In one fluid motion, he hooks his fingers into the waistband of my pants and rips them down over my hips, taking my underwear with them. Cool air hits my heated skin, and I shiver violently, my thighs trembling as he yanks the fabric past my knees and my ankles until I’m bare beneath him.
He pauses for one heartbeat, just long enough to look. His gaze rakes over me like fire, hungry with want. I feel exposed in a way that has nothing to do with nakedness and everything to do with the way he’s seeing me. Not just my body, but the marks—the proof—of the secret I kept from him for three years.
Heat rushes to my face before I can stop it.
Instinct takes over. My hands move quickly to cover the stretch marks along my skin. I’m not ashamed of them, not usually. They are proof of Luca, proof that I survived something beautiful and terrifying all at once. Proof that Dante and I are forever tied together, whether the world approves of it or not.
But under his gaze, vulnerability blooms. This is the first time he is seeing the aftermath, the silent story my body tells of the child I hid from him. For a fleeting second, I’m afraid to know what he sees when he looks at me now.
Dante’s brow furrows and he shakes his head almost immediately, a quiet disapproval flashing across his features. Not at me, but at the way I try to shield myself from him. Hishands close gently around my wrists before I can pull away, firm but careful as he lifts them.
“Don’t,” he murmurs.
He draws my hands away from my body, ignoring the faint resistance in my muscles. Unexpectedly, he laces our fingers together. The gesture is more intimate than I expect, leaving me no room to hide. His thumbs brush lightly over my knuckles and when I finally gather the courage to look up at him, the intensity in his expression steals the breath from my lungs again.
“Beautiful,” he breathes, the word rough with emotion. “So… unbelievably beautiful.”
The sincerity in his voice cracks something open inside my chest.
For a moment, I can’t speak. All I can do is stare at him, stunned by the tenderness threaded through his tone and the quiet reverence of a man realizing what was created in his absence. His gaze softens further, his thumb lifting to brush along my cheek in a touch so gentle, it makes my eyes sting unexpectedly.
“You carried our son. You brought him into this world. There is nothing about you I could ever see as anything less than extraordinary,” he says quietly, bringing my hands up to kiss each knuckle.
Emotion swells painfully in my chest, nearly too big to contain.
He lowers himself again, letting my hands go while his broad shoulders force my thighs wider. His mouth trails a devastating path down my stomach until his breath ghosts hot and unsteadily against the slick heat between my legs.
His tongue drags up me in one long, slow stroke. The sound that tears out of me is unrecognizable, primal. My hips buck off thecushions to grind against his mouth, but he pins me down with one heavy forearm over my stomach and the other latched onto my right leg. He presses it back, holding me open for him while he licks again, circling my clit with the tip of his tongue before sucking it gently between his lips.
Stars explode behind my eyes. My hands fly down to his hair. Every flick, every slow drag of that incredible tongue makes my body jolt. My thighs tremble around his head, muscles clenching and releasing as pleasure coils tighter in my belly.
He groans against me, the vibration sending shockwaves straight through my core. His tongue laps at the slick leaking out of me, sliding it inside my hot, aching core. I’m so pent up that I’m shattering before I even have a chance to soak it all in. He works me through my orgasm, drawing out every aftershock until I’m a whimpering mess.
When he finally lifts his head, his mouth glistens. “I could live between your legs for the rest of my life and it still wouldn’t be enough.”
He crawls back over my body, kissing every inch of skin he passes until he’s hovering over me again, his forehead pressed to mine. I reach for him with trembling hands at the same time one of his own moves between my thighs again. Two fingers are pressed against my entrance, slipping inside easily. The first stroke of his fingers makes me moan.
“Fuck,” he breathes against my mouth. “You’re so wet for me. You’ve always been so fucking perfect for me.”
The orgasm rips through me like wildfire. My walls pulse and flutter around his fingers, greedily trying to keep him inside even as the pleasure crests and crashes over me. My thighs shakeviolently around his wrist, hips jerking in helpless little spasms while I sob his name.
“Please,” I beg. “Please, Dante. I need you inside me.Now.”
My body clenches around nothing for a second when he pulls his fingers out of me. I’m left feeling empty and desperate, aching so fiercely, it borders on painful. The sudden absence is unbearable. My body mourns him instantly, slick and fluttering uselessly around nothing.
He leans back just enough to unbuckle the front of his pants, practically ripping the button apart in his haste to wrestle himself free. His cock springs out as soon as he shoves his pants past his hips, too impatient to strip himself any further.
He looks painfully hard, the head of his cock beading with precum and flushed dark in the low light. Thick veins run along the length of him, pulsing visibly with every frantic beat of his heart. He’s so rigid he curves upward, the tip already weeping, smearing a wet streak across the pristine white shirt covering his lower stomach when he shifts.
I can’t look away from him. My mouth waters, my core throbbing in answer. I reach for him without thinking, my fingers wrapping around the hot length of him. The sound he makes is guttural, almost wounded, and his hips jerk forward into my grip involuntarily like he can’t help himself.
“Elena,” he chokes out, his eyes fluttering closed. “Fuck—don’t. Not yet. I’m too close.”
But I don’t stop. I stroke up him, my thumb sweeping over the slick head to spread the precum down the shaft. He shudders violently, one hand gripping the back of the couch to steady himself so hard, the couch shakes with it.
A muscle tics in his jaw like he’s fighting not to come right there in my hands.
“Look at me,” I whisper, echoing the command he always used to love giving me.
