The stretch is intense. I’m soaking wet, but he’s big. He knows it too. He watches me, eyes dark with concentration and a kind of reverence that undoes me. Even having done this already, it's like starting all over again as he stretches me, fills me in one slow push.
I breathe through the initial burn, through the intensity of being so full, I can feel it in my lungs, in every breath I take. He fits inside me like he was made for me, every inch of him a claim. He’s holding me still, letting me adjust. My body trembles.
“Take it,” he growls, voice rough with control. “All of it.”
I nod, unable to speak.
He’s watching me so intently, seeing everything. I lift my head, meet his eyes. The moonlight is in them. I rock my hips, a small, experimental movement. He sucks in a breath. The friction sends sparks skittering through me.
I do it again, and this time, I move more purposefully, taking him deeper. The water moves around us, a warm, liquid caress that only adds to the friction. Pleasure licks up my spine, hot and sweet.
I set a slow, steady rhythm, rising and falling, my hands braced on his shoulders, my eyes locked with his.
The sounds I make are half-swallowed by the night. The slap of skin is muffled by the water, but it’s there, a primal beat. The jets bubble against my back, a constant, tingling sensation. He starts to move with me, lifting his hips to meet my downward strokes, pushing deeper, hitting a spot inside me that makes stars burst behind my eyes.
“Gio,” I gasp.
He knows.
His name from my lips is a trigger. He grabs my hips, takes over, and the rhythm breaks. He pounds into me, fast and hard, and the pleasure builds to an impossible peak. My vision whites out. My body clamps down on him, wave after wave of release so intense it’s almost painful.
He follows me over, a deep groan against my neck as he shudders and empties himself into me.
We float like that for a long time, the warm water holding us, the night sky a blanket of stars above. His forehead rests against mine. Our breathing is the only sound.
I feel sated. Peaceful. Boneless.
And also utterly terrified.
I’ve let him in. Not just physically. He’s right here, embedded in the center of everything, in the quiet spaces I’ve guarded for years.
Giovanni brushes a wet strand of hair from my cheek, his touch firm, less comforting than claiming. “Don’t drift away from me,” he says, his voice low, rough. “Tell me what’s in that head of yours.”
The command—so direct, so impossibly cutting—nearly unravels me
“Us,” I whisper before I can stop myself. “I’m thinking about us.”
He pulls back just enough to study me, his gaze sharp, unshielded in a way that steals my breath.
“Good,” he says, like it’s an order, like it’s the only answer he’ll accept. “Because I’m thinking about us too.”
Then he kisses me—slow, deliberate, a kiss that doesn’t soften him but stakes a claim. Something solid. Something that feels inescapably real.
The fear recedes, just a little.
And in its place, something far more dangerous begins to bloom: hope.
Chapter Twenty Eight
Giovanni
I hold her while the water cools around us.
My mind is quiet, a rarity I’ve only ever found with her. The vineyard, the family, the whole damn mess of it all fades to a distant hum. There’s only the woman in my arms, the feel of her skin, the scent of her hair mixed with the night-blooming jasmine.
She feels it too. I know she does. It’s not just this, the sex. It’s everything. The way she looked at me on that balcony, the trust it took to step into this water with me. The way she justcompletely gave herself over to me. That’s not something you can fake.
This thing between us is real.
