Chapter 19 Natalia
NATALIA
Johnny goes completely still.
His hand finds the shower handle without his eyes leaving mine, and the pounding spray cuts off so fast the silence feels like a slap. There’s just our breathing and the drip of the faucet and the wild stupid hammering of my pulse.
A second ago, he was all patience.
Now he looks at me like the leash he had on himself just snapped.
He slides his hands under my thighs and lifts me, and I wrap myself around him before I can think about it. My legs lock behind his back. My arms circle his neck. His body is slick and hot against mine, and the hard length of him presses between us hard enough to pull a shaky breath out of me.
He carries me out of the bathroom.
Water streaks down both of us and dots the floor behind him. My mouth brushes the corner of his mouth, then his throat, and I feel his pulse jumping there, fast and heavy. It steadies me a little, knowing he isn’t calm either.
The bedroom door bangs softly against the wall.
A gasp tears out of me as my back hits the sheets.
He’s over me a second later, breathing hard.
Water tracks down his pecs and stomach, catching the low light from the window.
His cock juts out thick and proud, and I want it so badly my thighs press together, searching for friction that isn’t there.
He looks at me like he wants me more than he knows what to do with.
And like he’s making himself go slow anyway.
Even now, he’s leaving this in my hands.
Every choice I’ve ever made has had someone else’s fingerprints on it. Where I live. Who I marry. What I’m worth and to whom.
Not this one.
“Come here.”
Johnny braces a knee on the mattress. Lowers himself over me.
The full weight of him presses me into the sheets, skin to skin, and the sound that comes out of me is something I couldn’t fake if I tried.
I can feel him against my inner thigh, hot and hard, and when my hips tilt up without permission, his eyes squeeze shut for one hard second.
Then his mouth is on mine.
I taste myself faintly on his tongue, and embarrassment flashes through me, then melts so fast into arousal I can barely separate the two.
His hand slides into my hair. Mine finds his shoulder, then his back. He makes a low sound into my mouth when my nails drag over wet skin, and the sound goes straight through me.
I reach between us before I can lose my nerve.
My fingers wrap around him, and he sucks in a breath like I’ve hurt him. I stroke him once—just once—and the sheer heat and hardness of him makes my stomach flip. He’s bigger than my body knows what to do with. The thought should scare me.
It does scare me.
It also makes me wetter.
His forehead comes down to mine. “Nat.”
I open my eyes.
There’s strain all over his face. Want, yes, but not only that. Restraint. Care. Maybe even fear.
“You don’t have to—”
“I know.” My voice comes out thinner than I want. I swallow and try again. “I want to.”
His thumb traces my cheek. His eyes search mine one last time, restraint hanging by a thread.
The thread snaps.
His hand slides down my body. Over my breast. My ribs. My waist. Lower. He grips my thigh and pushes it wide. The air hits where I’m swollen and slick and a shiver rolls through me.
“Tell me if it’s too much,” he says.
I nod.
“I need your words, Princess.”
“I will,” I whisper.
Only then does he notch himself against me. The blunt head of his cock presses at my entrance, hot and bare, and every muscle in my body tightens.
I knew it would feel different from his fingers. I knew that. But knowing is not the same thing as feeling the thick heat of him there, pressing, asking, making my breath catch halfway in.
His hand slides back to my face. “Look at me.”
I do.
Then he pushes in.
The first inch burns enough to make my fingers lock on his shoulders.
He stops immediately.
Air saws in and out of my lungs. My eyes water. Not from regret. Not even exactly from pain. From the shock of it. From how much I can feel. The stretch, the sting, the unbearable fullness of just that little bit.
“Breathe,” he murmurs.
I try.
He kisses the corner of my mouth. My cheek. Waits while I drag in one breath and then another.
“It’s okay,” I whisper, though I’m not sure whether I’m telling him or myself.
The tendons in his neck go taught. “Nat—”
“I want this.” My voice wobbles. “Please.”
His eyes squeeze shut. When they open, the brown is almost gone, swallowed by his pupils.
He pushes in a little farther.
The burn flashes sharper this time and I make a helpless sound into his shoulder, but I don’t tell him to stop. One of his hands grips the sheets beside my head. The other stays on my hip, steady and warm, like he’s holding me together through it.
He stops again.
We stay like that for a few seconds that feel much longer. My body clenched around him. My breath unsteady. His nose brushes mine.
Then his hand slides between us. His thumb finds my clit and my whole body jolts around him. He doesn’t thrust. Doesn’t move his hips at all. Just slow, steady circles while I’m pinned there, full of him, until the sting starts to blur into something else.
The ache changes. Little by little, the first sharp edge eases, leaving behind a heavy, pulsing fullness.
“There you go,” he says, so quietly I barely hear it.
I let out a shaky breath that almost turns into a laugh. “Don’t be smug.”
The corner of his mouth twitches.
Then he moves again, careful and slow, and when he finally settles fully inside me, I go still from the sheer overwhelming reality of it.
He’s everywhere.
Pressure crowds low in my belly, strange and intimate and almost too much. I cling to him and breathe against his neck and let myself feel it—the ache, the heat, the closeness of his body covering mine.
He holds still. Every muscle in him locked tight, waiting.
“Don’t move yet,” I whisper.
