Page 48

Sistine

T he song my husband sang to me after everyone left was stuck in my head.

It kept replaying over and over, the beat of it translating from my mouth as a hum.

My voice could not compare to my husband’s.

The roughness and softness of his voice combined kept inflicting me with music frisson, as the differences in his touch, hard and smooth, did when he touched my skin and made goosebumps rise.

Although Mariano had not told me to pay attention to the lyrics, I had.

I had paid attention to them as if I was hanging on by a thread and his message to me would throw me a lifesaving rope.

A moment this important had meaning behind it, and the song he chose to sing to me on our wedding night was not going to be lost on me.

It was not.

It was taken to heart as a vow would be.

“Tell me, do you like that one, my wife.” He pulled my hips toward him, and they rammed into his hardness. I lost my breath, my arms instinctively tightening around his neck. I needed something to keep me up. No doubt he could send me falling and keep me stable.

“I do,” I whispered, our eyes gazing. “Sing me another please .”

We swayed, the hundreds of candles and the firelight giving the room a grotto feel. Our shadows danced along with us on the walls, expanding and shrinking, shivering and steady.

He cleared his throat and sang another one for me.

I hummed along since I had never heard that one before. He spun me out, brought my back into his front, our hands and arms entwined, while he sang in my ear, before he turned me out and brought my front to his front with a smoothness that made me lose my breath again.

Dannazione .

The man could sing. His voice felt as if it were a physical thing, something that needed him to breathe but could live outside of him.

It was warm, touching every sensitive nerve I seemed to have developed along my skin, and it was as rough as the pebbles beneath my feet in the creek.

He did this raspy thing with his throat that made me weak in the knees.

“The way you’re looking at me,” he said when the song was over.

“How am I looking at you?” Probably as though he was the first man I had ever seen in my life—and he was calling to the woman inside of me.

“Like I hung the fucking moon.”

I smiled. “You roped it. You roped it and hung it for me.”

“Sistine Evita Fausti,” he breathed out, his tongue hitting every perfect spot in my name. “For the rest of your life, for the rest of mine, I’ll do whatever it fucking takes to keep it that way.”

He turned me out again, toward what I liked to call the “gazing window.”

It was the perfect viewing spot in the room. Especially from the bed.

Also, sì , the bed. While I had been out with Atta, Marito mio had a mattress delivered. It was as soft as a cloud.

The fireplace was roaring, but it could not fully touch where we danced or the bed. It only warmed the space up a little. What it did not touch fully, my husband did.

Perfect.

His hands roamed over my body, over the curves the dress enhanced, and I closed my eyes, hoping he would explore me forever this way. If I were made of glass, his prints would fog over every area he touched, leaving his handprints behind.

I demanded this.

Demanded he brand me down to the bone.

His touch alone burned me. Perhaps it could have been from the high of the day and evening, but I knew it was not—my husband had changed with the new title and role in my life.

The look in his eyes had morphed. His touch had transformed.

I had never thought it possible, but after sacred vows had been spoken out loud and made between us, he had become more possessive.

A look in his eyes that was more proprietary surfaced.

He did not have to speak the words for me to understand.

His eyes.

His touch.

Every breath he took whispered:

Mine.

The whisper would turn into something else entirely, something deadly, if something or someone threatened what was his.

The connection between us.

“My life ,” he called me in Italian as his hands found the hidden zipper and slowly started to release me from the dress.

Once it was done, leaving me only in my lace and tulle light-blue underwear, a bow over my culo , he moved my hair to the side and placed a soft kiss on the nape of my neck. “My wife .”

I made a mmhmm noise when his warm breath washed across my chilled skin. My hands searched for purchase against the wall, my nails clawing, when he started to suck from my nape to the throbbing pulse in my neck. He was going to mark me there.

Mine.

He could not live without me.

I would sacrifice my blood, sweat, tears, my love, for his life—for the rest of my life.

I could not live without him.

My breath trembled out, and my knees were so weak, I was not sure how much longer I could stand.

My husband could read the signs of my body better than I could.

He set a lingering kiss over the pulse in my neck, where my skin was probably bruised from how hard he had been sucking.

