Chapter 30 #2
“Breathe,” he says. Low. Strained.
I hold there, adjusting, feeling him pulse inside me.
“Hey.” His voice shifts. Still strained, held back by a thread, but he strokes circles on my hip bones. Gentle. “Tell me if it’s too much.”
“It’s not.” I rock forward. Pleasure sparks up my spine. “It’s perfect. You’re perfect.”
“Then move.” His grip tightens. Not guiding. Demanding. “Ride me, tesoro. Show me who you belong to.”
I start to rock. Slow at first. A roll of my hips that drags him out of me, then takes him deep again. The friction is devastating, hitting the spot inside me that makes my vision blur.
I brace against his chest, feeling his heart hammer beneath me. Pounding fast now. Faster than the steady sixty-two I’ve been monitoring for a week.
“Your heart’s racing,” I whisper.
“You’re doing that.” His jaw clenches. “Don’t stop.”
“Use me.” His voice breaks on the words. Wrecked. “Take everything.”
I do.
I roll my hips again, finding a rhythm, feeling him stroke places inside me that only he has ever reached. Every thrust sends sparks shooting through my core. Every retreat leaves me aching, desperate.
The hospital bed groans beneath us, springs protesting, and the sound is obscene against the quiet of the medical wing.
“They can hear us,” I gasp.
“Good.”
“Faster.” His hips buck up to meet me, driving deeper. “You can take it harder than that. Give me everything.”
I obey. My pace builds, hips snapping down to meet his, the wet slap of our bodies filling the room. Sweat breaks out across my skin. My legs burn.
All that matters is the pressure building, the pleasure coiling through my belly, the look on his face like I’ve brought him to his knees even though he’s on his back.
“Cristo. Look at you.” He sounds destroyed. “Fucking yourself on me like you were made for it. So goddamn beautiful I can’t.” The words break off. His head falls back against the pillow.
His words land somewhere below my navel like a detonation. I moan, head falling back, and the pressure builds at the base of my spine.
Close. So close and I can’t think, can’t do anything but chase it.
“That’s it.” His thumb finds my clit, circling with a pressure that buckles my arms. “Good girl. You’re close. I can feel your pussy gripping me. Let go.”
He sits up, wrapping his arms around me, and the angle changes.
Now he’s deeper, impossibly deep, and he’s sucking my nipple between his teeth, working the peak until I gasp and shake.
The wet heat against my breast, the scrape of stubble against sensitive skin, the thick drag of him inside me.
Too much. Everything is too much.
“Oh God.” I claw at his shoulders. “Dante. I can’t.”
“Come for me. Let me feel it.”
The pleasure crests.
I shatter.
The orgasm rips through me in waves, my pussy clenching around him, pulling a scream from my throat that I muffle against his shoulder. I’m shaking, unraveling in his arms while he keeps working my clit, keeps stroking me through every pulse and tremor.
“Right there.” He growls it against my ear. “Give me all of it. Every fucking drop.”
Before I’ve finished trembling, he seizes my hips and thrusts up. Hard. Once. Twice.
His rhythm turns ragged, stutters, and then he’s burying himself to the hilt with a sound that’s my name torn in half.
“Cassia.” Broken. Shattered. “Cazzo.”
I feel every pulse. Every hot rush of him filling me.
His arms lock around my waist, his face presses into my neck, and his teeth graze my throat. Not biting, just holding. His whole body shudders against mine as he empties himself inside me.
We stay like that. Locked together.
Him softening inside me, my pussy still fluttering with aftershocks, both of us wrung out.
He traces a slow line up my spine, vertebra by vertebra, and the tenderness after the roughness undoes me more than the sex did.
“Damn,” he says, voice muffled against my throat.
I laugh. It comes out shaky. Undone.
“Yeah.”
“Pretty sure I pulled something.”
“I told you to be careful.”
He lifts his head. He’s smiling. A real smile. Rare and devastating and unfair.
“Worth it,” he says.
I kiss him because I can’t not. Because he’s mine. My husband. For real this time.
He cups the back of my neck, holds me there longer than necessary, his forehead resting against mine.
Later, we lie tangled in the ruined sheets.
His heartbeat thuds steady under my ear. Sixty-two beats per minute. Strong. Steady. His.
I trace idle patterns across his chest. His arm is draped over my waist, heavy and warm, his thumb still moving in absent circles against my hip.
The slick of him lingers between my thighs. I need a shower. I can’t bring myself to move.
The room is quiet. Safe. The compound hums with life below us. Voices, footsteps, the sounds of a household that kept running while its Don recovered.
“How is everyone handling it?” I ask. “About your father. What Gia found.”
His hand stills in my hair. A long exhale.
“Gia buries herself in Papa’s medical records, looking for anything else she might have missed. Renzo’s tracing the Benedetti timeline. Trying to figure out how long Romano was feeding them information.”
“And you?”
He pulls me closer. His arm tightens around my waist, and I go with him, pressing myself against his warmth.
“I’m holding onto the one thing that’s real.” He brushes my temple. “The one thing Romano couldn’t take. Tesoro mio.”
My hand presses harder against his sternum. I breathe him in. His arms close around me and I let them, let myself be held without calculating what I owe for the holding.
“I want the wedding soon.”
I lift my head. “What?”
His gaze meets mine. Dark and certain.
“I want it soon. I want everyone to see that my wife chose me.”
A week ago, I would have argued. Would have said he needed to rest, to recover, to focus on the family and the threat still circling.
But a week ago, I watched him come that close to gone.
And waiting is just another word for wasting time you might not have.
“Okay,” I say.
His eyebrows rise. “Okay? Just like that?”
“Were you expecting an argument?”
“From you? Always.”
I lean up and kiss him. Soft. Brief.
“I want everyone to see too,” I tell him. “I want them to know this was a choice. Both of us. Choosing each other.”
His palm cups my face. Thumb tracing my cheekbone.
“When?”
“When Giada clears you. Not before.”
“Cassia.”
“Non-negotiable.” I settle back against his chest. “You’ll survive the wait, husband.”
He laughs. Low and warm, rumbling through his chest and into my bones.
I let the sound wash over me. Press my palm flat against his heart and feel it beating.
Sixty-two. Sixty-three. Sixty-four.
Strong. Steady. Going nowhere.