“Good morning,” I said, smiling up into the warm eyes of my husband. His eyes were like waking up to chocolate on the pillow next to you every morning. Except this morning his eyes had grown dark. “Did you sleep?”
A subtle shake of the head answered my question. He hadn’t. The tension from last night was still present, and he seemed to have stewed in it all night. I was right not to tell him about what I had seen. He wouldn’t handle it well.
“I’m all right, Brando,” I said, trying to assure him. “This place is just…” I shrugged once. “Filled with a lot of history, and it’s bitter cold. The weather had me on edge.”
He studied my face for some time before I felt the tension in him ease. He believed me. The worry had diminished some with the light, but the feeling the “man” left behind still lingered in the air.
Brando kissed my palm, pushing the thought from the forefront of my mind. “Grazie,mia moglie,” he said, his breath smelling of sweet strawberry.
“Oh, you found it?” I had a bouquet of over five hundred suckers made for him. The arrangement sat in a corner of the room. “I was going to give it to you last night, but…” I raked my fingernails across his chest in light strokes. “Since you married me, I assumed that you were going to have to exercise your patience. I wanted to be sure you had enough gear for the job.”
“I came to the end of my patience a long time ago. Now they’re just sweets.” The smile that came to his face was slow, which made it more stunning. “You hungry?”
“No.” Though I felt more like myself, memories of the night before seemed to sit in the pit of my stomach. “I’ll have some coffee, though, in a bit.”
He leaned in closer, his nose skimming the skin along my neck. “You were afraid of me.” He placed a hard kiss over my pulse. “Last night.”
“Never,” I breathed. “But you have me at your mercy. Why would you think that?”
“Always so curious,” he said almost to himself, pausing his explorations. He plucked at the sleeve of the thick wool robe. “Layers.”
“Ha!Layers would throw themselves out ofyourway. It’s cold. If you wanted me naked all of the time, we should have eloped to Bora Bora.”
“The cold makes it better, baby—you’ll never leave my arms.”
“Well, there are those inconvenient times when I have to use the bathroom.” I rose onto my knees, preparing to get out of the bed.
“Inconvenient,” he murmured, releasing the tie of the robe with one hand, studying the frilly silver bra and underwear underneath. With a flick of his wrist, the clasp of my bra released and my breasts were exposed.
“Oh,” I said, closing my eyes, swaying when his warm hands came in contact with my chilled skin. His touch was as light as a feather, and the contrast between his body temperature and mine made me shiver.
The darkness of his hair against my skin made me seem even paler as the strands glided along with his tongue. When his mouth closed around my nipple, an invisible line to the lower part of my stomach became so taut that I made a noise to be ashamed of. But I wasn’t. Never was I embarrassed to be with him. Period. My hands fisted in his hair, wanting to keep him as close as possible.
His other hand moved lower and pushed the thin fabric of the underwear out of the way, able fingers teasing.
“We were supposed to go…” My legs trembled, would have knocked together if his hand wouldn’t have been between them, and I couldn’t finish my thought.
Dropping his head lower, his tongue trailing, he sank his teeth into the hem of my underwear, pulling down slowly, until they were flung across the room… then he lifted me as though I were nothing but a rag doll, planting me down on top of him. I gasped at the intrusion, at the sudden completion I felt, as his hands gripped my hips, directing my movements. My body had to adjust to his size and I took my time enjoying each sensation as I went deeper and deeper.
“Tell me where we’re we going, Scarlett.”
“Nowhere,” I moaned, my eyes rolling behind my head. “Not one effing place.”
“That’s what I thought,” he said, his eyes hooded and his voice rough. He lifted a hand and traced the shape of my lips. I lifted his hand even further, putting his fingers in my mouth and sucking. Then I bit down. Hard. He lifted his hips, coming up so quick and so hard that he knocked the breath from me.
“Ancora,” he ordered.
The look in his eyes almost shattered me then.
I did what he had ordered though. I bit him again, meeting his eyes, neither one of us able to look away. I didn’t know which was more compelling. Him buried deep inside of me, or the way he seemed to move me with his eyes alone.
He groaned, making a noise more suitable for a wild beast than a man. His eyes softened when instead of hurting him again I kissed the finger that I had made teeth marks on. This time the noise that came was lower, straight from his chest.
“I want you even more now,” he said, tracing the shape of my lips again. “I can’t stop wanting you. I need to have what’s mine.O morirò.”Or I’ll die.
He flipped me over and claimed what was his.Me.
I wondered if this strong of a love could keep me on this earth when the rest of me was supposed to be someplace else.
