48. Nicolai
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
NICOLAI
I stand at the foot of the bed, watching her. The slope of her shoulder, the flutter of her eyelids, the scar beneath her buttocks. My hands twitch, now that I know every mark on her body is because of him.
I should leave. Let her rest since I can’t sleep.
But her hand slips from the sheets, palm upturned like an invitation. A few months ago, I would have thought twice. Tonight, I take it, knowing forgiveness is a debt I can never repay. Now I kneel, pressing my lips to her pulse. It thrums against my mouth, urgent and consuming.
“Nico,” she murmurs.
“I’m here.” Her eyes slit open, glassy with sleep.
“You’re brooding again.” A tired smile tugs at her lips.
“I’m the Boss . Brooding is in the job description.” Luna would surely reprimand me if she only knew I took matters into my own hands again this week.
She snickers, and the sound is so unlike her. “Come to bed, marito . The ghosts will keep.”
I don’t move. Can’t. The truth lodges in my throat. It’s as if she read my thoughts.
Her fingers brush my jaw. “I’m real,” she whispers. “So is this.” She guides my hand to her stomach.
The kick is faint but ferocious . I jerk back, but she traps my palm there.
“Feel that?” Her voice falters, “That’s your legacy. Not your brother’s grave. Not this house. This child.”
I press my lips to her belly. “I don’t know how to love a child,” I confess.
“You don’t have to love them yet, that will come in time,” she says. “Just love the idea of being more than your brother.”
The kick comes again, and something in my soul splinters. I press my lips to her skin, a silent promise. Her breath catches, but she doesn’t pull away.
“Giovanni would’ve broken this child,” I mutter against her stomach.
“You’re not him, Nico.”
“Aren’t I?” My hands drift over her hips. “I could have ended him, and I did nothing.”
She yanks my head back, forcing my gaze. “You’re doing something now.” I stand up, capturing her mouth with a growl. She tastes like victory, and I drink her down like my reward.
“Careful,” I rasp.
“Make me,” she dares.
She pulls me down and our bodies slot together, violence and tenderness warring in every touch. Her legs hook around my waist, pulling me closer.
“Nico!”
“This is how you make an heir,” I whisper, trailing another scar with my lips that Giovanni etched into her hip. “Not with fists. With fucking passion.”
“Passion,” she questions as her dark, throaty laugh follows.
“Terrifying, isn’t it?” I press my mouth to the swell of her stomach.
She fists my shirt, dragging me up until our breaths clash. “Let’s be frightened together then.”
“Luna,” I warn, but she holds tight and pulls me in.
Her kiss is fierce and unrelenting. I let her push me onto my back, her thighs straddling my hips. “Look at me,” she demands.
I don’t. Instead, I skim my hands up her ribs, beneath her breasts, and circle back down to her hips. My cock is thick and hard near her wet pussy. She hisses, her nails biting into my chest.
“Coward.”
The insult ignites me. I flip her, pinning her wrists to the mattress. Her laugh is bitter and triumphant. She wanted this, the fight, the fury, the way our bodies war as much as they worship.
“You’re obsessed,” she taunts, arching into me.
“You’re mine,” I correct, my mouth trailing the curve of her neck, and something inside of me buckles with the realization. Luna’s mine, and she’s having my child.
She grinds against me, and Jesus Christ, the world spins. “Prove it.” Apparently, the child I planted inside her belly isn’t convincing enough.
I do by tearing her gown right down the middle with my hands before my lips chart every scar and every shudder she tries to smother. My breath is hot against her skin when I reach the swell of her stomach.
“Nico, please.”
“Quiet.” I kiss the flutter beneath her navel, and her hands fist my hair, yanking me up.
“Enough stalling.”
I slide into her with a groan; my face buried in her neck. She’s fire and fucking fury, her hips meeting mine with a violence that should scare me. It doesn’t. Nothing scares me except the way she whimpers my name. Like I’m her husband and savior all rolled into one.
“Again,” she rasps when I pull back. Her thighs tremble as I slide out, then in, torturously deliberate. A whimper escapes her lips, and I swallow it, our tongues tangling in surrender. Her hips roll, and I thrust deeper, harder.
I drag my mouth along her collarbone, savoring the hitch in her breath when my teeth graze the pulse at her throat. She arches into my mouth with a breathy groan. While her heel hooks over my calf, urging me impossibly deeper.
“I can’t, Nico.” The crack in her voice unravels me.
I crush her hand to the mattress, interlacing our fingers, and she sobs.
Not from pain. From whatever this is, the thing that claws through our ribs and refuses to let go.
We’re no longer fucking but fusing, skin on skin, and the weightless second before freefall.
We move in sync, a clash of hunger and desire and the creak of the headboard. Her legs lock around my waist, pulling me deeper, and I lose it.
“Look. At. Me,” I command, bracing my forearm beside her head. Her eyes flutter shut. “No,” I grit out, nudging her jaw with my nose, until she’s staring into the parts of me, I never reveal. Her pupils are black and bottomless.
“Please,” she mouths against my shoulder. I drag my lips to her ear.
“Come with me.” A command. Her body stiffens, and then we both shatter.