“Please.” Her voice was tender, but there was an undercurrent to it that was rough, like she was being patient, but if I didn’t agree, she wouldn’t be.
We’d fight.
I sighed. Lifted my pointer and middle fingers. “Two weeks, if the results don’t come sooner.”
She sighed. Then she looked away from me, real demure, and smiled, a little shyly. “Don’t you want to unwrap me?”
She gasped and beat me on the back when I picked her up and threw her over my shoulder, bringing her to a bed that could sleep ten. I set her down on it gently, untying the silk bow keeping the robe together. It opened to another fucking world.
“You are so beautiful, Stella.”
“Your light?” Her eyes welled, and I wiped the tears away, rubbing the salty droplets against my lips and drinking them down.
“Per sempre.”
Our eyes connected, and it was like the biggest star in the sky had come out to shine just for me. The connection between us moved like the warmth the fire was giving off, but even hotter. I felt it down to the marrow of my bones—a cold fire. From her. From me. Coming together.
A feeling I’d never felt before and had become so fucking addicted to.
“Teo?”
“La mia stella.”
“The cold used to burn me. It’d burn me so bad that I wasn’t sure if I’d live through the night, not even with that big fireplace in the dungeon she kept me in. But—” she reached for me, unbuttoning my shirt, running her hands along my skin, flinging my shirt to the floor “—when I’m touching you, just near you, your warmth runs the cold away and…I feel so good. So good, I can feel myself lighting up, wanting to get lost in your warm eyes. In the safety of your darkness.”
Fuck me.
I was in the light of the brightest thing to ever grace my life, but I was still so lost.
So lost in this woman who could bring me to my knees with a look.
A touch?
A touch could end me, if the beating of my racing heart pounding against my ribs was the truth.
It was.
My lips were slower, though.
So were my hands.
As I served every inch of my wife’s skin with my body.
I sucked the pulse in her neck, leaving a mark I knew would last for days.
Deeper below her skin, on the pulse of her life, my mark would stay forever.
“Teo,” she barely got out, opening her thighs to me, her slick wetness glowing, reflecting the fire, the sweet smell possessing me.
It felt so fucking good, tasted so fucking good, it was like she was melting into me, and I was melting into her.
Groaning, a sound from deep inside of my chest, I went to her, burying myself inside of her so deep, I gave her all that I was, and she took it, bringing me home.
Chapter 49
Matteo
Stella complained on the last day of our honeymoon that our time felt like it had gone by too fast. All the restaurants, the snow, the skiing, and the times we locked ourselves away from the world, especially at night, when the hours were longer and the chill in the air was colder…it felt like everything happened in a blink.
