He was both my heartbreak and my remedy.
“Il mio rimedio,” I whispered.My remedy, because even though he caused me heartbreak, it was never him, but the circumstances in our lives, and how he reacted to them.
He grinned. “A bit of both? Remedy and heartache?”
“Sì.” I smiled.
“We’re the same,” he said. “Your love is my madness and my remedy too.”
He put his finger underneath my chin, tilting my face up higher. He asked me if I was ready to get in the shower, but he already knew the answer. He wanted to hear it.
“All I need is you.” I closed my eyes, untucked my arms, and set them on his—so strong under my hands, so warm against my chilled skin—and held on tight. “Solo tu.”
He brought my hands up, guiding them around his neck, and after I held on, he scooped me up, and I brought my legs around his waist. He shut the water off, most of it lingering in the air as thick fog, and then set my bottom down on the counter, coming between my thighs.
A thin sheen of moisture clung to his smooth chest, making the color seem like polished bronze in the candlelight. He was those three coins I’d thrown in the Trevi Fountain when I was a girl. A wish come true.
“I’ll kill anything or anyone that means you harm. That includes all your worries and guilt,” he said. “That’s what I was made for.”
“For me,” I whispered.
He nodded once, then taking a step back, his eyes lingered on me, hotter than the air that purled around us. His intense gaze started at my bare feet, rising higher and higher, until I almost started to squirm. He eyes stopped at the spot between my legs, and though no words were spoken, my body obeyed his body’s silent demand.
Open up for me.
I did, slowly spreading my legs wider.
His nose glided along the shape of my left foot, the inward curve of my ankle, all the way up past my knee, until he stopped between my thighs. That alone sent shocks through me, sparks catching fire. I was always sensitive to his touch, but while pregnant, my skin had become paper to his heat.
A knowing look came over his face.
Yes, I think so too,I wanted to say, but couldn’t. I had a feeling his birthday wishes were coming true. I was pregnant again.
He looked up at me as though he’d heard me, and in the next moment, I was spinning, barely able to keep upright, not even conscious of when a mixture of languages and wild noises started streaming from my mouth. His tongue was like magic.
“Accendere,” he whispered against me, his warm breath and pumping finger doing things to me that made me want to be as close to the surface of my skin as possible, so I could be closer to him.
Accenderemeant to light up or switch on. He wanted to watch while I burned for him.
It didn’t take me long to spin out of control and then come spiraling down into his arms. Trembling but no longer tired. Instead of wearing me out, it turned me on even more.
He claimed my mouth for his, a star-crossed collision, hungry for the beginning and the end, his tongue so deep that each time I moaned, it echoed in the hollowness of his throat, radiating down to bones.
I trembled when he moved his mouth down to my throat, and I gasped when his teeth grazed my nipple. “Please. D-don’t stop,” I barely got out.
He said nothing as his hands roved to my back, his direction tilting me back, enough to give him room to maneuver. My palms were splayed on the counter for purchase, while my feet freed him of the restraints of his pants. Tears fell in slow streams from the corners of my eyes, and he kissed them away, then used his tongue to trace the lines.
With aching slowness, he entered me, and I lost my breath. Even at his gentlest, he still hurt. He was thick and long, and it took my body time to adjust. When it did, he sent me back up into space, the moments becoming ours, time shrinking into oblivion.
Each thrust sent me higher and higher, no gravity to keep me centered. I needed something to hold on to. Something based in this reality to keep me from getting lost.
“My back,” he ground out.
He would always keep me steady. Keep me next to him. Keep us together.
After I’d shredded him raw the night before, and he hadn’t had time to heal, I refused to sink my claws in.
This wasn’t about digging to find the most hidden parts of ourselves.
