Chapter 18
POV: Amanda
I excused myself from the table with a soft smile, though my chest was still buzzing from everything—the teasing about the necklace, Riccardo’s painting, Adrian’s possessive words that made me feel like I belonged in a way I never imagined I could.
“I’ll be in the office,” I said, pressing a hand to my stomach like I could calm the storm there. “There’s something I need to check, with the new information about the De Lacquas.”
Adrian’s eyes followed me, dark and unreadable, like he already knew what I was about to do. But he didn’t stop me. Not yet.
I needed space. I needed the board. I needed control, or at least the illusion of it.
Because the truth was, I was terrified.
The board was a mess of red lines, names, and arrows. My handwriting slanted across the papers taped to it, fury pressing the pen too hard. The De Lacquas. The casinos. The timing.
It all pointed to one truth, but it wasn’t enough. Not yet.
I stared at the connections until my eyes burned. My heart pounded like it could beat the answers out of me. If I could just find the missing piece, the crack in the armor, then maybe… maybe I could keep him safe.
“My queen.”
His voice was low, filling the office before I even heard the door close. Adrian.
I didn’t turn. My fingers tightened around the marker, pressing it against the board until the ink bled. “They want to break you,” I said, my throat tight. “They’re pushing, waiting for the moment you slip, the moment you—”
Warm hands closed over mine, stealing the marker from my grip. My breath hitched.
“You need to stop,” he said softly, almost like a command but wrapped in silk. “It’s two in the morning. You’ve been staring at this all night.”
I shook my head, eyes stinging. “No, you don’t get it, Adrian. If I miss something, if I don’t see it in time—”
He turned me, forcing me to face him. His eyes burned into mine, dark and steady. “Nothing will happen to me.”
The certainty in his tone shattered something inside me. I hated how my chest cracked open, how raw I felt. My lips trembled, and before I could stop myself, the words poured out.
“I can’t lose you.”
His breath caught. Just for a second.
“I’ve never…” My voice broke, but I couldn’t stop. “I’ve never loved anyone like this. I didn’t even know I could. And it terrifies me, Adrian. It terrifies me because every second I spend with you, I feel like I belong, and if something happens to you—”
“Shh.” He pulled me against him, his forehead pressing to mine. His scent, his warmth, his strength wrapped around me like a shield.
“My greatest fear,” he whispered, “is not that something happens to me. It’s that something happens to you.”
The air left my lungs in a rush.
His thumb brushed my cheek, catching the tear that had finally slipped free. He tilted my face up, and his eyes softened in a way I’d never seen before, breaking me all over again.
“I love you, Amanda,” he said. Not like a confession, not like a surprise. Like a vow. “I’ve loved you from the moment you walked into my world and turned it upside down.”
My heart stopped.
“I love you,” I whispered, the words tasting like salt and fire and truth. Saying them felt like leaping off a cliff with no parachute. And I didn’t care.
His lips crashed into mine, deep and desperate, stealing the breath I didn’t even realize I had left. His hands tangled in my hair, mine fisted in his shirt as if I could anchor him to me, as if I could fuse us together and never let go.
The kiss was raw, messy, beautiful. It wasn’t just passion—it was need, it was fear, it was everything we’d been holding back ripping free.
I melted into him, and for the first time in my life, love didn’t feel like weakness. It felt like survival.
His kiss left me trembling, hollowed out and full at the same time. My heart wouldn’t slow down, and neither would his, thudding against my chest where our bodies pressed together.
When he finally broke the kiss, his lips brushed my temple, lingering there. His breath was warm, steadying me even as my whole body threatened to collapse under the weight of what I had just said.
“I’ve got you,” he whispered. And before I could protest, he scooped me up into his arms.
I let out a small gasp, my hands instinctively wrapping around his neck. “Adrian, you don’t—”
“Yes, I do.” His tone left no space for argument.
He carried me out of the office, through the silent halls of the house, until he pushed open the door to his bedroom.
And that’s when I saw it.
I froze in his arms.
On the wall above his bed hung Riccardo’s painting. My face, my eyes, my essence—immortalized in oil and color, staring back at me from the most intimate corner of Adrian’s life.
It wasn’t just art. It was devotion.
My throat closed, tears pricking hot at the corners of my eyes. “Adrian…” My voice was a whisper, broken, because I didn’t know how else to breathe.
He laid me gently on his bed, his hand brushing over my cheek, tracing the tears that betrayed me. “He wanted me to have it,” Adrian said softly, almost reverently. “To see you here. Every night. Every morning. Because you are mine. My queen.”
The words didn’t trap me. They freed me.
I swallowed, my chest rising and falling with a shudder. “I’ve never belonged anywhere like this,” I confessed. “And it scares me. But it feels so… good. Too good.”
“Then don’t fight it,” he murmured. “Stay.”
I curled into him as he laid beside me, pulling me against his chest like I was the only thing that mattered. His warmth, his strength, the rhythm of his heartbeat—everything wrapped around me, anchoring me in a way no safe house, no mission, no uniform ever had.
