I smiled. “You roped it. You roped it and hung it for me.”
“Sistine Evita Fausti,” he breathed out, his tongue hitting every perfect spot in my name. “For the rest of your life, for the rest of mine, I’ll do whatever it fucking takes to keep it that way.”
He turned me out again, toward what I liked to call the “gazing window.”
It was the perfect viewing spot in the room. Especially from the bed.
Also,sì, the bed. While I had been out with Atta,Marito miohad a mattress delivered. It was as soft as a cloud.
The fireplace was roaring, but it could not fully touch where we danced or the bed. It only warmed the space up a little. What it did not touch fully, my husband did.
Perfect.
His hands roamed over my body, over the curves the dress enhanced, and I closed my eyes, hoping he would explore me forever this way. If I were made of glass, his prints would fog over every area he touched, leaving his handprints behind.
I demanded this.
Demanded he brand me down to the bone.
His touch alone burned me. Perhaps it could have been from the high of the day and evening, but I knew it was not—my husband had changed with the new title and role in my life. The look in his eyes had morphed. His touch had transformed. I had never thought it possible, but after sacred vows had been spoken out loud and made between us, he had become more possessive. A look in his eyes that was more proprietary surfaced.
He did not have to speak the words for me to understand.
His eyes.
His touch.
Every breath he took whispered:
Mine.
The whisper would turn into something else entirely, something deadly, if something or someone threatened what was his.
The connection between us.
“Mylife,” he called me in Italian as his hands found the hidden zipper and slowly started to release me from the dress. Once it was done, leaving me only in my lace and tulle light-blue underwear, a bow over myculo, he moved my hair to the side and placed a soft kiss on the nape of my neck. “Mywife.”
I made ammhmmnoise when his warm breath washed across my chilled skin. My hands searched for purchase against the wall, my nails clawing, when he started to suck from my nape to the throbbing pulse in my neck. He was going to mark me there.
Mine.
He could not live without me.
I would sacrifice my blood, sweat, tears,my love,for his life—for the rest of my life.
I could not live without him.
My breath trembled out, and my knees were so weak, I was not sure how much longer I could stand.
My husband could read the signs of my body better than I could.
He set a lingering kiss over the pulse in my neck, where my skin was probably bruised from how hard he had been sucking. Allowing the dress to fall to the floor, he swept me off my feet and carried me to the bed, just as he had carried me over the threshold when he stepped into the cabin after our ceremony was over.
My body felt almost drugged, and when I looked up at him, my eyelids were heavy. Almost too heavy to keep open. Although I felt woozy, almost in a trance, my arms reached out, and my hands started to unbutton his shirt.
Mine.
Our eyes were locked as he set me on my feet, my body close enough to his to feel the heat radiating off him. He exhaled a breath when I reached out, his eyes closing as I continued to undress him. Down to skin, I explored his body with my fingertips only. Over every valley and peak, over every edge and plain.
