Chapter 44
Chapter Forty Four
Elena
Atlantic City is a glittery blur beneath our window, all neon and noise, but up here it’s just lamp-light and linen and Luca’s hand tracing lazy shapes on my hip.
We escaped. Not Rome, not Paris, just a few blocks from home with a view of the boardwalk and a mini bar priced like a crime. Luca technically can’t go to any of those places with that damn monitor on his ankle for a few more months.
I don’t care. It’s away. Away from schedules and security sweeps. Away from Caterina’s careful eyes and Roberto’s clipped updates. Nico is on a different floor, which Luca calls “prudent” and I call “pretend privacy.” Still—away.
“Are you comfortable?” he asks, the ridiculous question he always asks after he’s spent ten minutes arranging pillows like I’m a national treasure.
“I’m pregnant, not porcelain,” I say, but I nestle anyway, my thigh over his, my cheek on his chest. His skin is warm. He smells like the soap from the fancy shower and a little like my shampoo, which he insists he doesn’t use and absolutely does.
He makes a pleased sound when I hook a finger in the chain at his throat. “Possessive,” he murmurs.
“Observant,” I correct, tilting up to kiss the hollow above his collarbone. His pulse answers me.
He drags his knuckles down my spine with enough pressure to make my toes curl. “Say it again,” he says softly.
“That you’re observant?”
“That you’re mine.”
“You’re incorrigible.” I tip my head back and meet his mouth anyway, the kind of kiss that starts simple and ends up not. I feel him smile against my lips like he knows exactly what he does to me, and he’s proud of himself. He’s not wrong.
The bed is ridiculous—wide as a small country—and we’ve used every inch of it tonight. Now everything is slow and melted. The lamp is dim, the curtains open to a scatter of lights below.
“Tell me a thing I don’t know,” he says into my hair. His fingers angle at my ribcage, and I shiver. He notes it because of course he does. “Besides that.”
I swallow a laugh. “I once cheated at Monopoly.”
“That’s not a real crime,” he says.
“I hid a five under the board.”
“Ah.” He sighs, faux tragic. “White-collar.”
“You asked.”
“I did.” He tips my chin with two fingers, studies my face like I might change in front of him. “Tell me something true.”
I run my palm over his chest, feel the slow rise and fall. “Sometimes, when you’re asleep, I count your breaths and match mine to yours.”
He goes very still. “Do you?”
“Mm.”
“And what happens when I snore?”
“I stop,” I whisper.
His lips quirk.
His hand slides lower, to where my stomach rounds beneath the sheet. The gesture is instinct now, reverent, protective. “How are the two of you?”
“Hungry,” I say. “Always.”
He makes a considering noise and kisses the top of my shoulder. “Room service again?”
“I want French fries and a milkshake, and also the chocolate tart we didn’t order because you said it was past midnight.”
“I rescind my prudence,” he says solemnly. “And I’ll add a plate of fruit so we can pretend this is balanced.”
“You can put a strawberry on the tart.” I take his hand and press his palm flat against my belly. “She’s never quiet when you’re here.”
“She?” He arches a brow, amused.
“I have a feeling,” I say quietly. “We’ll know for sure in a few weeks.”
He leans down and says, low to my skin, “Ciao, piccolo,” and my heart flutters foolishly. The baby answers with a flutter of her own.
“Just a few more weeks,” he murmurs to my belly, “and we’ll get to officially meet.”
I swallow and look away for a second because I am not going to cry in a hotel bed on our “babymoon.”
He shifts, rolls me gently to my back, and props himself above me on an elbow. I can see him better like this—the cut of his cheek, the lines at his eyes I didn’t put there but know how to soften, the way his mouth goes tender when he looks at me.
“You want to hear something true?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“I thought I had used up all my luck.”
My throat tightens. “You didn’t.”
“No.” He kisses the corner of my mouth. “Apparently not.”
I slide my foot along his calf. “Tell me another one.”
He smiles down at me, slow and a little wicked. “I’m in love with you,” he says, not for the first time. “Wildly. Irreversibly.”
I pretend to consider this. “On a scale from one to ‘won’t let me eat boxed mac and cheese,’ how irreversible are we talking?”
He groans. “You are never going to let that go.”
“Not in this lifetime.” I hook him closer. “Incidentally, if you loved me, you’d let me have a blue box day.”
“I’m literally about to order you a milkshake and a tart and a bucket of French fries,” he says, indignant. “And you’re going to make me boil orange dust in my kitchen, too?”
“You don’t boil the dust,” I whisper, kissing him, and he laughs into my mouth like I just said the filthiest thing imaginable. “You add it in after.”
