Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
LORENZO
T he smell of chocolate and cinnamon waltzed over to me the moment I opened the front door. The sound of a giggle floated along the hallway and filled my rib cage with a tangible ache. Two fucking weeks. Not even in my teens had I ever gone so slow with a girl, and I had to do it with my wife. Fuck if it didn’t hurt.
Day by day, I inched closer to her, slower than a snail on a siesta. It killed me to let her have the upper hand, but it made it easier for her to close that fucking gap. Bliss. That was it when she put those deliciously plump lips of hers on mine. But damn, did she take her time with it. Some days, I wondered if this was innocence or pure seduction because, goddammit, she knew how to string a man along. I hadn’t fucked a woman in ages, and my dick was permanently leaking pre-cum. It didn’t help one damn bit I had married a seductress who refused to put out until it was set in stone that I’d be faithful to her. I wondered if this would be on my deathbed, because how could I prove my faithfulness to her without having her wrapped around me 24/7?
I followed the sound of merriness to the kitchen. Well, it looked like someone had had some fun. I had never known Benedetta to be anything other than pristine, but it looked like the whirlwind that my wife was, had changed that. The spilled flour, the stickiness of leftover dough, and the smear of dark chocolate on the countertop made my hand clench inside my pocket. I liked things to be in their place. Everyone knew this. Except for my fucking wife.
The urge to fill my lungs with nicotine crawled through me. But the masochist in me wanted to see if I could hold it off till she kissed me. If she kissed me.
I should have married her sister and taken her fucking bodyguard along. I could have fucked whoever I wanted, and imagining her with her bodyguard didn’t lift a single hair on my body.
Now I was stuck with the messiest woman I’d ever known, who made me hang around like a juvenile, hoping for an innocent kiss.
She was popped on a bar stool, the shortest dress in history riding up her tanned thighs. Mamma used to say karma could be a bitch. I guess it was knocking on the door for all my past sins.
She turned around, her finger in her mouth, licking off the remnants of chocolate, by the smell of it. The innocence on her face, in combination with those lips wrapped around her finger, took me straight to another place where those lips could wrap and suck. Who was I kidding? The moment I saw her, I lost fucking track of her sister.
“Oh!” Her mouth popped open, and her finger slipped out.
Benedetta looked up from doing the dishes. “Enzo, you’re home early. Couldn’t keep away, figlio mio? ” she asked sneakily.
I frowned as I dropped the envelope I was holding on the table and strolled over to the kitchen. My eyes raked over my wife a few feet away. I couldn’t imagine her mother had packed these dresses for her and she hadn’t gone shopping here. Whoever packed this shit for her must hate me for sure. I wanted to cup her ass, rest my dick in her, and plunge my tongue into her sweetness.
“What have you two made?” My eyes fell pointedly on the countertop, which didn’t seem to bother either of the two women.
“ Cannoli Siciliani. Can’t you see?”
Innocence mixed with fucking spark. I leaned my hip against the barstool. “I am supposed to guess it by the mess in the kitchen?”
She followed my gaze like she was seeing the mess for the very first time. “Oh.” She shrugged her shoulders. “It was too cold and clean, anyway. Now it looks like a kitchen.”
She thought my high-end design kitchen was too cold and too clean.
“Well, I’d like it clean, anyway.”
She huffed, putting her hands on her hips. “Has anyone told you that you can't have everything you like?”
“I am beginning to experience it, sì . And I don’t like it one bit,” I muttered darkly.
She stilled. “Did you give in to your temptation?”
I frowned in confusion till realization dawned.
“I’m not talking about another woman, Principessa ,” I said softly.
Her eyes shone bright, and her smile was weak, and it wobbled like a stack of piled-up sticks. But I’d take one of these any day over her painful cries.
“You want one?” She held a cannoli in her hand, filled with chocolate cream and dipped in chocolate sauce.
“Did you make it?”
Benedetta chuckled in the kitchen, and Daria’s eyes went round as big as saucers. “ Sul serio! It took like four hours to make. I can’t even boil an egg.” Triumph spilled out of her voice.
I grabbed her hand and pulled her with her cannoli to me. All I wanted to do was wrap my mouth around her. Instead, I wrapped it around the sweet and imagined the chocolate spilling inside was her sweetness. “Hmm, una bomba. ”
She jerked her hand away and rubbed it awkwardly on her lips. Doubt flickered in her gaze as to whether I meant the sweet or her. I guess she didn’t know me well. She was the only fucking beauty in the room. A dark smile pulled at my lips. Did she even know how she seduced me with her fingers on her lips? “Benedetta is amazing.”
