Epilogue #2
His fingers find my zipper and drag it down with a slowness that makes my breath catch. The gown pools at my feet and he steps back to look at me.
His lips part. No sound comes out.
Beneath the dress, Luna's body paint covers every inch of me. Roses and vines and jungle flowers cascading over my breasts, my bump, my hips. The same art she painted on me the night I walked into this building as a stranger. Full circle.
"Luna?" His voice is rough.
"Luna insisted. Said the goddess needed her war paint for the wedding night." I rest my hands on my painted belly and let him look. "Surprise."
His chest broadens with a deep breath. "Fuck." The word leaves him in a long exhale. His eyes trace every brushstroke, every bloom, every leaf curving over the body he knows by heart but is seeing reborn.
His hand reaches out and his fingertips follow a vine that trails from my collarbone down between my breasts. The paint is cool where his touch warms it. "You're going to kill me, jungle flower."
I arch a brow. "With sexiness? Yeah, that's the plan." A seductive smile curls the corner of my lip that makes my husband growl.
Luca bends and cups my ass in his strong grip.
He lifts me onto the wide ledge beneath the glass wall, the party still pulsing below us.
I reach behind him and pull the leather strap holding his hair back.
Long black hair falls around his shoulders.
His grin turns wolfish as he kneels between my thighs.
"Someone might look up." My breath catches as his mouth finds the painted vine trailing down my inner thigh.
"Let them." His tongue follows the vine higher, licking through paint and skin until he reaches the place where I'm already aching for him.
The first stroke of his tongue makes my head fall back against the cool glass.
The second makes my thighs clamp around his ears.
By the third I'm gripping his hair with both fists and grinding against his mouth while three hundred people celebrate our wedding directly beneath us.
"Luca." His name comes out strangled. Desperate. "I need you inside me."
He rises and I fumble with his belt, yanking it free while his mouth claims mine. I taste myself on his tongue and moan into the kiss. His pants hit the floor and his cock springs free, thick and hard and already leaking at the tip.
He grips my hips and enters me in one slow thrust that makes us both groan. The angle is perfect, the ledge putting me at exactly the right height, and he fills me so completely that tears prick my eyes for reasons that have nothing to do with pain.
"My wife." He pulls back and drives forward again, his forehead pressing against mine. "My beautiful, stubborn, painted wife."
I wrap my legs around him and pull him deeper. We find a rhythm that builds heat fast, his hands gripping the glass on either side of my head, his hips snapping against mine while the bass from the music below vibrates through the wall and into my spine.
The orgasm rolls through me in a wave that steals my voice. He follows seconds later, burying himself to the hilt and groaning my name against my throat.
We don't stop there. He strips his clothes away and then comes back for me.
He carries me to the waterfall. Warm water cascades over us as he takes me from behind, one arm wrapped beneath my belly to support our daughter, the other arm around my chest. The paint runs in rivers of crimson and green down our skin, pooling in the water at our feet.
I grip his forearms and push back to meet every thrust, the spray hitting my sensitive breasts, his teeth grazing the curve of my neck.
"Harder." The word tears out of me.
And he gives me harder. His grip tightens around me and his pace turns relentless. The sound of our bodies meeting echoes off the wet walls. I shatter with a cry that bounces off every surface in the room.
He spins me around and I’m back in his arms. He lifts me and I wrap my legs around his middle as he carries me across the room, soaking wet.
He lays me down and arranges pillows beneath my hips with a tenderness that contradicts the hunger still burning in his eyes.
He kisses the smeared roses on my belly, traces a ruined vine with his tongue from my hip to my breast, and takes a painted nipple into his mouth until I'm arching off the mattress and begging.
This time he takes me slow. Deep, unhurried strokes that let me feel every inch while his thumb circles my clit with devastating precision. We come together, his body shuddering over mine, my walls clenching around him, Luna's artwork reduced to beautiful destruction across the white sheets.
She'll definitely consider it a compliment.
Afterward, tangled in silk and satisfaction, his fingers trace the tiny devil Luna hid among the flowers on my bump that the water didn’t quite wash away.
“You like the little Dante we added to the artwork?” My voice is soft.
"You're stuck with me now, jungle flower." His voice carries the lazy warmth of a man who has been thoroughly loved and has no plans to move.