We didn’t make love that night. We didn’t need to.
We just held each other. His arm around me, his breath steady against my hair, my fingers clutching his shirt as if letting go meant losing myself.
And with Riccardo’s painting watching over us, I fell asleep in Adrian’s arms—safe, loved, his.
The sunlight slipping through the curtains warmed my face, coaxing me awake.
For a moment, I forgot who I was, what I was doing here.
All I knew was the solid weight of Adrian’s arm wrapped around me, the steady rise and fall of his chest under my cheek, and the way his body caged mine even in sleep, as if he feared letting me go.
I shifted slightly, and his hold tightened instantly. A low groan rumbled in his throat. “Don’t move,” he muttered, his voice hoarse with sleep.
I smiled against him. “Good morning.”
His hand slid lower, over my waist, possessive, claiming. He tilted his head just enough so his lips brushed my temple. “Good morning, regina mia.”
Heat spread through me at his words. My queen.
His queen. He tilted his head just enough so his lips brushed my temple.
My body responded before my brain even caught up—heat pooling, nerve endings alive, and a delicious ache pressing between my thighs.
His eyes opened, dark and molten, light brown catching the sun, and I was undone.
We hadn’t even kissed yet, and I was undone.
“I want you,” I whispered before I could think better.
His answering smirk was pure sin. “Then you’ll have me. But first—” He rolled us, pinning me under him with a smooth, effortless strength. His hand slid to the hem of my shirt and tugged it upward, exposing my waist. “Let’s undress properly this time.”
The scrape of fabric, the brush of his fingers—deliberate, claiming—set me on fire. He stripped me slowly, savored the reveal: my waist, my bra, my panties, until I was bare and trembling beneath him.
“You’re too perfect,” he said, his gaze roaming, his tone almost reverent, “and mine.”
Before I could answer, his mouth was on me—trailing hot, open-mouthed kisses down my stomach, lower, lower, leaving a path of heat and chivers and desire, until his shoulders pushed between my thighs.
“Spread your legs for me, my queen,” he said, and I obey.
I gasped, fingers fisting the sheets as his tongue found me, teasing, tasting, devouring. My back arched off the mattress. “Adrian—”
“Yes,” he growled against me, the vibration making me shudder. “Say my name. Louder.”
His mouth worked me with relentless skill, alternating between soft, sweet licks and deep, punishing strokes that had me writhing. My thighs closed around his head instinctively, but he gripped them, holding me open, forcing me to take every flick of his tongue.
I was falling, drowning, my cries echoing in the room until pleasure broke me apart. My orgasm ripped through me, raw and consuming, and he only eased up once I was trembling too hard to speak.
He kissed his way back up my body, his lips wet and slick against my skin. “Taste yourself,” he murmured, capturing my mouth in a deep, claiming kiss.
The tang of myself on his tongue made me moan, made me arch into him. My hands fumbled at his shirt, tugging it open, desperate. “Your turn.”
He raised an eyebrow, amused. “You want to take me in your mouth, regina?”
“Yes,” I breathed. “Please.”
That word—the one I never said to anyone—made his eyes go darker. He stood, stripping off his clothes with swift, impatient hands until he was gloriously, beautifully naked. My breath hitched at the sight of him, thick and hard and already glistening at the tip.
I slid off the bed, onto my knees before him. His sharp intake of breath almost made me smile. I wrapped my fingers around his cock, stroking slowly before guiding him between my lips.
“Fuck—Amanda…” His voice cracked, rough with need. His hands tangled in my hair, but he didn’t push, letting me set the pace as I took him deeper, my tongue circling, teasing.
I loved the way he shuddered under me, the way his hips twitched despite his control, the way he cursed in Italian as I hollowed my cheeks and sucked harder.
When he finally pulled me up, his eyes were blazing.
He pushed me back onto the bed, spreading me open and sliding into me with one deep, relentless thrust. I cried out, clutching his shoulders, overwhelmed by the stretch, the fullness, the perfection of him.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his hand gripping my chin, forcing my gaze to meet his as he began to move. “Don’t close your eyes. I want you to see who you belong to.”
Every thrust was deep, slow, deliberate—like he was carving his name into my soul. I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him closer, needing more, needing everything.
“I love you,” I gasped, the words tearing out of me, raw and desperate.
His face softened even as his pace quickened. “I love you too, regina mia.”
We moved together in a frenzy of need and tenderness, of passion and belonging, until I shattered around him, crying his name. He followed with a guttural moan, spilling inside me, holding me so tightly it felt like he’d never let go.
When the tremors eased, he stayed inside me, his forehead pressed to mine, his breath ragged.
“Mine,” he whispered again, softer this time.
And I believed him. Even if a part of me knew this couldn’t last forever, I let myself believe. Because in that moment, in his arms, I was his. Completely.
I traced his face, kissed his temple, pressed against him, and believed it. I am his.