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My hands grip her ass, holding so damn tight because she’s my anchor to the world. My damnation and salvation. And watching her like this? It’s already more than I can handle.

This is different from every other time we’ve been together. There’s no desperation, no attempt to possess. This is simply love—pure and honest and healing.

“God,” I groan, voice hoarse. “I forgot how good this feels—withyou.”

She opens her eyes—dark, hungry—and rides me harder, faster, her hands braced on my shoulders. But her body? Her body gives me everything.

And I take it. Every last aching, beautiful second of her.

She moves like she knows exactly what she’s doing to me—rolling her body like a tide she’s trying to outrun. Every rollof her hips, every clench of her inner muscles around my cock, drives me closer to the edge I’m barely holding.

My jaw clenches. My abs twitch. Sweat beads at my temple, and I hold her harder. I don’t dare let go. She’s too beautiful like this—hair sticking to her neck, lips parted, flushed all over as she rides me like I’m hers to ruin.

“Jesus, baby,” I grit out, eyes glued to where our bodies meet, to the way she takes me so deep I feel it in my spine. “You’re killing me.”

She leans forward slightly, shifting the angle, and my whole body tenses. Her breasts brush my chin, swaying with every motion, and I have to fight the instinct to thrust up into her.

Her breath stutters. Her nails dig into my shoulders. She’s close—I can feel it in the way her movements start to falter, just a little, like she’s trying to keep control but losing it, too.

My vision narrows. My pulse pounds.

“Don’t stop,” I whisper, voice breaking. “Just like that. I’m?—”

She slams down one last time, her body trembling, muscles clenching around me. She lets out a raw and desperate strangled cry as she shatters above me, head thrown back, hair wild, her spine arching in a perfect bow.

A scream tears from her throat, high and unrestrained, just as her inner walls flutter and clamp, ripping through my self-control.

I lose it.

My orgasm detonates, white-hot and all-consuming. My cock throbs deep inside her, spilling into that tight, trembling heat as my hips jerk up once, twice, uselessly chasing more friction.

“Fuck, Aria…” I groan her name, every muscle locked tight as wave after wave crashes through me.

She collapses against me, breath hitching, skin slick with sweat, still pulsing around me as aftershocks ripple through her.Her thighs shake. Her fingers grip my arms like anchors. Her lips brush my throat, open and panting.

We’re a mess of limbs and gasps and heat, tangled in a climax that feels like it’s still echoing through both of us.

I don’t know where I end and she begins.

And I never want to know.

She shifts off me, and we sink into each other with care, breathless and spent. I take her into my arms, against the side of my chest that’s uninjured, and her body molds to mine. Our breathing slowly returns to normal, and she looks up at me with those gorgeous, wonderful eyes.

“I love you,” she whispers against my neck.

“I love you, too,” I reply, my arms tightening around her. “Always have. Always will.”

We lie there in comfortable silence, skin cooling, bodies still joined, and I realize something has fundamentally shifted between us.

The war is over—not because one of us won, but because we finally chose each other over everything else.

There’s no winning in love—only choosing. And this time, we finally chose right.

EPILOGUE

ARIA

Sunlight pours through the massive windows, right into the heart of our home. The Bianchi estate looks beautiful at this hour, and I smile at how happy my heart is and how full my home feels.