29. The Hazards of a Crushing Amount of Love
Chapter 29
The Hazards of a Crushing Amount of Love
I made a hissing sound, my hand automatically going to my eyes, when we stepped out of Castello Burranea , and the bright light of a new day hit me. Rocco had given me a pair of sunglasses to wear, but my eyes were completely adjusted to minimal light. This light was much too bright. Garish. It seemed foreign. I wanted to run back inside the castello and hide underneath the covers with my husband, who it seemed had turned me into a vampire.
He pulled me into a more shaded area and traded his sunglasses for mine.
“Wha—?” I asked lamely, not even able to complete the entire word. My brain sent it, but my mouth cut off the “t.”
“Your sunglasses seem to be broken.” He stepped out into the light and came back a second later with a perplexed look on his face, like he didn’t understand what the issue was.
Even though I was being a brat about leaving, I grabbed his arm and smiled. “My eyes are just sensitive,” I said. “We’ve been in mostly dimness for…”
“Three weeks,” he said.
Three measly weeks?! That was what? Only twenty-one days !
“Not long enough,” I grumbled as he led me to a waiting car, opened my door for me, and closed it behind me as he made his way around, claiming the driver’s seat with the legendary smoothness he was known for.
My arms were crossed over my body as he sped away from the castello like it might chase us and claim us again, or he was going to change his mind and bring us back, where we would live happily ever after together in matrimonially (dim) bliss— Forever and Ever , Amen .
My vote went to the second scenario.
Definitely the second scenario.
Being with him had satisfied me beyond measure, and it almost felt like he was cutting off my words when I was in the middle of writing the most important scene of my life. There were times where the pressure to write would be so great, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. And when I sat down to finally get my hands on the keyboard, sometimes the scene would feel like it fell flat because I hadn’t gotten to the muse in time.
Then I’d remind myself of what my dad had told me once—he rarely told me anything, so the things he did impart to me, I saved. He’d told me he never beat himself up over how slow or fast he wrote a book, because if he did, that meant the story that was coming too slow or too fast wouldn’t have turned out to be the story he was supposed to tell. The words would be different if he started at a different time than he had or was rushed to finish because of a deadline.
“A story is like a woman,” he was once quoted as saying. “She comes when she wants.”
When asked to clarify the she comes when she wants line, he had told the reporter, I didn’t stutter, did I?
Sighing, I vanished any thoughts of my dad and looked at the man next to me, controlling this car like he had controlled my body. He’d worked me up to fits of passion so raging, at one point, I thought I was a flame about to set the castle on fire. He’d killed every inhibition I could’ve ever had and set me free in unbridled lands where his body was king.
Okay, maybe I was being dramatic and too writerly about it all, but my feelings were my feelings. I was truly irked about leaving Castello Burranea. And the longer we drove, the sun beating down on us, the wind whipping around us, I was starting to feel the crust I’d acquired. I lifted my arm, setting it on the door, giving myself a sneaky sniff, expecting grilled onions.
I didn’t smell bad— at all .
I smelled like him.
Healthy.
Virile.
Sophisticated and rich, like candle wax mixed with the scents of bourbon, cigar smoke, and bergamot. A solid undertone of citrus below it all.
And he had kept all those scents intact, even after all we’d done.
We could have stayed longer.
Much, much, much longer.
I took my arm back and crossed them, sighing as the world around us invaded my senses, even if I was fighting to keep my entire being, meaning my husband too, back in the room of spells at the castle. I refused to acknowledge how different the island not only looked but felt without the immense presence of the Fausti family. Though soldiers swarmed the streets in plain clothes. The idea of it was to give whoever was after us the impression that nothing was amiss. Life on the island was going on as it usually did.
Life for me wasn’t. I refused to take my foot off the brake. I wanted life to stay locked out, us standing still together at the other castle. I sighed, long and hard, as the car sped up the hill to the castle above the sea, Castello Sul Mare . Even though I was perturbed, I still couldn’t stop the flutter of the butterflies in my stomach when my eyes went straight for the window my ghost had been standing in, watching me. Something deep inside of me must have known, but it wasn’t until I started writing it all down that I came to terms with it—where my life was headed and with who.
