Chapter 39 #2
The words dropped like bricks in the room. He didn’t answer me. His thumb traced my speeding pulse again and again. Then he shook his head softly. As if he were clearing his thoughts. I suddenly understood it. He hadn’t prepared for this outcome. That made it even more precious to me. “Do you?”
He exhaled a sharp breath and let out a raw, abrasive laugh that I felt all the way to my skin. “Do I?”
I bit my lips. He followed the movement with hooded eyes. “I think you’ve been playing games with me.”
“Have I?”
I nodded.
“Perhaps.” He tugged gently, and I fell onto his lap. “But there’s one game you’ll never ever win.” His knuckles caressed my cheek. “I will always, always love you more, stella mia.”
The intensity of his gaze was a matchstick on dry wood. Pressure built in my chest. “Impossible.”
His eyes sparked. “You see impossibility; I see a theorem waiting to be acknowledged.”
“That depends on—”
“You’re the reason I breathe. Your breath, your sound, your scent, your touch. That’s my fucking oxygen.”
My smile wobbled. “I could say the same.”
“Thirteen.”
“Ugh?”
“That’s the number of moles on your inner thigh.”
“If you let me see your tattoo again, I could count the number of times you have my name on you.”
He brushed me off. “Would you like to know the exact size of each one of them?”
“No.” I didn’t even know that.
“One, two, two point four, two point—”
“Stop.” I held up my hand. “They’re not that big.”
He took my hand and kissed the inside of my wrist. His grip was soft. His gaze was possessive. “Oh, stella mia, we’re talking millimeters, not fucking inches.”
I stared at him. “Did you take a ruler and measure?”
He gave me a wicked smile and said, “Nine-nine-seven-four-seven-e.”
I blinked. “Is that your bank account number?”
“Better. That’s the color of your lips.”
I didn’t delve into it. I wouldn’t survive that. “Is that why you have my name tattooed?”
“No. I kept forgetting it,” he replied dryly.
Glaring at him, I jumped off him and commanded, “Clothes off.”
He gripped the back of my thigh. “Promise me you’re mine.”
I leaned down and breathed the word, “Always,” before I kissed him. He gripped my nape and fell into the kiss. It was sweet and soft. Hot and possessive. He pulled me down onto his lap. I dropped down but ended the kiss. “Stop distracting me.”
He laughed softly but sat still and allowed me to finally undress him. Each pop of his shirt brought me closer to revealing his secret. I did it slowly, taking the time to brush my hands on his skin, baring his tattoo inch by inch.
“There’s more,” he said through half-lidded eyes.
I pushed him back, and he fell onto the mattress obediently. He lifted his hips so I could work on his pants and boxer shorts. When they landed on the floor, I took a step back and stared at him.
?Diso mío! He was right. I’d never be able to win this game. His entire left side, from the tip of his toes to the star on his chest and sliding down to his wrist, carried the most beautiful bougainvillea vine. Intertwined with it, my name sparked like a star in the night sky. Anna. Anna. Anna.
My throat went dry. Bending down next to him, I traced my name. Finding one threading across each vein, on a pulse beat. “This isn’t love…” I counted another one and another. “It’s obsession,” I murmured.
“Call it whatever you want. I’m yours.” He pulled me up and rolled me to my back. “To do with as you wish.”
“I lost count.”
“One hundred and thirty-two.”
“What’s special about it?”
He kissed the pulse fluttering behind my ear. “Figure it out,” he murmured before dragging his mouth down to give me butterfly kisses.
I tried to calculate, but he was a distraction. Moving down my body, murmuring soft words in Italian, running his rough hands over my skin. Before long, he had my dress off and my underwear ripped. Then he continued to worship my body, each kiss a promise. Each word a forever.
He had one mission. That was to prove his obsession.
He thrust into me. Caging me with his touch and his eyes.
Then he moved. Slow and steady. It felt like he was giving me his soul.
He kissed my eyes, my lips, my nose, my everything.
He promised me his world. He promised me his heart.
He delivered all of it in a rough voice filled with emotion and Italian words.
I arched under him. I melted into the mattress.
I wanted to linger in that moment forever but cried out and came so suddenly and so intensely that it felt like a shock to my system.
He groaned into my neck, his entire body trembling, his hands biting into my skin as he jerked inside me.
“Mine,” he muttered right after, before pressing a kiss to my forehead.
Our heartbeats struggled to catch up. Sweat gliding off our skin. The smell of sex still thick in the room. I pressed my hand on his chest. His heartbeat could DJ at a nightclub.
“Mine for fucking forever. Convinced?” The rasp of his voice was sandpaper on my velvet skin.
“Might be,” I replied vaguely because I couldn’t remember what we’d been talking about.
A rough laugh hit the dip between my neck and shoulder, before his teeth sank into the tender flesh on my neck. A shiver ran down my spine. Then he rolled onto his back and took me with him.
I traced the star on his chest. Over and over again, while his heartbeat slowed down.
“How about the third man?”
He lifted his head, a question in his gaze.
“Well, I’m keeping you,” I told him.
He cocked a thick eyebrow.
“You’re far too useful.”
“I bet,” he replied dryly, but I could tell that had pleased him.
“So, what about the third man? Can I kill him?”
He groaned.
I stared at him. “You killed him, didn’t you?”
He looked at me and smiled. There was so much evil behind it the devil would run and hide. “Can I wrap it as a wedding gift?”
“Who was he?”
He sighed. “My uncle.”
He’d killed his own father. His uncle. For Papá? For me?
I sat up. “How many men have you killed in my name?”
He tucked a loose curl behind my ear. “Oh, stella mia, there’s not enough wrapping paper in the world to wrap that shit up.”
I gasped. He pulled me down and swallowed it in a kiss.
I lost myself in him. For once I wasn’t scared because he’d always have my back. No matter what. Somewhere between, I mumbled, “Thank you.”
Thank you for loving my papá.
For avenging his death.
For loving me.
For being there. Even when I didn’t know he was there.
Everything he’d done he’d done for me. “Thank you.”
“Show me,” he growled.
I did. I rocked my hips against him. We brought ourselves to the edge slowly.
It was pain. It was pleasure. It was torturous.
It was a reward for a lifetime of agony.
I drowned in him. He did in me. His touch slid on me like heated silk.
I matched it. He told me to hold on. He told me to fall with him.
When we did, we consumed each other. Fell deeper and deeper before we soared together.
Somewhere in between that, something clicked in me.
One hundred and thirty-two times.
The number of months after Papá died, and I’d come to work for him.
The number of months he’d not seen me.
He may have won the game, but I was right.
This wasn’t love. This was obsession. Oddly, I didn’t want it any other way.