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I kiss him again, grabbing the collar of his shirt, yanking with all my strength until the buttons tear free. I run my hands down his chest, the muscles rippling, reminding me of all the times I had been pinned beneath him.

God, I want to see it all. My fingers drag the shirt down his arms while he grips my waist.

The rage has melted into raw, carnal need, and I want to consume him.

He grips my hips as I move against him, the hard line of his cock straining against his pants. I lean forward, my mouth at his ear. “I should make you beg,” I whisper, biting his lobe, “for lying to me.”

“Make me,” he dares, voice like gravel.

So I do.

I lean back just enough to grab the zipper of my dress and yank it down in one motion, baring the flushed swell of my breasts. I shrug the fabric off my shoulders until it pools at my waist, and then his hands are on me, rough and starved.

His mouth crashes down on my breast, tongue swirling over my nipple until it stiffens under his teeth. He bites—not gently. I moan, sharp and helpless, as he sucks hard, leaving a dark bloom in his wake. The pain twists into pleasure, and I arch my spine, offering more.

I reach behind me to unclasp my bra, but he beats me to it—fingers hooking beneath the lace, and with one savage rip, he tears it off me. The sound alone makes my pussy clench.

“You always were better ruined,” he mutters against my skin, and then he’s back on me—biting, licking, devouring. One hand cups my breast while his mouth works the other, tugging and sucking like he means to leave me trembling.

I’m already wet. Dripping. My thighs are slick where they press against his pants, and when I roll my hips again, he groans into my skin.

I lift slightly and shove my dress up over my hips, exposing the thin black lace of my panties. His eyes go molten at the sight.

“Take them off,” he rasps.

I do it slow, dragging the wet fabric down my thighs while his hands roam my ass. I’m bare now, dress bunched at my waist, my slick heat inches from his cock, and I don’t wait. I reach between us and start unbuckling his belt, fingers clumsy with urgency.

He lifts his hips just enough for me to yank down his pants and boxers in one go. His length springs free—thick, flushed, heavy—and my mouth waters at the sight.

I wrap one hand around him, stroking from base to tip, watching his jaw clench as I do. My thumb swirls over the bead of pre-come. His grip tightens on my hips like he’s trying to keep control.

Good.

Let him lose it.

I shift my weight, hover just over him. His length nudges against my entrance, slick with anticipation. I lower myself an inch, let the head slide in, and then stop—teasing.

His eyes blaze. “Aria?—”

“I said,” I whisper darkly, “you don’t get to dictate terms to me.”

Then I slam down onto him in one savage stroke. We both gasp, the sound punched from our lungs as he fills me, stretches me, splits me open in the most perfect way.

“Fuck,” he groans, head dropping back. “You feel—Jesus—so goddamn tight.”

I ride him slowly at first, grinding my hips in circles, feeling every vein, every inch of him rub against my walls. His hands grip my ass, guiding my pace, but I don’t let him lead. This is mine .

I start to move faster, hips snapping, the wet slap of our bodies obscene and delicious. My breasts bounce with every thrust and his mouth finds them again—biting, sucking, claiming.

The chair rocks with our rhythm, leather creaking. I dig my nails into his shoulders, hips rotating for pleasure.

My thighs burn from the pace I’m setting, but I don’t slow. I don’t want soft. I want to wreck him the way he wrecked me—make him remember this every time he closes his eyes.

His head tips forward, breath hot against my collarbone. “You’re torturing me.”

I rotate my hips, let my pussy slide all around his cock. His hips buck to drive into me, but I push him down, my nails raking down his shoulders. He drives his hips up to meet mine again, and god, the pleasure seeps through deeper, rougher. I can’t fight myself any longer.

I need more.

His hands grip my ass so tight I’ll bruise, but I don’t care. I want the ache. I want the mark.

I feel him everywhere—filling me so deep. Every nerve is lit. Every inch of me feels his .

“Harder,” he grits, voice hoarse in my ear. “I need to be deeper— need to fuck you properly.”

But even as my body begs for more, my mind stumbles.

What the hell are we doing?

I swore I’d never let him have this again—this power, this access to my soul.

And yet, here I am: open, aching, desperate for him to split me in half.

This isn’t surrender.

This is exposure.

And I don’t know which scares me more.

Before I can answer, he grabs my hips and stands.

With me still on him.

A startled gasp rips from my throat as his hands lock under my thighs, my back arching as he lifts me off the chair, still buried deep inside me. The sudden shift only makes me clench around him, and he groans like he’s dying.

“Fuck—Aria?—”

For a moment, we just breathe.

His forehead presses to mine, slick with sweat and heat and something harder to name.

“I should let you go,” he whispers. “But I don’t know how.”

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.

“You love this,” 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’re making 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.

When I wake, sunlight streams through the partially opened curtains. I reach across the bed before my mind fully registers what I’m doing, searching for his warmth, his solidity.

My hand meets cold sheets. He’s gone, leaving only the scent of his cologne and the ache between my thighs.

No note. No explanation. Just the silence of my beautiful, empty penthouse.

I curl into myself, one hand resting protectively over my stomach, and try to ignore the hollow feeling expanding in my chest.

This changes nothing, I tell myself fiercely. This was just sex. Just a moment of weakness. And yet I feel like I’ve handed him a piece of my soul.