Page 50

I had enough karma to deal with with the elf who stole my socks.

I grinned, and before Mariano made it into the room, yelled for him to bring me one of the glass jars from the kitchen.

Whoever had been here previously, one of Atta’s family members, had left behind a bunch of glass jars in the cucina .

My husband— my husband! —for as long as we both shall live and beyond, came in with a tray.

A glass of something red, a medley of fresh fruit, cheese, and crackers were arranged on it.

The glass jar sat beside it all. He set the tray on a table and lifted the glass jar in question.

I wrapped the sheet around me towel style and took it from him.

I nodded to the dangling creature keeping eight eyes on us.

As easily as I could, I set the jar underneath her and then set the top on. It disconnected her web, but she was all right and ready to be relocated.

I turned with a smile on my face. “Charlotte is ready for her new home!”

He crossed his arms over his chest, coming in closer, eyeing her. “Charlotte, ah?”

I nodded. “We need to poke holes in the top. Tomorrow, we can bring her to one of the barns on the property.”

“Because she’s a barn spider.”

I looked closer at her. “I believe so.”

He sighed, taking the jar from me. After he made it to the kitchen, I heard popping noises.

He was making holes for her. I jumped back into bed, a grin on my face, even if I was sore and aching from how wide he had stretched me, how deep he had gone inside of me.

I could still feel him there. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, got back to what I was thinking of before.

Right.

I had evicted our first house guest. I had a feeling we would be evicting a lot more once we started deep cleaning.

My husband’s face was…not the same when he came back into the bedroom.

It was…perhaps…disappointed? He handed me the glass from the tray, which was filled with cranberry juice.

I gulped it down, some of it slipping past my lip and running down my chin, between my breasts.

His eyes were magnetized to the area, even if his full lips were turned down.

He said nothing as he pushed the tray toward me and went in the direction of the kitchen again.

He came back with a full gallon of the juice.

I thanked him as he poured me another glass, then drank it straight down.

Instead of pouring me another, he handed me the gallon. I drank straight from the well.

Feeling refreshed, I started on the fruit. When I realized he was staring at me, I set a grape close to his mouth, and he opened.

Still. Something was off with him.

I fed him another grape. “What is going on, Mariano?”

He sighed, and it was so heavy, the melon about to make it into my mouth paused. I set it down on the platter. Set my hand over his. Braced myself for whatever he was going to say next.

“Mariano,” I whispered, a slight amount of panic starting to rise to the surface of my emotions.

He refused to look at me. He rolled his shoulders. “You did not call for me,” he said in Italian. He crossed his arms over his bare chest.

I stared at him for a moment. “I do not understand,” I said.

“The spider.”

You did not call for me. The spider.

“ Ah ,” I breathed out, popping the bubble of laughter about to rise from my chest. He was dead serious about this.

He wanted to be the knight to my damsel.

He could not help himself. It was in his blood.

I set my hand over his bulging bicep, squeezing a little.

“I am afraid of plenty of things. I will always call for you when those appear.”

His eyes turned down to mine. “Snakes.”

“ Sì . All snakes.”

“Tell me.”

“There is more,” I pivoted. “I do not like bad weather.”

He wrapped his arm around me, pulling me close, kissing my head. He was in protector mode, and I could not get enough of him this way. Even his scent around me felt as impenetrable as a shield.

I sighed. “When lightning shocks the room, and thunder cracks…I only want to…hide from it.”

He held me closer. I sighed. I had always hated to admit any weaknesses.

The world has a way of finding them on its own and applying pressure to them, a way to break the already broken.

Admitting these things to Mariano did not feel this way.

If anything, it made me feel as if I was not alone with my fears.

I was sharing the weight of the burdens with him.

“I’ll kill anything that means you harm, Annie,” he said. “I’m your armor in this world. The man who would die for your honor.”

“I know,” I whispered. “Does this include roaches? Because I really do not like those.”

He laughed, raspy and low, and the sound moved over me, covering me in a warm blanket. “Yeah, Annie.” He sighed. “This includes roaches.”

“ Bene ,” I whispered. Then I looked into his eyes and, rising from my position, used my legs to straddle him. His cock was being held back by the sweatpants, but not truly. It appeared as though he would tear through them.

I set my hands on his shoulders, my thumbs stroking his neck. “Is this place really ours?”

“ Sì.”

A warmth that had nothing to do with the fire spread from my toes and hit my lips. A smile spread on my face that I could not control.

A gorgeous grin came to his. “You’re pleased with me, Annie.”

“Sì.” My smile grew even wider. “I am pleased with my husband!” I leaned in and kissed him. Kissed him again. And again. Until he refused to release my head and the kiss grew deep.

Wild.

Until I could no longer breathe.

I broke it, having to take a moment to catch my breath, but my body could not be stopped. It was a magnet to his. I kissed his neck, down his chest, and over his heart, I stilled and looked up. “We have said vows, and this is one of them. What is yours is mine .”

His eyes were already lowered. His cock hard. He gave me a suspicious look, which I met with a mischievous smile.

“For the next…hour?” I waved the time off. “Time does not matter. This body.” I licked him from heart to Adonis belt, and goosebumps rose on his skin. I suddenly felt as magical as a magician. “Is all mine .”

“It’s yours. Just like yours is mine.” He cleared his throat. “With my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.” He was reminding me of two vows he’d made to me.

I lifted my finger. “I am amending—no, adding to—my statement. This body is all mine to do whatever I want with it.”

A breath between us. He nodded.