I ignored her words. “Why can’t you cook?”
She tilted her head up in defiance. “I will not cook to please a man. He should take me as I am.”
Benedetta chuckled as she left the room. Thank God at least one person in this place knew me well enough to leave me alone with my wife.
“He as in me?”
“Or whoever I marry after you.”
Jesus! Acid boiled in my stomach and injected through every vein in my body. She was already planning her next marriage? To whom? I’d kill anyone she even thought of.
“You’re hurting me!”
I looked down at my hand bruising her wrist. Fuck . When had I done that? With a shake of my head, I released her.
“No more talking of other men, sì ?” She was asking too much of me. I’d given my word that I would be faithful, and she didn’t even seem to understand how much it meant. But she spoke of marriages to the next man as if ours was nothing but a halt on the way to her final destination. I rushed a hand through my hair, because I wasn’t sure what I’d do with it if I didn’t. “Are you keeping your end of the deal?”
“Well, I didn’t cheat on you while at home. Did you?”
I was not sure if she’d had too many cannolis to spike up her sugar level or if she was getting comfortable enough with me to voice her words without a filter. I wasn’t sure which of the two I preferred. The latter, I hoped, even if it was a curse on my blood pressure.
“The thought never crossed my mind, Principessa. ”
“I won’t know anyway if you did.” Bitterness laced her voice.
How am I to win this game? How can I prove I wasn’t cheating on her? It seemed it was easier to prove unfaithfulness.
“I guess you won’t, but I respect you enough to tell you if I did.”
She pinned me with her big blue eyes. “So, you cheated?”
I gritted my teeth. “That’s not what I said. If, God forbid, I cheated on you, I would tell you.”
She fidgeted with her hands, still looking unconvinced, and I was getting tired. I’d come home with one reward in mind. “I’d like to have another one of those cannolis .”
She obediently took one and offered it to me. I shook my head. “Feed it to me, Principessa. ” She frowned as if I’d asked her to make it herself. “With your mouth.” And even though it killed me, I added, “If you want to.”
Her eyes flickered from the cannoli to me and back. She’d stepped just out of reach, and I willed her to step in between my legs. She threw a glance behind her.
“She’s not here,” I whispered hoarsely.
Come on Principessa. Fucking kiss me.
When she glanced at me again, I was sure she’d run. But I thought she surprised herself and me by stepping in between my legs. I stiffened my thighs and willed them not to close her in. It had to be her choice. Kiss me like you’ve been thinking of me the whole damn day.
Both our gazes dropped to the sweet in her hand. I hated Sicily. I couldn’t stand anything that reminded me of Mamma, and Sicily was all of that. But here I was, craving a childhood sweet like it was nostalgia pulling me in when it was nothing but her.
The crack when she brought it to her lips and took a bite was loud. Doubt crossed her mind. I imagined her wondering how she was going to do it. I ached to wrap my hand around the back of her neck and yank her to me. But instead, I kept my hands planted on my thighs in plain sight.
Then she leaned over and touched her lips to mine. Jesus , will I be punished? Because I didn’t wait for her and opened my mouth to the sweetness of the cannoli and her. Nothing could ever taste better than this. Except maybe her pussy. I groaned to banish that thought, and she was pulling away. Not today, Principessa.
I wrapped my hands around her sweet ass and pulled her up. I can’t remember the last time I’d wanted something as much as I did her.
Fuck! It felt good that she didn’t protest and wrapped her legs around me. Before I knew it, I was up to the clatter of the bar stool rolling on the floor. I pushed her against the kitchen island and deepened the kiss, letting my tongue run in her mouth, seeking all the crusts she might have hidden in her sinfully sweet mouth.
Her breasts grazed my chest, and I wanted to shred all her clothing and fuck her against the kitchen counter. I wanted her soaked in her fucking cannoli so I could lick every drop off her soft skin.
I sucked the soft whimper off her mouth, soaked it in my tongue, and sent it pushing right back in. I tried, I really tried, not to grind against her, but honestly, my heart wasn’t in it. She felt good. Even with her clothes on, her pussy felt like a million bucks against my dick.
Fuck! I wanted this woman. On top of me, underneath me, against the kitchen island. But with a groan and a million curses in my mind, I pulled myself off her fucking seductive mouth.
Her lips trembled, and mine burned with a fever. Our heated breaths fused, and her eyes hazed.
The vibration of her heartbeat rocked against my chest.
Oh, yes! My girl liked being lavished.
The thought skidded through me that I never wanted to see her like this with another man.
“Just wanted to leave an imprint on you, Principessa. You know, if you’re thinking of cheating on me, you’d have something to remember me by.”