Page 117

“If you are not breathing, neither am I. In this life and all others, it is us . The connection we share—I know it is rare, priceless, as priceless as this ring on my ring finger.” I lifted it, and in the glow of the full moon, the red diamond was coated in liquid mercury, gliding over the diamonds around it, making them shimmer.

“A symbol of who you are to me. Sent by God above to be my one and only.”

However, all this hyperbole…and he was right. What I had done…I had done to shove the truth in my family’s face, but perhaps he did not realize how deep the truth went for me.

“I admit,” I continued, my chin held high, “I had something to prove. I wanted my family and the extended parts of yours to know. To know how powerful the connection between us runs. No one could come between us. Not my father, my sister, and no challenger in your war-thirsty family. I dare them all to stand and challenge what no man is allowed to—a union God and His hand, fate, has brought together and made one. A man and his wife. A woman and her husband. Mariano Leone Fausti and Sistine Evita Fausti.”

I was trembling at the truth in my words.

He was trembling as he received them.

“As far as Ig?—”

He was on me. His hands in my hair, his mouth pressed to mine. Our tongues were at war. He pulled my head back by my hair, looking into my eyes. “Don’t fucking say his name.” His mouth was on mine again.

My back hit a hard surface—a place to store outside equipment, it seemed.

I could hear the pitter patter of rain as it seemed to hit the tin roof.

I was soaked, my thin cotton nightgown sheer in the light of the moon, clinging to my skin, my breasts and nipples showing through.

The wig between my legs was dark against the pink of my flesh.

I was not only soaked from the rain, but from what this man did to me with a touch.

Even with the constant flow of water, my body was on fire.

His hand roamed up to my outer thigh, my breaths meeting his breaths as his mouth devoured mine.

“You.” He kissed me again. “Your silence fucking breaks my heart, while your words mend it.” He lifted me up, and my legs automatically went around his waist. He kissed a trail down my neck, sucking at my pulse point, before lowering to the spot over my heart.

He was going to leave passion bruises all over my skin. Branding me with his kisses.

My hand dug into his hair when he sucked so hard, it felt as if my uterus had contracted.

Death awakens us.

I felt consumed, but also so alive—the mist clinging to my face, how internally I was hot, but my skin was pebbled with a chill that was not in the air.

The way my husband’s mouth felt as if it was a flame against my skin as he claimed it for his own—over and over.

He demanded to go deeper than skin. He wanted in my bloodstream, down to the marrow of my bone.

“I feel you there, my husband,” I barely got out in Italian, moaning into the night.

“Keep me there,” he replied in the same language. “Keep me there as your knight and your shield.”

My feet lowered his soaked pants, and his cock sprang free, his sword.

He entered me on a thrust that sent my back up the wall.

I gasped and he groaned. I locked my legs around his toned waist, feeling his muscles tremble beneath my palms. I demanded to keep the feeling locked inside of me, him locked inside of me, in case I was ever lost. His fire would direct me in the deepest nights of my life.

I would see the glow, feel the warmth all the way down to marrow, and follow the direction of my heart—straight to his.

It almost felt as if his heart was inside of my chest, and mine was in his. This. This was how we had found each other in a world that seemed never ending.

There was no proof of this. No theories tested and no articles written.

However, I believed that not all mysterious are known, and those that are do not always have to be solved.

Some miracles, mysteries in life just…are.

To question the inner workings of it seems to challenge a much greater force than us.

I did not need to know the specifics of it.

Only that it existed.

If anyone needed proof, all they had to do was stand in the same room as me and my husband.

In that moment, I was consumed by it.

Consumed by the thought that this man had been created for me, and when he was inside of me, we were both home in each other’s arms. We were reaching out for what had been lost, given, before we were even aware of each other’s existence.

The love I felt spilled over from my lips and into his ear as he pushed deep inside of me.

He was not hurting me.

He had complete control over himself, although he trembled with the instinct to become feral.

