Page 15

NERISSA

It's only four in the afternoon, but I’m curled up in our bed with wet hair and wearing one of Nesto's t-shirts. Zero defenses.

He had to take a call from Domenico when we arrived, so I showered first. After two long days at the hospital, I'm wiped, but I want Nesto here with me before I fall asleep.

I always sleep better with his arms around me.

He walks into the room still in slacks and his undershirt, muscles rippling under the tight white cotton knit. My mouth goes dry and other parts get wet.

I tell my ovaries to settle down. Now is not the time. I need sleep. Not sexing up.

My ovaries ignore my good sense and keep telling the rest of my body, what we really need is him.

Nesto lifts a small velvet pouch like it’s made of glass.

My heart crawls into my throat. "I’ve seen that pouch before."

Ernesto walks over and sits beside me on the bed. "Your father leant this to me."

I blink. "He did?"

That can only mean one thing.

Nesto nods once, then opens the pouch. The gold tie pin gleams in the late afternoon sunlight filtering in through the crack in the curtains.

My breath catches. "He…I…"

"I didn’t ask for it. He just… offered." Nesto’s voice is quiet, careful, like he’s still wrapping his head around what happened.

I stare at the piece. It’s not just jewelry. It’s a piece of De Luca history. All the men in my family wore that pin when they took vows of leadership in the Cosa Nostra. I wore it the night I became Salvatore's second-in-command.

I reach for it, then stop. "Did he say what it was for?"

"He told me to wear it when I ask you." Nesto doesn't smile, but there's quiet joy in his tone.

Every breath in my body stills. I look at him. Really look.

This man. My lover. My safe place. My equal. My match.

And now… my future.

My throat tightens. "He trusts you."

"I think he does." Nesto sets the pouch down on the nightstand and cups my face with both hands. "I would’ve asked you without it. Or his approval."

"I know." My smile trembles. "But now you’ll be asking with all the weight of the De Luca legacy behind you."

"Only thing I care about," he murmurs, brushing a kiss against my lips, "is having you say yes."

"I already have," I whisper. "Every damn day."

"Say it now. The word, Nerissa. I want the vow."

"Yes, Ernesto Ferrari, I will marry you."

The next kiss is filled with heat and dominance. "You belong to me."

"I have from the beginning."

Ernesto pins my wrists above my head with one large hand, his body covering mine like a promise and a threat.

His eyes burn with a fire only I ignite in him. "And I belong to you, to every last molecule of my DNA."

"Good thing because I have plans for that DNA." Plans I'm not ready to talk about yet, but someday sooner than later.

An animalist sound comes from low in his throat and he kisses me with bruising intensity.

Everyone thinks I’m the fierce one. The cold one. The one with the edge.

They’re not wrong.

I’ve killed men. Run negotiations that had the soldiers around me sweating. Carried the De Luca name on my back like a battle standard since the day I took my vow.

But here, in our bed, I’m just a woman.

His woman.

And I don’t have to lead.

"You’ve been running on adrenaline for days," he murmurs. "I can feel it under your skin. Let me burn it out of you."

"Yes," I breathe. "Please."

I trust him to know what I need. And once again, he proves that he does, pulling the t-shirt off of me before pinning my hands back to the bed.

With reverence. With command.

He takes a beat just to look at me naked, taking in every inch of melanin rich skin, every curve and muscle I’ve forged into armor over the years.

The first time he did this, I squirmed and demanded he get on with it. He tied me to his bed and edged me for two hours before letting me come so hard, I nearly passed out.

There have been times since then that I did lose consciousness after an orgasm too strong for my body to bear.

Now his eyes on me trigger my muscles to loosen and my heart to quicken.

Because he sees me. All of me.

"You’re so damn beautiful," he growls. "You always are. But like this? Breathless and soft for me? You wreck me . "

Wanting to touch too, I tug at his hold on my wrists.

But he shakes his head. "Tonight, I’m the only one touching."

I suck in a fortifying breath. My body knows what that means, and it's not a quickie and sleep.

Nesto presses my hands to the bed. "Keep them there."

He'll restrain me if I need it, but he prefers to command me with his body and voice alone.

When I nod my assent, he smiles. "Good girl."

Endorphins pour through me at those two words.

Then he touches me, fingertips feather light, drawing paths of goosebumps along my sensitive skin. Down my arms. Over my stomach. Along my inner thighs.

I'm so slick I can feel my arousal running down to my ass and he hasn't even touched my pussy or breasts.

