Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Oh—
His mouth is on mine before I finish breathing.
And I’m not complaining, because I lean into him like I can’t get enough of him. And I can’t.
His kiss is not careful. His hand slides from my jaw into my hair, fisting it, tilting my head exactly where he wants it, and I make a sound against his lips that I've never made before, desperate, needy and completely beyond my control.
Oh lord. I’d die a happy woman right now.
He groans in response, low and rough, and the sound of it goes straight through me, pooling hot and urgent low in my stomach.
His hands find my waist, yanks me forward off the bed and the pressure is the spark that finally sets the dry timber of my restraint asunder.
I gasp and go willingly, sliding off the bed until I’m on my knees on the floor between his thighs, a position that should feel submissive but feels like a reclamation.
My hands find their way to his chest, clutching at the fabric of his shirt, my palms burning from the sheer force of his heart hammering against them.
"Enzo—" I whimper, but the name is a prayer, a plea for him to stop, or to never stop, I honestly can't tell which.
"Yes." His mouth is on my jaw, dragging down the sensitive column of my throat. I tilt my head back, exposing myself to him completely, my breath hitching in a series of jagged, ruined sounds. "Fuck, Princess."
Princess.
The word is a detonator. It shreds the last of my composure.
My fingers hook into his shirt, twisting the material until my knuckles ache, pulling him into me until the friction of our bodies is the only thing keeping me upright.
I want to crawl inside him. I want to peel back his skin and marrow and hide myself in the heat of him.
For years, I have curated this hunger in the dark, feeding it only on scraps of glances and "what-ifs," and now that it’s finally out, it’s a monster.
It’s a starving, frantic thing that doesn't just want him—it wants to consume him.
His hands slide under my shirt, and the sensation of his palms against my ribs makes my entire nervous system go white-hot.
When his thumbs brush the undersides of my breasts, a high, thin sound escapes me, a sound of pure, unadulterated shock at how much I’ve missed a touch I’ve never even had until now.
My body doesn't wait for my brain to catch up; it arches, seeking the weight of him, desperate to close the microscopic gaps between our skin.
"Christ," he breathes against the hollow of my neck, his voice a rough vibration that rattles my bones. "You're so fucking responsive."
I’ve lost the ability to form a sentence. My vocabulary has been reduced to the rhythm of his breathing and the scent of his skin.
I am a live wire, sparking and dangerous, reacting to every graze of his teeth, every shift of his weight.
And I wouldn’t want it any other way.
When his mouth finds the nerve endings below my ear, a whimper breaks out of me, not of fear, but of a devastating, soul-deep relief.
He pulls back just enough, his hands still anchored to my waist, his eyes dark with a focused, predatory intensity that pins me in place.
"Tell me what you want," he commands, his voice a low rumble.
"You." It’s the only truth I have left. "I want you."
"Be specific."
The flush in my cheeks feels like a physical burn, but I don't look away.
I can't. If I look away, I might wake up.
"I want your hands on me," I say, the words tumbling out in a rush of heat.
"I want your mouth on me. I want—" I swallow hard, my throat tight with the sheer scale of my need.
"I want everything. I want the years I lost wanting you. I want every inch of you until there’s nothing left of me but you. "
His jaw tightens and he reaches down and pulls my shirt over my head in one smooth movement and then his hands are on my bare skin and I lose the ability to think about anything except the way he's touching me.
He cups my breasts, his thumbs brushing over my nipples, and I arch into his palms with a soft cry that makes him curse under his breath.
"So perfect," he murmurs, and then his mouth is on me, hot and wet, and I thread my fingers through his hair and hold on because my legs have stopped working entirely.
He takes his time, learning what makes me gasp, what makes me moan, what makes my fingers tighten in his hair, and I'm falling apart under his mouth and we haven't even gotten to the bed yet.
"Enzo, please—"
"I've got you." He stands and lifts me with him like I weigh nothing, and then I'm on my back on the bed and he's above me, braced on his forearms, looking down at me with an expression that makes my breath catch.
"You're so beautiful it actually hurts to look at you," he says quietly.
"Then stop looking and touch me."
He laughs, low and dark, and then his hands are on the waistband of my underwear and he's sliding them down my legs and I'm completely bare beneath him and he goes very still.
"Fuck," he breathes.
