Chapter 36 #2
He’s not gentle. Not tonight. His tongue works my clit while he grips my hips, holding me pinned against the wall. I can’t move, can’t think. Can only feel the wet heat and the rough scrape of his jaw and the obscene, slick sounds between us.
“Oh God.”
He adds a finger, then two, curling them inside me while he keeps working. The stretch. The fullness. He finds the spot that makes my vision white out, and he presses. My head slams back against the wall and I stop trying to be quiet.
“That’s it.” The words come out muffled against me. “Let me hear you, tesoro. Every fucking sound.”
He sucks my clit and I shatter. The orgasm rips through me, my whole body clenching, my thighs squeezing around his head. He doesn’t stop, just slows, working me through every aftershock until I’m boneless and gasping and slack against the wall.
When he pulls back, his chin is wet, his gaze destroyed, his eyes wild. He’s looking at me like a man who just found God and lost his mind at once.
“Now,” he says, rising to his feet, dragging the back of his wrist across his jaw, “the dress comes off.”
He undresses me like he’s unwrapping something precious. He finds the zipper at my back and drags it down, tooth by tooth. The silk loosens, gaps away from my skin. He slides the straps off my shoulders, watching as the fabric pools at my feet.
I’m bare underneath. No bra. Just me.
“Cristo.” The word tears out of him. He goes still, and I watch his chest heave, his whole body taut with the effort of not reaching for me.
“Touch me,” I whisper.
He shakes his head. “Not yet.” His voice is stripped raw. His cock strains against his trousers, and the restraint is more devastating than any grab could be. “You’re going to ruin me. You know that.”
“Maybe I want to.”
His restraint snaps. Then his mouth is on my neck, my collarbone, the swell of my breast. His teeth graze my nipple and I arch into him, and he catches me, one arm banding around my waist while the other works his belt.
I reach for his shirt buttons. Fumble. He doesn’t wait.
He grips the front and pulls, and buttons scatter across the hardwood like dice.
I push the ruined shirt off his shoulders. Trace over his chest, his stomach, the trail of dark hair below his navel. He smells like the garden still, jasmine and champagne and cedar, the ceremony clinging to his warm skin. I press my face into the hollow of his throat and breathe him in.
He walks me backward toward the bed, shedding the rest between kisses. His trousers. His briefs. By the time the backs of my knees hit the mattress, there’s nothing between us.
I pull him down on top of me. The press of him, heavy and warm and solid. He smells like the night. Like ours. I wrap my arms around him and hold on.
His cock presses thick against me and I reach between us, wrapping my fingers around him. Velvet and steel. Hot in my palm. I stroke from root to tip and his hips jerk.
“Fuck.” He hisses through his teeth. “Cassia.”
“I want you inside me.”
“Look at me first.” He waits until my eyes find his. Dark. Blazing. “I’m watching your face when I fill you up.”
He notches himself at my entrance and pushes in. Inch by devastating inch. Watching my face the whole time. I feel every bit of him, the stretch, the fullness, every nerve ending singing. My back arches off the bed.
That first inch steals my breath. The second drives my nails into his shoulders. Halfway, and I’m trembling.
“Stay with me,” he grits out.
He pushes past the resistance and I whimper. Then he’s seated to the hilt and I can feel him everywhere. Pulse throbbing inside me, matching my own.
“Cazzo.” The curse grinds out between his teeth. His arms are shaking. “You’re so tight. So fucking perfect.”
He stays there. Forehead pressed to mine. Our breath mingling. I can feel his heartbeat inside me, or maybe it’s mine. I can’t tell where he ends and I begin.
“Move,” I whisper. “Please.”
He pulls out and drives back in with a force that makes me cry out. The sound seems to snap something loose in him. His hips piston harder, gripping my thigh, hitching it higher, changing the angle so he’s hitting a place inside me that sends white sparks across my vision.
“My wife,” he growls against my neck. Another punishing thrust. “My fucking wife.”
“Yes.” The word comes out broken. “Only you.”
“Say it again.”
“Yours, Dante. I’m yours.”
“Dio.” His hips snap forward, brutal, precise. “You were made for this. For me. You feel that? How good you take my cock?”
I wrap my legs around him, pulling him deeper, meeting him stroke for stroke. The bed creaks beneath us, the headboard thudding against the wall. Somewhere outside, the reception is still going, music and laughter drifting through the open window.
“They can hear us,” I gasp.
“Let them.”
“Harder.”
He obeys. Drives into me so deep I taste it at the back of my throat. My nails rake down his back and the sound he gives me is guttural, animal, a sound from somewhere beneath language.
He sits back on his heels, pulling me with him, and I’m in his lap, impaled on him, eye to eye with the man I married. He locks onto my hips. His chest heaves. Sweat glistens along his collarbone.
“Ride me.”
I do. I roll my hips, finding a rhythm that makes us both groan. He clutches my waist, not guiding, just holding on. Like he’s the one drowning and I’m the only solid thing left.
And I take.
I want him wrecked. Desperate. Ruined. Every time he looks at me after tonight, he’ll remember this.
I pick up the pace, grinding down on him, clenching around him. A broken sound tears from his chest.
“You’re close,” I say. Not a question.
“Fuck. Don’t stop. Don’t you dare stop.”
“Look at me.” I cup his face in my hands. Force his eyes to mine. “Come inside your wife.”
He lets go. I feel every pulse of him inside me, the way his whole body locks up and trembles, the broken syllable of my name cracking against my throat. His arms crush me to his chest, his face buried in my neck, shaking, shaking, and I hold him through it.
The sight of him undone, this powerful man falling apart in my arms, pushes me over the edge right after. The wave rolls through me, pulling and pulling, and I break with his name in my throat and his heartbeat hammering against my ribs.
We fall back together. Tangled. Spent. His arms still locked around me like he’s afraid I’ll disappear.
After, we lie in ruined sheets. He traces lazy patterns on my hip. My head rests on his chest, rising and falling with him. The jasmine-scented air drifts through the window, carrying the faint sound of music.
He’s still inside me. Neither of us has moved to separate. I don’t want to. I want to stay here, skin to skin, connected, real.
He strokes through my hair, slow and careful, untangling the pins Giada spent an hour placing. One by one he pulls them free and sets them on the nightstand, the tiny clicks loud in the quiet room.
“We should go back,” I murmur.
“In a minute.”
Neither of us moves.
The gold dress is pooled on the floor, a shimmer of candlelight against the dark wood. My underwear is somewhere near the door. His shirt, missing half its buttons, didn’t even make it to the bed.
“They’re going to know,” I say.
“They already know.” His voice is lazy, satisfied, roughened. “Nonna Rosa saw me drag you out of the garden. She’s planning her comments for tomorrow.”
I laugh against his chest. “She’ll make beignets and pretend she doesn’t know anything.”
“That’s what she’ll do.”
Silence settles over us. His heartbeat thuds under my ear.
Sixty-one beats per minute. I count them because I can. Because he’s here. Because three weeks ago this heart stopped, and now it’s beating against my cheek, strong and alive and mine.
“Dante?”
“Hmm?”
“I’m glad I married you. Both times.”
His arm tightens around me. He presses a kiss to the top of my head.
“Best decision I ever made, tesoro. Both times.”
The music drifts in through the window. Laughter. Glasses clinking. The world celebrating without us.
We’ll go back. Face the knowing smiles and the teasing comments and the last toasts of the night. But not yet.
Right now, I just want to stay here. In this bed. With this man.
My husband.