Epilogue #3
Birdie
*** Later that night ***
I close our bedroom door now that both kids are down, but I know there’s a chance Stefano will wake, so I press the lock. The click sounds louder than it should, making my pulse spike. Because I’m about to rock my husband’s world in more ways than one.
Lorenzo is in bed, readers on, papers spread across his lap like he isn’t the most dangerous thing in the room because he’s spent years learning every soft, needy, ruined part of me.
Slowly, I walk toward him, undoing the tie of my robe.
“Lorenzo,” I say.
He looks up immediately. One word. That’s all it takes. His attention lifts from the papers and lands on me with enough heat to make my skin prickle.
“I need something from you.”
I let the robe slip from my shoulders. It falls to the floor in a whisper of silk, pooling around my feet, and Lorenzo goes completely still.
His eyes move over me slowly. From my bare breasts to my waist, lower to the small strip of lace between my thighs, then back up again.
His mouth parts, barely, and the hunger that crosses his face is so raw it sends a pulse straight through me.
He removes his readers, setting them down on the nightstand. Then the papers, as if he is giving me time to change my mind. As if he doesn’t know I locked the door because I have no intention of escaping him.
“What do you need, cara?” he asks, voice low.
I step closer. “You.”
“Then come here.”
I climb onto the bed, but I don’t crawl into his arms. Not yet. I swing one leg over him and straddle his lap, settling over the hard ridge already pressing against his sleep pants.
His hands find my hips instantly.
“Elizabeth.”
I love the warning in his voice.
I love ignoring it more.
I roll my hips once, dragging myself over him. His grip tightens.
“Careful,” he says.
I lean down, brushing my lips over his. “No.”
That breaks something in him.
Lorenzo surges up, one hand spearing into my hair as his mouth takes mine. The kiss is rough. Hungry. All teeth and tongue and the kind of need that still shocks me after all this time. He kisses me like I’ve been gone for months instead of across the hall putting our children to bed.
His other hand slides down my back, over my ass, and he groans when he finds the lace soaked through.
“Jesus Christ.” His fingers press against me through the fabric. “You came in here like this?”
“I told you.” I nip his lower lip. “I need something.”
He drags the lace aside and slips his fingers through me, finding exactly how wet I am for him.
“Greedy wife.”
I shudder. “Always.”
He touches me with slow, practiced cruelty, rubbing my clit with his thumb while two fingers slide inside me. I gasp into his mouth, my hips jerking, but he catches me with his free arm and holds me against him.
“Quiet,” he murmurs. “Unless you want to wake the house.”
I bite his shoulder to muffle the sound.
He laughs under his breath. “That’s my good girl.”
The praise hits me like a match to gasoline.
I grind down on his hand, riding his fingers while he watches my face with that devastating focus of his. Like there is nothing in the world more important than the way I fall apart for him. His fingers curl and my back arches.
“Lorenzo.”
“I know.” His mouth brushes my throat. “I know exactly what you need.”
He rolls us suddenly, pinning me beneath him. The shift steals my breath. His body covers mine, heavy and hot, and then his mouth is moving down my body, over my breasts, my ribs, my stomach.
He pauses there. Just for a second. His lips press to the soft place beneath my navel, and my heart gives one hard, painful beat. Because he doesn’t know.
Not yet.
His mouth drifts lower before I can lose my nerve, and then he’s between my thighs, tearing the lace down my legs with less patience than skill.
“Lorenzo,” I whisper.
He looks up at me from between my knees.
The sight of him there—my beautiful, ruthless husband, hair mussed, eyes black with want—is enough to make me ache.
“Open for me,” he says.
I do. His hands spread my thighs wider, and then his mouth is on me. I clap a hand over my lips as pleasure tears through me. Lorenzo eats me like he has been waiting all day for this, tongue dragging over my clit, lips closing around it, sucking just hard enough to make my hips lift off the bed.
He pins me down with one forearm across my stomach.
The pressure nearly ruins me.
He adds his fingers again, pushing them deep, curling them while his tongue works me with wicked precision. I writhe beneath him, one hand fisted in the sheets, the other buried in his hair.
“Don’t stop,” I breathe.
He hums against me and the vibration sends me spiraling. My thighs tremble around his head. I try to stay quiet, I really do, but the orgasm crashes over me too hard. I turn my face into the pillow and sob his name as I come against his mouth, my body clenching around his fingers.
He doesn’t stop until I’m shaking and so sensitive I can barely take the brush of his tongue. Only then does he lift his head. His mouth is wet. His eyes are merciless.
“Still need me?” he asks.
I laugh, breathless and wrecked. “Don’t be smug.”
He moves up my body, kissing my thigh, my hip, my stomach, my breast, leaving heat everywhere. “I’m very smug.”
“You’re very overdressed.”
His smile turns sharp.
I shove at his pants, and he helps just enough to get them off, kicking them somewhere off the side of the bed. Then he’s naked above me, his cock pressing hot against my inner thigh.
I reach between us and wrap my hand around him.
His jaw clenches as I stroke him slowly, from root to tip, watching the control flicker in his face.
“Elizabeth,” he warns.
“What?”
“You know what.”
I guide him lower, dragging the head of him through my wetness.
His breath leaves him in a rough curse.
