9. Nova
— ? —
Nova
That Same Night - Continued
The world whites out.
He’s inside me - finally, finally inside me - and I can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t do anything except feel. He’s big, bigger than I expected, stretching me in a way that’s just on the edge of too much, and my body is clenching around him, trying to adjust, trying to accommodate.
“Breathe,” he commands, and his voice sounds as wrecked as I feel.
I suck in a breath. Then another. Slowly, incrementally, my body relaxes around him.
“Good girl.” His hand strokes down my spine, soothing. “That’s it. Just breathe.”
“Move,” I gasp. “Please - move-”
He pulls back. Slowly, so slowly I can feel every inch of him dragging against my inner walls. And then he pushes back in, just as slow, and I moan into the pillow.
“More?”
“Yes - God - yes-”
He does it again. And again. Long, slow strokes that I feel in every cell of my body. It’s not fast, not the desperate pounding I asked for, but it’s thorough. Deliberate. Like he’s learning the shape of me from the inside.
“You feel incredible,” he breathes. “So tight. So wet. Like you were made for me.”
I want to respond, but I can’t form words. All I can do is feel - the drag of him inside me, the heat of his body behind me, the grip of his hands on my hips holding me in place while he takes me apart with agonizing patience.
“Luca - please-”
“Please what?”
“Harder. I need - I need more-”
His hands tighten on my hips. His rhythm changes.
Not slow anymore. Not gentle. He pulls back and slams into me, and I cry out, my arms buckling, my face pressing into the pillow. Again. And again. He’s fucking me in earnest now, each thrust driving me forward on the bed, the sound of skin on skin obscenely loud in the quiet room.
“Is this what you wanted?” His voice is a growl, barely recognizable. “Is this hard enough for you?”
“Yes - fuck - yes-”
“You’re mine.” Another thrust, impossibly deep. “Say it.”
“I’m yours-”
“Again.”
“I’m yours, Luca - I’m yours, I’m yours, I’m-”
He reaches around me. His fingers find my clit, and he strokes, and I scream.
The orgasm rips through me without warning. One second I’m hovering on the edge, and the next I’m falling, shattering, my whole body convulsing around him as wave after wave of pleasure crashes through me.
He doesn’t stop.
He keeps fucking me through it, keeps stroking my clit, keeps driving into me until the first orgasm blurs into a second, and the second into a third, and I’m not even separate orgasms anymore, just one long continuous explosion of sensation that doesn’t end, doesn’t stop, doesn’t-
“One more,” he grits out. “Give me one more.”
“I can’t-”
“You can.” His other hand fists in my hair, pulling my head back, and the slight sting of pain sends lightning down my spine. “You can, and you will. Come for me, Nova. Now.”
I come.
This one is different. Deeper, darker, wrenched from somewhere in my core.
I’m sobbing into the pillow, tears streaming down my face, my body shaking so hard I can barely stay upright.
Behind me, I feel him tense, feel his rhythm stutter, feel him bury himself deep and groan my name as he follows me over the edge.
We collapse together.
He catches himself on his elbows at the last second, keeping from crushing me, but his weight settles over my back - warm, grounding, real. I can feel him still twitching inside me, can feel the aftershocks rippling through both of us.
For a long moment, neither of us moves.
Then, slowly, he pulls out.
I whimper at the loss. My body feels empty without him. Hollow, aching, already craving more. He rolls onto his side, and I feel his hand on my hip, turning me to face him.
“Hey.” His voice is soft now, all the roughness gone. “Look at me.”
I open my eyes.
He’s right there, close enough to count the individual lashes framing his dark eyes. His hair is disheveled, damp with sweat. His lips are swollen. He looks thoroughly debauched, and I probably look worse.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
I laugh. It comes out shaky, overwhelmed. “I’m not sure I remember how to walk.”
His lips twitch. “That good?”
“That’s-” I search for words. Fail to find any that are adequate. “I didn’t know it could be like that.”
Something passes across his face - satisfaction, possession, maybe something softer underneath. He pulls me closer, tucking me against his chest, his arms wrapped around me like he’s afraid I might disappear.
“It’s always going to be like that,” he murmurs into my hair. “Every time. I’m going to ruin you for anyone else.”
“You already have.”
His arms tighten. “Good.”
We lie there in silence, our breathing slowly returning to normal.
The sweat cools on our skin. The moonlight shifts across the ceiling.
And I think about what just happened - not just the sex, but everything leading up to it.
The waiting. The wanting. The slow, agonizing build that made the release feel like a revelation.
“Luca.”
“Mm.”
“What you told me. That morning. About watching me for three years.”
His body tenses slightly against mine. “What about it?”
“You gave me the confession.” I tilt my head back to look at him. “Now I want the story. All of it. What you actually did, all that time. And why you waited so long to come for me.”
He’s silent for so long I’m sure he won’t answer at all. But then he starts talking, his voice low and measured, and I realize he’s telling me things he’s never told anyone.
“You already know the beginning,” he says. “The dinner. The paint under your nails. The moment I knew I was in trouble.” His hand finds mine, traces my fingers in the dark. “What you don’t know is what came after.”
“Tell me.”
“I watched you. Through proxies, mostly. People I paid to keep an eye on you. To make sure you were-” He laughs, humorless. “To make sure you were okay, as if anyone in that family could ever be okay.”
“The reports got worse, didn’t they?”
“Yes. Over time. I saw the isolation happening - the way Vivienne cut you off from your friends, your career, your family. I saw the bruises in the photographs. I heard about the ‘accidents’ that weren’t accidents.”
“And after she broke my wrist to punish you, you stopped reaching where she could see.”
“Yes.” His voice is rough with self-loathing. “I told myself patience was the same as keeping you alive. That building the case in the dark was the only road that didn’t end with you in the ground. I told myself-” He stops. Takes a breath. “I told myself a lot of things that let me sleep at night.”