He knew the risks. Just how deep he could go. The damage that could be done to our love—his child developing in my womb. Yet…he was going deeper than I ever felt him go before, even if he was in complete control of the easy but intense rhythm.

The pace almost felt…punishing.

The slowness of it.

The deepness.

My body demanded to bow to his, but he would slip out just before I did, bringing me back down to where we had begun. Starving for…more. Manic to reach the highest pinnacle with him.

My arms tightened around his neck, and I made a low mewling sound that seemed to echo when he slid out, his engorged cock touching every overly sensitive nerve inside of me.

“Tell me, did you miss my cock, my wife.”

“ Mmmm …”

“It’s all yours,” he murmured in my ear, his breath warm and fanning over the delicate skin there. “All fucking yours. Look . Fucking look at what you do to me.”

He forced my eyes down, where his glistening cock was wedged between my thighs, the tip inside of me. I bucked my hips against him, demanding more, and he called me greedy before he slipped inside a little more.

His eyes closed.

His neck arched back. His Adam’s apple pronounced.

His jet-black hair glistened as onyx would, tiny droplets of crystal mist clinging to him.

“I’ve never been so fucking hard,” he said, his voice rough. “I’ve only felt the heat of my wife against my bare cock. Only my wife. Mine .”

“Mariano,” I said, my voice hoarse.

“Mariano,” he repeated. “Nah. I only answer to the name you gave me.”

“My husband.”

“Tell me, my wife, what do you need from your husband.”

“All of you!” I tried again to get all of him inside of me.

He was holding back.

“Now,” I rasped, biting at his lip. “Now, or I might… mmm …”

He pushed deeper inside, and my breath caught.

I raked my nails against his back, and he hissed out before he captured my mouth again.

What he had showed me, his cock coated with my want, was the most erotic thing I had ever seen.

The taste of him, rainwater and cinnamon with a touch of mint…

his cologne wafting in the air around me, woodsy, spicy, citrusy, consuming my senses…

“I cannot… mmmmmm .” My thighs automatically clenched around him when I felt I could no longer hold on. He was too deep inside of me. Too deep to even catch my breath. It felt so good, tears streamed down my face, though they were lost in the rain.

He knew.

He always knew.

He licked the trail of them up my cheek until he came to my eye, and then he kissed a path back down to my lips, where he consumed them again in a kiss that transported.

His hips began to work harder, faster, and I could not hold on.

I orgasmed around his cock with a sound I knew echoed in the night as if we were two feral animals mating out in the wild.

The growl that came from his throat when he spilled himself inside of me was so animalistic, it sent me into a warm spiral again that made me tremble around him for a second time.

There were times when he pulled out of me that I orgasmed again.

I was so spent, not only from the physical act, but the emotional one, that I buried my face in the crook of his neck, breathing him in and taking shelter in the pace of his pulse.

My arms hung like two limp spaghetti strands around his neck.

My legs trembled around him. I was not sure if I could even walk.

He pulled back, gazing into my eyes, then fixed the straps of the nightgown. They had slid down my arms and stuck there. The light fabric was soaked.

So was I. To the bone. I probably looked like a drowned rat.

My husband… sigh .

He looked like a Roman statue standing tall in Italy. The mist only gave him more of a male mystique.

The scent in the air was powerful around him. His scent belonged here, belonged to the woods, the water, except…I could smell us together. The scent of his seed and my arousal. Bitter and sweet.

He closed his eyes, and I almost whimpered at the lost contact, as I would sometimes whimper when he separated us.

He leaned in and kissed me. Kissed a trail from my mouth, down my throat, until he moved the fabric down even further and kissed each breast, licking around the shape of them, until he put my nipple in his warm mouth and sucked.

Sucked until the peak could cut glass when he pulled away and lavished the other with the same attention.

I felt needy. Greedy. I pushed myself closer to his mouth, feeling my uterus contract as if an invisible string tugged from my nipple to the inside of my legs.

I was so sensitive…my entire body shivered, and I orgasmed again. It was not loud, but a quiet whimper in his ear.