Chapter 25 - Emma
“You fought.” Alessandro’s voice cuts through the fog, and I realize he’s been watching me breathe. His fingers press against my wrist, checking my pulse. The words crack when he continues: “The doctors said you were gone, but you fought to stay.”
My throat burns from the stomach pump, and everything tastes like acid. But he's here, this beautiful, haggard man who commands armies, and he's been reduced to counting my heartbeats.
"For you," I whisper, the admission scraped raw from my damaged throat.
His grip on my wrist tightens, not painful but desperate, like he needs physical proof I'm real.
In the gray dawn light filtering through our bedroom windows, I can see everything: stubble darkening his jaw, eyes red-rimmed and hollow from sleeplessness, the same wrinkled shirt from yesterday.
An empty coffee cup sits on the nightstand beside a glass of water and some medication bottles.
"Emma." My real name breaks from his lips like a prayer. "Stellina, I thought…" He stops, his free hand reaching toward my face, then freezing midway, trembling.
I catch that suspended hand, guide it to my cheek despite my weakness. "I'm real. I'm here."
He shudders at the contact, his thumb tracing my cheekbone with desperate gentleness. "Hours," he says. "Hours of watching you breathe, terrified each one would be your last."
The weight of what I've done crashes over me. Not just the attempt, but what it did to him. This powerful man who's been keeping vigil, who looks like he hasn't left my side, just watched and waited and hoped.
"When the pills started working," I confess, pressing his palm harder against my face, "when the darkness came, I could have let go. It would have been easy. But I kept thinking about your voice saying my name."
His control shatters. He drops from the chair to his knees beside the bed, both hands now framing my face like I'm made of spun glass. "Never again," he says, the words somewhere between command and plea. "Promise me. Swear on those stars you love. Never leave me like that again."
"Alex…"
"I can't survive it." His voice breaks completely. "I've done terrible things, Emma. Killed men, destroyed lives. But watching you slip away…" He presses his forehead to mine.
The truth of it settles between us. I nearly died, and in doing so, I discovered the one thing that could break Alessandro Rosetti.
My body betrays me when I try to sit up, weakness making me sway. The room spins slightly, and I have to close my eyes against the dizziness. Alex's hands steady me immediately, but even that simple movement leaves me breathless, shaking like my muscles have forgotten how to work.
"Easy," he murmurs. "Your body needs time to recover. The doctors said…"
"I need you," I interrupt, my voice desperate. "I need to feel you, all of you. I need to know I'm alive."
Heat flares in his eyes, warring with concern. "Emma, you're still weak…"
"I'm empty," I correct, my hand finding his chest, feeling his heartbeat accelerate under my palm. "I feel hollow where life should be. Fill me. Please, Alex. Make me feel something besides this terrible absence."
His jaw clenches, control and desire fighting for dominance. "If I touch you now, I won't be gentle. These hours of thinking I'd lost you, I'm barely holding myself together."
"Then don't be gentle." I pull him closer with what little strength I have. "Be real. Be desperate. Show me what my almost-death did to you."
He crashes into me like a storm, his mouth claiming mine with bruising force. I taste his desperation, hours of fear and prayer and bargaining with whatever gods might listen. His tongue invades my mouth, demanding and possessive, and I moan at the intensity of it.
"Fuck," he growls against my lips. "You taste like life. Like everything I thought I'd lost."
His hands roam my body, pushing aside the nightgown I'm wearing, one of his shirts, I realize. When his palms find my breasts, I arch into his touch despite my weakness. My nipples harden immediately, oversensitive after the trauma.
"Look at you," he breathes, pulling back to drink in the sight of me. "Alive. Responding to me. Even after…" His voice cracks.
"Show me what it feels like to live," I demand, my voice nothing but a thread but hard as steel wire. My thighs fall apart for him, a limp invitation, but he takes it as if I’d flung open the gates of heaven itself. There’s a look in his eyes I’ve never seen before—a war between relief and something feral, an animal hunger caged too long.
When his hand moves between my legs, the shock of his touch shoots through me like adrenaline, so stark and alive that I almost sob from it.
He finds me swollen, slick, raw. His thumb circles my clit, each pass more deliberate than the last, but it’s his words that brand me:
"Promise you’ll never do it again," he rasps, the tone all threat and plea, as if the world’s axis hangs on my answer.