Ahhh, yessss, the voice in my head breathed out when I started to lick his skin. He was a bit salty, but woodsy and spicy at the same time. His stomach tightened when my tongue ran around his navel.

My eyes rose to meet his, and he was watching me as though I was a creature who had never explored him this way before.

With our eyes locked, my tongue continued its explorations down, a moan vibrating my throat. I did not know what it was, but the way I was positioned, my culo in the air, it was making the pulse between my legs throb.

The air was cool, and it was touching the want coating my thighs, making me shiver.

My skin was hot. Perhaps my temperature as well.

It was doing something to me. Licking him , exploring him with my tongue, was driving me crazy.

I stilled when I came close to the tip of his cock, our eyes lingering, his narrowed into almost slits.

When I held a handful of his balls and then took him into my mouth, he growled low in his throat, and his hands tightened into fists.

I had never done this before, but he tasted so good.

I could not stop.

I massaged him while I licked and sucked him like a lollipop.

The noises he made?

Made me feel high, almost unhinged.

He was groaning, growling, and his hand was on my head.

At any moment, it seemed he was going to guide me down further, to take him deeper, but he was giving me this.

He had given me his word, even with a nod.

He was mine to explore this way. I was learning.

Doing what felt natural. What got the loudest and most intense reaction out of him.

He liked it when I took him deep. When I moaned.

Same.

His humungous balls seemed to contract in my hands the more I worked him with my mouth.

“Sistine,” he growled.

I was so high on doing what I was doing to him, I did not even comprehend that he had hauled me up his body and flipped me face down.

My culo was in his face. My face was, ah, facing his bobbing cock.

It was so heavy, it swayed, even when hard.

The sight of it made me lick my lips, wanting to do more of that to him.

To make him feel good. To taste him. To moan and allow him to feel the vibration of my mouth.

“Fuck,” he said, and I moaned, or mewled as a queen would, or…I did not even know, when his tongue touched my figa, and he started to devour me.

It almost felt like an instinct. My mouth slid over him again. My hips were activated, grinding against his face, and his hips were pulsing up. He was growling against me, like an animal who had been starved and had caught the first meal of his life, and I was moaning against him.

I used my arms and lifted. “I cannot—” I moaned even louder. My lungs were burning. My chest tight. My thighs trembled. Sweat coated my skin. It glistened in the firelight. Dripped on his thighs. My body could not hold on to the intense pleasure for a second longer.

My mouth went over him again, but he flipped me over, so we were face to face.

We were both breathing heavy, our hands reaching out, our mouths coming together in an explosion that only intensified when he entered me on a thrust that knocked the breath completely from my lungs.

He moved inside of me as if he were a man possessed.

A mysterious something was lost inside of me he had to desperately find.

I was desperately trying to share it with him.

“Come to me, my wife,” he ordered in Italian, his teeth rolling over his bottom lip when he stilled inside of me for a moment. “Come to me.”

When we both found each other, I orgasmed around his cock, my voice vibrating as if I was hitting deep holes in the ground, my chest on a bumpy ride, and he exploded inside of me with a growl that made me orgasm again.

It was never one time with him. Always multiple at one time.

I closed my eyes, relaxing my body, or attempting to. When he was this close…my nerves were exposed and the slightest touch of his would set me off again.

I could not stop touching him.

He could not stop touching me.

His face was buried in the crook of my neck, and his warm breath fanned over my skin as he exhaled. “My heart is fighting to get closer to yours, but it is never close enough,” he said in Italian. Then he switched to English. “You’re going to kill me.”

“You were not ended before.” I was not sure why those words slipped out then. Perhaps they had been lodged in my heart and needed to be set free. I did not understand the magnitude of how connected we felt when we were one—and he had done that before me.

Given his moniker, on the regular.

Heat seemed to engulf me when I thought about it.

Jealousy was a new emotion to me.

My sister felt it as the feral animal she was, but I never had.

I understood it then. Perhaps my feelings were unwarranted.

Mariano did not have to show loyalty to the woman he would marry before he was married to her.

However, I was coming to realize that jealousy was not a sane emotion.

I felt almost unstable, as I did when I punched the ass-face blond in the eye.

He turned my face toward his. “What I did before you was never like this. It never almost killed me. It always kept me hungry for more. Racing toward it. There’s a difference between fucking and making love, Annie.

I didn’t know the difference until you. You are my wife.

” He set my hand over his racing heart, and then he hit it against it.

“ My fucking wife. No one compares to you. What you do to me. The only reason I’m not dead from emotional overload is because I refuse to fucking leave you. ”

My hand trembled from what we had done, from the words he had just spoken with true conviction, and I set my palm against his cheek, my fingertips stroking the light dusting of hair on his face. I closed my eyes and nodded.

“Look at me,” he demanded.

I did, but barely. I was spent.

“I’ve never looked at anyone the way I look at you. Because when I look at you, something exists between us that I never had before. I can’t deny it. Won’t fucking deny it. It’s mine. Yours. Ours alone. I live for it. I’d go to the grave for it.”

“Stop talking about graves,” I mumbled. The thought of being without him suddenly made me ache. Ache in a part of my heart and soul I did not know existed until him.

Then I was flying. He was carrying me in his arms. My eyelids fluttered halfway open when the bathroom came into view.

Candles were placed all over. Without setting me down, Mariano started the shower.

The tub could not be used. Almost everything in the cabin needed to be redone.

Without breaking a step, he brought us underneath the tepid spray, and after that…

Dreams.

I dreamed of a bright white sandy beach, turquoise waters, cotton candy skies, and air that was as soft and warm as a cozy blanket. It covered me in tranquility until the storm began.