Chapter 16 Lucia
LUCIA
Dinner ends the way everything with Giovanni ends lately. With him watching me like I’m a decision he’s already made, and me pretending I still have choices I’m not already giving away.
The plates are cleared away and the wine sits half-finished an hour after this started. The candles have burned enough that the room feels softer, fragrant, with more benign shadows gathering in corners.
I should be exhausted and in one way I am.
But my body is still humming, wired with the aftermath of Red Hook, of survival, of his mouth on mine and his body moving inside me in the dark, of the knowledge that we finally arrived at the place we were both destined for, both recognised the second he stepped out of his car in Queens.
Giovanni doesn’t move to stand, more than content to keep me right where I am, on his lap, his hand spread at my waist as if the simple act of holding me there is a kind of proof.
“You’re quiet,” he murmurs.
“I’m thinking.”
“That’s dangerous.” I hear the dark amusement in his voice.
And I huff a laugh. “For who?”
“For me,” he says easily. “I never know what you’ll do when you think too much.”
I tilt my head, watch the sharp angle of his jaw, and curb the need to trail my mouth over it. It’s not because I don’t want to or that he’ll stop me. This is purely a temptation test on myself. One I note with a sinking heart that I want to fail. Spectacularly.
“Hmm. Maybe I’ll run again,” I try again.
His arm tightens, his voice drops, velvet over steel. “Let’s retire this joke, amuri. Or you will learn, sooner rather than later, the full benefits of a neat spanking.”
Heat curls low in my stomach. I look away, because if I don’t, I’ll fall straight into whatever this is.
Giovanni’s fingers trace slow, idle patterns at my hip, not demanding, not rushing, just…there. Possessive in his unabashed way as his mouth brushes my temple.
I inhale, catching the scent of him: clean soap now, wine, the faintest echo of gunpowder that won’t leave my memory. That makes my throat tighten.
I turn back to him, my gaze catching on his face, at the cuts and bruises peppered all over his skin, on the bandage around his shoulder. We stare at each other for a long moment, the air thick with everything we refuse to name.
Giovanni’s hand slides up my spine, slow and deliberate, until his palm cups the back of my neck, firm and certain. “You’re shaking again,” he murmurs.
“I’m fine.”
He smiles faintly. “Liar.”
The word should annoy me. Instead it warms something in me that has been cold for too long. Leaning up feels like the most natural thing in the world.
I sigh when his mouth finds mine.
This kiss isn’t like anything we shared at Red Hook.
It’s slower. Deeper. A claiming that feels almost reverent, as if he’s learning me again now that the world has tried to take me away.
I make a soft sound I don’t mean to and Giovanni’s breath catches.
“Lucia,” he murmurs, like my name is a prayer and a warning.
My hands slide up his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart beneath my palms.
Alive. Mine, in the strangest way.
“Are we done talking? I want you in my bed. Finally.”
Need steals through, filling me up in places that scare me a little. “Yes. I want that too. Tomorrow can wait,” I whisper.
“Eccellente,” he says.
His lips trail along my jaw, to the pulse at my throat, and my eyes flutter shut. My skin feels too aware, every inch of me seeming to remember him. To crave him with the same urgency I did mere hours before.
“Are you going to keep me waiting?” he murmurs against my skin.
“Maybe,” I tease.
He pulls back just enough to look at me. “I know a way to help you decide.”
The way he says it makes my breath stutter. He stands then, lifting me with him as though I weigh nothing, carrying me off the terrace in unhurried strides where each step feels like a delicious, decadent countdown.
In the bedroom, he sets me down gently, hands framing my waist. And for a moment, he only looks at me. The silence is intimate. And heavy.
He spins me around so my back is to his front. “You have any idea how many times I’ve dreamt of fucking you in this bed?” he rasps in my ear.
Shivers race up and down my spine. “Some, but you survived.”
His mouth curves against the sensitive spot just beneath my ear. “Sì. But barely. And with a colossal case of blue balls I’ll need very many years to recover from.”
I swallow. “You said the wait was worth it.”
His teeth graze my earlobe. “It was.” A beat. “Very much. But that’s not to say I’m not reclaiming every moment I could’ve spent deep inside you.”
Heat rushes through me as he pulls at the tie holding my robe closed. It glides down my shoulders and pools on the floor, forgotten.
Giovanni leans in, his voice low, wicked, devoted. “Starting now, tonight,” he murmurs, “I want to take my time.”
My pulse jumps. “And tomorrow?”