I do it again, teasing both of us, letting him catch against my entrance before sliding him back up to my clit. Pleasure sparks through me, sharp and needy, and his hand closes around my wrist.
“Enough.”
The word is rough. Final. He takes himself in hand and presses against me.
My thighs fall wider. His gaze locks on mine as he pushes in.
Inch by devastating inch. My mouth opens, but no sound comes out.
He stretches me open, filling me so deeply my eyes flutter shut.
No matter how many times I take him, there is always that first unbearable moment where my body has to remember how to make room for him.
Lorenzo groans when he’s fully seated inside me.
“God,” he whispers. “You feel like heaven.”
I wrap my legs around his waist. “Move.”
He doesn’t make me ask twice. He pulls out and drives back in, deep enough to make the headboard tap the wall. We both freeze. I press my lips together and Lorenzo looks down at me, and for one suspended second, we both almost laugh.
Then his hand comes up and covers my mouth.
My body clenches around him and his eyes flash.
“Oh, you like that,” he murmurs.
I nod against his palm and his control snaps.
He starts moving harder, one hand braced beside my head, the other keeping my mouth covered while he fucks me into the mattress.
Every thrust is deep and possessive, his hips snapping into mine, his cock dragging over that perfect place inside me until my eyes roll back.
“Look at you,” he says, voice shredded. “Coming to me naked and wet and needy after putting our children to bed.”
The words send heat flooding through me. His mouth lowers to my ear.
“My beautiful wife. My filthy, desperate girl.”
I moan against his hand.
“That’s right. Take it.”
I do. I take every inch of him, every hard stroke, every filthy praise whispered against my skin. I take the weight of him, the heat of him, the way he owns my body without ever making me feel anything but worshipped.
His hand slips from my mouth to my throat, not squeezing, just holding me there, thumb brushing the frantic beat of my pulse.
“Mine,” he says.
I nod, already too far gone.
“Say it.”
“Yours,” I whisper.
His hips jerk.
“Again.”
“Always yours.”
He kisses me hard, swallowing my gasp as he reaches between us and finds my clit. The second his thumb circles me, I nearly come.
“Lorenzo—”
“I know, cara.” His voice gentles even as his body stays ruthless. “I’ve got you.”
He rubs me in tight, perfect circles while he drives into me, and the pleasure builds so fast I can’t hide from it. My nails rake down his back. My thighs clamp around his waist. Every muscle in my body goes tight.
“That’s it,” he murmurs. “Come on my cock. Let me put another baby in you.”
I break.
The orgasm rips through me, hot and blinding, my body pulsing around him as I bury my cry in his shoulder.
Lorenzo curses, hips stuttering, his restraint shredded by the feel of me coming around him.
Then he buries himself deep and comes with a rough, broken groan, his body locking over mine as he spills inside me.
For a long moment, there is nothing but our breathing.
His weight settles carefully, not crushing me, just enough to make me feel held. He kisses my temple. Then my cheek. Then my mouth, softer this time.
“So,” he says, still buried inside me, voice rough with satisfaction. “Was that what you needed?”
I laugh shakily, my fingers sliding through his damp hair. “Mostly.”
His brows pull together. “Mostly?”
My heart starts pounding again, harder than before.
His hand drifts down my body in lazy circles, over my waist, my hip, then back to my stomach. He stills when my hand covers his.
I hold him there.
His eyes sharpen immediately.
“Elizabeth.”
He’s still inside of me, his warmth still filling me, his hand beneath mine over the secret I’ve been carrying all day.
“I needed you,” I whisper. “Before everything changes again.”
His expression shifts. The heat fades just enough for concern to break through.
“What changes?”
I blink fast, but the tears come anyway from the enormity of it. From him. From us. From this life we built out of wreckage and want and all the things we were never supposed to survive.
I press his hand more firmly to my stomach.
“I’m pregnant.”
Lorenzo stops breathing. His eyes drop to our joined hands. Then back to my face.
“What?”
I smile through the tears. “I’m pregnant again.”
“Again,” he says, rough and disbelieving.
I nod. “Again.”
His mouth finds mine, hard and shaking.
Then he pulls back, looking almost offended by the timing, by himself, by the fact that he didn’t know while he was touching me like that.
“You let me—” He glances down, still breathing hard. “You let me take you like that while you were carrying our baby?”
My laugh comes out wet and breathless. “I promise the baby is fine.”
His eyes darken again, but this time the heat is tangled with something softer. He slides lower, easing out of me carefully, and presses his mouth to my stomach. Then he stays there, his cheek against my skin, his hand spread wide over me like he can protect what he cannot even see yet.
My fingers thread through his hair. He looks up at me, and the love in his eyes nearly finishes what his body started.
“You should have told me sooner,” he says.
“I wanted to tell you after.”
His mouth curves, slow and wicked. “After I came inside my pregnant wife?”
Heat rushes back into my face. “Lorenzo.”
He kisses my stomach again, smiling against my skin.
“My clever girl,” he murmurs. “Already carrying my baby and still asking me to fill you up.”
I tug his hair lightly. “You’re impossible.”
He crawls back over me, caging me in with his arms, his expression soft.
“No,” he says, kissing me once. “I’m happy.”
My throat tightens.
His hand returns to my stomach.
“And I’m going to spend the next eight months proving exactly how much.”
The End