Chapter 12 #3
I spin her around. She reads my face and her eyes go wide and bright and she bolts.
I let her get three steps, her bare feet slapping the hardwood, before I'm on her, my arm hooking around her waist, pulling her back against my chest. She twists and laughs and fights against my grip and the sound of her laughter in my penthouse, breathless and wild and echoing off the high ceilings, fills my heart with a profound need to keep her close.
I press her against the hallway wall, the plaster cool against her flushed back.
Pin her wrists above her head with one hand.
She wraps a leg around my hip and grinds against me, the wet heat of her soaking through my slacks, and I free myself from my pants and thrust into her so hard her head tips back against the wall and a cry tears from her throat that fills the hallway.
"Yes." She gasps it against my jaw, her free hand gripping my shoulder, her nails digging crescents into my skin deep enough to draw blood. "God, yes. More."
I give her more. Deep, rough strokes that rock her against the wall with each thrust, my hand gripping her thigh hard enough to leave finger-shaped bruises.
Her leg hooks over my hip, her back sliding against the plaster.
She's loud and unashamed and every sound she makes feeds the hunger I've been starving for decades.
Her walls clench around my cock, tight and wet and pulsing, and I bury my face in her neck and breathe her in, tasting sweat and the faint salt of dried tears on her skin.
I fuck her with everything I've been holding back.
"Look at me." I pull back far enough to see her face.
Tears and flushed cheeks and swollen lips and the most honest expression I have ever seen on a human being.
"I see you, Sloane. All of you. Every piece you just handed me.
I see it and I'm not looking away. You’re the most beautiful person in the world to me. "
She is mine. In all ways, she is mine.
I grip her ass and lift her higher against the wall. Her legs tighten around me, her heels digging into the backs of my thighs, and I drive deeper, harder, burying myself in the tight, wet heat of her until neither of us can tell where the wall ends and our bodies begin.
"When I come inside you," I growl against her mouth, "I want it to take. I want you carrying part of me when this is over."
Her breath hitches. Her eyes lock on mine, wide and burning, and her hips roll to meet every thrust. She grips my shoulders, her nails carving crescents deep enough to sting, and rides the force of my body slamming her into the plaster.
I reach between us and press my thumb against her clit, firm and relentless, and the sound she makes is raw and broken and mine.
Her hand flies out and catches the edge of a console table. A vase tips. A framed painting rattles loose from its hook. Both crash to the hardwood and neither of us flinches.
I drive into her so hard the wall shudders.
"Massimo." My name comes out of her mouth wrecked, barely a sound, her forehead dropping against mine. "God, yes."
Her body locks around me, every muscle clenching tight, her thighs shaking against my hips. She comes with her teeth buried in my shoulder and my name trapped behind them, muffled and desperate against my skin.
I follow her. Not gently. I bury myself to the hilt and let go, filling her completely, my release pulsing hot inside her while a groan tears from my chest that doesn't sound like a man in control because I'm not. I'm not anything right now except hers.
I want this woman round with my child. The thought hits me mid-collapse and I don't push it away.
I brace one hand against the wall to keep us both upright, my forehead pressed against hers, my breath ragged and broken against her mouth. Her body shakes against mine and the aftershocks pulse through both of us, slow and deep, rolling out in waves that match the rain still hammering the glass.
We slide down the wall together. End up on the hallway floor, her in my lap, my back against the plaster, the cool hardwood beneath us grounding the heat still radiating from our skin.
Both of us breathing hard. The rain fills the silence and her fingers trace lazy patterns on my chest through my ruined shirt.
"I broke a button," she says, touching the gap where the shirt pulls open. Her voice is hoarse.
"I'll make sure you pay for that."
"Add it to the contract." She presses her lips against my collarbone and I feel her smile against my skin, warm and tired and real. Then she pulls back and looks at me, her blue eyes serious beneath the post-sex flush. Her bare face is stripped of everything except the truth. "I’m not going to end up like your mom, Mass.”
I love the sound of my shortened name on her lips.
“I wanted this between us even if it’s not real. I know there’s an expiration date on the nuptials, but I'm not going to lose myself like she did. You are not your father."
"I know."
She searches my face. Nods once and then rests her head on my chest.
I hold her on the floor of my hallway with rain pounding the windows and her heartbeat slowing against my ribs and I think about my mother. About the contract she signed.
About Lorenzo.
I know what Lorenzo has planned. But knowing about a threat and stopping it are two different things. The woman in my arms just handed me every vulnerable piece of herself and I will die before I let Lorenzo Ferraro touch her life.