3. Aria #3
His eyes are unreadable, but his body is so still it feels like waiting. "I told you that we meet when I reach out. This is careless, Aria."
I hate how easily he dismantles me.
I hate that I came here thinking I could be coy, clever.
That I could play him the way I've played diplomats and suitors, men twice his age and half as dangerous.
I lift my chin defiantly. "It was important."
"Say what you came to say," he murmurs.
His indifference grates at me, makes me want to lash out. "Papa has chosen a suitor," I say at last.
That gets his attention.
He straightens, the glass forgotten in his hand.
"And?" he asks, his voice dropping to a silken whisper. "What does the jewel of the Lombardi dynasty think of her future husband?"
I force my voice to be steady.
"I think he's a practical choice. He has influence. Wealth. A connection to Eastern European arms routes. Papa believes he'll help rebuild what we lost."
Enzo steps forward once.
His eyes darken, a cold anger sparking in their depths. "And you?"
"I think…" I falter, breath catching. "I think I'm considering it."
The silence that follows is absolute.
Then, like a storm breaking free of its own sky, he is in front of me.
His hands come down on my arms, hard enough to hold, not hard enough to bruise, but I feel the heat of him everywhere, the way his breath saws through the distance between us.
"No," he snarls. His grip tightens. "No one touches you."
My heart skips a beat.
"No one puts their hands on what's mine." He pulls me to him, every inch of him rigid, trembling with a fury I've never seen in him before.
"I don't care who your Papa promises you to," he growls against my cheek. "I don't care what alliances he's trying to resurrect. If he marries you off to anyone else, I will burn the deal to the ground with the groom still in his tuxedo."
His lips crash into mine with a fury that knocks the breath from my chest, one hand locking around the back of my neck, the other gripping my waist with bruising force.
I gasp against him, and he swallows the sound, deepening the kiss until I can't think, can't breathe, can only feel.
Whiskey lingers on his tongue, dark and heady, burned into the edges of his mouth like a memory that will not leave.
He tastes like heat and fury, like something forbidden and final, and when his teeth scrape gently against my lower lip, I whimper into him.
That sound undoes something in him.
He growls low in his throat and presses me backward until my spine hits the paneled wall, his body pinning mine in a line of heat and strength.
I feel the hardness of his chest, the press of muscle against silk, the promise of power thrumming beneath his skin.
My hands find his lapels, fingers curling in the fabric like I need to anchor myself or be swept under completely.
He kisses like a man starved of gentleness, like this is the only language he's ever trusted.
I can taste the war in him.
He breaks the kiss only to return to it harder, angrier, dragging his mouth over mine with a desperate, almost punishing rhythm.
His hand fists in the back of my dress, pulling me closer, as though he's trying to erase any inch of air between us.
My head tilts back, and he takes my throat in his palm—not to hurt, just to hold, to claim, to remind me who he is and who I have always been in his presence.
"You told me you're going to marry," he breathes against my lips, voice low and wrecked. "You think I would let that happen?"
I try to speak, but he kisses me again, cutting the words from my tongue before they can form.
This kiss is deeper than the last, rougher, his mouth moving over mine with devastating precision, his tongue claiming me until I am dizzy with it.
He tears his mouth away just long enough to drag his eyes over my face.
"No one touches you," he says, each word bitten off like a sentence. "No one gets to have you. Only me."
Then he kisses me again, like he's sealing it with blood.
My knees weaken beneath me, but he holds me upright, hands gripping my hips, grinding into me until I can feel the sharp edge of his desire through every layer of fabric.
I am undone, shaking beneath the crush of his mouth, lost in the fire he brings with every touch, every breath.
His hands move before my breath can catch.
One rises to the column of my throat, holding me steady against the wall, not with cruelty but with absolute, unrelenting control.
The other travels lower, slow at first, grazing the curve of my waist, the line of my thigh, until it finds the hem of my dress and drags it upward in one ruthless sweep.
The silk gathers beneath his hand, cool and weightless, lifting inch by inch until the air kisses my bare thighs.
His knuckles brush the lace between my legs, and I feel the tremor that runs through me all the way to my spine.
He pauses, just for a breath, his fingers curling around the waistband of my underwear.
The sound of it being tugged down is barely a whisper, but it thunders in my ears as it slides over my hips, down my thighs, pooling at my heels like a discarded secret.
I exhale, unsteady, and he drops to one knee without ceremony, his shoulders pressing my legs apart with ease.
The sight of him kneeling before me—a man like Enzo Moretti, born of violence and shadow, on his knees—is enough to make my lungs seize.
Then his fingers are on me.
Two of them, long and calloused, dragging through my slick heat with maddening patience.
I bite my lip, hard, my hands splayed flat against the paneled wall behind me, anchoring myself as sensation licks up my spine like flame climbing oil.
"You're soaked," he murmurs, and the sound of his voice—quiet, like he's just stumbled into something holy—nearly breaks me.
His fingers part me, slick and insistent, and I cry out as he slides one inside, slow and deep, curling against that secret place I didn't even know I'd been aching to be touched.
The wall at my back becomes the only thing keeping me upright as he begins to move, measured and deliberate, learning me by feel, by the way my hips buck and my breath catches, by the way my moans catch on my tongue like prayers.
His thumb finds my clit, circling it with a touch that is both ruthless and adoring.
He adds a second finger, thicker now, stretching me, and the sensation is too much and not enough, a torment that builds and builds until I can't remember my own name.
My head falls back against the wall with a soft thud, the chandelier light catching the sweat on my collarbone, the sapphires at my throat glittering like sin.
Enzo's name spills from my mouth, breathless and broken, and I feel him groan against my skin, his fingers moving faster now, coaxing me toward the edge.
"Come for me," he says, voice so low it doesn't sound like speech, more like a command from something older than language. "I want to feel you fall apart on my hand."
And when I do—when the pleasure crashes through me like lightning tearing through a storm cloud—I cry out his name like a vow I was never meant to make.
His mouth finds mine again as I come down, swallowing my shuddering breath, holding me steady while the rest of the world spins out beneath us.