Seizing her wrists, I stopped her progress. “You are my holy water.”
Wiggling out of my hold, she undressed me, piece by piece. Her perfume lingered in the air, still on her skin, and the warm scent of sleep clung to her, enticing me to breathe in more deeply than usual.
Clothes scattered on the floor, she straddled me on the chair, rising up on her knees to press the warm cloth to my face. Eyes solid on mine, as green as I’d imagined, she drifted the soft fabric over my eyes, along my cheeks, down my throat, and along my chest.
Warmth lingered from the temperature of the water on my skin, until the air cooled it down.
“Now do me,” she said, her voice still raw, but still as soft as the light in the room.
I put my hand to the small of her back to keep her in place, and she arched back, giving me total access to her skin.
Starting from her chin, I slid the cloth down slowly, over her throat, her neck, both places that I’d been obsessed with since I’d seen the marks, along her shoulder blades, between her breasts, around them. Her nipples were hard, the pink skin around them puckered. Goosebumps rose on her arms, the light illuminating each one.
Her mouth parted and she breathed out, a cool rush that I breathed in.
“You’re flushed,” I said, my voice gruff, bringing the cloth over her womb. “His name will be Mariano.”
She grinned at me. Repeated the name into the night, the moon our witness. “He’ll be different, I think. Eager to please his father.”
I almost barked out a laugh. “Matteo planning on giving me trouble?”
“He’s a miniature version of his father, in all ways.” She shrugged. “You’ll see.”
“A taste of my own medicine.”
She leaned in, putting her mouth close to my ear. “I will bite thee by the ear,” she whispered, doing just that.
A noise that seemed to excite her came from my mouth, and bringing her closer to me, I bit her ear.
She rose over me after, a smile of pleasure on her face at our game.
An ache caught fire inside of me, desperately wanting to caress her lips, wetting them, cleaning them, before I came in and kissed them, deep, long, and slow.
She was tempted to bite the cloth as it continued to stroke her skin, but it had been soiled by the night and wouldn’t go near her mouth.
Picking up on this thread, her arms came up, her fingertips barely touching skin, fluttering over me like butterfly wings, until she came to my hands. She entwined them with hers, and I dropped the washcloth.
Bringing our hands up to her mouth, she used my finger to trace the shape of her lips.
Slipping my finger in her warm mouth, she grazed me with her teeth, and then she began to suck as her body moved, sinking down onto me, taking me in as deep as she could go.
This woman had become my suit of armor; she had saved me from the slaughter, body and soul, many times over. She had become all she had vowed to me she would be.
My companion, my partner, in all things.
My flesh, blood, and bone.
My spiritual council.
The hands that healed me when flesh became weary.
My mightyfemmina.
My rib, the one chosen to protect her heart and lungs. Vital to the both of us for survival.
“Are you drunk?” she breathed. “You look drunk.”
“Not even close,” I said in Italian. “But I feel poetic.”
