Portia
Concetta helps Rafael set up dinner on the B&B’s small rooftop terrace, string lights strung between the chimney and an old iron railing, candles flickering against the evening breeze coming off the water somewhere beyond the rooftops of the village.
“What’s all this?” I step through the narrow door onto the terrace, genuinely caught off guard by the effort clearly poured into tonight.
“A proper dinner,” Rafael answers. He pulls out my chair, dressed nicer than I’ve seen him in weeks. “You’ve earned one after everything lately.”
“You didn’t have to do this.”
“I wanted to.” He settles across from me, pouring wine into two glasses Concetta must’ve dug out from somewhere deep in her cabinets. “Besides, I think we both needed a night that isn’t about grief or war or anything we’ve survived the last few months.”
The meal Concetta prepared is simple but ideal. Fresh pasta with lemon and herbs, bread still warm from her oven, and a bottle of wine from a vineyard somewhere nearby that tastes like sunlight and stone.
We eat slowly, our conversation flowing as we laugh more than I have in weeks.
“Jayla was updating me on Adagio’s cooking skills earlier,” I say, twirling pasta around my fork. “Apparently he’s officially graduated from disaster to merely questionable. She sounded almost proud.”
“High praise. Maurizio’s taken to critiquing every dish from a safe distance. Won’t actually taste anything Adagio makes, but he has strong opinions regardless.”
“Some things never change.”
“Some things shouldn’t.” He refills my wine glass, studying me across the candlelight with an intensity that makes my pulse quicken. “I like watching you laugh like this. I don’t think I let myself imagine evenings like this one, back when all of this started.”
“Neither did I. I used to think love like this only existed in the stories I chased for other people. Never imagined I’d actually get to live inside one myself.”
“I keep thinking about what you said a while back,” Rafael says eventually, setting down his glass. “About picturing a life after all this.”
“I haven’t stopped. I’ve still being imagining one.”
“You’re not alone, dolcezza. I’ve been picturing it more clearly lately.” He reaches across the table, taking my hand in his. “A house near the water. The two of us growing our lives together. But I don’t want to just picture it anymore. I want to build it. With you. For real, starting tonight.”
Rafael stands, and my breath catches as he moves around the table, lowering himself onto one knee in front of me and pulling a small velvet box from his jacket pocket.
My hands fly to my mouth, tears misting my eyes. “Rafael—”
“I’ve loved you since before I understood what loving somebody actually meant.
You’ve seen every terrible part of me, every secret, every mistake, and you stayed anyway.
You fought for us even when I gave you every reason not to.
Even when I was another man trapped inside me.
I don’t want to spend one more day without making that permanent. ”
He opens the box, revealing a simple, elegant ring.
“Marry me,” he says. “Here, in Sicily, where our real life together actually begins.”
“It was a yes as soon as you got down on one knee. A thousand times yes, Rafael.”
He slides the ring onto my finger, then pulls me into a kiss that tastes like wine but is full of every promise we’ve made to each other.
We make it back to our room still wrapped around each other, laughing between kisses, my new ring snug on my finger.
“I can’t believe you actually proposed,” I murmur against his mouth, pulling him toward the bed. “I thought tonight was just dinner.”
“I wanted to surprise you.” His hands find the zipper of my dress, dragging it down slowly. “I’ve been carrying that ring for two weeks, waiting for the right moment.”
“You could’ve just asked.”
“Where’s the romance in that?” he replies. He smiles against my throat, easing the dress from my shoulders, taking his time in a way that makes my whole body ache with anticipation. “I wanted you to remember this night for the rest of your life.”
“I already will.” I pull his shirt over his head, tracing my fingers along the scar left by his gunshot wound, a permanent reminder of what we’ve survived together. “Fiancé.”
“Fiancée.” He kisses me again, lowering me onto the bed.
He lays me back against the pillows, following me down, his weight settling between my thighs as his mouth finds mine again, slower now, deeper.
I arch into him, the new ring cool against his skin as I drag my hand down his spine, and he shudders under the touch, breaking the kiss just long enough to look at me, his expression reverent.
He kisses down my throat, my collarbone, taking his time at my breasts, tongue circling slow until I’m gasping and arching off the mattress, fingers threading through his hair.
Lower still, unhurried, mapping every inch of me like he’s committing tonight to memory on purpose — the curve of my waist, the softness of my stomach, the inside of my thigh where he presses one lingering kiss before moving on entirely, refusing to let me anticipate where he’ll go next.
By the time his hips finally settle against mine, I’m trembling, aching, desperate for him in a way that has nothing to do with rush and everything to do with how thoroughly he’s just spent himself worshipping me.
His mouth finds its way back up my body slowly, unhurried even now, pausing at my sternum, my collarbone, my throat, before finally claiming my mouth again, deep and slow, one hand cradling the side of my face like a woman he still can’t believe he gets to keep.
I gasp at the fullness of him pushing into me slow, foreheads pressed together as he seats himself fully inside me, giving us both a long moment to simply feel it—the ring on my finger, the weight of him, the certainty neither of us had months ago that we’d ever get here at all.
He moves unhurried, deep, measured rolls of his hips that build heat low in my stomach without ever rushing toward it.
I wrap my legs around him, drawing him deeper, and he groans against my throat, hips finding a slow, steady pace that has my whole body arching to meet him every time.
His hand slides under my lower back, tilting me up into him, and the new angle drags a broken sound out of me that he answers with his own, low and reverent against my skin.
Every gasp gets swallowed by his mouth, every sound I can’t quite hold back, his pace building gradually, deeper with every roll of his hips.
I dig my nails into his shoulders, into the muscle of his back, anchoring myself against the slow, building pleasure spiraling tighter with every thrust. His mouth finds my ear, my jaw, murmuring words I only half catch between kisses.
He shifts his weight onto one forearm, freeing his other hand to slide between us, finding the exact spot that makes my hips buck against his instantly. The same unhurried rhythm carries into his fingers, and I feel the tension coiling tighter, sharper, my whole body drawing taut under him.
I come apart with his name breaking on my lips, my back arching hard off the mattress, every muscle in my body clenching around him at once.
He doesn’t stop, doesn’t slow, riding me through every wave of it, his own control finally slipping as my release drags him right along with me.
His hips stutter, breath catching hard against my throat, and he buries himself deep one final time, groaning low as he finally lets go, shuddering through his own release with his forehead pressed to mine.
For a long moment, neither of us moves, chests heaving together, his weight a welcome pressure against me as we both come back down slowly.
He rolls us gently onto our sides afterward, still tangled together, my leg thrown over his hip, his hand tracing lazy patterns along my spine.
Sweat cools slowly against overheated skin, and neither of us moves to break the closeness, both of us content to simply lie here, breathing each other in, no war waiting outside this room tonight to interrupt us.
The ring catches the candlelight still flickering from the terrace outside our window, and I hold my hand up between us, admiring it against the backdrop of his bare chest.
His fingers catch mine, pressing a kiss against my knuckles, right beside the ring, and I feel the promise of it settle warm through my entire body, more permanent than anything either of us has ever said out loud.
We lie still, neither of us in any rush to move, the rest of our lives stretching out ahead of us.