Prologue #3
He crawls up my body, leaving a trail of open-mouthed kisses along my ribs.
His mouth is slick with me, and tasting myself on him should feel filthy; instead it feels like the first honest thing we’ve done all day.
I reach between us and guide him to my entrance.
The blunt head of him presses against me, waits, patient as a held breath.
“Look at me,” he says. “Tell me you want this. Out loud.”
“I want this. I want you inside me. Now. Please.”
He pushes in an inch and stops. Stretch burns sweet, a sharp bright edge that makes me hiss.
I breathe through it; he waits like a saint with a filthy agenda, jaw tight with restraint.
Another inch. Another. When he’s fully seated, forehead against mine, neither of us moves.
I can feel his heartbeat where we’re joined.
“Jesus,” he breathes. “You feel-”
“If you say ‘like home’ I will divorce you before midnight and take the good towels.”
His mouth quirks. A real almost-smile. “I was going to say incredible. Almost devastating. But noted on the towels.”
He starts to move, slow rolls of his hips, deep and careful, giving me time to adjust around the thickness of him.
Every thrust is a question answered by the way I lift to meet him.
Sweat gathers at his temple. My nails score his shoulders.
The headboard knocks once against the wall and we both freeze like teenagers, then grin like idiots who’ve been caught stealing cookies from a locked kitchen.
That’s when it happens: we shift, trying to find a better angle, and my knee clips his hip at the exact moment his elbow slips on the ridiculous silk duvet.
We tangle sideways in a graceless heap, still joined, and the absurdity of it, two political pawns mid-consummation, flailing like we’ve never shared a bed with gravity, hits me so hard I laugh.
Not a polite bridal giggle. A real laugh, startled and loud and completely inappropriate.
He laughs too. The sound is rusty and warm and completely at odds with the cold reputation everyone whispered about over antipasti, and something in my chest cracks open around it.
“Smooth,” I manage, wheezing.
“I meant to do that. Advanced technique.” He braces himself on one forearm, still chuckling, and kisses the corner of my mouth. “Hold on to me. Second attempt at dignity incoming.”
I do. He finds the rhythm again, deeper now, less careful, and the laughter dissolves into something hungrier.
Every stroke drags against that spot inside me until I’m making broken sounds that would scandalize every guest still drinking downstairs.
His hand slides under my knee and opens me wider.
The new angle punches a moan out of my chest.
“Harder,” I tell him. “I won’t break. I’m not porcelain.”
“Tell me if-”
“Massimo.”
He gives me harder. The bed complains in an antique creak.
I come apart again with his name in my mouth, clenching around him so tight he swears in Italian under his breath, and then he’s following me, hips stuttering, a groan torn out of him as he spills deep inside me, face buried in my neck like he’s hiding from the intensity of his own undoing.
We stay like that, breathing hard, sticky and stunned.
His weight is a comfort, not a cage. Outside the window, someone is still playing soft music in the courtyard; a violin, maybe, or a memory of one.
Inside, my thighs tremble with aftershocks and his hand strokes absently along my arm as if confirming I haven’t vanished.
When he finally eases out, he reaches for the tissue box on the nightstand without being asked and cleans us both up with a tenderness that makes my eyes sting in a way I refuse to examine.
No performance. No transaction ledger. Just a man wiping soft cotton between my legs like it matters that I’m comfortable afterward.
He settles on his back and pulls me against his chest. My cheek finds the steady thud of his heart. The cold night I feared has somehow turned into this: sweat cooling on my skin, the echo of shared laughter still loose in the room, and a stranger who asked before every single step, and meant it.
He traces idle patterns on my bare shoulder, as if mapping territory he’s been granted temporary access to.
I listen to his heartbeat settle from a sprint into something almost peaceful.
The wedding cake is still downstairs. The contracts are signed.
None of that feels as real as the ache between my thighs or the quiet way he asked, again and again, if I was still with him.
“For the record,” I murmur into his chest, “that was nothing like a line item.”
“Good.” His arm tightens. “I was aiming higher than accounting.”
“I didn’t think you could laugh,” I admit afterward, my head on his chest.
“I didn’t think you could be quiet for more than thirty seconds.”
“Rude. Accurate, but rude.”
“I’m an ass, remember? Cold and condescending.”
“You’re warmer than advertised.”
“Don’t tell anyone. I have a reputation to maintain.”
I smile against his skin, and he pulls the blanket higher over us both.
Maybe, I think as I drift off. Maybe this won’t be cold after all.