Chapter 23 Nico #2
She sees her own face contorted in pleasure, her breasts bouncing with each of my thrusts, my body, powerful and slick with water and sweat, moving against hers.
The visual feedback, the sheer carnality of the image, pushes her over an edge she didn’t know existed.
A broken, sobbing scream is torn from her lungs.
“I’m coming! Oh God, I’m coming!”
Her orgasm is a convulsive, violent thing.
Her inner muscles clamp down on my cock in a series of frantic, milking spasms, her body seizing in my arms as she shatters.
Her legs give out completely, and I hold her up, my own groans mingling with her cries as I feel her come apart around me, her release hot and slick against my skin.
I don’t stop.
The sight of her, the feel of her climax, the raw, screaming sounds she’s making—it only fuels my own relentless pace.
I’m lost in her, in the wet, pounding rhythm, in the possessive, feral need to brand myself inside her forever.
Her sobs turn into wordless, keening wails as the overstimulation teeters between agony and ecstasy.
Her fingers scramble against the slick marble wall for purchase, finding none.
“Please… Nico… it’s too much…” she begs, her voice a ragged whisper, her body trembling uncontrollably.
“It’s not enough,” I growl into the nape of her neck, my thrusts becoming even harder, deeper, my own climax coiling tight in my gut like a spring. “It will never be enough.”
I watch our reflection—her head lolling back against my shoulder, her eyes squeezed shut, tears and water streaming down her face, my face a mask of grim, determined pleasure.
I’m driving into her with a force that shakes us both, the sound of our wet skin slapping together a frantic, primal drumbeat in the steam-filled room.
I can’t hold back any longer.
With a final, guttural roar that echoes off the tiles, I bury myself to the hilt and let go.
My own release erupts, a hot, pulsing flood that seems to go on forever, syncing with the last fading tremors of her own body.
I collapse against her, my forehead pressed to her wet back, both of us shuddering and gasping, held up only by the wall and the last vestiges of adrenaline.
For a long time, the only sound is the drumming of the water and our ragged, synced breaths.
The steam slowly clears from the mirror, revealing us—spent, wrecked, and utterly fused.
I slowly, carefully, lower her until her feet touch the floor, my arms still wrapped around her, holding her steady as her legs tremble violently.
I turn her in my arms.
Her face is pale, streaked with water and tears, her eyes hollowed out with exhaustion and a kind of stunned awe.
She looks utterly ravaged.
Beautiful.
Mine.
I reach up and gently wipe a tear from her cheek with my thumb.
She leans into the touch, her eyes closing.
The world outside, with all its dangers and demands, is still there, waiting.
But in this steam-shrouded sanctuary, surrounded by the ghosts of saints and the scent of our sex, we are, for this one stolen moment, untouchable.
The silence between us now is not a weapon, but a pact.
And It's finally, perfectly, broken.
The hot water is beginning to run cold.
I don't move, just hold her there against the wall, my body a cage and a cradle, feeling the fine, aftershock tremors that still wrack her frame.
Her skin is flushed, marked by my hands and my mouth, a living map of the storm we just weathered.
She feels fragile in my arms, all the fierce defiance from earlier washed away, leaving something raw and terrifyingly exposed.
Her voice, when it comes, is a cracked whisper, muffled against my chest.
"I'm sorry."
I go still. "For what?"
"For not telling you sooner."
She pulls back just enough to look up at me, her eyes swimming with a fresh wave of tears. "About the baby. I was... scared. I thought... I thought it would be a chain. For you. For me. I thought if I kept it to myself, I could control it. I could protect it."
The confession hangs in the steam-filled air.
The baby.
The secret that started this whole silent war between us.
It doesn't feel like a bomb anymore.
It feels like a key, finally turning in a lock I didn't know was there.
I lift a hand, cupping her jaw, my thumb stroking over the apple of her cheek.
"Look at me." Her wet lashes flutter as she meets my gaze.
"You think I don't know what it's like to be scared?
To want to control the one thing in your life that feels like it's spinning into chaos?
" I let out a slow breath, the truth of my own bloodline, the curse and the power of it, settling between us like a third presence.
"It doesn't matter. None of it. The hiding, the running. It ends now."
I lean in, my forehead resting against hers, our breath mingling.
"That child... our child... will carry my blood. It can't be hidden or washed away. It's a part of them, forever."
I feel her shiver, not from the cooling water, but from the weight of my words.
"So you have a choice, Elisa. You can run. You can take that part of me growing inside you and you can spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder, waiting for a shadow that will never stop coming."
My voice drops, deadly serious, the promise of a man who has seen the darkest corners of the world and is not afraid to burn them down.
"Or you can stay. You can stand right here, next to me.
You can let me be the father. The protector.
You can see what it looks like when a man like me has something real to fight for.
You can watch me tear apart anyone, any organization, any fucking country that even thinks about threatening what's mine. "
I pull back, my eyes locking with hers, letting her see the absolute, unshakable certainty there.
The violence and the devotion, two sides of the same coin.
"You can run from me, mia cara. Or you can stand with me and let me set the whole goddamn world on fire to keep our family safe. The choice is yours. But choose now."
The water sputters, finally going cold.
She doesn't flinch.
She just looks at me, her hand coming up to rest over mine on her cheek.
The fear is still there, but it's been eclipsed by something else, something fiercer.
A dawning, terrible resolve.
"I'm not running," she whispers.
And then, stronger, her voice clear in the dripping silence. "I'm staying."
A grim, profound satisfaction settles in my chest. I turn off the water.
The sudden quiet is deafening.
I reach for a thick, cotton towel and wrap it around her, then one around my own waist.
I lead her, silent and steady, out of the bathroom and back toward the bedroom.