“More,” he said.
She walked behind him, ran tender fingers over the spot where the bullet had struck. “You’ve got hella bruise. Are you in pain?”
“My balls are killing me.”
On a laugh, she faced him, threw her arms around him and hugged him hard. “You are an amazing man, Gabriel Santini. I love you, but not because you saved my life?—”
“I owed you,” he said. “You broke that Bratva’s neck.”
“And you saved me from Donskoy,” she said. “This is a bizarre competition.”
“I’m not competing with you,” he said. “I’m trying to keep the woman I’ve fallen crazy, madly in love with alive long enough to marry?—”
Silence.
He’d said too much. Way, way too much.
Up went her eyebrows, her ravenous gaze searching his face for an answer. With joy radiating from her eyes, she said, “Let’s get you in the shower, then I’ll take good, good care of you, my baby.”
Into the shower they went. With a tenderness he’d never known, she washed him. Every inch of him from his hair to his feet. Gazing down at his woman, he felt like the luckiest man. He’d found someone who adored him forhim, not for his wealth or his power or even something he could do for her.
When she finished, she caressed his shaft. “I want us to make love in bed, but I also want to take care of you now. Something special just for you.”
“What about you?” he asked. “I want to take care of you, babe.”
“You do,” she replied. “In so many amazing ways. Let me do this for you. Just a little thank you.”
She knelt at his feet, took him into her mouth and twirled her tongue around the head. Pleasure replaced pain. Desire replaced fury.
As the water sluiced his bruised back, he watched with great interest as she caressed his balls, inched his hardness into her mouth. Gentle licks turned into intense sucking as she unleashed her energies onto him, taking him in deeper and deeper into her mouth. Her throaty groans sent him hurtling toward an orgasm, but when she took himallthe way in, then flicked her hooded gaze at him, he exploded inside her.
The climax shot out of him, the ecstasy erasing the insanity that had become his life. Peace blanketed him, enveloping his angry heart with love.
When he stopped, she slowly pulled him out. Rising, she stood on her toes and kissed him.
“I love you,” she whispered.
He held her close, allowing her love to fill him with certainty. She was his woman. This was it.
Him. Her. Together. Forever.
“I love you,” he replied, “and I would take a bullet for you again, if that’s what it takes to keep you by my side.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, “but all I need is you.”
He insisted on washing her off, appreciating her curves and silky skin. They dried off, got into bed.
“I’m on birth control. I want you to know why.”
He waited.
“I wasn’t sexually active in Russia, but I was advised to go on the Pill by someone I respect at work. She was concerned that if I got sexually assaulted over there?—”
“That’s what she told you?”
“It was hard to hear, but she had a point, so I went on birth control. I’ve never had a chance to try out the efficacy of it.”
He chuffed out a laugh. “Between you and Teddy, it’s like I’m in grad school.”