At the same moment, two of his fingers press inside, thick and insistent, and my body bows toward him, muscle memory wrenching me into the air even though I can barely hold myself up.
All the strength in me has funneled into a single, quivering, aching point.
"I’m sorry," I gasp, and mean it, though I know it won’t be enough. Not for him, not for the universe, not even for me.
He doesn’t slow. Instead he fills me deeper, his fingers curling to find the spot that makes my vision scatter into a thousand constellations, and all that’s left is sensation and heat and the pounding of my heart.
"Harder," I say, or try to, but it comes out as a whimper. A weakness, a begging. He hears it anyway, and it’s like gasoline on the fire.
"You want to be fucked back to life, stellina?" He’s growling now, low and thick, not quite human. "Is that what you need?"
"Yes," I manage, barely, clutching at his wrist. "Yes. Please, Alex. I need—"
He slams a third finger into me and everything goes white, my body clenching down so hard I think I might shatter into dust. He uses his weight to pin my hips, keeping me from thrashing even as I ride his hand, every nerve ending screaming with the agony of being alive.
I’m sobbing now, and it’s not about pain or pleasure, it’s just the flood breaking loose, every wall I built to keep myself from feeling smashed to pieces in the span of a few minutes.
"Look at me." He’s above me, face rigid with control, eyes wet with unshed tears. "Open your eyes, Emma. I want you to see who’s saving you this time."
I force my eyelids open, and the image burns itself into my brain: Alessandro, shirtless and golden in the sunrise, his hand between my legs, his jaw set like he’s about to go to war. His other hand is braced on the mattress, veins standing out like cables.
He leans in, pressing his mouth to my ear, and his breath is ragged. "Next time you want to die, tell me. I’ll kill you myself, but slow. I’ll make you beg for every inch of it. You don’t get to leave me, Emma. Ever."
I’m too far gone to answer. My body is already spasming, an orgasm ripping through me so intense it feels like a seizure, my muscles locking and releasing, again and again, until there’s nothing left but trembling.
I clutch at him, anything to anchor myself to this world.
When it’s over I collapse, boneless and spent.
He eases his hand out, but the next second he’s stripping off what little clothing he has left, tossing it aside like it’s contaminated.
His cock is already hard and leaking, the head flushed almost purple.
I reach for it, desperate to taste him, but he intercepts my hand before I can even close my fingers around him.
"No," he says, voice thick with pain and determination. "This isn’t about me. Not yet. I need to be inside you. I need to know you’re here, you’re alive, you’re not leaving me."
He lines up at my entrance, spreading my legs so wide it aches in my hips. The stretch is agony, but also a relief. He pushes in, slow at first, and the breath leaves my lungs. He’s too big, or I’m too small, or maybe I’m just too fucking raw, but I want all of it anyway.
He bottoms out with a brutal thrust, his hands bracketing my face now, fingers digging into my jaw.
He stares at me like he’s memorizing every freckle, every tear track, every stupid, human flaw.
The first few strokes are shallow, cautious, but not for long.
After all that holding back, the dam is broken; he fucks me like he’s trying to carve his name into my bones.
It’s not gentle, but it’s not angry either.
There’s too much love in it for that, too much fear.
He’s chasing something, and I know what it is: he wants to erase the last twenty-four hours, rewrite the memory of finding me sprawled and dying on the roof.
He wants to fill me so completely that nothing, not even death, could take me from him.
I wrap my arms around his neck, pulling him down until our foreheads are pressed together. My legs are weak but I hook them around his waist, dragging him deeper, locking him to me.
He’s panting, sweat dripping down his temple, and his thrusts are getting erratic. "Say it," he chokes out. "Tell me you want this. Tell me you want me. I need to fucking hear it, Emma."
"I want you," I sob, and it’s not a performance, it’s the only truth left. "I want all of you. Fuck, Alex. I love you."
The words break him. He makes a sound I’ve never heard, sharp and wounded, and his rhythm goes to hell. He fucks me harder, deeper, grinding against my clit with every slam of his hips, and I feel myself building again, impossibly, from the ashes.
I think of all the times I tried to run, tried to break free from the gravity of him. It was never going to work. I was always meant to orbit this man.
"I choose you," I breathe, wrapping my legs weakly around his waist. "I choose this. Life."