“You love me?” she breathes. “Are you only saying that because Enrique almost killed me?”
“No.” I brush a few strands of hair behind her ear and palm the side of her face. “When the alarm alerted me that you were in danger, I was sitting in the car with my brother, talking to him about you.I was already planning to come home and tell you.” I sigh. “There isn’t much I’m afraid of, Sweetness, but loving you terrifies the shit out of me.”
“What? Why?” She shakes her head. “Loving someone should be beautiful, not scary.”
“Because of that right there.” I run the tip of my finger down her forehead, over her nose, and stop at her plump lips. “You see the beauty and good in everything, and you should. It’s why your father kept you away. But I’ve seen the consequences of loving someone.”
My sister losing her boyfriend and being forced to have an abortion.
My mother being beat down emotionally and physically by Andrey.
Dominick’s son almost being taken twice.
Even Dani’s parents’ deaths are the consequences of Enrique’s love for his parents turning deadly.
“What happened today could easily happen again,” I tell her. “Only with a different outcome. He could’ve killed you the moment he got into the condo, and I would’ve lost you.”
My heart clenches beneath my rib cage at the thought of Dani leaving this world before me, and I pull her into my arms, needing to nuzzle my face into her neck and inhale her sweet scent.
“You should run,” I whisper. “Run fast and far away from here.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she says, pulling back and looking me in the eyes. “I’d rather risk the consequences and spend whatever time I have loving you than being without you.” She slides her leg across my torso and straddles my stomach. “You can’t protect me from everything,” she says, framing my face with her hands. “All you can do is love me.”
She grabs the hem of my shirt, and I help her pull it free. Then, she inches down my body, kissing my skin along the way, until she’s parallel with my crotch. She unbuttons and unzips my pants and pulls them, along with my boxer-briefs, down, exposing my hard shaft.
I lean on my elbows, my blue eyes meeting her green.
“I love you, Matteo,” she says, “and I’m not going anywhere.”
She wraps her fingers around the base of my cock, and then she takes me all the way down her throat. She sucks and slurps and chokes on my cock until her eyes water and I’m close to blowing my load.
But this isn’t how I want to come. I want to be inside Dani, kissing her, touching her, feeling her pussy wrapped around my dick, milking the cum out of me.
So, when she stops to catch her breath, I pull her up and guide her over my cock. We both groan as she takes me inside her, inch by inch, until I fill her completely.
“I never knew it could be like this,” she murmurs against my mouth. “This connection. The desire. I can’t get enough.”
“It’s you,” I tell her, gripping her waist so I can fuck her from the bottom. “Your sweetness is addictive.”
She rests her hands on my shoulders and looks at me with so much emotion. It’s as if she can see into my soul.
“No.” She shakes her head. “It’s not me … it’s us.”
Us.
Dani and me.
“I want you,” I tell her. “I want to pursue whatever this thing is between us, but …” I swallow thickly, wondering if what I’m about to say will force things between us to end before they’ve even started. “But I don’t want what my brother has,” I admit. “I don’t want kids. It’s bad enough that your life is at risk. And add in all the ways I’m fucked up—between my emotional dysregulation and dyslexia?—”
“Hey,” she says, pressing the pad of her finger to my lips. “You are not fucked up, and if our children were born with either of those disabilities, they wouldn’t be either. They would be loved and cared for, and you would never let them struggle. But if you don’t want babies … then I’m okay with that.”
“Just like that?” I ask, shocked that she would change the entirecourse of her life for me. “You said you wanted a family that included kids.”
“And I do,” she admits. “I always thought that, one day, I’d have kids, and I hoped I would be close with them. I love my parents, but I hated that they sent me away to keep me safe. And then they were killed. Everything they did to keep me safe, and in the end, they still died way too soon.
“Between losing them and thinking my life was about to end, thanks to Enrique, I don’t want to take life for granted. Amid all the chaos, I found you. I’ve dated over the years, but nobody made me feel the love and happiness that I feel when I’m with you. And if being with you means it’s only us, then that’s enough for me.”
Fuck, this woman. She’s everything I swore I never wanted yet can no longer live without.
