Chapter 18
Mikayla
I had never been taught to love my body.
No one sat me down and explained it like a lesson. But I saw the judgement in smaller ways. Side comments. Looks that lingered a second too long, then slid away. Advice disguised as concern.
You have a pretty face, Mikayla.
You’d be stunning if you lost a little weight.
You’re just… built big.
You have bigger bones than usual.
Big bones. That was the phrase people liked most. As if my skeleton had personally offended them.
My ankles were thick—cankles, if you were feeling cruel or funny depending on the delivery. My hips were wide. My chest too full, like it didn’t belong to the rest of me. My thighs touched when I stood, which apparently was a crime punishable by lifelong self-awareness.
My skin was too white. Porcelain, some said. Ghostly, others meant. My hair was too black, so dark it made people squint and ask where I was really from, like my DNA owed them a clear answer.
I never had one.
Too pale to be Mediterranean. Too dark to be Northern European. A walking question mark with good cheekbones and a body that never quite fit the expectations attached to my face.
I knew my face was pretty. I wasn’t blind. Symmetry, lashes, lips—God had done fine there.
But the rest of me?
It felt like a clerical error.
So I learned to be careful. Learned that confidence was safer than desire, and modesty was a shield. My past indiscretions were few and far between, not because I didn’t want more—but because wanting felt like asking for disappointment.
I didn’t trust my body to be wanted the way it was.
Which made the moment Gianni pushed me back against the wall feel like stepping into another universe entirely.
The plaster was cool against my spine. My breath left me in a sharp rush as his body came close—not crushing, not rough, but unyielding and present. Like he was claiming space I’d never been allowed to take up before.
I was naked, fully and completely. My towel was discarded on the floor. And he didn’t hesitate.
He didn’t try to hide the lust in his eyes. His gaze wasn’t assessing in a manner that was skimming past my hips or lingering at my stomach or flinching at my thighs.
His gaze burned.
My heart slammed against my ribs as his hand came to my waist, solid and sure, fingers spanning skin I’d spent years wishing were smaller. His thumb pressed into the curve of my hip like it belonged there.
I gasped—not because of the touch, but because of what it meant. He wasn’t overlooking anything. He was seeing it. All of it.
My chest rose fast with my breathing, and his gaze followed the movement without apology. Heat flooded my face, my stomach tightening as shock and want tangled together until I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
This wasn’t how this was supposed to go.
I was supposed to feel exposed. Embarrassed. Aware of every flaw I’d memorized since adolescence. Instead, I felt… wanted. Desired in a way that didn’t ask me to shrink.
His body caged mine in, not trapping me—but holding me there like he was daring me to believe what his eyes were saying. My hands came up without permission, resting against his chest, feeling the steady power beneath my palms.
I was dizzy with it. With him.
With the realization that the parts of myself I’d spent years apologizing for were the very things making his breath hitch, his jaw tighten, his control visibly strain.
I had never been pressed against a wall by a man who looked at me like this. Like I was too much, and exactly enough.
And standing there, bare and breathless, with his heat surrounding mine, I understood something all at once.
I hadn’t been wrong about my body. The world had been wrong about what it was allowed to want.
And Gianni? He wanted me. Every delicate inch.