Epilogue
Sofia
I wake up slowly, the soft daylight filtering through the glass walls that line the front of the house. Stretching lazily, I reach for Nero, only to find his side of the bed empty.
In his place, there’s a note and a single rose.
Smiling, I pick up the flower and tuck it behind my ear before opening the note.
In the kitchen.
I let my head fall back onto the pillow with a soft laugh. When it comes to romance, well, Nero is... a work in progress. He has these moments where he can be unintentionally sweet, but he’s also abrupt and, sometimes, completely oblivious.
“Hello, Princess.” His deep voice draws my attention. He’s leaning against the doorframe, holding a bowl in his hand, a playful smirk tugging at his lips.
My eyes drink him in, and as always, a sense of rightness fills me. It always does when I look at him. He’s mine—every inch of him. This perfect, rugged, infuriating, beautiful man. All mine.
I’m the luckiest woman in the world.
I stretch out on the bed, intentionally arching my back and allowing the bed covers to slip down my breasts.
“Hey, baby,” I say with a slow smile, enjoying the way his gaze darkens.
Amusement flickers in his eyes, but the second they settle on the exposed mounds of my breasts, any trace of humor is gone, replaced with raw hunger.
“Did no one ever tell you not to tease a hungry animal with its food, Mrs. Castello?” he growls, voice low and heated.
The name never ceases to warm my heart and, reflexively, my focus lands on the gold band around my husband’s finger. I don’t think he’s taken it off a single day since I said I do to him and slid it into the digit. I can’t believe it’s been almost five months since then.
After that day at the docks, when the shootout ended, things had gotten complicated. The police and press had circled like vultures. I had to stay indoors for a while when their relentless hounding became too much.
One particularly aggressive journalist had shoved a microphone in my face and wouldn’t stop screaming questions, causing me to stumble and fall. And like an avenging angel, Nero had appeared seemingly out of nowhere, and in seconds, the man was an unrecognizable mess on the ground.
Our lawyers—and Carmine—had managed to smooth things over, but it had taken me to talk Nero out of hunting the man down at the hospital to finish what he started.
“Marry me, and I won’t kill him,” he had said, dead serious.
I remember staring at him in disbelief. “Tell me you’re joking.”
“I don’t joke about things like this, Princess,” he’d replied, not a trace of humor in his tone.
“Seriously,” I’d thrown up my hands in the air, frustrated, “are you trying to coerce me into marrying you? You know what? Go ahead and kill him. Do whatever you want. When you land in federal prison, I’ll be free to go off with some young, hot, and?—”
He hadn’t let me finish my tirade. Instead, he silenced me with a hard, passionate kiss and proceeded to give me not less than ten orgasms that night. Let’s just say my memory was a little hazy for a week afterward.
The next day, we got married. Last I heard, the journalist was still alive.
“What time is it?” I ask my husband as he approaches me, his gaze full of naked, liquid heat.
“Time to feed you,” he replies. “You passed right out after?—”
“Four orgasms,” I cut in with a huff. “Are you trying to kill me? My headstone will read Beloved Wife, died of pleasure.”
When I look over at him, brows pull together in a deep frown. “Stop talking about dying and eat your fruits.”
He thrusts the bowl of peeled and sliced fruits at me before crawling into the bed to settle at my back. He adjusts me to his preference till I’m leaning up against him.
“You cut far too much,” I protest, eyeing the mountain of fruit.
He eyes the bowl with disbelief. “You’re going to finish every single thing in that bowl, Sofia. I mean it.” Then, almost casually, he adds. “By the way, your parents called.”
My mouth twitches and I toss an apple slice into my mouth. “What did they say?”
“I didn’t pick the phone,” he shrugs, one hand rising up to cover my bare breast as he begins to roll a nipple between his fingers.
A moan escapes me, long and loud, but I manage to shake my head, fighting through the haze of lust. “You promised you’d make an effort with them.”
The promise had been made under extreme duress, back when my parents had been less than supportive about my new relationship with Nero. They’re old-fashioned, set in their ways, but I know they care about me in their own way.
“We agreed that no one should attempt to reach us if it wasn’t an emergency, and in case of emergencies, reach Davide to contact us,” he points out. “What part of those instructions says that they can just call us randomly?”
I open my mouth to answer, but he pinches at my nipple, and a flood of moisture gushes out of me. I gasp at the immense pleasure, then look over my shoulder to glare at the man I’m so hopelessly in love with.
“I know what you’re doing, Nero,” I accuse.
“If you want me to stop, just say the word,” he bends to whisper in my ear and my body shudders, breath catching in my throat. When his tongue peeks out of his mouth and swirls around the shell of my ear, I’m a goner.
As if I can ever want my husband to stop touching me.
“Eat your fruits, baby,” he murmurs. “You don’t eat enough.”
“How am I supposed to when you’re doing that?” I whine, half-laughing, half-desperate.
Just like that, he pulls away from me, causing a frustrated groan to slip out of my mouth.
“I hate you,” I grumble, stuffing my mouth with mango slices.
Nero is big on me making my own choices and decisions, but when it comes to feeding me, he doesn’t compromise. He watches me like a hawk until I clear my plate. It’s a habit of his now. I can’t deny it’s working—my appetite’s back to what it used to be. His care, attention, and relentless drive to ensure I’m taken care of are the biggest reasons why.
