Page 105 of My Dark Fairy Tale

Seconds later, he came, too, pulling out carefully before fisting his cock until he rained hot seed over both my holes.

And when he came, he shouted my name to the same moon as in a pagan union, a marriage under the stars that felt more eternal than if we had signed any kind of legal document and binding code.

I was his.

Completely, unutterably, until my dying day.

After, when he cleaned me up as best he could with his discarded designer shirt, ruining it without a thought, he collected me in his arms and carried me through the dark, quiet house to his palatial bedroom. He got into bed without allowing me to the leave the circle of his arms and then settled me curled up on his torso like a kitten.

I was completely exhausted, but I clung to wakefulness, waiting to hear those three little words I was now so certain he would ask me.

Will you stay? Will you stay? Will you stay?

I repeated them in my mind like a spell, and when he spoke, at first, I thought he himself had spoken them.

But no.

“You are brighter than any star we saw tonight,” he confessed as he stroked my hair with one hand and my hip with another. As if he couldn’t bear for any inch of me to be unloved for even a moment. “Please, promise me something.”

“What?” I whispered around the hope lodged in my throat.

“Segui la tua stella,” he murmured. “It means ‘follow your destiny.’ Do not go home and let your parents dictate your life any longer just because you feel guilty about their loss of Gemma. Just because you feel you should be able to make their lives easier by being good at the costof your dreams. Whatever wishes you made in the safety of your head tonight, follow them for me, even when I am not there to show you how much I am cheering you on.”

I blinked at the flood of tears that attacked my ducts, trying to keep them back through sheer force of will.

The only wishes I had made tonight were to stay here with Raffa forever, but it seemed he didn’t have the same dream.

“Your dreams mean more now to me than my own,” he said quietly before kissing the top of my head.

A few minutes later, his hands went limp on my body as sleep swept him and my hope for those three little words away forever. When I was sure he was deeply asleep, I turned my face into his chest and let myself anoint him with my tears as I whispered, “I love you, Raffa. In any language, across any distance. And I always will.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Guinevere

I woke up with a gasp because there was a hand over my mouth.

My eyes flew open, torso knifing up only to be gently pushed back down. Raffa was leaning over me, the whites of his eyes gleaming in the dark room.

“Hush,” he insisted quietly, sharp urgency in every line of his coiled body as he hunched over me like a shield. “Someone is in the house.”

Fear tied my belly into tight knots. He removed his hand to press a finger to his lips.

I nodded, heart moving to hammer in my throat so hard I thought I would vomit around it.

A light was flashing on Raffa’s bedside table like a silent alarm, throwing red light into the room every few seconds. It was a security system, I realized with relief.

The police were on their way.

The door to the room creaked open.

Raffa pushed me into the mattress, straddling my body, facing the door with agunraised in the direction of the entrance.

But it was only Ludo, his own handgun in both hands. He jerked his head at Raffa and made a hand gesture toward the hall before disappearing again.

Raffa nimbly climbed off the bed and grabbed for my hand.

“Hide in the closet while I go sweep the house,” he ordered me softly in Italian. “Do not make a noise and donotcome out unless you recognize the voice of whoever is in the room.”