Allowing the dress to fall to the floor, he swept me off my feet and carried me to the bed, just as he had carried me over the threshold when he stepped into the cabin after our ceremony was over.

My body felt almost drugged, and when I looked up at him, my eyelids were heavy. Almost too heavy to keep open. Although I felt woozy, almost in a trance, my arms reached out, and my hands started to unbutton his shirt.

Mine.

Our eyes were locked as he set me on my feet, my body close enough to his to feel the heat radiating off him.

He exhaled a breath when I reached out, his eyes closing as I continued to undress him.

Down to skin, I explored his body with my fingertips only.

Over every valley and peak, over every edge and plain.

However, there was nothing plain about my husband.

His body was a testament to the hard labor he preferred.

Every muscle was defined. Even his veins bulged against taut, tan skin.

When I’d first met him in winter, he was more olive, but after the sun had kissed his skin, he was much darker.

The darkness of his skin teased out the light of his peridot eyes, cyan around the edges.

His soft, silky black hair was as inky as night. It was cut in the same style as his father’s. Trim around the edges. Longer on top. When he would remove his hat, it would go wild before his hand tamed it down.

It seemed to say a lot about who Mariano Leone Fausti was.

He was wild on the inside, but he controlled when and where he set it loose.

My wish was that he set it free on me.

I would be there to fix his hair once we were done.

A trembling breath left my mouth.

The realization hit me—hard enough to steal my breath again.

This wild animal of a man was mine .

“ All mine,” I whispered, making a circle around him, coming to stand in front of him again.

It took a second for his eyes to open. His eyebrows were thick, but he had two, not connecting, and his eyelashes were long and raven.

Depending on how he was feeling, his eyebrows could give him such a fierce look.

His lashes only added to the passion when he was looking at me as he was at that moment.

Eyelids lowered almost to closed. As if he was high off the thought of devouring me.

Yet…his stare was focused, so intense, it made me breathless.

Breathless, but not afraid.

I was willing to sacrifice myself to him. If he needed my blood, it was his.

Whatever existed inside of me was his, as whatever existed inside of him was mine.

I stuck my chin up as my trembling hands, palms forward, came to rest against his hard chest, just to feel the life beneath his surface race to me. His skin was hot, hot enough to make sweat run from my neck, along my back, and disappear into the arch of it.

“Forever and always, Mariano Fausti,” I whispered.

“You and me,” he said.

“You and me,” I repeated.

“Call me the name you gave me.” His eyes were turned down to mine, and all the passion and conviction inside of him seemed to be concentrated to that one area—unless my eyes turned down and found how hard he was for me. His cock was stabbing me in the stomach.

“ Marito mio ,” I said.

One, two, three breaths passed between us before he said, amen , and then his mouth crashed into mine.

My arms flew around his neck as we kissed, moved toward the bed, our bodies barely separating.

My skin was against his, and it was making me higher than the kiss.

When his skin was next to mine, it was an experience I was certain would not ever grow old.

It was as if one of us was the kindling and the other was the heat, and together, we formed a fire.

A fire that could burn for hours and hours, days and days, months and months, years and years. At the end of it, we could walk away together, the fire turning the outside world to ash, but not us.

He lifted me up, set me on the bed, and took the position next to me.

It seemed as if by magic, the time spent getting situated in the bed disappeared.

We were kissing, our hands exploring, until I was begging for my husband to be inside of me, and he was telling me he could not wait another moment to be inside of his wife. When he entered me, I cried out.

“ Shh , my wife,” he whispered, stroking my head, kissing me.

His tongue touched mine, continued to touch mine even when he moved his face away.

“Deep. I need to be so fucking deep inside of you—so deep inside, I’m lost until I find my home.

” He entered me fully, and he swallowed down the gasp from my mouth.

“That’s it. Take all of me home. Keep me there. ”

“ Sì ,” I barely got out. I was talking nonsense. Or was I? I was letting my heart do the talking. My body. He moved deep inside of me, stirring up feelings buried so deep, only he and I knew of them. “ Sì. Sì. Sì. You are there. Per sempre. ”