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I flung a roll of toilet paper at him and he cracked up, the masochist. I rolled my eyes, thinking the soft paper would probably be bruised after bouncing off his chest and falling to the floor.

His muscles seemed harder than the stone.

I turned my eyes back to the mirror, asking myself the same question, hesitant to touch the skin on my face.

Who is this woman?

It was the first time in a week—two, more—that the light of day brought clarity to everything around us.

This woman was me, but…not. I looked completely wild.

I was not sure if my hair could be tamed.

It was a snarled mess. My eyes had a bright look to them, as if I was feverish.

My skin was still pale, and the patches of love marks and bruises stood out more than they should.

My lips were rosy from the nonstop kissing.

Perhaps I was thinner? I turned to the side. I did not have a bump yet, but my stomach felt…tight, as if it was about to give in to the growing life inside of me.

The growing life inside of me.

Our wild child.

I sighed at this.

My eyes met Mariano’s through the mirror.

I smiled at him. “I look like a truly feral woman.”

His face became serious. He pointed at his heart. “Mine.”

“Yours,” I breathed out. “All of me, Marito mio .”

He cleared his throat. “No bath,” he said. “I’m taking you someplace special today.”

“We get to leave?” My eyes widened.

He exploded with laughter, shaking his head. “A fucking trip,” he muttered to himself as he left me alone for the first time in a week, two, more. I did not like the way it made me feel, as if he had pulled out of me, and we were separate again.

This was why we both seemed to constantly pull each other back. We could not stand to be two, only one. My husband had just walked into the next room, and I was missing him as if he had left for months.

Before, I would have called myself pathetic, groaned, fought with my heart and soul about how wrong it was to be so dependent on him. Before Mariano Fausti, I did not even believe in love at first sight. I did not deny it either. I just did not consider it for myself.

Mariano Fausti made a believer out of me.

My attraction to him was instant—my heart and soul knew it before I did. It was my mind that fought. It was…overwhelming, the magnitude of feelings I had for him the moment our eyes met. Instinctually, I knew my life would never be the same.

What I felt for him was always there, but he felt so…new in my life.

It was almost impossible to put into words, and perhaps the experience was too great to sum up in mere sentences.

It would be disrespectful to even try. However, all I could attest to was that the one word, mine, seemed to be the only word close enough to how it felt.

Rarely did anything belong to us on this earth.

All was temporary.

A fleeting moment in history.

Not him and I.

We were it .

Even after death, I felt in my soul we would be together.

An eternal flame.

The same one existing inside of me—our direct link to always.

Our baby.

Perhaps we came into this world alone, but there was something inside each of us that had a prescheduled time, was meant to be, and once we found it, it was ours until after our dying breath.

“Annie.”

My eyes flew up. I had been staring at myself in the mirror, my hands running along the cool stone, but I was not seeing myself or what I was doing in that moment. I had been lost to…whatever this was between us.

My husband lifted a suitcase. “Your things.” He cleared his throat.

“I’ve never in my life rushed for anyone.

Yeah, I raced. I raced toward the unknown, because an instinctual part of me knew who was waiting for me.

You. But I’ve never run to grab a fucking suitcase before.

Fuck me sideways.” He stood straighter, and for him, it almost seemed as if he was fidgeting—standing straighter, then leaning against the doorframe, then crossing his arms, then standing straighter again.

I had to hide my grin.

“I couldn’t fucking stand to be apart from you,” he finished with. “In the same house.”

I nodded. “Same.”

Our eyes connected, and in a breath, we were going for each other. I wrapped my arms around him, and he lifted me up.

“I fucking missed you so much,” he said.

“Me too.” I kissed his lips over and over.

“Fucking insanity,” he said around more kisses.

“Totally nuts,” I said, but I did not even care that he was moving us toward the bed again. I would have beat his ass if he would not have taken this path.

We had not done it in the light here. I wanted to explore his body in it. Not only in the mysterious lines the dark gave him for me to follow. I wanted to memorize every inch of his skin in the sunlight, as he always did to me, as well.

He chuckled against my lips. “The light, ah?”

“I said that out loud?”

He set me down on the bed, and I bounced. All humor was gone from his face. “Let’s see what else I can get my wild woman to say before the day’s over, ah?” He came for me.

I did not fight.