“You’re a monster.”
“You’re in love with a monster.”
He bites my lower lip. “Irreversibly.”
A little zap of something shimmers through me. Warm and real. The light from the window paints a strip across the white sheet on my hip, and he follows it with his thumb.
He kisses me again, deeper now, until the promise of French fries becomes secondary. The lights of the city spin slowly below, and up here, in the quiet gold of the room, we are entirely, blessedly, alone.
We kiss in the quiet, mouth to mouth. A small, soft noise escapes me as his thumb strokes over the peak of my breast, a slow, deliberate circle.
He answers with his own sound against my mouth, rough and wanting. I am suddenly desperate to be closer, to feel more, and I roll onto my side, pulling him with me, hooking my leg over his hip. The sheet pools around us, a useless barrier.
My fingers find the line of his jaw, the roughness of his stubble, the soft space behind his ear. I trace his pulse with my thumb.
His hands move down my body and back up again, slow and thorough, as if he’s memorizing the new landscape of my changing shape. He doesn’t just touch—he appreciates. His palms span my ribs, my hips, the curve of my belly.
“You are…” he says, trailing off, his voice a low murmur against my neck.
“I’m what?”
“Breathtaking,” he finishes. His mouth follows his hands. A kiss on my shoulder. A kiss over my heart. A kiss to the curve of my stomach. He looks up at me from his position, his eyes dark and so full of something I can’t breathe for a moment.
Then he shifts again, settles between my legs, his elbows bracketing my head. He just looks at me. The intensity of it is a physical weight, and I lift my hand to touch his cheek. He turns his head and kisses my palm.
“I love you,” I say. He closes his eyes for a second, as if he’s absorbing the words.
“Elena,” he whispers, his voice breaking. He opens his eyes again. "I want to fuck you. I want to make you feel good."
"You always make me feel good," I whisper.
"Not like this." He moves his hips, a slow grind that is both a question and a promise. "Let me."
With his gentle guidance, I move to my hands and knees, this being the most comfortable position, I've discovered, with such a big belly. But he doesn't enter me.
Instead, he kisses his way down my spine, each touch like a brand. My hands fist in the sheets, my back arching. I can hear his breathing, rough and ragged, feel the warmth of his mouth on my skin.
“You taste like salt,” he murmurs against my lower back. “And me.”
And then his mouth is somewhere else entirely.
I make a choked sound, my entire body going taut as a bowstring. His hands grip my hips, holding me steady as he explores my aching pussy with his tongue. It’s slow and deliberate and utterly intoxicating.
“Luca,” I gasp, his name a plea. I don't even know what I'm pleading for. More. Less. For him to stop. For him to never stop.
He responds by tightening his grip, his tongue moving with more purpose now, circling my clit with an unerring pressure that has me seeing stars. He knows me. He knows my body better than I do. He knows just how much pressure to apply, just where to linger, just when to change his rhythm.
I’m on the precipice, my body humming with tension, when he eases back. I whine a protest, but he only chuckles, a low, husky sound. “Patience, Elena.”
He moves up and over me, his chest pressing against my back, his hands smoothing my hair away from my face. He kisses the nape of my neck, a soft, lingering kiss that’s a stark contrast to the fire still burning low in my belly.
“I’m going to make you come so hard you’ll forget your own name,” he whispers in my ear. "Then I'm going to do it again."
I shiver, a wave of goosebumps breaking out over my skin. I can feel his hard cock against my thigh, a promise of what’s to come. He takes my hand and laces our fingers together, his thumb stroking the back of my hand.
“Are you ready?” he asks.
I nod, unable to speak.
He enters me in one smooth, slow thrust that has us both gasping. He's big, and I'm already so sensitive, so full of need that the sheer stretch of him is almost enough to send me over the edge. He doesn't move for a long moment, letting me adjust, letting me feel every inch of him.
“Okay?” he asks, his voice strained.
“Okay,” I manage, my own voice a ragged whisper.
He starts to move, his thrusts slow and deep at first, a steady, rhythmic glide that builds the pressure inside me again. His hands are everywhere, on my hips, my breasts, my stomach. He’s murmuring to me in Italian, a string of words I don’t need to understand.
He reaches around to find my clit, his fingers stroking in time with his thrusts, and that’s all it takes.
The world splinters apart, a kaleidoscope of color and sensation as I come with a cry that’s half his name, half a sob.
He doesn't stop, his pace increasing, his own breathing becoming ragged as he chases his own release.
“Elena,” he groans, my name a prayer on his lips as he follows me over the edge, his release a hot, sudden flood inside me.