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I don’t answer. I just hold tighter.

He staggers to the bedroom, carrying me. I wrap my arms around his neck, legs around his waist, dizzy from the sheer filth of how good this feels—how completely he owns my body in this moment with his face nestled between my breasts, my head thrown into his neck. I bite. He growls.

We crash onto the bed in a tangle of limbs, but he’s already moving, already pressing me into the mattress with his weight. His hips pound upward, each one rougher than the last. I cry out as he pounds into me, raw and brutal, his breath ragged against my cheek.

“Jesus, you feel like you were made to fit me,” he groans, each thrust harder than the last, like he’s chasing something just out of reach.

My nails rake down his back, catching on the ridges of muscle as we move together in a rhythm that’s frantic and wet and raw.

“You feel this?” he growls, one hand sliding between us to circle my clit. “Feel what you do to me?”

“That doesn’t change what you did. You still don’t get to keep me,” I pant, but my legs lock tighter around him, dragging him deeper.

“Youlovethis,” he says through gritted teeth, and he’s not wrong. Not with the way my body arches to take more, not with the way I’m trembling under him, already close again.

He pins my wrists above my head and drives into me so deep, I see stars.

“Is this what you needed?” he asks, his voice strained with the effort of holding back. “To be fucked like this? To be reminded who you belong to?”

I whimper.

“Say it,” he growls again, each drive of his hips hitting deep, brutal, and perfect.

“You,” I gasp, writhing beneath him. “You’remaking me come—fuck—Marco, I?—”

He angles his hardness higher, hits me right where the coil sits waiting to spring free. I scream out in pleasure, throw my head back.

“Yes,” I cry, the word ripped from my throat as he drives me closer to the edge. “Yes, God, yes.”

“You’re mine,” he growls, the possessive claim sending a thrill through me despite everything. “Mine to protect. Mine to pleasure. Mine to love.”

The word “love” slips out, hanging in the air between us, but before I can process it, he pounds into that perfect spot inside me that makes coherent thought impossible.

My body arches off the bed, his name torn from my throat in a half-sob, half-snarl. I clamp down around him, shuddering, “I’m close,” I warn, feeling the tension building to an unbearable peak. “Marco, I’m going to?—”

“Come for me.” He licks my neck. “Let me feel you come around me.”

“I should hate you,” I gasp, clinging to his back, lost in the rhythm.

“Then do it,” he growls, “but know this—if hating me means keeping you close, I’ll take it. Every time.”

He thrusts deeper, punishing, reverent.

“Because you were always the only thing that mattered.”

The orgasm crashes over me like a tidal wave, starting at my core and radiating outward until even my fingertips tingle with pleasure. My legs tremble against his hips as waves of pleasure tear through me, fast and wild and all-consuming. My inner walls clamp down around him,waves of ecstasy washing through me. I cry out his name, the sound raw and broken, as my body convulses beneath his.

He follows me over the edge moments later, his rhythm faltering as he drives into me one final time, burying himself to the hilt as he empties himself inside me. His groan is animalistic, primal, a sound of complete surrender that matches my own.

We collapse together onto the mattress, his weight pressing me into the sheets for a moment before he rolls to the side, keeping one arm draped possessively across my waist. My body feels boneless, sated in a way I haven’t experienced since I left him.

His fingers trace idle patterns on my skin, skimming over my hip, my waist, my stomach—where our child grows. The tenderness of it pulls something tight in my chest, a lump rising in my throat before I can stop it.

“You don’t hate me, Aria. You’re just afraid you still love me. Whatever happens next… I’ll never stop protecting you.”

I don’t answer. I can’t. The ache in his voice blends with the warmth of his touch, softening something inside me I thought was locked shut.

Sleep takes me between one breath and the next, my body too exhausted to fight it. The last thing I feel is Marco’s lips at my temple, a flurry of kisses like a promise I’m too tired to believe—but too desperate to push away.