Chapter Fourteen #3
I breathed through it. The stretch. The fullness. The fact that Ari’s forehead was pressed to my temple, his breath warm against my skin, his hands gripping my hips and thighs hard enough to leave marks, and the marks were going to be spectacular and I was completely fine with that.
“You can move.” My voice came out rough, rougher than I’d intended, which was Ari’s fault entirely.
“I know.” His voice against my temple. Low. Certain.
He didn’t move. He waited. His cock buried inside me, stretching me open, his hands holding me against the wall.
I made a sound. Closer to a plea than anything I had ever made in my life, the noise of a man whose composure had reached its operational limit.
Ari moved.
One thrust, deep and hard, and my thighs tightened around his waist with the enthusiasm of something that had been waiting for this input and was now compiling a very detailed report.
Then another. And another. Each one deliberate, each one hard.
His mouth found my throat. My jaw. My mouth between thrusts, kissing me with the focus of a man who had decided that multitasking was underrated and he was very good at it.
My hands gripped his shoulders. The muscle there shifted under my palms with each thrust. Sounds came out of me. Not words. Sounds.
My cock was trapped between us. The friction was relentless, Ari’s stomach rubbing against me with each thrust, and the dual sensation of being fucked and being stroked by the same motion was something my nervous system had problems calibrating.
“Ari.” His name in my mouth. Not a question. Not a plea. A statement of fact, delivered with the quiet certainty of someone who had decided that naming was owning and he was mine to name.
His grip tightened. His pace shifted—harder, more urgent, the rhythm faltering from deliberate to something warmer and considerably less controlled.
I felt it—the crack in the armor, the place where Ari’s famous composure met its limit and decided that limit was flexible.
There. There he is.
I pulled him closer by the back of his neck. My mouth found his ear, and I said something against it that I will not be thinking about later, something raw and honest.
Ari groaned. Low. Rough. He drove into me, hard, deep, holding, and the feeling of him—thick, hot, stretching me open in a way that registered everywhere at once—made my cock jerk between us.
I came undone against the wall.
Ari’s name in my mouth. My whole body was shaking, my cock pulsing between us, stripes of white hitting his stomach, my chest, and the orgasm rolled through me with the violence of something that had been building since I first laid eyes on the man.
Ari followed seconds later.
Buried deep. His hands gripping my hips with bruising force, his face pressed to my shoulder, and the sound he made was quiet. Wrecked. Entirely unlike anything I had heard from him before.
We stayed like that. My back was against the plaster, Ari was still holding me up, both of us breathing hard.
His forehead rested on my shoulder. His breath was warm against my skin.
His cock was still inside me, pulsing gently, and the fullness of it registered somewhere with the warmth of something that had decided where it belonged and was now implementing that decision.
“The plaster is cold.” I said it into the silence. My voice came out rough, which was Ari’s fault entirely.
He carried me to the bed. One motion, controlled, the kind of controlled that came from years of moving heavy objects in the dark without making noise. My weight was transferred from wall to arms to mattress without disruption.
“I could have walked.” I said it to the ceiling. The ceiling did not respond.
It had seen worse.
“I know.”
“I’m going to add a wall-sex surcharge to the invoice.”
“I assumed.”
“It will be significant.”
“Fine.” His voice dropped. Lower. Warmer. His arm settled across my ribs, heavy and possessive, the weight of a man who had made a decision and was not revisiting it.
I lay still under his arm. The darkness pressed down around us, warm and patient, and my brain, which had opinions about everything, had no opinion about this whatsoever, which was either concerning or perfect and I was too tired to decide which.
Tomorrow was the conclave. A room full of men waiting for Ari to fail, waiting for the illegitimate dock worker with the scar and the lighter to prove that Geno’s disaster was genetic rather than circumstantial.
The fact that I had said Ari’s name against a wall and meant it, meant all of it, the honesty of a man who had stopped pretending that belonging here was a question rather than an answer.
I reached for the nightstand. My fingers found the caramel—gold foil, slightly crumpled, the crumple of something that had been handled by large, careful hands and placed exactly where it was supposed to be.
Ari’s arm tightened as I unwrapped it. The pressure was specific—not restricting, possessive, the kind of possessive that was something warm and it had been there longer than either of us was willing to admit.
I ate the caramel. Sweet. Salty. The taste of a series of catastrophic decisions and committing to every one of them.
I am so done for.
Completely. Irrevocably.
I didn’t say it. Didn’t need to. The arm across my ribs pressed slightly warmer, and the certainty of that pressure suggested that Ari already knew, had known for longer than was professionally appropriate, and had decided that knowing was enough.
The palazzo hummed its nighttime soundtrack—old pipes settling, the distant click of a thermostat adjusting, the quiet of a building that had been standing for four centuries and had just witnessed something it hadn’t been designed to accommodate.
I closed my eyes. Ari’s breath was warm against my shoulder. His arm across my ribs. His heartbeat steady against my side, slower than mine, more deliberate.
Tomorrow waited, patient and inevitable. A room full of men. A family name that still smelled like smoke. And me standing at the devil’s shoulder because belonging there was not a question, but an answer.