Rocco squeezed my hand and kissed it, like he was feeling it too. I’d learned that, too, during our time in the magical room at the castle. We were connected in ways that already had us answering for each other, or just looking at each other, knowing what the other was thinking. It was the completely in sync thing again. And I didn’t doubt he wasn’t feeling my mood either. He just wasn’t commenting on it, because for whatever reason, he was able to keep his foot on the gas, bringing us forward.
Men scattered like rain when we pulled up to the castello and he parked the car. I wasn’t sure where the soldiers disappeared to, but when he stepped out, looking so fine it should have been a natural crime, we seemed to be alone. He was shirtless, his tuxedo pants hanging from his hips, and barefoot. He’d set his white shirt over my body, and it hung like a dress, well past my thighs. He opened my door and, refusing to let me set a foot on the ground, slid me out of the seat and carried me toward the door.
I stared at the sharp lines of his face, wondering if I ran my hand along his jaw with a full beard on his usually clean-shaven face, would it cut me?
He grinned.
“What are you so happy about, Rocco Fausti?” It was meant to sound snappy, but it came out breathy instead.
His grin turned into a full-on smile, as bright as the blasted sun, and he lifted me up, kissing my face. Big smooches that were meant to be placating. He called me “cute” in Italian and said that I was “pouting,” going as far as to call me a “small pout,” I think. Piccolo something he’d called me.
I huffed at him, and it seemed like he wanted to roar with laughter, but decided it was best if he didn’t. How could he be so…effing detached?!
He tore through the castello , almost taking the frigging narrow steps to the spiral staircase that led to the dock two at a time. I wasn’t afraid of roller coasters, either—they usually exhilarated me—and it was like I was on one with him, but in a foul mood.
Bright sun met us outside with an expansive view of the Mediterranean Sea. The teal water rushed underneath the dock, occasionally a wave lapping against it, causing a spray. I felt the droplets land on my body, and my skin puckered from the extreme heat and the much cooler temperature of the water.
Rocco wasn’t stopping though. He was going straight for the area of the dock that didn’t have a side.
“Rocco—!”
I barely had time to hold my nose. Yeah, I was one of those people. Thirty years old and still had to hold my nose. He kept me in his arms while he jumped in. The water was a bit choppy, so I wasn’t sure if we made a splash or not, but he kept me locked in his arms as we submerged, and when we broke the surface, we did so together.
“Gah!” I shook my head, wiping salt water from my eyes. “You could’ve just told me that I stunk.”
He threw back his head and roared with laughter. I blinked at him, always hypnotized by that sound. By the hunter in his smile. By those eyes—eyes that reflected me in his arms. When the water ran down his face, I wondered if it was sea water or the color of his irises bleeding out.
“Ahh,” he sighed. “My Amora.” He kissed me, over and over, almost like he was drinking me in. “You smell like me. You taste like mine.”
“Okay,” I whispered, setting my head back, letting my toes rise above the surface. “As long as I do all that.”
Begrudgingly, I had to admit the water felt so good. Except for his shirt, which was ballooning around me and tugging me in all different directions. It felt like an octopus clinging to my body. The water had saturated it.
It was like he’d read my mind. He swam us closer to the dock and helped me out of it. He threw it against the dock. I wasn’t sure why he didn’t throw it on it. But I realized why after. There were hooks lined up for towels. He made it, and the shirt dangled. He did the same with his pants and made those on a hook too. With the heat and constant breeze, they would be dry in no time.
“Can anyone see us back here?” I asked.
He took me by the shoulders and the look in his eye almost made me want to swim away from him, but I moved into his touch instead.
“Any man dares to look at mine, it will be more than his eyes he will lose.”
“Okay,” I breathed. He wasn’t effing around about that. It made me almost uneasy, the vow in it craving blood, so I took his mind off it.
He sucked in a breath when I wrapped my hand around him. He was already rock hard.
“Only from looking at you,” he rasped out before he leaned in and kissed me.
“You have to watch those naughty fish,” I whispered against his lips, stroking him. “Once they grab on, they refuse to let go.”
“I have to watch my wife.” He thrust his hips into my touch, groaning. “She is a naughty fishy who nibbles.”
