Chapter 17 #2
He grips the sides of my panties. A frilly beige thing that matches the color of my dress.
Above me, Luca thumbs the soft material.
“These are pretty, jungle flower, but not needed.” He yanks on either side and the lace rips, falling to the sides.
He tosses the lace aside and kneels in front of me.
He places my feet on the edge of the bed and spreads me wide.
His mouth devours my pussy and he groans the second his tongue slips between my folds.
I moan, too, knowing he found the pool of hot liquid he causes at the slightest touch waiting for him. “Sweetness, and all mine.”
He sweeps his tongue over my dripping hole. He swirls the pad of his thumb over the nub and I’m instantly bowing off the bed.
“Luca!” I scream, uncaring of who hears me.
My body has been starved for my husband’s touch and now that it has it the climax that shoots through me is fucking glorious and instant.
Heat unlike anything I've ever felt rages through me. I don’t get to see when he strips but when the bed dips and he moves between my thighs I push up to my elbow.
His heavy cock drips with precum. Fat and swollen, the head begs for me to lick it.
Luca points the tip at my pussy and swirls all those juices dripping from the crown through mine.
“Luca.” I wrap my legs around him and press my heels into his ass. I raise my hips to meet his throbbing cock. “Fuck me, Luca. Ruin me for all other men all over again.”
“Fuck, woman. You’re all mine,” he roars and sinks until his heavy balls slap against my ass. My walls clamp around him and hold him inside me.
The stretch and fullness of him filling spaces that have been desperate to feel him is glorious. He stills inside me, his forehead pressed against mine, his breath ragged and hot against my lips.
He kisses a path down my torso and takes a hard peak between his hot lips. I cry out and hold his head to my breast, wanting more of the deliciousness.
"Look at me." His voice breaks on the second word when he comes back over the top of me.
My eyes open and the man looking down at me holds nothing back.
When I do, I find my Luca, raw and wrecked and so completely mine that the sight of him splits me open along every fault line I've been barely holding together.
We move together with a ferocity that shifts by degrees into something deeper, the anger burning away layer by layer until what remains beneath it is the aching, desperate need to be as close as two bodies can be.
His thrusts slow from punishing to deliberate, each one a question and an answer and a promise I can feel in my bones. My nails rake down his back and he hisses through his teeth, the sound dissolving into my name spoken like a prayer against the curve of my neck.
The orgasm builds from somewhere so deep it feels geological, tectonic plates shifting beneath the surface of everything I thought I knew about anger and love and the impossible territory where they overlap.
When it breaks, it takes my voice with it, a cry that carries the grief and the fury and the stubborn, terrifying hope I couldn't kill no matter how hard I tried.
I shamelessly pitch my pelvis forward and take more of him deeper. He growls, letting me know he feels the way my body sucks him in.
I moan into his mouth when he breaks away to steal my lips with his.
There’s a ravenous hurriedness to the way he pries my mouth open with his tongue.
I give in to him and savor the feel of his tongue sweeping over mine.
I rock my hips, fucking him as much as he fucks me, both of us breathless and hungry for the other.
I run my hands up his back and feel the power of the man taking me. He saved me, protected me with his body when I made a foolish decision to try and save my mother on my own. He’s not the only one with an ego, I’ve come to understand.
He protected me. Saved me. And I saved him.
“I love you. Luca, I love you more than I’ve ever loved someone. Being away from you tore my heart out. I just didn’t know how I could face you after everything.”
“It’s me who could not face you. It tore my heart out to be away from you.
But I knew you needed time. The love I feel for you, my jungle flower, is deeper than just my soul.
You’ve become a part of me I can’t live without.
From this moment on, you will know everything.
My fears, my worries. My dreams and my sins. ”
“And I accept them if you accept mine.”
With that, my back bows off the mattress and he picks me up, leaning back on his heels. He settles me over his lap and I begin to move over his cock. Taking him deeper and deeper with each unhurried stroke.
His arms bear my weight and I lean into them trusting him to keep me safe. Trusting him with my body, heart and soul.
Wet, hungry lips wrap around one nipple and suckle before moving to the next.
My head falls back and I am swept away by all that is the man I love. His scent, his touch, his body.
“You belong to me. I give you everything I am.”
“Yes,” I moan and wrap my arms around his neck.
I raise my head and our gazes lock. He spreads me out on the bed and settles over me, gently.
I cling to him and meet every thrust he gives with one of my own.
Together we stoke the heat building inside us.
He grips my hips, burrowing so deeply inside me I’m left gasping his name.
