Chapter 30
CASSIA
Seven sunrises from this room.
The first two from the chair by the window, my fingers pressed to his wrist. Checking. Rechecking. The rest from right here. His bed. Pressed against his side with his heartbeat steady beneath my ear.
Seven mornings of Ti amo, tesoro murmured against my hair before he opens his eyes.
Seven mornings of those words landing in my chest like a fist. My ribs tighten around them. Every time, my palm finds his chest on its own, pressing down, feeling the thud.
Dante’s awake. Has been for a while, based on the tension in his shoulders. He’s staring at the ceiling like it offended him.
“No,” I say before he can move.
His head turns. Dark gaze finds mine.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking it.” I push up onto my elbow, letting the sheet pool at my waist. “You had that look. The one that means you’re about to do something stupid.”
“I was going to check in with Renzo.”
“From bed. Using your phone. Like a reasonable person recovering from being poisoned.”
He sits up. The muscles in his abdomen flex, and I track the movement, taking stock. Better color today. The gray pallor from that first terrible night is gone. He looks like himself again. Dangerous and vital and too stubborn for his own good.
“I’ve been in this bed for a week.”
“You were twenty minutes from cardiac arrest.”
“I’m fine.”
I flatten my palm against his chest. Right over his heart. “You’re not fine. You’re stubborn. There’s a difference.”
That curve at the corner of his mouth. The one that used to be rare and is becoming familiar.
“You married stubborn.”
“I’m aware. I’m regretting it daily.”
“Liar.”
I am. We both know it.
His hand covers mine, pressing my palm harder against his heartbeat. Steady now. Strong. A week ago it was thready and weak, and Giada’s face was a mask I couldn’t read, and I sat in that chair by the window and bargained with God.
Let him live. Take anything else. Just let him live.
“Cassia.”
I blink.
His thumb traces the bones of my wrist. He can feel my pulse hammering there.
“Where did you go?”
“Nowhere.” I shake my head. “I’m here.”
“You were somewhere else.”
I could deflect. I’ve spent my life deflecting, making myself smaller, taking up less space. But he asked me to marry him again. Not a contract. A choice.
And choices mean honesty.
“I was remembering that first night. Sitting in the chair. Waiting.”
His brow furrows. “You should have slept.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Cassia.” His voice drops.
“Don’t.” I pull away, but he catches my wrist. Holds. “Don’t tell me I should have taken care of myself. Don’t tell me you would have been fine. You were twenty minutes from death, Dante. Giada told me. Twenty minutes.”
Silence stretches between us. The memory claws at my throat.
He doesn’t argue. Just tugs my wrist until I’m off-balance, until I’m falling against his chest, and then his arms are around me and he’s kissing me.
I make a sound. Protest or surrender, I’m not sure which.
He’s warm. Insistent. He tastes like the coffee Nonna Rosa brought up an hour ago, dark and bitter and familiar.
“Careful,” I manage against him. “Your ribs.”
“Are fine.”
“Giada said to take it easy.”
“Giada worries.” His teeth graze my lower lip. A spark shoots down my spine. “You worry. Everyone worries. I’m tired of being handled like glass.”
He’s not glass. The man who runs an empire, who commands without raising his voice, who watched his father die and built walls so high I thought I’d never scale them. He’s not fragile.
I’ve been the fragile one. Afraid to push. Afraid to reach for more. Afraid that if I take too much, I’ll hurt him.
But he’s tracing the divots of my spine through the thin cotton of my nightshirt, and I’m tired too. Tired of being careful. Tired of holding back.
A week without him touching me like this. A week of sleeping tangled together but never crossing the line.
He pulls back just enough to look at me. Ragged. His pupils have swallowed the dark of his irises.
“What do you want?”
No one asked me that before him. Not like it mattered.
“You.” The word comes out rougher than I intend. Hungrier. “I want you.”
His grip on my hips tightens, dragging me closer until I feel him hard against my thigh. Thick. Straining against the thin sheet between us.
“Then stop being careful.” His voice drops to a register that vibrates through my sternum, permission wrapped in command. “Get on top of me and take what you need.”
Heat floods low in my belly. A single hard throb that steals the air from my lungs.
I rise onto my knees.
He watches from beneath me, sprawled against the pillows, and the sight of him steals something vital from my chest. Dark hair mussed from sleep.
Jaw shadowed with stubble he hasn’t bothered to shave.
The hard planes of his chest bare, the sheets twisted low around his hips, the lion tattoo rippling over his pectoral as he draws breath.
Mine. He’s mine.
I pull my shirt over my head. Drop it to the floor.