The fingers framing my hips tighten just a fraction. “Tomorrow, I go back to war,” he delivers with steel and venom. Then he softens again, thumb brushing my cheek. “But tonight, mia moglie… you are alive. I am alive. And I want to feel that.”
The words undo me more than any threat ever could. And I’m a bundle of goo in his hands when he walks me two steps closer and bends me over the side of the bed.
He proceeds to take his time to kiss his way down my spine. Linger on the two indents at the tops of my arse, groaning as his tongue flickers into the shallow divots. His hands cup and mould my bottom, then he roughly parts my legs.
Furnace heat blasts my face and my body when he blows softly on my slick flesh. Right before he parts me with his thumbs and tastes me in brazen eagerness that has us both groaning.
He feasts until I’m gasping and clutching the sheets in frantic need. Barely cognisant of the words falling out of my mouth, only the wild ride I have no desire to step off.
“God…Gio! I’m…I’m coming.”
“Yes. Show me, bellezza. Give it all to me,” he croons hoarsely.
I don’t fight the feeling when it hits me with force-five power. He surges to his feet, holding me through the delirium-filled convulsions. But only until I’ve caught half my breath.
And Giovanni presses me firmly back onto the bed, my bottom in the air, his steely length poised at the entrance of my sex.
Then with a harsh grunt, he penetrates me. The grunt turns into a shout. My fists clench the sheets once more as he sets a powerful rhythm through my quivering flesh.
“Fuck, I thought I needed a refresher of how sublime you feel, but…dragunnida…this…you…are fucking incredible,” he delivers thickly as he shuttles in and out of me. As his fingers dig deeper into my skin and my husband rides me like I’m his favourite mount.
He’s thick and powerful and he stretches me to breaking point, but I take every slam, every groan, every hiss and use it to power my own desire.
And all too soon, I’m back on the edge. Then throwing myself over it with his rough encouragement.
Revelling in how my clenches drive him to his own roaring climax.
We collapse in a heap of tangled flesh when it’s over. And I simply let him kiss me again, slow as a vow, as the night folds around us like shelter.
And for the first time since the gunfire, since the chase, since the trap closed—
I let myself believe in the quiet.
Just for tonight.
Giovanni
The Dragoni Estate changes after Red Hook, as is the prudent thing to do to ensure that that which I hold important doesn’t come to harm.
It doesn’t announce itself with alarms or shouting, because Dragoni territory does not panic. It adjusts. It closes ranks. It becomes something quieter and far more dangerous.
By morning, the house I built by daring to be different is no longer a mansion.
It’s a fortress.
Men rotate at the gates in shifts so seamless they look like shadows, the perimeter doubles, the cameras are recalibrated, the staff is reduced to only those whose loyalty has been tested in blood or time or both, and every road leading to this place becomes a road that belongs to me.
Lucia notices.
Of course she does.
My wife notices everything.
She stands at the window in one of my shirts, hair still damp from her shower, watching the slow choreography of armed men outside as if she’s trying to convince herself she isn’t seeing what she’s seeing.
“This is insane,” she says finally, voice tight. “Are we under lockdown now?”
“This is how it needs to be.”
When she starts to protest, I shake my head.
“This war was always on the flip side of peace,” I reply, adjusting the cuff of my shirt with deliberate calm. “And some might say it was inevitable, the way rot needs to be cut out to make way for fresh blood flow.”
Her jaw clenches. “I don’t want this.”
I wrap my hands around her waist, dropping a kiss on her forehead.
“I know.”
“And yet you keep tightening the cage.”
I pull back then, fixing my gaze on her.
“It is not a cage.”
Her laugh is sharp. “Oh, sorry. What is it, then? How many men are here this morning?”
“It is protection,” I say evenly, knowing very well I’m poking a beautiful she-wolf. “And your obedience is part of that protection.”
Her eyes flash, predictable, and I know I’m about to get the claws. Funny that my senses leap at the thought.
“My obedience?” she echoes coolly.
“Yes.”
“You say it like you’re talking about a dog.”
I step closer.
“I say it like I am talking about my wife, who was nearly turned into a headline in Red Hook because men want to punish me through you.”
Her throat bobs. “I didn’t ask to be used this way.”
“No,” I agree, voice lowering. “But you are. Whether you ask or not.”
The air between us holds.
She looks away first, because she always does when the truth lands too cleanly.
I let her… for a moment.
Then my phone vibrates.
I glance down, my jaw tightening when I see a name and a number I know too well.
Bellandi.
I don’t answer. Don’t give him the satisfaction.