25. The Future Conversation #2
"I started after you told me what you wanted your life to look like." His voice lowered. "I wasn't asking you to fit into mine, Riley. I was making room for yours."
I had spent years searching every offer for the hidden cost. I didn't know what to do with one designed to protect me.
Luca rested his hand on the desk, palm up. Not taking. Waiting.
For the first time, the future in front of me didn't look like surrender. It looked like choice, power, and a door with my name on it.
I put my hand in his.
His fingers closed around mine with a care that almost undid me more than the contracts had.
"I need you to hear me before I lose my nerve," I said.
Luca's thumb moved once across my knuckles. "I'm listening."
I looked down at the bracelet Ava had made, then at my name printed across pages he had already rewritten to make space for me.
"I spent so long believing love was something I could only afford after I had built a life of my own." My voice wavered, but I kept going. "Like I needed the career, the stability, and proof that I could stand on my own before I let anyone matter this much."
His expression hardened, not at me, but for me.
"You never have to become less for me."
"I know." The truth of it settled somewhere deep. "That's why this scares me so much."
I drew in a breath that trembled all the way through me.
"I love you, Luca."
He went completely still. The silence lasted one heartbeat. Two. Then he stood so quickly the chair scraped against the floor.
"You love me," he repeated, like the words had arrived in a language he had forgotten how to speak.
I laughed through the tears burning my eyes. "That was your chance to say it back."
He caught my face between his hands.
"Ti amo," he said, rough and immediate. "I love you. I loved you when I was fighting it, when I was trying to manage it, and when I finally understood you were never something I could control."
The first tear slipped free.
"And the job?" I asked, because I needed this part said too.
His forehead rested against mine. "Yours, if you want it."
"Equal authority."
"Yes."
"My own counsel."
"Yes."
"I sign after they review everything."
His mouth curved. "I would expect nothing less."
I slid my arms around his neck.
"Then yes," I whispered. "To the wing. To the partnership."
His gaze dropped to my mouth. "And to us?"
I kissed him before he could finish asking.
The sound he made was low and broken, his arms closing around me as if restraint had finally become impossible.
I slipped Ava's bracelet from my wrist and set it carefully beside the contracts.
Luca glanced at it, then back at me.
"I'm not taking it off because I'm leaving," I said.
His gaze heated. "Good."
"I'm taking it off because explaining a broken bracelet to your daughter would kill the mood permanently."
A startled laugh escaped him. "There she is."
He lifted me from the chair, and I wrapped my legs around his waist, laughing against his mouth as he carried me toward the bedroom.
The future had stopped feeling like a threat and started feeling like an invitation.
He kicked the door shut behind us with a precision that should have been comical but only sent heat pooling lower, his mouth never leaving mine. The bedroom was dim, the city lights bleeding through sheer curtains and casting everything in amber and shadow.
I could feel his heart hammering against my chest as he lowered me to the bed, his body following mine down with a reverence that made my throat tighten.
"Look at me," he breathed, and I did.
His eyes were dark, pupils blown wide, and I saw everything in them—the fear I'd spoken of reflected back at me, transformed into something fierce and protective. He ran his thumb across my lower lip, watching it swell from his attention.
"I need to feel you," I said, and it wasn't a request. It was a demand, and the way his jaw tightened told me he felt the shift between us as clearly as I did. I was not the woman shrinking herself to fit. I was taking.
I reached for his belt, fingers steady despite the tremor in my chest, and he let me. Watched me. His breath caught when I freed him, and I took a moment to look—really look—at the man who had rewritten contracts and boundaries and his own guarded heart to make room for all of me.
"Riley." My name came out strained as I stroked him, learning the weight and heat of him, the way his hips jerked involuntarily toward my touch. "Fuck. You have no idea?—"
"Tell me." I squeezed gently, watched his eyes flutter shut. "Tell me what I do to you."
He laughed, rough and disbelieving. "You unmake me. Every time." He caught my wrist and pressed a kiss to my palm before pinning it above my head. "Every goddamn time."
"Good." I arched up to bite his jaw, his throat, anywhere I could reach. "Now unmake me."
He groaned against my collarbone, his free hand dragging my skirt up with rough intention. I helped him, lifting my hips so he could strip me efficiently, my underwear following, until I lay bare beneath him while he remained frustratingly clothed.
"Unfair," I protested, but he was already moving down my body, spreading my thighs with his shoulders, and the protest died in my throat.
The first touch of his tongue was deliberate, devastating.
He took his time, learning what made me gasp and what made me moan his name, the rhythm building with maddening patience until I was gripping the sheets.
When he slid two fingers inside me, curling them with expertise, I cried out—loud, unguarded, mine.
"That's it," he murmured against my thigh, his voice vibrating through me. "Let me hear you. Let me feel you come apart."
I did. The orgasm rolled through me in waves, my back arching off the bed, his name breaking across my lips like a promise and a prayer.
He stayed with me through it, gentling his touch but not withdrawing, drawing out every shudder until I was trembling with the aftershocks, my skin flushed and oversensitive.
When he finally lifted his head, his mouth glistening, his eyes held a question I answered by reaching for him.
I tugged at his shirt, impatient now, and he helped me strip it away, his trousers following, until he knelt above me as naked and exposed as I felt.
I took a moment to appreciate him—the lean muscle of his shoulders, the dark hair scattered across his chest, the evidence of how badly he wanted this straining against his stomach.
"Come here," I said, and he did.
He settled between my thighs, and I felt the blunt pressure of him there, hot and insistent.
I wrapped my legs around his waist, my heels digging into the small of his back, and pulled him closer.
His breath hitched, his restraint visible in the tightness of his jaw, the cords of his neck standing out with the effort of holding back.
"I want to feel you. All of you." I cupped his face, forcing his eyes to mine.
The words seemed to unlock something in him.
He surged forward in one slow, deliberate thrust, filling me completely, and we both moaned in unison, the sound raw and reverberating through the quiet room.
He paused there, fully seated inside me, his forehead dropping to mine with a shuddering breath that smelled of my arousal and his desperation.
"Christ, Riley." His voice was wrecked, nothing of the controlled businessman left. "You feel—" He thrust experimentally, withdrew halfway, and drove back deeper. "You feel like coming home."
I moaned, my nails scoring his shoulders, catching against his skin as I held on. "Harder," I demanded. "Please, Luca, harder."
He did, establishing a rhythm that started deep and unrelenting, each stroke dragging against that perfect spot inside me until I was gasping, my spine bowing off the mattress.
The sound of our bodies meeting filled the room—wet, heavy, undeniable—and I loved it, loved that there would be no mistaking what we had done here, what I had chosen.
"You're so fucking beautiful," he gritted out, his thumb finding my clit with the same precision he brought to everything, circling in time with his thrusts. "Look at you. Taking everything you want."
"I want you," I panted, my hips meeting his, meeting him halfway, refusing to let him set the pace alone. "I want this. I want us."
His rhythm faltered, and for a moment he stopped entirely, buried deep inside me, his chest heaving against mine. He cupped my face with both hands, thumbs brushing the tears I hadn't realized were still leaking from the corners of my eyes.