His focus drags down my body. Slow. Deliberate. Over the swell of my breasts, my hardening nipples, the dip of my waist. I feel it like fire tracing my skin.
“Fuck.” The curse is low, reverent. “Look at you.”
“Looking’s not enough.” I press him back against the pillows. “Stay there, husband. Let me.”
Resistance flickers across his face. The control freak in him wanting to take over. His tendons stand out, flexing against the sheets.
“Stay,” I tell him.
His jaw works. But he doesn’t move. Just watches me with that dark, hungry intensity. Letting me lead.
I lean down and kiss the hollow of his throat. His pulse beats hard, and I taste salt. Clean sweat and warm skin. The scent of him fills my lungs. Cedar soap and underneath it something darker, something that’s just Dante. I breathe him in until I’m dizzy.
He cradles my head. Not pushing. Just holding.
I trail down. The flat planes of his chest. The ridge of his collarbone. I drag my teeth over his nipple and his hips buck off the bed, a rough sound tearing from him.
“Cristo.”
I smile against his skin. Trail lower. The ridges of his ribs, the muscles of his stomach that tense beneath me. The faded bruise on his hip from where he fell when the poison hit.
I kiss the bruise. A promise.
“Cassia.” My name comes out strained, a warning threaded with something desperate.
I keep going. Following the dark trail of hair below his navel. I hook into the waistband of his shorts and tug down.
He lifts his hips to help, and then I see him. His cock, flushed and straining, already leaking at the tip.
I wrap my hand around the base. He hisses through his teeth.
“You don’t have to.”
“Let me.”
I hold his stare and lower my mouth.
The first taste of him, salt and heat, makes my core clench. I take him in slow, tongue flat against the underside, and the groan that rips from his chest is raw and wrecked.
His fingers tighten in my hair, curling, but he doesn’t push. He’s letting me set the pace, and the restraint is costing him. I can see it in the cords of his neck standing taut, the way his teeth grind.
I take him deeper. Hollow my cheeks and suck, and his hips jerk off the bed.
“Cazzo.” He pulls me back by the hair, firm but careful.
“Stop. I’m going to come down your throat and that’s not where I’m finishing tonight.”
My core throbs at the words. I release him with a wet sound that makes us both shudder.
“Where are you finishing?” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. Lower. Ruined.
His intensity blazes. “Inside you. So deep you feel me for days.” His thumb traces my lower lip, slick with him. “Ride me, tesoro. Now.”
I slide my panties down my thighs. Kick them off the edge of the bed.
The IV pole rattles when my foot catches the tubing, and I freeze.
Dante reaches over and unhooks the IV line, tosses the sensor clip aside. The heart monitor flatlines into a steady drone.
“They’ll come running,” I say.
“Then we’d better be fast.” The corner of his mouth twitches. “Cazzo, I’m kidding. Gia put me on wireless two days ago. Come here.”
He holds my hips, stroking the sensitive inner skin, and his gaze drops between my legs.
“You’re soaked.” The gravel in his voice scrapes through me. “I can see it. I can smell you from here and it’s making me ache.”
My face heats, but I don’t look away. His focus on me there, hungry and unashamed, makes my clit pulse in time with my heartbeat.
I reach between us. Wrap around him.
He hisses, hips bucking up, and I stroke once from root to tip. Velvet over steel. Hot.
“Tighter,” he commands.
He covers me, squeezing until I hold him the way he likes.
“Just like that. Fuck.”
I stroke again. A bead of precum pearls at his slit, and I swipe through it, spreading the slickness over the swollen head.
His abs contract. A groan tears from deep in his chest.
“Enough.” He catches my wrist, pulling me off him. “I’m finishing inside you, not like this. Get up here.”
I don’t make him tell me twice.
I rise up on my knees and position myself above him. The head of his cock nudges my entrance, and we both go still.
The anticipation is its own torture. I’m slick, dripping onto him, and I can feel him twitch against my folds.
“Look at me,” he orders.
I meet his gaze. Dark and blazing and certain. Not the Don. Not the mask. Just the man who chose me with a ferocity that should scare me.
It doesn’t.
I sink down.
The stretch is exquisite. He’s big, and I’m swollen and sensitive from a week of wanting, and I have to take him inch by slow inch. My thighs tremble with the effort of control.
He fills me, pushing against nerve endings that spark and sing, until I’m seated and we’re both shaking.
“Fuck.” The curse rips out of him. He grips my hips, digging in hard enough to mark. “So tight. Cazzo, tesoro, you’re strangling my cock.”
I can’t speak. Can only drag in air.
The sensation of being this full, this stretched, overwhelms everything else. My thoughts scatter like numbers knocked off a page.