That, and the fact that he always makes sure I’m so exhausted after sex that I instantly need sustenance.
Since we arrived in Marina di Puolo for our honeymoon three days ago, he’s gotten a new habit of cutting up fruits for me. The island is idyllic, calm, and relaxing, and the beach house we are occupying is made up of a single bedroom, a single bath, a living room complete with a pool table, and a cozy kitchen.
We both laugh the minute Cat strolls lazily into the room. The moment he spots us on the bed, he does a quick 360 and saunters back out.
It’s almost as if, the moment he senses we’re about to get down—something that happens all too quickly once we’re in the same room together—he makes himself scarce.
I can't blame him; I’m sure his innocent cat eyes have seen more of our lovemaking than he ever wanted to. We still haven’t settled on a name for him. Since Nero rejected Alfred, we just call him Cat.
“Did you speak to Carmine about negotiating with Parrello?” I ask after a while. “I don’t like that slimy son of a gun. He acts too slick, and you know that men who act like him always have something to hide. A few somethings wouldn’t even surprise me.”
I let out a squeal as Nero suddenly hurls me up into his arms and drops me back until I’m facing him and sitting astride him, knees planted outside of his thighs.
“What did I tell you about getting involved in Cosa Nostra’s business?”
I raise a brow, then say with a full mouth, “Hmm. Not to?”
“And yet here you are.” His thumb presses against my lower lip, staring at them with a kind of intensity that makes my panties get soaked. “Tell Davide he will soon be without a job.”
I laugh, because it’s not the first time he’s threatened to fire his loyal man for giving me information. Little does Nero know that Davide’s fiancée is also a well of information for me. I know that the lifestyle is dangerous, and I’m definitely not going to be rushing off to wars or anything, but is it so bad that I want to know what’s going on in my husband’s life?
“He can come work for me when I open my clinic,” I grin at him saucily.
“And how is he supposed to survive being jobless for a few years?” he asks, and I wince.
I had applied to three different colleges around the area, and after two sent me back rejection letters, I had started to lose hope, until I opened the third one and saw the words “Accepted.”
“You want to go to school? Again? What for?” My mother had screeched when she heard the news, followed by a hesitant. “Congratulations, I guess.”
“He can live off one of those limitless credit cards you gave me,” I muse.
“Limitless.” My husband makes a strange sound in his throat. “With the way you’re really determined to buy the entire country out of all its jewelry, that card may not be limitless forever.”
I roll my eyes at him because I know he truly doesn’t mind my expansive jewelry collection. In fact, the other day, he had me drape myself in diamonds—neck, wrists, ears, ankles—and then he had fucked me in just them.
Slowly, I raise the last slice of mango to my mouth and chew it, giving him a challenging look. “I believe, Mr. Castello, that that was the last of my fruit.”
“Is there a reason I’m being informed of this, Mrs. Castello?” he drawls.
I’m already pushing my panties down my ass and thighs. “I will leave you to use your imagination, husband.”
Luckily for me, he’s not wearing jeans today. The dark sweatpants mold to his muscled thighs expertly and makes my mouth water and, to my delight, I pull down the waistband of the pants and his cock immediately jumps free.
I like nothing more than an easily accessible Nero.
“My imagination is failing me, Princess.” His hands settle on my hips, digging in almost painfully. “Fuck, you are so sexy.”
“How sexy?” I tease.
In the short time Nero and I have been openly together since Sebastian’s death, he’s restored my confidence and a teasing, playful side of me that I’ve always been too unsure to let loose. With Nero, I’m not ashamed to ask for what I want, because he will never make me feel depraved about it.
Instead, he will scour the ends of the Earth just to deliver on a silver platter my most insignificant and slightest desires.
“You make me want to forget everything back home and just stay here, forever,” he confesses.
It’s the same with me, but I know that we can’t just run away from our responsibilities. My husband hasn’t come this far just to give up now. He wouldn’t be the man I love and respect if he did.
I go up on my knees and position his cock to my slick entrance, gaze pinned on his.
“Don’t tease me, Princess,” he snarls, and then his grip on my hip tightens further, and I’m slammed down on my husband’s thick, long cock.
The walls vibrate with my scream as I’m impaled on seven inches of pulsing erection.
“ Oh God, oh God ,” I pant, trying to catch my breath. No matter how many times he pushes into me, the sheer size still manages to take my breath away.
He lifts me up again and brings me down. Our mouths melt against each other at the second stroke, eager and messy, tongues dwelling and teeth crashing against each other’s.
Nero raises my hips again, but this time he spins us, so my back is to the bed. When he grabs hold of the headboard, I just know I’m about to have my mind blown, like every other time with him.
“I’m going to fill you up till you are leaking me for days, and then I’m going to do it all over again.”
I nod eagerly. “Yes, please.”
He laughs into my throat. “Greedy little thing.” He palms my ass cheeks, raising my hips off the bed and pushing into me. “You take me so good, Princess.”
I clutch him tighter and smile.
This life I have now feels almost perfect, and at the center of it all is Nero—the dark-eyed stranger who stared down at me from the end of that aisle like a premonition.
He’s dangerous, and he’s flawed, but he’s also everything I need.
A nightmare turned into a daydream.
“I love you, Mrs. Castello,” he growls. “I want you to remember that, because I’m about to fuck you like I don’t.”
“I damn hope so, Mr. Castello,” I smirk. “And I love you, too.”