His grip on my wrist tightens, not painful but desperate, like he needs physical proof I'm real. In the gray dawn light filtering through our bedroom windows, I can see everything: stubble darkening his jaw, eyes red-rimmed and hollow from sleeplessness, the same wrinkled shirt from yesterday. An empty coffee cup sits on the nightstand beside a glass of water and some medication bottles.
"Emma." My real name breaks from his lips like a prayer. "Stellina, I thought…" He stops, his free hand reaching toward my face, then freezing midway, trembling.
I catch that suspended hand, guide it to my cheek despite my weakness. "I'm real. I'm here."
He shudders at the contact, his thumb tracing my cheekbone with desperate gentleness. "Hours," he says. "Hours of watching you breathe, terrified each one would be your last."
The weight of what I've done crashes over me. Not just the attempt, but what it did to him. This powerful man who's been keeping vigil, who looks like he hasn't left my side, just watched and waited and hoped.
"When the pills started working," I confess, pressing his palm harder against my face, "when the darkness came, I could have let go. It would have been easy. But I kept thinking about your voice saying my name."
His control shatters. He drops from the chair to his knees beside the bed, both hands now framing my face like I'm made of spun glass. "Never again," he says, the words somewhere between command and plea. "Promise me. Swear on those stars you love. Never leave me like that again."
"Alex…"
"I can't survive it." His voice breaks completely. "I've done terrible things, Emma. Killed men, destroyed lives. But watching you slip away…" He presses his forehead to mine.
The truth of it settles between us. I nearly died, and in doing so, I discovered the one thing that could break Alessandro Rosetti.
My body betrays me when I try to sit up, weakness making me sway. The room spins slightly, and I have to close my eyes against the dizziness. Alex's hands steady me immediately, but even that simple movement leaves me breathless, shaking like my muscles have forgotten how to work.
"Easy," he murmurs. "Your body needs time to recover. The doctors said…"
"I need you," I interrupt, my voice desperate. "I need to feel you, all of you. I need to know I'm alive."
Heat flares in his eyes, warring with concern. "Emma, you're still weak…"
"I'm empty," I correct, my hand finding his chest, feeling his heartbeat accelerate under my palm. "I feel hollow where lifeshould be. Fill me. Please, Alex. Make me feel something besides this terrible absence."
His jaw clenches, control and desire fighting for dominance. "If I touch you now, I won't be gentle. These hours of thinking I'd lost you, I'm barely holding myself together."
"Then don't be gentle." I pull him closer with what little strength I have. "Be real. Be desperate. Show me what my almost-death did to you."
He crashes into me like a storm, his mouth claiming mine with bruising force. I taste his desperation, hours of fear and prayer and bargaining with whatever gods might listen. His tongue invades my mouth, demanding and possessive, and I moan at the intensity of it.
"Fuck," he growls against my lips. "You taste like life. Like everything I thought I'd lost."
His hands roam my body, pushing aside the nightgown I'm wearing, one of his shirts, I realize. When his palms find my breasts, I arch into his touch despite my weakness. My nipples harden immediately, oversensitive after the trauma.
"Look at you," he breathes, pulling back to drink in the sight of me. "Alive. Responding to me. Even after…" His voice cracks.
"Show me what it feels like to live," I demand, my voice nothing but a thread but hard as steel wire. My thighs fall apart for him, a limp invitation, but he takes it as if I’d flung open the gates of heaven itself. There’s a look in his eyes I’ve never seen before—a war between relief and something feral, an animal hunger caged too long. When his hand moves between my legs, the shock of his touch shoots through me like adrenaline, so stark and alive that I almost sob from it.
He finds me swollen, slick, raw. His thumb circles my clit, each pass more deliberate than the last, but it’s his words that brand me:
"Promise you’ll never do it again," he rasps, the tone all threat and plea, as if the world’s axis hangs on my answer. At the same moment, two of his fingers press inside, thick and insistent, and my body bows toward him, muscle memory wrenching me into the air even though I can barely hold myself up. All the strength in me has funneled into a single, quivering, aching point.
"I’m sorry," I gasp, and mean it, though I know it won’t be enough. Not for him, not for the universe, not even for me.
He doesn’t slow. Instead he fills me deeper, his fingers curling to find the spot that makes my vision scatter into a thousand constellations, and all that’s left is sensation and heat and the pounding of my heart. "Harder," I say, or try to, but it comes out as a whimper. A weakness, a begging. He hears it anyway, and it’s like gasoline on the fire.
"You want to be fucked back to life, stellina?" He’s growling now, low and thick, not quite human. "Is that what you need?"
"Yes," I manage, barely, clutching at his wrist. "Yes. Please, Alex. I need—"
He slams a third finger into me and everything goes white, my body clenching down so hard I think I might shatter into dust. He uses his weight to pin my hips, keeping me from thrashing even as I ride his hand, every nerve ending screaming with the agony of being alive. I’m sobbing now, and it’s not about pain or pleasure, it’s just the flood breaking loose, every wall I built to keep myself from feeling smashed to pieces in the span of a few minutes.
"Look at me." He’s above me, face rigid with control, eyes wet with unshed tears. "Open your eyes, Emma. I want you to see who’s saving you this time."
