18 | Surrender 🔥
SANTO
She hesitates—one heartbeat, maybe two—caught between pride and the pull she can’t shake.
Then she huffs under her breath, annoyed at herself, at me, at the heat in my glare.
But she moves, bracing her bare feet on the slippery porcelain and pulling herself up.
She looks like an angel in her little white dress—but a dangerous one, with hellfire burning behind her ribs.
She rummages through the kit until she finds what she needs—gauze, antiseptic solution and bandages—and then she shifts forward, lowering herself onto her knees between my thighs.
The sight should be illegal. I’m instantly hard.
She’s heat and purity and temptation wrapped into one, and I’m sure she’ll be my undoing.
Ella braces her forearm on my thigh, either unaware of my raging erection, or wanting to feed into it. I choose to believe the latter.
The antiseptic-drenched gauze drags across my battered knuckles, but I don’t feel the sting. My free hand moves without permission, fingers sliding into the silky strands of her hair until my thumb grazes the sharp edge of her jaw.
Her head snaps up. Our eyes collide. Everything in the room goes still.
She swallows once, her breath brushing my skin. “Don’t—”
But she doesn’t finish the sentence. Maybe because she can’t. Maybe because she doesn’t know how to lie to herself anymore.
I keep my hand right where it is, thumb tracing her cheekbone like I’m memorizing the shape.
“Keep tending me, bella,” I murmur. “I want to watch you.”
Her lips part. A soft, shattered exhale spills out. She tries to look back down at my knuckles—but my hand in her hair is a tether, and she gets only halfway before her gaze drags back to mine, pulled like gravity.
I can feel the moment her anger melts into something hotter. The moment her pulse kicks. The moment she becomes aware of exactly where she’s kneeling, and what it’s doing to me.
The antiseptic solution bottle trembles in her grip.
“Stop looking at me like that,” she whispers.
“Like what?” My voice is a rasp.
“Like you…” Her jaw clenches, eyes darting to my mouth, then away. “Like you want something.”
“I do.” I lean in, just enough for her breath to mingle with mine. “I want my wife.”
Her lashes flutter, just once, betraying everything she’s trying to hide.
She should pull back, but she doesn’t.
Her hand slips—not much, just a tiny tremor from nerves and champagne—and her palm lands on my thigh to steady herself.
She freezes. I move.
I slide my thumb along her lower lip. “Ella,” I murmur, voice low enough to bruise. “Look at me.”
She does, her eyes are wide, cheeks flushed—her fingers curl tighter on my thigh, her gaze dropping to my mouth again.
That tiny surrender is all I need.
I pull her up to me in one smooth motion, her hands flying to my shoulders—and then her mouth collides with mine like she’s been fighting the urge since the altar.
It’s raw and hungry—a storm finally breaking after too many hours of building.
She kisses me like she hates that she wants me, and I kiss her back like I’ve been waiting a lifetime to claim this exact moment.
Her fingers thread through my hair, pulling me closer, pulling herself deeper, and the bathroom disappears, the reception disappears—the entire world collapses into the heat of her body pressed against me, her mouth on mine, and the way she’s breathing me in like she needs me more than air.
I hook my arm under her legs and scoop her up, her body fitting against mine like it was made for me. Her ankles cross on their own accord, arms tightening around my neck as she feverishly tries to decide between pushing me away or tearing off my clothes.
I stride to the door, and when Marco straightens at the sight of us, eyes widening just a fraction—my bride in my arms, her lips swollen from kissing me—I don’t slow down, explain or apologize.
I just stare him down with the kind of look that turns men to stone.
“Send everyone home,” I order, voice a sharp blade. “Now. The night is over.”
Marco is already moving. “Sì, Capo.” Yes, boss.
Ella is goddamn heavenly in my arms—my salvation.
She’ll blame the champagne tomorrow. Tell me she was drunk. Pretend she didn’t kiss me hard enough to bruise her own lips.
But I know better.
People lie with their mouths, but their bodies tell the truth.
Her body pressed to mine is trust, her breath on my neck is surrender. The slick heat between her thighs is the closest thing to truth I’ll get from her tonight.
But there’s power in silence too, and right now she’s quiet in all the ways that matter.
I carry her up the stairs without rushing, without speaking, without giving her any room to run from what we both already chose since the first time we locked eyes.
Let her cling. Let her pretend. Let her blame the champagne.
I know exactly what she wants, and I’m done waiting for her to admit it.
Tonight, I’m taking my bride to bed. She’ll run from the truth tomorrow, but I’ll be right behind her.
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FIORELLA
I’m not thinking. I don’t even want to think—I just want to feel. To let go of every last inhibition and finally give in to the pull that’s been chewing through my self-control all day.
So I do.
I don’t protest as he carries me down the hall toward his bedroom; I just bury my face in his neck. His skin is warm against my lips, smelling faintly of cigar smoke and leather and something metallic I choose to ignore.
He pushes the door open with his shoulder and steps inside, kicking it shut behind him.
Darkness envelops us, and I can’t help but think it’s symbolic, somehow.
Then he flips a switch. A soft glow spills from behind the headboard, washing the room in gold, almost giving the bed a halo.
Ironic.
Santo slides me down the front of his body until my feet touch the floor, and then he guides me backward—step by slow step—until the edge of the mattress grazes the backs of my thighs.
“Pretty dress, Fiorella,” he murmurs, his voice curling around me like smoke.
“Ella,” I breathe, chest already rising and falling too fast. “Thanks. My husband picked it out.”
His fingers find the hidden zipper at my spine and he drags it down as he eases me onto the bed. “Good choice,” he says against my throat, lips brushing heat over my skin. “Did he pick out what’s underneath too?”
“All of it,” I pant. “The lingerie, and the body too.”
His mouth curves against my skin as he traces my throat, then down to the hollow of my collarbone. “A man of fine taste,” he hums, pulling the dress down and revealing the barely-there lace of my bra. “Dio mio.” My God.
My hips lift instinctively, letting him slide the dress down my legs. He tosses it onto the end of the bed like it didn’t cost him a small fortune.
And now I’m almost bare beneath him—the thin lace of my bra and thong may as well not have been there as his gaze drags over my body, cataloguing every inch of me.
He actually crosses himself, whispering in Italian. “Dio, dammi forza… o la rovinerò.” Lord, give me strength… or I’ll ruin her.
My breath catches. His gaze snaps to mine.
Then, softly—dangerously softly—“We don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
The words rip the air right out of my lungs.
I look away before my voice can betray me, reaching blindly for his shirt instead. My fingers fumble with the buttons, undoing them one by one.
The shirt is immaculate—crisp white, not a whisper of blood.
Maybe it was all an act. Maybe he just hit a wall to keep me scared of him.
I shove the shirt off his shoulders before I can think too hard. My hands slide down his warm, inked skin as more of him is revealed to me.
My husband.
The man who traded my brother’s life for a ring on my finger.
The man who can apparently kill someone with his bare hands and not think twice about it.
But also the man I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since the first time I saw him.
I trace the waistband of his slacks, my fingers meeting in front. He hisses a curse under his breath, low and shattering.
Then he parts my thighs with his knee and lowers himself over me.
I’m aching for him—throbbing with lust—as his hardness presses directly against my clit through the thin lace of my thong.
My hips move involuntarily, grinding up in search of friction.
Thought dissolves. Restraint dissolves. Any sense of rationality abandons me.
There’s nothing left except the heat of his body over mine, the hunger pooling between us, the electric ache that has nothing to do with the past and everything to do with right now.
Just him. Just me. Just us, and the inevitable burn pulling us under.
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Are we ready for some spice? ??????