I blinked at him. Then I exploded with laughter. He kissed me while I laughed, and releasing him from his naughty nibbler’s hold, I wrapped my arms around his neck, letting him swim me around, my legs locked around his waist. It didn’t seem like he had an ounce of fat on him. His skin was taut over every one of his muscles, down to his ribs. My fingertips traced the swollen veins on his arms.
The sea rocked us, but it wasn’t unpleasant. It was nice to just…float. No where to be but in my husband’s strong arms. Keeping my arms locked around his neck, I laid my head back, my hair floating behind me, my eyes closed to the sun. He kissed my neck, making more marks on me, before he licked me from throat to lips and started kissing me again.
We couldn’t stop .
Even if he wasn’t inside of me.
His touches.
His kisses.
His grins.
His laughter.
His strength.
Was all so…intimate.
And would be inside of me for the rest of my life and beyond. What we shared went so much deeper than the physical. The more we explored, the deeper we fused into one.
We swam together for a while until we started to explore a little further out. Rocco told me the boat was used for fishing. We’d take it in a little while to catch a few fish and some spiny lobsters for dinner. We swam around for about another hour or so before Rocco slipped on a pair of swim trunks, and I wore his shirt, mostly buttoning it up and rolling up the sleeves. We took the boat out, and Rocco attempted to catch us dinner. The entire time his eyes were on me. My hair was wild from the sea water and the wind blow-drying it, and the sight of me in his shirt…did things to him. He was hard the entire time and not ashamed of it.
We made love on the boat, out in the middle of the Mediterranean, and then had to take the boat in another direction because we scared all the fish away. We caught enough for dinner, and he dove for the spiny lobster, which reminded me of oversized crawfish. We took them back to the dock, and after Rocco cleaned the fish, he grilled everything for us. He showed me where to find ingredients in the solar-run fridge, which had been recently stocked by Guido. I made a pasta dish with veggies I asked Rocco to grill for me. I set the table with what I found in the wooden cabinets built into the outdoor kitchen, and before the sun set, we sat down to dinner, which I inhaled. The fish melted in my mouth, and so did the lobster. It was so good I licked my fingers clean.
My eyes rose to meet Rocco’s as he took a swig of his beer.
“What?” I whispered, going to wipe my face, making sure I had no olive oil glistening on my chin.
He reached across the table and stroked my lips, rubbing the olive oil in before he rubbed it on his own lips, licking them after.
I was transfixed.
I didn’t want to go down the rabbit hole of what that tongue could do to me. At the very least—make me cry out in pleasure and orgasm like he’d pressed an automatic button inside of me.
“You are too thin, Amora,” he said.
“Me?” I pointed to myself like he might have been talking to someone else. Sometimes, I felt like he was the cool man (boy or guy could never fit Rocco Fausti) in school, and I was the not so cool girl who’d lose all her wits when he talked to me.
Talked to me , Aria Amora Bella… Fausti .
He nodded seriously. “I need to feed you more.” His eyes glanced at the empty bowl where the pasta had been.
We’d scarfed it down. But he mostly fed me dinner. Except for the pasta. He wouldn’t touch it and bring it to my mouth. I fed it to him, though, and he had no issue with that. I entirely wanted to know, but I absolutely didn’t want to know what his deal with feeding me pasta was.
Sighing, I stood, a hard breeze pushing against me, billowing his white shirt out like a sail. I’d seen an electronic pad earlier, and I was willing to bet it went with the speakers hanging on each corner of the covered part of the deck. When I lifted it, a playlist came up. I showed it to him.
“Romeo?” I questioned.
He nodded, finishing his beer, and went to light the fire pit.
I scanned through Romeo’s playlist. I laughed at some of the songs, because they were so Romeo, yet not. He had a thing for that old movie Urban Cowboy , and not that all these songs went with the playlist, but they were in the same vein. Jimmy Buffet I could understand, he had a tropical vibe, but he had Gordon Lightfoot on there. I grinned, thinking of Romeo and the hair, and then settled on an old country song .
The ballad reached Rocco, and I could tell it caught his attention. He was listening to the lyrics. Of course he would. Some people just listened to a song for the entire music experience, not picking it apart, content to listen to it as a whole, but some people had to listen to the lyrics before the song could speak to them. That was my husband. Rocco was a lawyer, always the listener, the problem solver, so…it fit his personality.
