He was more present.
She did not smile at him, but she kept lifting her eyebrow, like she was trying to decide what his motives were before she gave him what he wanted.
Papàhad flown in the night before, upset thatmammahad not come home, and he wanted to see his granddaughter for the first time.
Ele had taken one look at him, at the face he made, and giggled.
“If it’s the last thing I ever do,” Corrado had said, watching them, “I’ll get her to smile for me.”
“You’re almost there,” I said, grinning at him. “But she is going to make you work for it.”
I had grinned to cover up what I truly felt. His words made me uneasy.
If it’s the last thing I ever do.I wanted it to be the first thing he ever did to set us in a different direction. But he did not give me time to dwell on it. He had told me earlier that morning that he was taking me out on a date.
After we put Ele to bed, I started to get dressed.
He’d dressed in a black suit and a gold tie. He adjusted it in the mirror while I fixed my hair.
I took note of his hands. How big they were. How strong. How I could trace the veins underneath his tan skin with a finger. Even his wrists were strong, a part of him that I found erotic.
I memorized the sharp lines of his face. How his eyes looked in reflection to the candles around the bathroom when he looked at me. I dressed in the color that I knew pleased him. The same color as his eyes.
I had committed to memory how he moved with such command and power, but he did so with such ease, there was no doubt that it was just a natural part of who he was. He placed the baroque earrings in my ear and the layered necklaces around my neck.
I absorbed the heat of his touch while it branded my skin, closing my eyes to anything but him and this moment.
His fingers trailed along my collarbone, then traced the cool metal around my neck, moving to my ears, sinking his fingers into my hair. “Ti amo,angel eyes,” he said.
“Ti amo, mio marito,”I said, leaning into him, placing a soft kiss on his lips. But that was not who he was. His lips claimed mine with wrath-like intensity, but to me, it felt like unfiltered passion rushing through my blood. His fingers were greedy as they moved underneath the dress and he slipped one inside of me.
My eyes rolled, my head tilted back, and my mouth parted. His tongue licked down my throat and back up before it found mine again.
Kissing him was always more than kissing. It always felt like the love between us was stealing my soul. The very breath of my existence.
Our eyes connected, and that wild thing moved, possessed, as we crashed into each other without touching. He turned me toward the mirror, my hands planted against the counter, lifting my dress over myculo,moving the thin strip of underwear to the side.His hand massaged, caressed, his finger slipping in and out, while he undid his pants.
“Keep your hands steady,” he said.
It was not my hands that needed to keep steady. It was my heart. My breathing. The floor beneath my feet.
He entered me in a thrust so hard from behind that it made me scream out.
He pulled my hair, tilting my head back. “Open your eyes,” he said. “Look at me. Give me what I need.”
I lifted my eyes to meet his. He slammed into me over and over, driving me higher and higher, until my body surrendered to the demands of his.
“Corrado!” I screamed out, so fucking close.
He pumped into me even harder, the wildest noises I ever heard coming from his mouth. They echoed around the bathroom, along with the sounds of our bodies slapping, pounding, crashing.
“So beautiful,” he said, his eyes lowered, his body demanding even more from mine. “My wife.Mine.”
I wanted to lower my eyes, my head, concentrate on giving him this, on holding back, but my body was giving in. The pleasure burned from the inside out—it was always like nothing I’d ever experienced before. But I’d always imagined it to be the same for the candle the moment its wick starts to burn.
“You’re ready,” he said. He was in me, all around me, no relief unless I gave in. “Now you’ll be satisfied.”
“Not after a hundred lifetimes with you,” I said, my voice breathless, but strong.
