We stay like that, completely wrecked.I can still feel him inside me, every twitch, every pulse.My body doesn’t know how to let him go.I’m shaking, breath shattered, skin slick with sweat and sex.Branded.Ruined in the best fucking way.And I’d take it all over again just to feel him lose control for me.
The only sound is our breathing, rough and uneven, hearts pounding out of rhythm, like neither of us has quite come back to earth yet.
The silence stretches.His body still pressed to mine, the room dim and still, the air warm with everything we just gave each other.
And yet, there it is.That feeling I swore I’d buried.
It hits soft at first, like breath against skin.
Then deeper.
Heavier.
That ache I’ve carried for him.The love I tried so hard to forget.The kind that hurts more than it heals.
I thought I walked away from it.Told myself it was the only way to protect what was left of me. Told myself he was too far gone, too walled off, too broken for me to reach anymore.His father had won.Molded him into exactly what he wanted.This cold person, he could control.Lost and untouchable to me anymore.
But here I am, his body still inside mine, his breath ghosting against my neck and that feeling is back.That quiet, steady pulse of something I never stopped feeling.God, I loved him.I still fucking do.Even when I swore I’d moved on.
He moves, just barely.One hand drags slowly up my side, over my ribs, over the curve of my waist, until his palm rests flat over my stomach.Not possessive.Not rough.But just there.
His mouth finds my shoulder.Not with hunger.Not with heat.With something else.Something softer.
He presses his lips there, slow and warm as if he’s holding a memory between us, afraid it’ll slip away if he breathes too hard.His breath ghosts across my skin, and then his lips find me again.It’s softer this time.A tiny kiss lands on my shoulder, full of hesitation, as if he’s not ready to let go.
And for a second, just one quiet second, it feels like love.The kind that never needed words. The kind that never really left.Just a kiss that lands deeper than any thrust ever could.
And I feel it.
Not dominance.
Not control.
But recognition.
He remembers.What we were.What we lost.And maybe, for one fleeting second, what we still are.
And standing there, chest aching, heart wide open in the arms of the only man I ever truly loved.I realize the scariest part isn’t that I still feel it.It’s that he feels it too, even if he’ll never say it out loud.
Chapter Thirteen
Matteo
Eight Years Ago
I’m seventeen.
One more week till eighteen.
One more week till I’m supposed to be a man when I don’t even know how to fucking breathe yet.
It already feels as if life’s got its boot jammed against my throat, pressing down harder every time I try to lift my head.I’m bleeding out slowly… one dream at a time.
The weight of it sinks into my bones, tattoos itself into every fucked-up inch of me.Heavy in my chest.Heavy in my blood.Like every scar I’ve seen, every bruise I’ve earned, is being sewn into my skin with wire instead of thread.
When I’m lying next to Emery, the world stops.The weight doesn’t vanish, it’s still pressing on me, but it freezes.The universe hands me one goddamn second to feel.To breathe.To exist.To remember I’m not just the machine my father made me into.I’m more than the weapon.I’m still human.At least with her.
For this second, I’m not his heir, his weapon, or his fucking puppet.I’m just a seventeen-year-old kid.A kid who still wants things he’s not supposed to want.