“But you didn’t sleep.”
“No. I haven’t slept properly in years. Not until-” He presses his lips to my hair. “Not until you.”
We lie there in silence, the weight of his confession settling over us. I should be angry, I think. Should rage at him for watching while I suffered, for not rescuing me sooner, for all the pain I endured while he kept his distance.
But I can’t be angry.
Because I understand. I understand being trapped by circumstances, by expectations, by the belief that staying silent is the same as staying safe. I understand making choices that seem right in the moment and living with the consequences for years.
“When did you decide to act?” I ask.
“The night Marta called me.”
“Marta?”
“The housekeeper. At my mother’s house.” His hand resumes its gentle stroking of my fingers.
“She served my grandmother before she ever served my mother. She’s been my informant since the day I walked out - passing along information about the family, about my mother’s plans.
She was the one who told me when things got really bad. ”
“And that night-”
“That night, she called me in a panic. Said my mother had been interrogating the staff about leaks. Said she was planning something, something worse than usual. And then-” His voice tightens. “Then she said you’d left. That you’d walked out on Dante, and that my mother was going to hunt you down.”
“So you came for me.”
“I came for you.” He shifts, pulling back enough to look at me. His eyes are dark, intense. “I had people tracking my mother’s movements. The moment I heard she was heading toward the city center, toward the area where my people had spotted you - I knew what she was planning. So I followed her.”
“You were there,” I breathe. “The whole time.”
“I was watching from a distance when she found you in that alley. When she-” His jaw clenches. “When she hurt you. I wanted to kill her with my bare hands. I wanted to tear her apart.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because killing her would have been too easy. Too quick.” His eyes bore into mine. “I want her to suffer, Nova. I want her to lose everything - her reputation, her freedom, her precious social standing. I want her to watch it all crumble and know that she brought it on herself.”
The cold fury in his voice should scare me. It doesn’t.
“The case you’re building,” I say. “The evidence you’ve been gathering.”
“It’s almost ready. Medical records, financial documents, witness testimonies. Everything my mother has done, documented and court-proof.” His hand cups my cheek. “When the time is right, I’m going to destroy her. And you’re going to watch.”
I should feel something - horror, maybe, or hesitation. Watching someone’s destruction, even someone who hurt me, should give me pause.
It doesn’t.
“Good,” I whisper. “I want to watch.”
Something fierce and hungry flashes in his eyes. He kisses me - deep, possessive, the kind of kiss that brands itself on your soul.
“I love you,” he says against my lips. “I’ve loved you for three years, and I’ll love you until the day I die. And anyone who tries to hurt you - anyone - will have to go through me first.”
“I love you too.”
The words slip out before I can stop them. Before I can analyze them or question them or talk myself out of them.
But they’re true.
I don’t know when it happened. Maybe it was the first night, when he pulled me off the street and carried me in his arms like I was something precious.
Maybe it was later, when he believed me without question, when he tended my wounds with gentle hands, when he gave me paints and space and time to heal.
Maybe it was all of it, accumulating like snowfall, until I looked up and realized I was buried.
“Say it again,” he breathes.
“I love you.”
“Again.”
“I love you, Luca. I love you, I love you, I-”
He cuts me off with another kiss. And then another. And then his hands are moving, and my body is responding, and we’re starting all over again - slower this time, gentler, his mouth worshipping every inch of me while I fall apart beneath his touch.
***
We make love three more times that night.
The second time is slow, face-to-face, his eyes locked on mine as he moves inside me. He tells me I’m beautiful. Tells me I’m strong. Tells me he’s never letting me go. I cry, and he kisses the tears away, and neither of us apologizes.
The third time is in the shower - the same shower where I watched him earlier, the steam swirling around us, my back against the cool tile and my legs wrapped around his waist. It’s hard and fast and desperate, both of us chasing release like we’re afraid this will all disappear if we stop.
The fourth time is just before dawn, when the first gray light is creeping through the windows. I wake to his mouth between my thighs, his tongue stroking me to alertness, and I come before I’m fully conscious.
When we finally collapse for good, the sun is up and we’re both exhausted - wrung out, sated, tangled together in sheets that smell like sex and sweat and us.
“We should sleep,” I murmur against his chest.
“We should.” His hand strokes my hair. “But I don’t want to close my eyes. I’m afraid I’ll wake up and this will all have been a dream.”
“It’s not a dream.”
“How do you know?”
I lift my head. Look at him - at this beautiful, devastating man who loves me, who’s loved me for years, who’s planning to burn down his own family to keep me safe.
“Because in my dreams,” I say, “I was never this happy.”
His expression softens. He pulls me closer, tucks my head under his chin, wraps his arms around me like he can shield me from the world.
“Go to sleep,” he murmurs. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
I believe him.
***
Luca
Marta calls me past midnight, and her voice is shaking so badly I can barely make out the words. My mother knows.
Someone told her everything - that Nova is here, with me, behind these walls. That we’ve been seen together. Intimately.
“That ungrateful whore,” my mother kept saying, Marta tells me. “That poisonous, ungrateful whore.”
But she didn’t rage for long. She went quiet, the way she always does right before she does the most damage. Dragging us out of this fortress would take an army, and my mother has never cared for armies. Too loud. Too many witnesses.
She doesn’t need an army. She needs a stage. Something we can’t resist walking into on our own.
Dante is getting engaged, Marta says. There’s going to be a wedding - soon, and very public. And my mother is going to make certain Nova and I receive an invitation.
“When they take the bait - and they will,” she told Marta, “you’ll tell me the moment they leave his gates. You’ll be my eyes that day.”
I can still hear Marta’s hands trembling in her voice long after she goes quiet.