“Never going back,” I vow.
I ease in further, slowly, relentlessly, until I am buried deep inside her. The tightness is overwhelming. I wait, allowing her body to adjust to my size, moving only slightly, minimally, feeling the deep, intoxicating heat.
“You’re so tight. Like you were made only for me. I own this now. This exquisite feeling. Tell me you feel me, Elena.”
“Alessandro,” she cries, clinging to my shoulders. “Oh, God, I feel you. It’s too much.”
“It’s exactly enough,” I counter, kissing her hard, deep. I begin a slow, measured rhythm, pushing into her depth, accelerating the pace as her hips begin to buck under mine. I am lost in her heat, in her absolute responsiveness. “Say it, Dove,” I rasp, my muscles screaming with the effort of holding back. “Say you’re mine.”
“I’m yours,” she gasps, her voice breaking.
The affirmation, the absolute surrender that is not forced, shatters my control. I drive into her, hard and fast, my body convulsing with a violent, consuming release. I press my mouth to her neck, groaning her name, collapsing my weight onto her, anchoring her to the bed, to me, to this room. I stay buried deep inside her, breathing her scent, kissing her shoulder.
Chapter 23
One moment we’re tangled in the sheets, the next—I’m beneath him, his body covering mine, his voice a low rumble against my skin. His hands worship every new place they discover. His lips claim me with reverence and fire. And I let myself fall. Completely. When he finally collapses beside me, breathless and warm, the world feels different. Shifted. Rewritten.
He brushes his fingers over my cheek and murmurs, “Dove,” like it’s the only word he wants to know.
And I think: I am falling in love with my husband.
The thought terrifies me. Excites me. Unravels me.
So when he pushes out of the bed and walks toward the bathroom, I panic. I slip out of the sheets, grab my nightgown, and hurry down the hall to my room before he comes back and sees… whatever confused hope and terror is stamped across myface. Inside my room, I shut the door quietly, pressing my back against it as my pulse races. I’m not running away. Not really. I just don’t know the rules anymore. Or what this means. Or what we are now. I turn on the shower and step inside, letting the hot water steady me for a moment. Maybe I’m being stupid. Maybe he just needed a minute.
Maybe he—
“ELENA!” His voice cracks violently through the house. I freeze mid-rinse.
Then—SLAM.
My closet door. Flung open so hard the hinge thunders.
“What—?” I hurry through the shower, wrap a towel around myself, and step out—Just in time to see Alessandro storm back into my bedroom, eyes blazing, chest rising like he sprinted through the entire house. My closet door is destroyed. Clothes pushed to the side. Drawers half out. He looks like a furious, gorgeous storm as he marches toward me. I hold my ground.
“What are you doing?” I ask, breathless.
He doesn’t answer. He plants his palms against the wall on either side of my head—caging me in with heat, muscle, and overwhelming intensity. “You think,” he growls, voice dark and rough, “that you can wake up in my bed… beneath me… with my hands on you… my mouth on you…and then run to another room like it meant nothing?”
My breath catches. His jaw flexes. His shoulders shake with restrained emotion.
“You’re my wife,” he snaps, but it’s soft—hurt layered under the anger. “And after this morning, we are never sleeping apart again.”
I stare at him, stunned.
He leans closer, eyes burning with a mixture of fury and fear. “I go to the bathroom for one minute,” he says, voice shaking, “and you vanish.”
Warmth floods my chest. He wasn’t angry because I left. He was scared because I wasn’t there when he came back. My heart softens—slow and dangerous. I love him for this. For all of it. For the anger born from wanting me close. He takes a shuddering breath, stepping even closer.
“I’m moving all my shit into this room,” he says. “Today. Right now. We share one bed. One room. One life. You are mine. And I am yours. And I’m done pretending otherwise.”
My pulse flutters. My big, burly, furious husband… wrecking my closet because I wasn’t still in bed with him. I reach up and rest my hand gently on his cheek. He stills instantly.
“Okay,” I whisper. His eyes widen—shock, relief, hunger—all at once. I smile. “Okay, Husband.”
I can’t stop smiling. Lunch sits half-finished in front of me, but I’m too distracted—too warm inside—thinking about how my morning went from panic to watching my husband storm around my room like a gorgeous, furious hurricane.
He muttered in Italian the entire time he moved his things into my closet. Shirts. Suits. Holsters. A drawer full of weapons I don’t dare question. Every time he’d catch me giggling at him, he’d freeze…turn slowly…and stalk straight toward me like a predator deciding whether he should punish me or kiss me senseless. He always chose the latter. Crushing mouth. Strong hands. Soft growls against my throat. Every time I laughed again, he kissed me harder.