He lets out a breath that sounds half wrecked, half relieved. “Jesus Christ.”
I would smile if I had enough control over my face to manage it.
He waits.
That matters too. More than I know how to say.
When the pressure starts to soften into something heavier and warmer, I shift under him, just enough to test what happens. The friction sends a pulse through me—sharp, pooling heat, almost startling in how good it is after the ache.
My breath catches.
His eyes open and lock on mine. “Nat?”
I do it again, a tiny movement of my hips.
“Oh,” I whisper, before I can stop myself.
Something fierce and helpless flashes across his face.
“Can I move?”
I nod, then remember. “Yes.”
He draws back a little.
The drag of it makes me tense, but when he pushes in again, it’s better. Still intense. Still enough to make my fingers tighten on him. But better. The rhythm he finds is slow at first, like he’s learning me and holding himself back at the same time.
Each stroke pulls a different sound from me. Not loud or polished. The kind of sounds I’d be mortified by if I had any brain cells left to spare for embarrassment.
He kisses me when I make them, like he’s collecting each one.
My body keeps changing around him. That’s the only way I know to think it. Adjusting. Opening. The initial sting fading under a deep, pulsing heat that gathers lower and lower until I can’t tell where discomfort ends and pleasure begins.
“Johnny,” I breathe, and his name comes out like a plea.
“I know.” He presses his mouth to my throat. “I know, Nat.”
My fingers slide into his hair. His rhythm shifts. Rougher now, the care still there but fraying at the edges, and something in me answers immediately. My legs fall wider. My hips lift to meet him before I can be shy about it.
“That’s it,” he says, voice deep enough to send a shiver down my spine.
Heat floods through me at the praise so fast my vision blurs.
He shifts the angle with one hand at my thigh, and the next thrust drags against a spot inside me that makes the whole room tilt sideways. I gasp. His head jerks up.
“That?”
I can only nod.
He does it again.
“Yes, God, right there, don’t stop.”
The pressure building in me tightens hard and fast now, centered low in my body and spreading out in trembling waves.
My breath breaks. My thighs shake. I clutch at him with one hand and hold on to the sheets with the other, because all at once I need something solid, and I’m so close, so goddamn close.
“Yes, Johnny, oh my God, more.”
His hips stutter.
Just for a beat. Barely a breath. But I feel it inside me, the rhythm that’s been building me toward the edge skipping like a scratch across a record. His whole body goes tense above me. A crease digs between his brows. His eyes lose focus.
“Luca.”
I blink up at him.
I don’t understand. My head is spinning, my body screaming, and the syllables don’t land right because I’m two seconds from falling apart and nothing makes sense except him inside me and the ache building behind my clit.
My mouth parts. “What?”
His hand comes to my face. His thumb presses into my cheek, almost trembling.
“Say it,” he says.
His next thrust is deep enough to wrench a cry out of me. He stays there, buried inside me, his breath ragged against my lips, like he’s barely holding himself together.
I don’t think. I’m too close, too full of him, too wrecked to do anything but obey.
“Luca,” I breathe.
His whole body shudders. A tremor that starts in his shoulders and rolls through him everywhere we’re connected. The sound that leaves his mouth is raw. Guttural. Like something cracked open.
“Again.” One word.
“Luca.” I pull his face to me, stubble rough against my palm. “Luca, please.”
His hand fists in the sheets. His mouth finds my neck. The rhythm he gives me after that is no longer careful, but it still isn’t careless. It’s need. It’s desperation. Like something locked inside him has broken open and now he doesn’t know how to stop it.
The pressure inside me snaps.
Pleasure tears through me so suddenly I almost can’t recognize it at first. My back arches. A cry breaks out of me. My whole body clamps around him, shaking with it, and the name on my lips is the one he gave me.
“Luca—”
“Fuck, Nat.” His rhythm fractures. His breath goes ragged against my throat. He pulls out fast, cock dragging against my swollen flesh, and then the hot pulse of him spills across my stomach, my ribs, warm streaks landing on my skin while he groans something unintelligible against my neck.
He stays there. Face buried against my throat, breath heavy and slowing against my skin. Then he lifts his head and looks down between us, at the mess he made on my stomach, and a darkly satisfied look crosses his face.
His thumb drags through it. Smears it across my hip, over the curve of my waist, possessive enough to send a fresh wave of heat through me.
His gaze flicks up to mine and stays there, hot and unapologetic.
I shiver under the weight of it.
The ceiling fan turns overhead with its soft, uneven click. The ocean outside is a distant hush through the cracked window. Cool air brushes my damp skin. He’s half over me, half beside me, one arm still under my back like he doesn’t know how to let go yet.
I run my fingers into his wet hair and feel his heartbeat slowly begin to steady.
Mine does not.
Because now the haze is lifting.
Now I can hear the word again, clear as if he just said it into my ear.
Luca.
The way his body reacted to it. The way he needed me to say it back. The look on his face, like the sound had reached someplace buried.
I go still under him.
“Johnny?”
He lifts his head.
There’s something shaken in his expression, something unsteady enough to make my stomach tighten.
I wet my lips. “Who’s Luca?”
He stares at me for one long second.
Then he exhales, slow and rough, and his thumb brushes once over my cheek.
“I am.”