We faced off as a warm, fine mist seemed to cling to us.
“You left me,” I accused.
He shrugged. “Felt like going for a run.”
“It is past midnight.”
He shrugged.
“For another woman,” I rasped out. “You left me for another woman.”
“Fuck if I did.” His eyes narrowed.
“In my dream,” I said. “Not just one woman. A gaggle of women.”
“A gaggle of women.”
“Yes.” I nodded, my hands turning into fists. “A gaggle of horny women.”
He noticed. He spoke in Italian. “Put your weapons away, my wife. No need for them. You.” He nodded at me. “You wounded me. You carved my heart out. Set it before an enemy. You didn’t even fucking tell me.” He hit his heart.
“Correct, I did not tell.” I lifted my chin. “At the time, life was…going in ways I did not expect. The maze was to prove?—”
“Fuck the test merepeoplemade to prove something to everyone but us. We know. So, fuck everyone who needed proof. I need no proof. All I need is the truth. I fucking have it. I’ve had it since the moment we met. I thought that was all you needed too.”
“I did not need the proof either. I knew it the moment our eyes met for the first time as well. Your heart is not the only one who speaks to you. Mine is loud as well. Or I would not have gambled with your life, Mariano Fausti, by going through with any test. If I was not one hundred percent sure of what exists between us, I would not have agreed. I would have walked away from you rather than lose the one person on this earth who was meant forme.
“If you are not breathing, neither am I. In this life and all others, it isus. The connection we share—I know it is rare, priceless, as priceless as this ring on my ring finger.” I lifted it, and in the glow of the full moon, the red diamond was coated in liquid mercury, gliding over the diamonds around it, making them shimmer. “A symbol of who you are to me. Sent by God above to be my one and only.”
However, all this hyperbole…and he was right. What I had done…I had done to shove the truth in my family’s face, but perhaps he did not realize how deep the truth went for me.
“I admit,” I continued, my chin held high, “I had something to prove. I wanted my family and the extended parts of yours to know. To know how powerful the connection between us runs. No one could come between us. Not my father, my sister, and no challenger in your war-thirsty family. I dare them all to stand and challenge what no man is allowed to—a union God and His hand, fate, has brought together and made one. A man and his wife. A woman and her husband. Mariano Leone Fausti and Sistine Evita Fausti.”
I was trembling at the truth in my words.
He was trembling as he received them.
“As far as Ig?—”
He was on me. His hands in my hair, his mouth pressed to mine. Our tongues were at war. He pulled my head back by my hair, looking into my eyes. “Don’t fucking say his name.” His mouth was on mine again.
My back hit a hard surface—a place to store outside equipment, it seemed. I could hear the pitter patter of rain as it seemed to hit the tin roof. I was soaked, my thin cotton nightgown sheer in the light of the moon, clinging to my skin, my breasts and nipples showing through. The wig between my legs was dark against the pink of my flesh. I was not only soaked from the rain, but from what this man did to me with a touch.
Even with the constant flow of water, my body was on fire.
His hand roamed up to my outer thigh, my breaths meeting his breaths as his mouth devoured mine. “You.” He kissed me again. “Your silence fucking breaks my heart, while your words mend it.” He lifted me up, and my legs automatically went around his waist. He kissed a trail down my neck, sucking at my pulse point, before lowering to the spot over my heart. He wasgoing to leave passion bruises all over my skin. Branding me with his kisses.
My hand dug into his hair when he sucked so hard, it felt as if my uterus had contracted.
Death awakens us.
I felt consumed, but also so alive—the mist clinging to my face, how internally I was hot, but my skin was pebbled with a chill that was not in the air. The way my husband’s mouth felt as if it was a flame against my skin as he claimed it for his own—over and over. He demanded to go deeper than skin. He wanted in my bloodstream, down to the marrow of my bone.
“I feel you there, my husband,” I barely got out in Italian, moaning into the night.
“Keep me there,” he replied in the same language. “Keep me there as your knight and your shield.”
My feet lowered his soaked pants, and his cock sprang free, his sword. He entered me on a thrust that sent my back up the wall. I gasped and he groaned. I locked my legs around his toned waist, feeling his muscles tremble beneath my palms. I demanded to keep the feeling locked inside of me, him locked inside of me, in case I was ever lost. His fire would direct me in the deepest nights of my life. I would see the glow, feel the warmth all the way down to marrow, and follow the direction of my heart—straight to his.
