Chapter 19 #3
There was nothing tentative in the way he took me apart after that. He kept me right at the edge until I was shaking, helpless under his hands, until every breath I pulled in felt too thin. And when he finally let me fall, it hit hard enough to leave me boneless.
I barely had time to come back into myself before he was over me again.
His face was flushed, mouth wet, eyes almost black, and when I reached for him he came at once, kissing me hard enough to let me taste myself on him.
That nearly sent me right back over.
“Again?” he murmured against my mouth, and there was just enough arrogance in it to make me want to bite him.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him closer. “Try me.”
The sound he made at that was low and filthy and deeply satisfying. He opened his pants just enough to free his hard erection.
He settled between my thighs, the weight of him enough to make me ache for more before he even gave it, and when he finally pushed into me it was slow enough to feel every inch.
My breath left me in a broken gasp. He groaned, forehead dropping to mine, his whole body going tight with the effort of not taking over completely.
“Emily,” he said, my name wrecked in his mouth.
“I know,” I whispered, though I wasn’t sure what knew anymore.
Maybe all of it.
The need. The love. The fact that he was trying so hard to stay gentle for me even now.
That was what undid me most. Not the size of him, though I felt that too, not the pleasure building all over again, but the way he fought himself to give me exactly what I needed instead of what came naturally to him.
I slid my hand into his hair and kissed him once, deep and slow.
“You can move,” I whispered.
That was all the permission he needed.
He did not lose control. That would not have been Pietro.
But something in him loosened, and the rhythm he gave me after that was deeper, rougher, more honest. The bed shifted beneath us.
My hands dragged down his back. His mouth found my throat, my shoulder, the curve of my breast, like he could not decide where to worship first and so chose everything.
The room filled with breath and movement and small, helpless sounds neither of us seemed capable of holding back anymore.
When I tightened around him, his whole body shuddered.
“Don’t do that unless you mean it,” he muttered against my skin.
I let out a breathless laugh. “You say that like I have any idea what I’m doing.”
His hand slid down my side, fingers flexing at my hip.
“That,” he said, voice low and strained, “is becoming increasingly difficult to believe.”
Heat rushed through me.
I held his gaze as long as I could after that, until the pleasure built too high and I had to close my eyes, his control started fraying in earnest, and my name from his mouth sounded like something dragged out of him by force.
When I finally broke, he went with me, his body pinning mine to the bed in the most beautiful possible way, his mouth at my throat, his hand gripping mine so tightly it almost hurt.
Afterward he stayed over me for a few silent seconds, both of us breathing like we had survived something.
Then he rolled just enough to drag me against him, one hand skimming slowly down my back while he kissed my temple, my cheek, the corner of my mouth.
“You all right?” he asked, still rough, not quite back in his body.
I nodded against him.
More than all right.
“Good,” he murmured. “Because I’m not done loving you properly yet.”
The words should have made me laugh. Maybe a small, shaky part of me did. But mostly they made something in me go still with the quiet shock of being wanted so openly yet held so carefully.
I tucked myself closer against him, one leg tangled with his, and listened to the rhythm of his breathing as the plane carried us steadily through the dark. The room was still warm after what had just happened, the intimacy lingering far longer than touch.
Pietro’s hand moved slowly over my back, not demanding or asking for more, simply there. Present. Certain. As if he understood that sometimes the most intimate thing a person could do was stay.
“What are you thinking?” he asked after a while, his voice low against my hair.
I smiled without lifting my head. “That you’re ruining me for everyone else.”
His chest moved under my cheek in what might have been a laugh. “That was always the intention.”
I tipped my face up just enough to look at him. In the dim light he looked tamer than usual, the hard edges eased by exhaustion and satisfaction and something almost unbearably tender.
“Arrogant,” I murmured.
“Accurate.”
I rolled my eyes, but the truth was I didn’t have the energy to argue and no real desire to. Not when I felt like this. Loose-limbed. Warm. Safe in a way that no longer startled me quite as much as it once had.
Outside, the plane kept moving steadily east. Seattle had changed something in me, showing me I had already outgrown so much of what used to define me. I faced what waited there. I did not break.
I closed my eyes with Pietro's arms around me and for the first time understood that a future with him wasn’t a beautiful, dangerous dream.
It was something real enough to build.