“Tell me,” he said, facing me, “do you enjoy this type of music, Amora?”
I nodded, twisting my hair up in a messy bun, my curtain bangs waving around my face. I blew a strand out of my eyes, but the wind was unruly, and my hair was being the same way. “I love ALL types of music. Both of my parents are…well, my dad was…eccentric music people, and even though I didn’t spend a lot of time with them growing up, I seem to have inherited it.” I shrugged. “I guess like my wild taste in food, from my dad, and my hazel eyes, from my mom.”
His eyes gazed into mine, and they were so warm and compassionate, I looked away. He probably felt sorry for me, but I’d come to terms with my parents not being a part of my life a long time ago. I had my grandparents, and that was enough, even if I struggled when I was younger with having two parents who hadn’t wanted anything to do with me because I was a product of a wild European affair that ended on a bitter note.
I was pretty sure my mom would have loved me if my dad would have truly loved her. She was just that type of woman. Her personality became whoever’s she was in a relationship with. If Joe Schmo enjoyed baseball, my mom bought stock in ball caps and just loved stadium food, even though she was a hot dog snob and thought they were gross.
“ Ah ,” I breathed out when he wrapped me in his arms, like he could steal from me whatever my parents had made me feel, before he started to dance with me on the dock like a romantic lead in a movie would.
He’d changed into a pair of thin khaki pants and a thin white beach shirt that he’d left open for dinner. I was still in his shirt, but mostly buttoned up. We were both sans shoes. Still. It felt right to respect the table by not coming to it naked. I wasn’t sure what kind of dance he was doing, but…damn, he was good. He was a big man, but deathly quiet, and entirely comfortable with his body. And the entire time, he gazed into my eyes like he had made himself at home in my soul. When the song came to an end, he played it again, this time leading me to a chair built for two before the fire pit and pulling me close to him, kissing my forehead.
I reached for my beer and took a long pull, but before I could drink it down, he kissed me, and we shared the cool hops between our mouths. The sun started to set, and with the music playing softly in the background, my stomach full, and this man, oh, this man , next to me, holding me in his arms, caressing my arms so lightly that my skin puckered, my eyes started to droop . He placed his curled pointer finger underneath my chin and gently coaxed my mouth into a kiss that went as deep as the sea, it seemed, as he released every button of his shirt.
His shirt and pants were lost, and so was I.
I wasn’t sure when it happened, but I ended up on top of him, my knees on each side of him. He reached up and released my hair from the bun, watching, almost transfixed, as my waves cascaded over my shoulders. He gently tucked my hair behind my ears, brushing it off my shoulders, baring my breasts to him, along with his lion’s heart necklace, before I sighed as I lowered down.
I stilled on his tip, a low moan vibrating my chest, and he hissed out a breath.
“Fuck.” He sucked his lip in, almost rolling it between his teeth, then releasing it, he groaned. “Deeper. Take me deeper, il mia cuore.”
No matter how many times we were together, my body had to adjust to his size. I didn’t think forever would be long enough to stretch me that wide. But, damn, it was a delicious drop as I lowered myself on top of him, inch by thick inch. My hands and arms trembled from the strain of steadying myself against the chair, and when he took my breasts in his hands, kneading each one, then leaning forward, taking my stiff nipple in his mouth, sucking so hard I thought my uterus was contracting, my body took over and I took him down to the hilt.
All the pressure ran down to my hips and they turned on, almost making circles around him, each sensitive nerve touched by his cock, sending me into a spiral of pleasure and sea air. Cool droplets of it landed on my body, making me shiver, as sweat dripped down my overheated skin.
“You are mine,” his mouth coaxed. “Own my cock, my wife. Ride it like the queen you are.”
I sat up, moaning into the feeling, my hips directed by his voice. It was deep with a rasp to it, and the way he punctuated each word, a breath in between, it was like he had studied poetry and could read it to the heart, making it flutter.
My heart felt like it was about to beat out of my chest. My lungs burned. The pulse between my legs was greedy and starved, needing more and more, but my body was starting to approach a line—the line of surrender. He jutted his hips up and I gasped, bouncing on his cock like the dock was moving with the wild waves of the sea.
