I take him all the way. Every inch. Until I'm sitting on his hips with him buried as deep as he can go. We're both breathing hard and his hand is gripping my thigh and the bandage on his arm is white against his skin and the stitches are holding and he's looking up at me with an expression I've never seen on his face before.
Not just want. Not just need. Gratitude and love. The emotions of a man who got shot and came home and the woman he loves is on top of him and alive and real and here.
I start to move, slow at first, rising and falling, feeling every inch of him drag against me. His hand moves from my thigh to my hip, guiding me, not controlling, just touching. His eyes don't leave my face. He watches me ride him with the focused intensity of a man who is memorizing this moment, memorizing it, keeping it somewhere the world can't reach.
The pace builds. I brace my hands on his chest and ride him harder, his hips start meeting mine from below, thrusting up to meet me, and the depth changes and the angle hits the place inside me that makes everything go white at the edges. I lean back, change the angle, take him deeper, and the sound that comes out of both of us is animalistic.
"Harder," I moan.
His hand grips my hip and pulls me down as he drives up and the impact rattles through my whole body. I brace against his chest, and he does it again, and again, and the rhythm we build together is urgent and desperate and the headboard hits the wall, and I don't care.
The world could end right this second and I’d welcome it with open arms so long as I died with his perfect cock fucking up my pussy.
His hand moves between my legs, thumb finding my clit while he fucks me from below, and the dual pressure builds fast, faster than I'm ready for, the orgasm coming together in my core from every direction at once.
"I'm going to come," I tell him because he deserves the warning and also because saying it out loud makes it hit harder.
"Fuck yes, vixen, come for me, give it all to me."
I come like I’ve never come before. The orgasm tears through me in waves that start between my legs and spread outward until my arms give out and I collapse forward onto his chest. He drives up into me twice more, three more, his good hand locked around my waist, and he follows me with a groan that I feel in his chest and in my bones, buried deep, pulsing, his face pressed into my neck.
We stay there. Breathing like we’ve just run a fucking marathon. His arm around me, the good one, holding me against him with a grip that says he's not letting go anytime soon. His heart is hammering under my ear, fast and hard and alive. The sound is the best sound in this building and I will never get tired of listening to it.
"Hey, asshole," I say against his neck.
"Yes, vixen."
"Don't ever get shot again."
"I'll try."
"Don't try. Do."
"I can't promise that."
"Then promise me you'll always come home, even if you’re coming home with a hole or two."
His arm tightens and his lips press against my hair. "I promise. Every fucking time, even if I have to crawl over shards of glass, I’m coming back to you. No matter what... I come home to you."
I close my eyes. His heartbeat under my ear. The bandage on his arm, white and clean, the stitches holding. His body is so perfectly warm and alive beneath mine.
This man is going to drive me insane for the rest of my life. He's going to make jokes when he should be serious and get shot when he should be safe and grin when he should be scared and love me louder than any person has loved me.
And I'm going to let him. Because the alternative is going back to the life I had before him, and that life has nothing in it that comes close to the feeling of this man's heartbeat under my ear after he came home alive.
Gigi would say I picked a dangerous one, a gorgeous one, and an insane one all in one package.
Gigi would also say those ones are the only ones worth keeping.
Chapter Nineteen: Emilio
Leonesendstheletteron a Wednesday, a full week after the meeting with Renzo.
I know because I'm standing in his office when he seals the envelope and hands it to a courier I've never seen before, a man in civilian clothes with a face nobody would remember and a car nobody would follow. The letter is written in Aurelio's name, per the old man's instructions, and Leone's handwriting fills the page because Aurelio's hands couldn't hold a pen by the end. Inside the envelope contains everything we found out about Kreiss.
"How do we know it gets there?" I ask.
"Aurelio's instructions included a delivery protocol." Leone sets down the pen and leans back in his chair. He looks better than he did a week ago. The bags under his eyes are still there, but the hollowness behind them has filled. The Don is settling intothe role. "The Harrisons will receive it within forty-eight hours. What they do with it is their business."