I reach for his shirt. "Your turn."
He helps me, pulling it over his head, and then his chest is bare and I can see all of him, the scars, the muscle, the evidence of everything he is written across his skin, and I run my hands over it slowly, feeling him shudder under my touch.
"Fucking hell, Isabella." My name comes out strained. "If you keep touching me like that I'm not going to last."
"Then don't last." I pull him down and kiss him hard. "I don't care."
He groans against my mouth and his hand slides between my legs and I break the kiss on a sharp gasp because nothing has ever felt like this, nothing has ever been this good.
"Look at me," he says.
I open my eyes. "There?" His voice is a low, jagged rasp that vibrates through the very mattress beneath me. "Right there, Princess?"
"Yes," the word is a fractured thing, a sob of relief caught in my throat. "Yes, right there—please, Enzo, don't stop—"
He doesn't. He anchors me with one hand heavy on my thigh, his thumb digging into the soft skin of my inner leg, while his fingers work with a lethal, patient precision. It’s not just a touch; it’s an interrogation.
He’s reading the arch of my spine, the way my hips stutter against his palm, the frantic, ruined gasps I’m drawing into my lungs.
I want to pull him into my chest until our ribs crack; I want to swallow his very breath.
The sensation is so sharp, so agonizingly perfect, that I feel like I’m being unmade.
For years, I’ve imagined this, but my imagination was a pale, flickering candle compared to the sun-bright intensity of his actual touch. I’m writhing beneath him, my fingers fisted so hard in the sheets that I can hear the threads groan.
I think I’m going to die of pleasure.
"That's it," he murmurs, leaning over me until his shadow consumes me. "Let me see you fall apart, Isabella. Give it all to me."
The command is what breaks me. I don’t just come; I shatter.
My vision whites out at the edges, the world narrowing down to the friction of his hand and the sound of his name spilling over my lips.
My body shakes with the violence of the release, a series of tremors that start in my core and radiate outward until I’m vibrating in his arms. And he doesn't pull away.
He gentles the rhythm, guiding me through the aftershocks, his touch turning from a demand to a devotion until I collapse back against the mattress, boneless and utterly spent.
I’m still trying to remember how to breathe, when I feel the shift.
He moves. He doesn't pull back to give me space; he moves deeper. His mouth brushes my hipbone, a searing heat against the sweat-dampened skin, and then he’s moving lower.
"What are you—" I start, my voice a thinned-out wire of shock.
"Shh," he breathes against my thigh, his eyes dark with a hunger that makes my blood turn to molten lead.
Then his mouth is on me and the question dissolves into a moan.
"God, Enzo—"
My hands fly to his hair, my fingers tangling in the dark strands, pulling him closer.
"Tell me if it's too much," he says against me, and then his tongue finds my clit and I stop being able to form sentences entirely.
He takes his time, learning what I like, and when he slides two fingers inside me while his mouth stays exactly where it is I nearly come off the bed.
"Oh god, oh god, oh—"
"You taste so fucking good," he says, and the vibration of his voice against me is almost enough to send me over again. "I could do this for hours."
"I can't—" I whimper, tears in my eyes, thighs shaking. "I can't take—"
"Yes, you can." He doesn't stop, doesn't slow, just works me higher and higher until I'm begging incoherently, my hips moving against his mouth, chasing something I can barely name.
When I come the second time it's harder than the first, longer, my whole body going taut before the release crashes through me and I collapse back with a soft broken sound.
He presses a kiss to the inside of my thigh and then another, and then he's moving up my body, kissing a path up my stomach, between my breasts, my throat, until his mouth finds mine and I can taste myself on him.
I reach between us and find him hard and straining against his jeans.
"My turn," I whisper against his mouth.
"No."
"Enzo—"
"Tonight is about you." His hand catches my wrist gently. "Next time."
"But you—"
He kisses me to stop the argument and I feel him, thick and hot against my hip, and I want him so badly I ache with it.
"Take me.”
He stands and strips off the rest of his clothes and when I see him fully bare for the first time my breath catches because he's beautiful and intimidating in equal measure.
I’m going to break in half.
He sees my face and stops. "We don't have to—"
"Get back here," I say, and reach for him.
He comes back to the bed and settles between my legs, braced on his forearms, and I can feel him against me, hard and ready, and my body is already trying to pull him in.