Chapter Fifteen Leone #2
"I know." She pulls back just far enough to look at me. Her eyes are dark, pupils blown wide, her lips already swollen from kissing. "I need you. Right now. I need to feel you."
I lift her.
Her legs wrap around my waist instantly, ankles locking at the small of my back. The shirt rides up her thighs, and I realize she's not wearing anything underneath. The knowledge has me instantly horny, blood rushing south so fast I see stars.
"You weren't wearing anything under my shirt," I growl against her neck.
"I was waiting for you."
"Fuck."
"That's the idea."
I pin her harder against the wall. One hand under her ass, holding her up. The other sliding between us, finding her pussy, discovering what I already suspected. She's wet. Soaking. Ready for me.
She moans when my fingers slide through her slit. Her head falls back against the wall, throat exposed, and I take advantage. My mouth finds her pulse point and I suck, hard enough to leave a mark, while my fingers circle her clit in slow, deliberate strokes.
"Leone." My name comes out strangled. "Please."
"Please what?"
"Don't tease. Not now. I need you inside me."
I pull my hand away. She whimpers at the loss, but I'm already unbuckling my belt, shoving my pants down far enough to free myself. I'm so hard it hurts, aching for her, every nerve in my body screaming for contact.
I line myself up against her entrance. The head of my cock presses against her and we both shudder.
"Look at me," I tell her.
Her eyes find mine.
I push inside.
She cries out. Not pain. Pleasure. The sound of a woman being filled exactly how she needs to be filled. I don't stop until I'm buried to the hilt, her body gripping me like a vice, her breath coming in ragged gasps against my ear.
"God," she whispers. "Fuck, fuck… yes, don’t stop.”
"I won’t, love. Not until you’re screaming my name." I pull back, almost all the way out, then thrust forward again. Hard. Deep. Watching her face change, watching her eyes flutter shut and her mouth fall open.
I fuck her against the wall.
There's no other word for it. This isn't making love. This isn't tender or gentle or careful. This is two people who almost lost each other claiming what's theirs with every stroke, every thrust, every desperate sound that echoes off the safehouse walls.
Her nails dig into my shoulders. Her heels press into my lower back, urging me deeper. She's so wet I can hear it, the sound of our bodies meeting, and it drives me higher. Harder.
"Mine," I grunt against her throat. "Say it."
"Yours."
"Again."
"I'm yours, Leone. Only yours. Always."
I shift my angle, hitching her higher against the wall, and the new position drags me across that spot inside her that makes her scream.
Her whole body tightens, clenching around me, and I feel her getting close.
Feel the flutter of her muscles, the way her breath is coming faster, the way her nails are digging in hard enough to draw blood.
"Come for me," I tell her. "Let me feel it."
She shatters.
Her orgasm rips through her, body convulsing, pussy gripping me so tight I have to grit my teeth to keep from following. She screams my name, loud enough that anyone outside would hear, and I swallow the sound with my mouth, kissing her through the aftershocks, holding her up when her legs go weak.
I carry her to the bed.
She's still trembling when I lay her down, still clenching around me in little waves. I pull out long enough to strip her shirt over her head, then mine, then the rest of my clothes. I need skin. All of it. Nothing between us.
I cover her body with mine and slide back inside.
She gasps, oversensitive, but her hips rise to meet me. Her hands find my back, tracing the scars, the muscle, the ridges of my spine. I move slower now. Long, deep strokes that make her moan with every thrust.
"I love you," I say against her mouth.
"I love you too."
"I killed fifteen men for you."
"I know."
"I'd kill fifty more."
"I know that too." She pulls me down, presses her forehead to mine. "And I'd do the same for you. Whatever it took. Whoever I had to become."
My heart cracks open. Expanding. Making room for the thing she's putting there, the thing that's been growing since the first night she called me a coward, and I realized I'd finally met someone who could see through me.
I move faster. Deeper. Chasing the edge, feeling it build at the base of my spine. She's getting close again, I can tell by the way her breath becomes erratic, the way her body arches beneath me, the way her fingers dig into my hips and pull me harder.
"Together," she pants. "I want us to come together."
I reach between us. Find her clit. Rub tight circles while I thrust, matching the rhythm, pushing us both toward the edge.
"Now," I grit out. "Come with me now."
She does.
We break apart at the same time, waves of pleasure crashing through us, her body milking mine while I empty myself inside her. I bury my face in her neck and groan her name, feeling her pulse against my lips, feeling her heart hammering against my chest, feeling everything.
We lie tangled, sweaty, dead to the world.
Breathing hard. Sweating. Neither of us willing to move, to separate, to break the connection we've built.
Her fingers trace lazy patterns on my back. My hand rests on her hip, thumb stroking the soft skin there. The safehouse is quiet around us. our breathing. the settling of two bodies that have finally, finally stopped fighting.
"So," she murmurs. "Officially protected, huh?"
"Officially."
"What does that mean, exactly?"
"It means anyone who touches you answers to the entire Bonaccorso family. It means you're not a guest anymore, not a prisoner, not an asset. You're mine. And what's mine is theirs to protect."
She's quiet. "That's a lot."
"It's everything."
She lifts her head, looking down at me. Her hair falls around her face like a curtain, and her eyes are soft in the dim light.
"I'm not scared," she says. "I should be. I know I should be. But I'm not."
"Good." I reach up and tuck her hair behind her ear. "Because I'm not letting you go. Not now. Not ever."
She smiles. It's small, private, a smile just for me. "That sounds so romantic.”
"It's not. It’s a death threat for anyone who tries to come for you."
She bends down and kisses me. Slow. Deep. A promise of her own.
When she pulls back, she settles against my chest, her cheek over my heart, her hand splayed across my ribs. I wrap my arm around her and hold on.
The bruise on my chest throbs. A dull ache, reminding me how close I came. Two inches. That's what separated life from death. Two inches and a ceramic plate and the stubborn refusal to die before I reached her.
"What else did the Don say?”
"Some stuff about my father."
"What did he say?"
I tell her. The story I never knew. The woman my father loved against orders. The choice he made. The respect Aurelio held for him even while hating the vulnerability he created.
She listens without interrupting. When I finish, she's quiet for a long time.
"You're like him," she finally says.
"I don't know. I barely remember him."
"You don't have to remember him to be like him." Her fingers trace the edge of the bruise, careful not to press. "You made the same choice. Defied the same man. For the same reason."
"I made the choice because I couldn't not make it. There was never another option."
"That's what I mean." She lifts her head again, meeting my eyes. "You didn't weigh the costs. You didn't calculate the risks. You just acted, because the alternative was unthinkable. That's not strategy. That's love."
The word still feels strange in my mouth. Heavy. Foreign. But less so than it did yesterday. Less so than it did an hour ago.
"I'm not good at this," I tell her. "Love. Relationships. Being someone's... person."
"Neither am I."
"You seem to be doing fine."
"I'm faking it." She grins, a flash of the sharp, defiant woman who called me a coward on the first night. "I've been faking competence my entire life. Eventually you get good at it."
I laugh. The sound surprises me. Rough and unpracticed, coming from somewhere I forgot existed.
She stares at me. "Did you just laugh?"
"Apparently."
"That might be the most terrifying sound I've ever heard. Do it again."
"No."
"Coward."
I flip her onto her back and pin her wrists above her head. She's grinning up at me, unafraid, and the trust in her eyes makes my chest ache.
"Call me that again," I say.
"Coward."
I silence her with my mouth.