“Tell me I can keep you.” His voice is a low, broken whimper, meant for me alone. I reach for his hand, still bracing his weight beside my head, and thread my fingers through his. The cool metal of his ring bites against my skin, sharp and familiar, sendsa shiver through me. He never took it off, even as he was cursing my name and moving to Turin, and that truth ignites something feral beneath my ribs.
I squeeze his hand, holding on, aching for him even as he’s still inside me, every inch of me trembling. My body betrays me, alight with want, even as my heart breaks beneath him, raw and exposed. I’m falling apart, and yet I’d hold this moment forever if I could.
“Keep me, use me. Show me who owns me, Daddy,” I rasp, hyperaware of the cameras on us. With a curse, the pace of his hips becomes bruising, like he’s trying to split me open and meld us together permanently. I take it while moaning, telling him how much I love it, how I want more, how he’s the best I’ve ever had.
“Pussy so good, I never want this to end.”
“Please Daddy, I want your cum. I want it so bad, I need it. Need it deep inside me, so deep it can’t spill out.Please.” My begging sets him off, and with a curse, he comes deep inside my body, taking me right over that edge with him.
As the warmth of his cum deep inside me mixes with the feeling of his sweaty shirt against my back sinks in, I think to myself I could stay here forever.
He shifts slightly, sliding off me, and I feel the cool emptiness where he was, my body still shaking with my comedown. Before I can move, he’s at the tripod, hands deftly shutting down the camera. The soft click of it powering off makes the room feel suddenly private, almost sacred.
I roll onto my back, trying to catch my breath, a small, satisfied ache settling low in me. My body wants to move, to shift, to follow him, but before I can, his voice cuts through softly, but firmly.
“Stay still.”
I glance up, and he’s already gone, disappearing into the other room. My pulse hammers in my ears as I wait, muscles tense and wanting, my skin still alive from him. Moments later, he returns, a damp towel in his hand.
He kneels beside me, eyes dark and unreadable, the kind of look that makes my chest tighten and my pulse stutter. Without a word, he leans down, pressing the cool cloth to my skin, tracing over me with deliberate care. Every touch is slow, intimate, claiming, even after everything that just happened.
I shiver, part from lingering desire, part from the quiet intensity of him, the way he takes care of me without asking, without needing permission. My fingers find his, lacing through them, holding on like I never want to let go.
Then he leans closer, his breath hot against my ear, “You’re my past, my present, my fucking forever. I’m done letting them keep us apart. Done standing aside when I should be fighting. We are endgame, baby. We always have been.”
Something inside me shifts. The weight I’ve carried for months, the doubt, the fear, the distance, it all melts away in the heat of his certainty. For the first time, I feel it—unshakable, unbreakable, ours.
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding, heart pounding, eyes brimming, and I know, in a way I’ve never known before, that nothing—not the past, not anyone else, not even the world itself—could ever pull us apart again.
Chapter 41
Lily’s still asleep when my phone vibrates against the nightstand the next morning.
She’s sprawled across the bed, hair a dark spill over the pillow, lashes fluttering faintly as she dreams. She looks peaceful, and so dangerously unaware of the war raging inside my chest. She looks like sin and salvation wrapped up in silk sheets, and for a second, I consider letting the phone keep ringing until it dies.
But I’m already lying to half the people who matter. Ignoring this won’t make it better.
Antonio’s reply to my carefully constructed story about a deal going sideways back home—and my conveniently vague timelinefor returning—had been full of suspicion. It’s clear he doesn’t like not knowing when I’ll be back, and he definitely doesn’t like being shut out. The fact he thinks I’m in London instead of Lyon, tangled up with the one woman I shouldn’t be anywhere near, only makes the knot in my gut tighter.
With a quiet curse, I ease out of bed and grab the phone before it can wake her.
The name on the screen stops me short.
Owen.
I step into the kitchen, the tiles cold under my bare feet. Her presence lingers everywhere—her perfume clinging to the air, sweet and warm, like she might appear behind me at any second and wrap herself around my waist.
The phone rings again.
“Owen?” I murmur, voice still rough with sleep.
His voice comes through urgently, talking a hundred miles an hour like stopping for breath is a waste of time he can’t afford. “We’ve got movement. There’s a shipment coming out of Turin tonight or tomorrow. Nico’s signature is all over the paperwork, and I don’t think—”
“This shipment isn’t wine,” I cut him off, dragging a hand through my hair. My chest tightens, and I feel the heat of adrenaline threading through my veins. The truth settles over me like a weight I can’t shrug off.
“Exactly.”
I glance back towards the bedroom door, pulse thudding loud in my ears. Lily’s in there. Asleep, safe, unaware that the fragile pocket of normal we’ve carved out for ourselves is already collapsing.
