress," he said cheerfully, holding out his arm. She took his elbow but he pulled her hand all the way through, weaving their fingers together, warm even through the gloves she wore. In the cavernous nave of the church, all of the whispering died when they walked in together, then started up again at twice the volume; "Poison Scorpion," she heard one woman hiss to to her companion, then "Don Cavallone!" Gennaro Pucciani slithered over and took Bianchi's hand. "So glad you could make it. Who is your lovely companion?"

"Bianchi," Bianchi said, watching his eyes skitter over to a thin man in a black suit who stood leaning against the far wall.

"Lovely to meet you," Pucciani croaked. Bianchi sighed.

The mass and the wedding passed without incident, Dino rubbing absent circles into Bianchi's palm with his thumb. "I didn't know you were seeing someone, Don Cavallone," the bride's grandmother said, snapping her fan open after her third consecutive shot of vodka at lunch.

"Well—" Dino said.

"Isn't young love just the most beautiful thing," Bianchi said loudly. "Your granddaughter looks very happy, Nonna Rocca." She nodded at the bride and groom making slow circles on the dance floor.

Nonna Rocca frowned. "Yes, yes, the son turned out all right but that Gennaro is such a slimy little shitf—"

Dino coughed. "Would you like to dance, Bianchi?" he said. The band launched into a moderately-paced waltz and Bianchi placed her hand in Dino's, smiling at Nonna Rocca who waved them away irritably. "I should probably be able to avoid stepping on you," he whispered, skimming his other hand down her spine before settling it on the small of her back. Bianchi made a noncommittal noise. "Romario's just outside."

"I have to go to the bathroom," Bianchi said. "You should wait for me in that dark secluded alcove on the balcony. Alone."

"Um," Dino said, "okay." She flicked her hands at him in a shooing motion and he went, visibly perplexed. Ducking around around a corner, Bianchi shook a set of brass knuckles out of her clutch, slipping it on her fingers and clenching them a couple of times, until she determined enough time had passed to go after Dino.

The thin man was there, as expected, skulking along a wall; "Excuse me," Bianchi said, tapping him on the shoulder. He jerked around, surprised, and Bianchi smashed her fist right into his face. No Nose de Luca went down like a sack of rocks, still clutching his switchblade, and Dino swirled his champagne glass. "Idiot," Bianchi added.

"I thought we'd really connected," Dino said wistfully.

"Idiot," Bianchi said again.

"That's not your usual—" Dino made a gesture at his own right hand.

"I want to leave." Bianchi listened to No Nose breathe wetly for a few seconds. "Please."

"Okay," Dino said. He hesitated, frowning, then pulled out his cell phone to call Romario.

She didn't wait for Romario to open the car door, just stepped out and walked inside herself; she could hear Dino giving hasty orders about what to do with No Nose de Luca's unconscious body and then his footsteps after her. "I'm just going to go—change," she said. "Give me a second."

"Bianchi," Dino said. She shut the door gently in his face.

Standing in front of the dresser mirror, Bianchi reached her arms behind herself and started yanking at the zipper on her dress. She only managed to get it halfway down before it caught in the fabric and wouldn't go any further; her hands fell away, nerveless, and she took a single shaky breath. Dino appeared behind her in the mirror.

"Hey," Dino said. Should have locked the door, Bianchi thought. "Are you mad at me?"

"I want to get out of this dress," Bianchi said. Dino hesitated again then brought his hands to her back, working the fabric out from where it was caught in the zipper's teeth. The zipper slid down smoothly the rest of the way and he stepped back. "I told Reborn I was fucking you."

"Ah."

"I got his—fucking blessing, too."

"How long are you going to wait for Reborn to start respecting you?" Dino asked quietly.

Bianchi whirled around. "Fuck you, Cavallone, that isn't even what this is about—"

"What's it about, then," Dino said louder.

"You think you respect me? You can't even back the fuck off when I tell you to—"

"Because I'm in love with you!" Dino shouted, turning abruptly red. "Jesus Christ, what do you want me to do?" For a moment, all Bianchi could hear was their combined breathing, harsh in the quiet room.

"I'm in love with Reborn."

"The only thing Reborn respects is someone's usefulness to him, and maybe one day he'll make an exception, but it isn't going to be for me and it isn't going to be for you." Dino shoved a hand through his hair. "You can't let him treat you like—you deserve better."

Bianchi heard herself laugh, short and mirthless, then sobered. "You just refuse to fucking get it, don't you? At least Reborn gets it, you are the stupidest person I've ever met, my own—my own brother can't even look at me without vomiting, I—"

"Shit, Bianchi," Dino said, and Bianchi bit her lip, hard. She crossed her arms under her chest and tried to turn away but Dino pulled her in, hooking her hands around his neck and picking her up, setting her on the dresser. Shuddering once, she wrapped herself around him and he pressed his nose into her temple.

"I'm going to fuck it up," Bianchi mumbled. "If I let myself stay with you I'm going to fuck it up."

"I love you," Dino said. "You are so full of shit."

"Fuck off, Cavallone," Bianchi said tiredly. Dino kissed the corner of her mouth, and then when she didn't resist coaxed it open with hot, firm swipes of his tongue. He kissed her for a long time, intent and serious, all over her face and down her neck. Pushing her dress off her shoulders, he bent his head to the swell of her breasts and sucked a red mark into one of them; at her small noise he straightened, picking her up again with two hands under her ass.

"Will you let me—" Dino said, taking a jerky step toward the bed.

"If you trip I'll kill you," Bianchi said, tightening her grip. Dino laughed and said,

"I won't." He didn't. They bounced against the bed and he crumpled her dress up over her hips, knuckles brushing against the material of her panties before he tugged them off completely.

"Yes," Bianchi said, fingers flexing against his collar. She wormed a finger into the knot of his tie and yanked it off, throwing it somewhere on the floor. Dino laughed again and helped her take off the rest of his clothes, then ran his hand up the inside of her thigh while she shivered. "Yes," she said when he thrust into her in one smooth stroke, "yes," when she lifted her hips to adjust the angle to take him deeper, "please, yes, Cavallone, Dino, fuck." His chest curved over her spine and he mouthed the shell of her ear, pushing her harder into the mattress with every movement of his hips until she couldn't breathe, gasping, overwhelmed.

"This is going to end poorly," Bianchi said after, spreading her fingers out across Dino's stomach. Dino hummed and stroked down her arm.