Finally, he skims his hands over my nipples and I moan. Already a shade darker than the rest of me, engorged with blood, they turn dark chestnut. Then and only then will he put his mouth on me there.

When, according to Nesto, they're too sweet to resist anymore.

He plays there for long moments, circling and touching until the hard peaks ache for his lips.

He knows. He always knows. "Look at those juicy nips just waiting for me to taste them."

Another gush of wetness adds to the moisture between my legs.

Nesto inhales deeply. "The smell of your desire makes my mouth water and my dick hard, and my good girl perfumes the air with it, don't you?"

"Yes," I breathe, feeling like my body's response to him is a gift only I can give.

Then his mouth is on one of my nipples, his tongue laving and his lips circling, but it's not enough and a low whine makes it past my lips unbidden.

Without warning, his teeth clamp down and his fingers pinch my other nipple to the point just this side of pain. My body bows in involuntary response, but I keep my hands pressed against the bed.

He keeps up the exquisite torture until I think I can't stand it anymore, but before I beg him to stop…or do it harder, his fingers unclamp from one nipple. He draws back with his mouth on the other, keeping it trapped lightly between his teeth until my breast is pulled up and away from my body.

Then, he opens his mouth and it falls back, sending a shudder through my entire body.

He goes back to the light touches and moisture pools in my eyes before spilling over to slide down my temples. Before Nesto, I did not cry. Not ever.

The way he takes care of me…the way he touches me, it makes the tears come and they are always a catharsis.

The torturously light touches continue until the tears stop and I feel hollow and whole at the same time. That's when Nesto lifts and bends first my left leg, and then my right one so I'm spread and displayed just for him.

He slaps my pussy. Pleasure vibrates from my clit to the rest of my body and I moan.

Nesto's smile is filled with warmth. With approval.

Then he lean down and with his face inches from my pussy, he slides two fingers inside me. There's no resistance from my soaked pussy.

"So wet for me already," he murmurs, mouth hot on my inner thigh. "You're hard as steel to the rest of the world, but your soft and drenched for me."

"Only for you," I whisper my agreement.

His fingers stroke slow, and measured, until I’m trembling. When he lowers his mouth and tastes me, I'm so on edge, I cry out.

My sounds spur him on. Nesto marks my most intimate flesh with pleasure. He alternates between sucking my labia and my clit, getting me hot and bothered with one until I'm on the brink, then shifting to the other, increasing or decreasing the pressure, whatever will keep me on the edge.

He doesn't stop. Doesn't relent until I'm crying out in wordless need.

Only then does he allow me to fall apart for him, utterly, beautifully undone.

There's no time to so much as bring my breathing back under control before he's over me, lining his big cock up to my entrance.

"Tell me who owns this," he growls against my lips.

"You do."

"And who do you belong to?"

"You." The word’s barely a breath. "Only you."

He pushes inside me in one deep, powerful thrust. It's almost too much, but my body was made for this man and accommodates him like it does every time.

With soul stealing pleasure.

I moan into his mouth.

He takes me hard, steady, keeping my wrists pinned as he drives into me like he’s claiming something he never intends to lose.

I surrender completely.

No power games.

No masks.

Just the raw, aching truth of us.

When we both shatter—his name on my lips, my name on his—it feels like something permanent carves itself into the fabric of the universe.

Us.

The water is warm, the scent of eucalyptus rising around us in lazy spirals of steam.

Ernesto sits behind me in the oversized tub, his arms curved around my body, his chest a solid wall against my back. I’m relaxed and heavy, floating in a place that’s all skin and heartbeat and the safe silence that comes when nothing has to be said.

He brushes his hand up my arm, slow, like he’s memorizing me again. "You good?"

"Mmm." My eyes don't open, but I add, "Better than good."

His nose nudges my temple. "Still here with me?"

"Always."

My voice is soft. Not because I’m tired, though I am, even more so than when we first got back from the hospital. But because I’m allowed to be soft here.

With him. In this space.

Nesto's fingers find mine and he twines them, connecting us. "You were fire earlier."

"You make me burn."

"No, amate , that's all you. My sun. My moon. My stars. My everything."

My heart in my throat, wanting to take a step back from the heaviness of the emotion between us, I try to tease. "That’s poetic for a man who spent the last hour proving he has no mercy."

"I have none," he says simply, no laughter in his voice, not letting me hide here anymore than when our bodies are joined in deep intimacy. "Not when it comes to taking care of you."