He moves down and places a kiss over my heart. “I want to spend my life showing you the love I have for your heart and soul.”
When he comes back up I cup his face. “My heart is yours. You better not break it from here on out.” I wrap my legs around him and tighten my core around his length. He pulses inside me and I gasp lightly.
“Luca, I want to love you forever. I’m trusting you with all of me. Us.” I touch my baby bump.
He considers my words and I see the weight of what I’ve handed back to him register.
“That’s a promise I’ll die to keep.”
He pistons deep inside me and I rock my hips to meet his thrusts. Together we seek our releases.We’re breathless and holding each other so tightly that when I scream my release, his roar mixes with mine. Our chests vibrate and I can feel my life force twine with his.
He comes with a sound that wrecks me, his body shuddering against mine, his arms so tight around me I can feel his heartbeat against my ribs.
We lie tangled together in the aftermath, breathing hard, and damp with sweat that is cooling against our skin in the lamplight.
His forehead rests against mine, our breath mingling in the narrow space between our mouths, and the scent of us together fills the small room with something primal and honest and impossible to fake.
He holds his weight off my bump and cocoons me in his warmth.
"I love you, Ilona Valentina." His voice is rough, stripped of everything but sincerity.
"The grumpy, stubborn, brave woman who saw through me from the beginning.
" His thumb traces my cheekbone, catching a tear I let slip. “You have my heart too. And I know it’s safe and where it belongs.”
The tears come quietly and he kisses each of them away.
When he pulls back he kisses the tip of my nose. “Have you felt the baby kick yet?”
"Not yet." The words come out soft as I watch his hand caress over my baby bump. "Persia says that won't happen until I'm further along."
His gaze lifts to mine, and the surprise that flickers through those brown eyes carries a warmth I haven't seen since the ultrasound. "You've been in contact with the family?"
"Every single day. They are my family too."
The emotion that moves across his face tells me everything. “I feared I ruined everything for you, us and our baby.”
He reaches over the edge of the bed and retrieves his jeans from the floor, his hand searching through the pocket. He brings back a small leather box.
Inside sit two matching white gold bands resting side by side. Solid. Simple. Strong. No diamonds or excess.
"The first ring came with a forced contract." He holds up both bands, one in each palm, the lamplight catching the brushed surface of the metal. "This one is a promise."
He slides one onto his own finger first, the band settling against his knuckle with a quiet certainty that makes my chest ache. "I call this the band of trust. I swear for the rest of my life, I will never take this off. I will never break your trust again."
“A trust ring?”
He nods slowly and the certainty sitting in his gaze feeds my soul.
He holds out the second band, balanced on his open palm, offering it without reaching for my hand for me to accept. Or not.
“Do you accept my promise?”
I take the ring from his palm, feeling the cool weight of it settle against my fingers, the metal is smooth and solid and I hand it back to him.
Fear mingles with hope across his handsome expression.
“I do accept.”
His body visibly relaxes.
“But only if you place it on my finger.”
He takes my hand with a gentleness that contradicts every rough, desperate thing our bodies did to each other twenty minutes ago. He slides the matching band onto my finger.
“I have something else. I found it next to your keyboard that day.” He lifts the cushion the bands sat on and produces my wedding ring.
I hold my hand out for him to slide the ring to join our shared band of trust.
"I choose you, Luca." The words rise from the same place the tears came from, the place where I've been storing every stubborn, reckless, terrifying ounce of hope that refused to die no matter how many reasons he gave me to let it go. "All of you. The sunshine and the devil."
"I choose us."
He pulls me close, his hand returning to my belly, cradling the curve where our daughter grows with a tenderness that makes my throat tight.
He looks at me, serious now, more vulnerable than I've ever seen him, the dark eyes holding mine with an intensity.
"Marry me again. For real this time."
A laugh escapes me, watery and bright and carrying the impossible lightness I did not feel when I woke up this morning.
"I want us to have a real wedding. I want to marry you properly, Ilona. I want to stand in front of everyone we love and vow to be the man you deserve. Will you let me?"
I cup his face in both hands, feeling all the love I have for this man bubble up inside me. This impossible man. My devil. The worst mistake I ever made and the best thing that ever happened to me.
"Yes." The word tastes like the beginning of something new. "But I'm picking the venue this time."
His grin breaks across his face. “Anything you want. Can I take you home now, jungle flower?”
I press my lips to his, tasting the salt of my tears and the warmth of his mouth and the future we're building from the wreckage of every wrong turn that led us here.
"Take me home, husband."
And this time, I mean it. Forever.