He smiled against my hip.
He climbed up, settling the hard length of his cock against my slick entrance. He paused there—the small ceremonial hesitation that asked, Are you with me? Are you here?—and she lifted her hips. The answer was yes, had always been yes since that very first time. He slid into me with the careful, slow attention of a man who’d learned every inch of me in eight months and wasn’t about to rush now.
I let out a soft, needy moan.
“There she is,” he murmured, voice low and reverent. “My good girl.”
“Pietro.”
He met my eyes without blinking. Then he moved—inch by inch—just as he had for the first hundred nights, before anything ever sped up. He held my gaze, the collar glinting at her throat, my wrists bound above my head with pale silk. On the table fifteen feet away, the new contract dried in ink; the old one lay face down beneath it. The future was happening right here, in each deliberate stroke.
“Nothing carried alone,” he whispered against her lips, the tip of his cock brushing my most sensitive spot.
“Nothing carried alone,” I echoed, breath trembling.
“Say it again.”
“Nothing carried alone, Pietro.”
“Together.”
“Together.”
He pressed just hard enough, just fast enough to send a tremor through my core. He read my body perfectly and gave precisely what I needed—no more, no less.
“Ask, baby.”
“Please.”
“Please what?”
“Please, can I—”
His thumb brushed my clit in a slow circle, lighting my nerves on fire. “Yes,” he growled.
I came with a strangled cry, my walls clenching around him, the world narrowing to exquisite heat. He stayed deep, letting my ride out every shudder, then started again, guiding me through wave after wave of pleasure.
“Again,” he whispered, palm pressing into her lower back.
“I can’t—”
“You can,” he insisted, voice thick.
“Pietro.”
“My good girl can. Ask.”
“Please.”
I shattered a second time, my body folding into his, every muscle trembling in raw release. He remained unmoving until my breathing steadied, then slipped out of my wet, welcoming heat.
He reached up and gently unwrapped the silk from my wrists, kissed the tender red marks at each wrist where the ties had been, then laid my arms on the cool linen.
We lay quiet. The fire had died to glowing embers; the lamp cast a soft, golden glow across their sweat-slicked skin. The only sound in the room was our slowing breaths.
The collar still circled my throat; I didn’t want to remove it. I lifted my left hand, letting the lamp catch the slender ring on my finger: the same gold as the collar, the same offcuts, the same loving hands that had set them both on me.
On the small table by the door, the new contract gleamed under the lamp, its ink set and final. Beneath it, face down, laythe old draft—the pencil version of two people afraid in different ways on the same night.
He stroked the back of my neck, his thumb resting on the knob of bone at the base of my skull—the same comforting touch he’d used every morning since we’d been together.
“Where are you, baby?”
I pressed my cheek into his chest. “Here.”
His arm tightened.
“Home,” I whispered.