I surrendered to him—again and again and again.

We had been in Fiji for a month.

Rain.

Sun.

We had not left the bure .

At that point, I told Mariano he was going to have to take some scissors to my hair. Although we bathed, there was never enough time to brush or dry my hair. We could not keep our hands off each other. I did not recall for how long, even after the day when the sun came out.

This time, however, I could see the determination in my husband’s eyes to make it out the door.

Perhaps mine as well.

“We are not separating,” I reminded him. “Wherever we are going, we are going together.”

“Fucking truth,” he said, and to prove a point, he went to the door to meet Merlin.

He left me in the bathroom to get ready. This time, I was more excited. The shopping trip I had with all the women spurred me to dig through the suitcase at lightning speed. He had not even moved it from the time he had set it down in the bathroom.

Mariano had told me he was taking me to a special area of the island, and all I would need was a swimsuit, or I could go naked. I could have, but I wanted to wear the things I had bought.

At least for a time.

Since there was not much of the “outfit,” it did not take me long to slip into it. I lifted my arm and sniffed. Since the time we attempted to leave, we had not bathed. I did not smell horrible. The scent of the shampoo, bath wash, and cream Scarlett had given me still lingered on me.

However, my hair?

I glanced at the hairbrush I had set on the counter.

“No,” I said sharply. I could already feel how horrible this was going to be.

A true fight. Nothing on this island felt as if it should be so rough.

The air was soft. The water was soft. I would deal with it later, or have Mariano chop it off.

I twisted it up, then set a hair clip to hold it together.

My hair was full of plump volume, and the top of my hair swelled.

It did not look so bad. I spritzed a little of the spray on and turned.

I jumped, flinging the brush, hitting Mariano square in the chest. He did not budge. He was staring at me.

“You need to make more noise, Mariano!”

He said nothing, but his eyes were working. They were taking me in at rapid speed, even if it was a slow perusal. It was making me antsy.

I almost danced from foot to foot. “Too much?” Magpie had picked it out for me.

It was a champagne-colored, leopard-print bikini.

The top was halter style, and it had a U-shaped wire at the center, which pulled my breasts together, creating a deeper cleavage.

The bottom had thin straps that reached my hips, and…

my husband turned me around. A single piece of material flossed between my ass cheeks.

He was all about the dental hygiene…

I had to say something to break the tension, and I could not come up with anything. It felt as if another storm was brewing. I hoped not. The sun was bright, it was hot, and I was ready to explore—with my husband.

“Too much?” I repeated, although I knew he had heard me. His ears worked as well as his eyes. Precise.

“Too fucking little,” he said, shaking his head. “That—” he pointed to me but meant the bathing suit “—doesn’t leave this bure . Meaning it doesn’t come back to the mainland with us.”

“Why?” I glanced down at myself.

“Why?” he repeated, shaking his head again. “That—whatever the fuck it’s called—will get me killed. You want to keep me safe, Annie. Lock it up here. Only wear it on our private beach. For me fucking only.”

I set my hands on my hips. “You get to walk around like that?” I waved a hand at him.

He looked down at himself. He had slid into a pair of swim trunks to speak to Merlin.

“I do not mean your trunks,” I said with a grin on my face.

His thick eyebrows were pulled in. He was confused but refusing to say it.

“I mean you, Mariano Fausti. In a suit, all eyes cannot deny what is clearly mine. In a beat-up t-shirt, worn-down jeans, and old work boots…tongues wag. It is only you—it does not matter the clothes.”

“I was born this way,” he said.

“Perhaps I was born to wear this suit.”

“My grandmother.” He sighed, shaking his head. “She’s behind that suit.”

“So?”

He crossed his arms over his chest, his biceps bulging. “ So …fucking…what?”

I stuck my chin up. “What if I wear it out? You bought it for?—”

He came at me, grabbing my arm, lifting me off my feet, throwing me over his shoulder as if I were as solid as a feather.

“ You bought it,” he said, truly pissed. “If I was the one doing the fucking buying, it would look like the one you have in Wyoming.”

Unceremoniously, he set me on my feet in the kitchen. He held my arm to steady me for a second, then waved a hand at the counter. Three gifts, wrapped perfectly, sat on it.

“What are those?” I asked, toying with the bows, truly curious.

“Open them,” he said.

“One has your name on it.”