“ Ahhhh! ” I cried out.
“ Ancora ,” he ordered and rammed me again.
He was rolling his teeth over his lips, his muscles bulging against his skin, his veins swollen, and his hands were gripping the holders, almost white from strain. I was riding him, but he was bucking into me, and my boobs were bouncing, my ass slapping against his thighs. Leaning back some, I took his balls in my hand, and they overflowed, until I used my hips and knees to move forward faster, and I felt them contract, and at the same time, we exploded into each other.
He growled out, “Fuck!” A garbled sound tore through my chest, as if I’d been climbing a mountain but started to slip, falling, falling, falling, and at the last minute, I was able to pull myself up—and was met with a flood of pleasure rushing through my body at the high of it all. I wasn’t sure if my heart could slow. Or if I was taking in enough air, even though it swirled around us in strong gusts.
He pulled me forward, and I trembled. He was still inside of me, and I was so sensitive, I moaned, about to orgasm again. He pulled out of me, and…I did. I quaked like the dock was getting hit by a series of attacking boats.
This seemed to please him. He made a deep sound in his throat and then kissed me, taking my breath for his own. Like he wanted to taste the pleasure that had flooded my system and drink it down for his own.
I was effing spent. I had no control of my eyes. My limbs.
The sea. The sun. Fresh dinner. Was a powerful combination.
And more than any of those things and all of them combined…
My husband was the most powerful of them all.
He drained every drop of energy from me, but when he would start to kiss me, touch me again, it was like my body instantly responded, the well either instantly filling or rising. I curled my arms and legs into myself, allowing him to bring me into his warm and protective embrace.
He smelled like…home.
Sounded like it too.
His heart beat against my ear.
I sighed out a breath before my eyes closed completely.
One breath.
Two breaths.
Three breaths.
The sound of fibers ripping and plastic giving met my ears, and then we met the dock in a hard-hitting boom! Rocco must have known he wasn’t going to be able to save us in time, and he shielded my body with his own. I only felt the reverberations of the crash through him.
Even though he broke my fall, he asked if I was all right, his hands roaming over my body, maybe feeling for a broken bone or abraded patch of skin.
“I’m okay.” My arms trembled as I used them to sit up, staring down at him. “Oh my God!” I said, trying to keep a straight face. “Are you okay?”
He grinned at me. “I am fine, but I killed the chair.”
I exploded with laughter, falling into him. He made an ung! noise when my elbow found a hard place to land—his still-hard cock. But he held me close, his body shaking with laughter, as we lay sprawled out on the dock, the crushed chair beneath us.
After a while, we both sighed, and even though we were still on the hard ground, my eyes started to droop. My knight had saved me from getting hurt. He’d literally wrapped himself around me so not one part of my body hit the dock.
“Thank you, my husband,” I whispered. “I might be bruised from all the sex” (because I was, and he didn’t seem to like it when he saw the purple marks in the bright light of day) “and your love marks on me, but…you broke my fall.” I turned and kissed him over his heart. “Thank you.” A breath and a kiss. “Thank you.” Another breath and another kiss. “Thank you.” A third breath, but this time, my kiss lingered on his skin.
I was determined to feed his heart words of love and gratitude. It didn’t seem like he had ever had that before. And when I was alone and thought about how starved he was for love, for…a woman to treat him like a man and not a machine, it made me want to cry—ugly cry. He had so much love to give. I just couldn’t understand how any woman could look into his eyes and not fall deeply in love with him—so deep in love, she’d hurt herself before she hurt him. But there would be no other woman who loved him as much as I did, if love was even a strong enough word. I didn’t believe it was. I believed what we shared couldn’t be replicated or replaced. It took the two of us to make us whole.
“You make me the man I have always longed to be, the man I am, the man I will always be,” he said, and it sounded like he was almost speaking to himself. “You have no idea how long I have waited for you, my Amora. Perhaps…” his voice seemed to linger in the breeze, his hands lifting before they came back to me gently. “Centuries. No. Even longer. Before time even began. I would carve my own heart out before any harm ever comes to you. I refuse to live this life without you, now that you are here.”
Rising with me in his sheltering arms, he carried me inside the castello , but we didn’t get any sleep.