That wasn’t what I’d asked her, but a gorgeous blush colored her cheeks, and a mischievous smile came to her face.
One week.
In Fiji, on our private section of the island, she wouldn’t need any clothes. Though taking them off her was addicting. Everything she wore turned me the fuck on.
In the meantime, I was working the ranch. Taking care of odd jobs here and there to prepare for my absence. Sistine wasstill getting used to the villa and the area. After the day Fate had shown everyone how meant to be we were, she seemed more secure, calling it our place, our home. And she was sticking close to me.
Sometimes I would catch a far-off look in her eyes, like something heavy was burdening her. When I’d mention it, she would wave it off, claiming she was just thinking about…life. Looking forward to it like a dream she didn’t want to wake up from.
The way she said it, how fucking sweet, broke my heart.
I walked inside to check on her. We were going out to the stables together, but I had to grab a few things from the tool shed. I wanted to fix that fucking broken sign that came close to breaking my head. My wife told me she’d meet me outside. She wanted to grab a glass of water.
She was at the refrigerator, gazing into space, eating the lemon chicken soup Mamma taught her how to make. Except Sistine made it without the chicken. She said she never had an issue with it before, but it made her nauseous. Basically, she was all about the lemon pasta soup. When I’d mentioned she was eating it, what I fucking meant was that she was almost inhaling it. She was slurping up the pasta straight from the pot, along with carrots, the juice, whatever was in there.
Grinning, I leaned against the wall, watching her. It did my heart good to see her eating as she was. She never had an issue with food, but after she had gotten sick, sometimes she would turn her nose up at certain items. Like the chicken.
She was lost in space, though, almost absentmindedly eating.
What the fuck was on her mind?
It seemed to be weighing on her, and she didn’t want to share it with me. I wanted to steal it from her, like an outlaw.
She turned toward the door and, when she found me standing there, she screamed and flung the pot at me. Therewasn’t much left, but what was still in the pot spread out on the floor. Our two four-legged vacuum cleaners, Apollo and Zeus, were going nuts over it.
I’d caught the pot before it hit the floor, but I looked up, feeling something cold and wet on my forehead. A lone pasta strand.
“Bullseye.” I shook my head, flinging it off.
“Shit!” She slapped a hand to her heart. “You scared it out of me.” My wife shook her head. “For a man who is so solid, you move too lightly. What were you doing?”
“Watching my wife. The honor of my life. You still hungry, Annie?” I set the pot in the sink.
“No, I, ah, had enough. Do not worry about wiping the floor. I am going to clean after we visit the stables.” She went to grab for a napkin, but I took her by her—my—flannel and pulled her in.
I kissed her lips, tasting buttery lemon and a hint of something that was all my wife. When she was dirty, I’d clean her.
She melted into me and whispered, “Seven days, but who is counting?”
“Us,” I said, keeping a grip on her, staring into her eyes. The soup was on my lips, too, and even that small fucking thing made me feel even more connected to her.
Mamma had once told me that love, for lack of a better word, wasn’t in the big gestures, but the small ones. She is a smart woman, my mamma.
Sistine fell into me. When she started to get dazed like that, her eyes softening, melting into mine, I refused to let go. My heart raced, my breath was strained, and my cock got hard. All from looking into her eyes. The whisper of her breath across my lips. The way her hands were soft but held onto me as though they were the strongest fucking things on this earth.
This is a woman.
Mine.
She squeezed my arm and pulled away. Catching her breath. Then she came back for another kiss before she pulled away again. “Did you go to school for this?”
“For kissing?”
Her eyes slowly opened, and a grin stretched her face before she exploded with laughter. Reaching around my hold on her, she smoothed out my eyebrows and made a childish noise at me. “Your forehead wrinkles when something makes you curious, or you cannot figure out what I mean.” The smile seemed glued to her face. “Yes, a kissing school for Fausti men. I do not know how you do it, but you are magical at it. I levitate.”
I grinned at her and kissed her nose. I released the flannel but never her. I took her hand in mine, keeping a solid grip on her in case the floor was slippery, and led her outside. My eyes kept going back to her. I couldn’t fucking look away.
She stopped walking, shielding her eyes with her free hand. “Che cosa?”