"I was stuck with you the moment you handed me that hibiscus." I trace the panther on his ribs, feeling the raised edge of a scar hidden beneath the ink.
"Best mistake, right?"
I scrunch my nose. "Best mistake I ever made was trusting you even when you broke my heart.
Through all that pain we built something real.
So real that sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and have to convince myself I'm not dreaming.
" The words come out soft, carrying none of the bitterness they would have held weeks ago.
He pulls me into him and tightens his hold around me. I feel his heartbeat against my back, steady and strong.
“You and me forever.”
My mind drifts to the question that still lives in the back of my head.
Quiet but present. Someday I might want to know who gave me blood.
But today isn't about the man who made me.
It's about the people who chose me. Enzo Marchetti isn't my father.
These people are my family. Blood has never been what makes a family real. Choice does.
When we return to the reception, the evening has deepened into that golden hour where ties are loosened and shoes are abandoned and mafia royalty looks almost human.
Movement catches my eye near the wish room corridor. Konstantin stands with a red envelope in his hands, and whatever is written inside has transformed his face. A stillness that goes beyond his usual composure. Deeper. More absolute.
I can’t tell for sure, but I think he tells Massimo, "This one's mine." But I’m no expert at reading lips. Either way, he tucks the envelope into his jacket and walks out without another word.
Rafael and Luca exchange a look across the room. I recognize that look. Something big is coming.
Before Kon disappears, I notice the man standing where he stood. I didn't see him arrive. One second the corridor was empty and the next he was there. Dark hair. A suit that looks like shadows wearing human form.
"Cristian is here?" I murmur to Luca.
"Yeah. He's trying to prove himself for permanent inclusion. Right now, he handles our more delicate acquisitions on a case-by-case basis."
"He looks like he's cataloging the room."
Luca huffs a laugh. "He probably is. That man sees everything, takes what he wants. Disappears like a ghost in the wind."
I watch Cristian's gaze track across the reception. Every face noted. Every exit mapped. His dark eyes move steadily from one group to the next until they stop.
On a server.
She’s petite. Dark hair pulled back in a practical ponytail. Quick, nervous hands gripping her tray. She weaves through the crowd with her chin down and her shoulders curved inward. Pretty in an unassuming way. The kind of woman you'd overlook completely.
Cristian Vetrov is not overlooking her. His eyes follow every movement she makes and the hair on the back of my neck prickles.
"Does he know her?"
Luca frowns and tracks my line of sight. "I don't think so. She's new. Started last month."
But the expression on Cristian's face tells a different story. Patient. Predatory. Already three moves ahead in a game no one else knows they're playing.
I shiver and turn back to my husband. Some games aren't mine to play.
"Dance with me."
His face softens and he leads me onto the floor, his hand settling on my belly as the music slows.
And then I feel it.
A kick. Not the gentle flutters I've been feeling for weeks now. This is a real kick, sharp and strong, directly beneath Luca's palm. The kind of movement that says I'm here and I'm not subtle about it. And then it comes again, a tiny pulse of movement beneath Luca's palm.
The gasp that escapes me has nothing to do with dancing.
"What is it?" Concern sharpens his voice. His body goes tense. "Are you okay?"
"She moved. Didn’t you feel it?" My eyes fill with tears. "She kicked. Did you finally get to feel that?"
His hand stills against my belly. The room falls away. The music fades. Nothing exists except his hand and the tiny life beneath it saying hello for the first time.
"There. She kicked again. You felt that, right? Tell me you felt that."
"I felt it." His voice cracks. His hand presses harder against my belly and our daughter answers with another kick, stubborn and fierce, and the look on his face is something I will carry with me for the rest of my life. "Oh, our baby girl is strong."
"Just like her momma. What did you expect?" His eyes glisten. That same raw emotion from the first ultrasound breaks across his face, unguarded and unashamed.
"I love you, jungle flower." His lips touch mine with reverence in the middle of the dance floor.
I tilt my chin higher and take the kiss deeper. "I love you too, devil."
We dance. His hand stays on my belly where our daughter kicks between us. Her first movement delivered on the dance floor of the building where she was created, in the arms of parents who almost lost each other and fought their way back.
Happily ever after isn't a destination. It's a choice you make every day, in every small moment, with every act of trust and forgiveness and stubborn, reckless love.
I choose this. I choose him. I choose us.